The automotive press is filled with articles about Automotive RADAR, drive-by-wire, vehicle-to-vehicle communications, and self-driven vehicles. Automakers and Electronics companies are lobbying Congress to build smart highways and lawyers debate liability and who is to blame when automated vehicles go awry. These concerns could be clipped from today's paper, but they were also topical in the 1950's. After 20 years and millions of dollars of automated vehicle R&D, the auto industry was gearing up to bring the technology to market...so why didn't they?

This talk is on the 75+ years of history of automated driving, the lessons learned, and why things are different today...or not.

Autonomous vehicles (AVs) are conveyances to move passengers or freight without human intervention. AVs are potentially disruptive both technologically and socially1, 2, 3, with claimed benefits including increased safety, road utilization, driver productivity and energy savings1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. Here we estimate 2014 and 2030 greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions and costs of autonomous taxis (ATs), a class of fully autonomous7, 8 shared AVs likely to gain rapid early market share, through three synergistic effects: (1) future decreases in electricity GHG emissions intensity, (2) smaller vehicle sizes resulting from trip-specific AT deployment, and (3) higher annual vehicle-miles travelled (VMT), increasing high-efficiency (especially battery-electric) vehicle cost-effectiveness. Combined, these factors could result in decreased US per-mile GHG emissions in 2030 per AT deployed of 87–94% below current conventionally driven vehicles (CDVs), and 63–82% below projected 2030 hybrid vehicles9, without including other energy-saving benefits of AVs. With these substantial GHG savings, ATs could enable GHG reductions even if total VMT, average speed and vehicle size increased substantially. Oil consumption would also be reduced by nearly 100%.

2015-03-12: Bay Area 2025 Transport Futures

What does the 2025 Bay Area transportation future hold for us? The world’s transportation innovation center now has the US’s second worst traffic congestion, after Los Angeles. Given a myriad of colliding and conflicting change vectors--robocars, robotaxi last mile systems, mobility as a service, smartphone ridesharing, low-cost robotic van transit, electric scooters, road/parking pricing, transit improvements, state climate policy, gentrification, and voter sentiment--how will everything settle out?

Bio of Steve Raney from Cities21 in Palo Alto.

Commercialization analysis for Nissan and Google self-driving cars. Ultra personal rapid transit (self-driving electric vehicle transit). First patent for "smartphone ridesharing.” Principal Investigator, US EPA’s "Transforming Office Parks into Transit Villages" study. BART’s Group Rapid Transit study. Conceived Bay Area MTC’s $33M Climate Innovations Grant Program. Proposal to cut US commuting by 23% (50M tons GHG/year) was a finalist in the Sustainable Silicon Valley competition. Three masters: business, software, and transportation from Columbia, RPI, and Berkeley. Member of two Transportation Research Board committees. 18 transport papers. Led last mile transit studies for Raleigh, Austin, San Jose Airport, Palo Alto, Pleasanton, Edina, Microsoft, and Oakland Airport.

2014-10-07 Speaker: Greg Larson, Chief, Office of Traffic Operations Research, Caltrans Division of Research, Innovation and System Information

Automated vehicles have been promised to all of us since the World’s Fair in 1939, but they have never been closer to reality than they are today. While serious research on vehicle automation has been going on nearly 30 years, Google’s recent successes have reinvigorated public interest in the topic, and the technology seems to be marching toward inevitable commercial availability. As the representative of a large transportation infrastructure owner and operator, Caltrans, Greg Larson will talk about the impacts of vehicle automation on the overall transportation system, some of the remaining societal and institutional challenges, and the importance of coupling automated vehicles with connected ones.

Greg Larson has worked for Caltrans for more than 23 years, first as a Research Engineer at the Transportation Laboratory, then as a Senior Electronics Engineer and an Engineering Manager. Before joining Caltrans, He spent eight years working for the United States Air Force as a System Engineer for electronic warfare systems. Greg is responsible for managing and overseeing the efforts of a professional technical staff performing research in the area of Intelligent Transportation Systems, with the Division of Traffic Operations and various Districts as their primary customers. He also serves as one of the AASHTO representatives on the national Connected Vehicle Deployment Coalition. Greg has a bachelor's and master's degree in EE from Cal State University, Sacramento and is licensed as a Professional Electrical Engineer in the state of California.

As you've seen in the news, Cruise has made waves with their new after-market autonomous vehicle solution. Come hear from Kyle Vogt, the CEO of Cruise.

2014-06-05:

You asked for technical, we're giving you technical! Come learn how Paul has researched pushing the limits of an autonomous vehicle and competing with professional drivers on a race course.

2014-04-09:

Richard brings a perspective from over 20 years in the automated vehicles biz. Having led USDOT’s Automated Highway System program in the 90’s, he runs a global consultancy centered on intelligent / connected / automated vehicles. Following a string of highly respected Meetup speakers, his biggest challenge is to find a fresh angle! He has opted to talk about today’s world and tomorrow’s world. How do we automate the current system? And once we do, how does the world change? And what does this mean for us?

Sven reviews some of the history of technologies leading up to today's automated vehicles, outlines current uses of automated technologies including farming and mining, and projects a roadmap of future technologies.

Pat poses some interesting ethical dilemmas raised and made more real by the emergence of Autonomous vehicles. iRobot and Will Smith anyone? As he says in this presentation, Pat is just the philosopher raising these pesky questions. It's up to us to discuss and think about them!

Where: at Nissan Research Center in Silicon Valley

When: 27 Jan 2014

To Whom: Silicon Valley Autonomous Vehicle Enthusiasts Meetup group

Why: Driving Innovation - A Speaker Series powered by Nissan

Bryant Walker Smith talks about autonomous vehicles from a legal perspective and reminds us we can't always blame things on lawyers!

Where: at Nissan Research Center in Silicon Valley

When: 11 Dec 2013

To Whom: Silicon Valley Autonomous Vehicle Enthusiasts Meetup group

Why: Driving Innovation - A Speaker Series powered by Nissan