Transform Lisbon city center

Autonomous vehicles promise to reinvigorate city centers. Areas that now live with congestion and noise from the vehicles, could be transform in green areas, large sidewalks and unique spaces to sit and enjoy. But how?

Imagine a visit to Lisbon downtown, get in to the car and drive to the fashion restaurant. On top of having to drive through all the city center confusion, we need to find a place to park, what can be one of the most boring exercises of this trip. An English research says that 30% of the traffic in city centers are due to drivers searching for a parking spot34.

AV’s, due to their capacity to connect to the parking infrastructure (V2I) and to other vehicles (V2V), are capable to access information that allow to choose where to go. The efficiency of this search and routes, avoiding road congestion, allowing to make the trip shorter. This reduction helps energy efficiency and air quality.

But why does the AV needs to be parked in city center? Can the vehicle drop the passengers at their destiny and get away of the center, since it’s autonomous? The pressure to park in the city center is high due to the lack of available spaces, what is reflected on the absurd prices. The AV can park outside the city center taking advantage of the lower prices there, or even at home, where the parking is free.

This way, the space that is now used to park could be converted in places to be enjoyed in the city. We hope that Lisbon, in the future, could be greener, with space to walk, cycle or even play in the street like the old days.

And so it begins…

The replacement of a human being driving a vehicle for a computational system and adequate tools that allow an autonomous driving is not an idea of this century. A small History context allows one to understand the path since the beginning.

The pioneer event for the AV took place in 1939. The AV was presented at the New York World Fair as a projection of a dream. Norman Geddes, sponsored by General Motors, placed the AV as the vehicle that the world would drive in 20 years28. However, the following years had all efforts on the development of war technology by the biggest car manufacturers.

Only in 1977, Tsukuba University in Japan, built, what it may be considered as the first intelligent robotic vehicle29. With cameras and a motherboard it allowed to detect obstacles and follow lines.

In 1983,  Carnegie Mellon University, in the USA, developed a model, the Terregator30, that used a combination of lasers, radars and cameras to move without human interaction. Three years later, the NavLab31, also manufactured by this university, would have been the first AV to carry people aboard at a maximum speed of 32 km/h.

On the same decade (1980), in Europe, the Bundeswehr München university team developed several projects around the autonomous driving. As a result, in 1994, the team presented a modified S-Class Mercedes-Benz called VaMP, that moved autonomously for more than 1000 km, at a speed of 130 km/h28.

ARGO project32, developed between 1997 and 2001, by Parma university, built a prototype (with image interpretation algorithms) that followed lines painted on a road along 2000 km in six days, with an average speed of 90 km/h with 94% of the time completely autonomous29.

In 2004, DARPA, American defense agency, promoted a challenge to accelerate the development of AV. The participants would have to present a AV that could finish the track created by DARPA. None of the participants finished the challenge that year. The year after, 195 teams participated, Stanford  university won and 5 teams finished the challenge: more than 200 km in Nevada without a driver33. This was a turning point.

The dream is old, but the effort duplicated in the last few years and the investment in R&D for this topic lost limits or barriers. The automotive industry has been pressured by other sectors to develop technology to make this real, specially IT companies that are interested in playing a role in this market.

How accountable am I in an accident?

On a level 3 SAE vehicle if the driver is responsible for an accident, since the driver is supposed to be aware and intervene if necessary1, then the companies will feel free to develop the technology without any pressure or accountability. Competition between different companies is kept and the evolution tend to be fast.

At this stage, the question is if the driver will react fast enough when required since the reliance on the autonomy of the vehicle might lead to an excess of confidence and lack of attention to the road.

However, driver’s accountability becomes a complicated concept if we’re talking about a level 5 SAE vehicle. On a stage where the advantages of automation may be fully used, it will be possible to integrate people that are not able to drive in a vehicle without an actual driver. Based on these examples, how are we make the driver accountable in case of an accident?

To approach this we should split responsibility between moral and criminal accountability. Relative to the moral accountability there are 2 ideas24 that deserve some attention:

The first one says that since the vehicles are a risk to others, owners/drivers should continue to have accountability over the vehicle. This will force the owner to pay some kind of tax or insurance.

The second one blames the driver in case of an accident. The result or consequences are beyond the driver’s control because one can only be blamed in case of direct intervention. In an example where there is an accident derived from a child running in front of the vehicle, the driver is only accountable if there was any intervention. This second approach is not sustained in itself.

To add to the driver’s accountability, there is the manufacturer accountability that is required to incentive the optimisation of AV. The manufacturer will be, in the end, “the ultimate responsible for the final product”25.

Mobility for everyone.

Nowadays,  who doesn’t have a car at the doorstep? Or, if this is not your case, the next question would be: nowadays, who doesn’t have two cars at the doorstep? In Portugal, 2014 statistics, say the around 90% of people travel by car21.

Our parents’ generation had the opportunity of acquiring a vehicle and our generations (80’s) grew up with this comfort. Even if the consequences of excessive use well known, who is going to stop using a car?

A few more minutes collecting statistics allow us to know that the prediction for the next few years show that the number of 65 years old will grow22. Older people, due to their experience, are the ones that show a bigger driving knowledge, being able to predict dangerous sceneries easily. However, at the same time, their age take this advantage from them, increasing the physical and mental limitations leading to an increased risk of accidents on the road17. Just like older people, people under the influence of alcohol and tiredness can see their ability to drive diminished, leading to an increase of the likelihood of an accident. Human error is the cause of 90% of all road accidents23, without taking in to account minor accidents that are not reported to the authorities.

The AV allows all these people to circulate in the interior without any interaction needed. This way, weakened and disable people are able to move independently, regardless of physical or mental problems that would prevent them to drive a vehicle.

But not everything is perfect. These advantages are also related to some problems when we drive our attention to the operational part. The AV, regardless of its evolution does not replace an human being. Weakened and disable people need help to get in and out of the vehicles. The adaptation of these vehicles to these problems should be investigated and developed to allow the integration of the biggest number of people.

But the arrival of autonomy will allow the mobility of a different group of people, that are not allow to drive today, like youngsters and children, due to their age and immaturity. Can we say that the extra travelling in the end of the day to drive the kids to practice or swimming are over? One more time operational issues have to be carefully thought like allowing kids to travel without supervision or safety.

The AV will have the goal of becoming a transport for everyone, however, the answers to some of the issues raised will be decisive on the integration of different groups of population.

People will turn green

Questions related to reliability, cyber-safety, ethics or accountability in case of an accident, will have to be answered in a short amount of time7. Nevertheless, there are more operational questions that will rise, like safety and comfort in case the driver gets the control of the vehicle back, in a level 3 SAE8 or motion sickness on a level 5 SAE9 vehicle. Let’s focus on this last issue.

When I was a child, on the curved mountain roads, it was certain that after 15 minutes on the back seat of the car my lunch would make its way out. Growing up and driving on the same curved roads I’ve never suffered of motion sickness again. I don’t see myself on that back seat ever again, however that will happen with an AV.

Once the driver is no longer necessary it becomes just a passenger and easily susceptible to motion sickness10. Why? Because a driver can predict the movement of the car, but a passenger can’t.

And who has never, as a child, tried to read a book on the back seat? Or more recently read an article on the smartphone?

The automation of vehicles will allow the drivers to perform tasks that are not road related. With the use of AV nothing will be required from a driver and one can perform several different activities. With the driver becoming a passenger that are able to look at a book or smartphone it will be easier to lose perception of movement felt by the body and a static image seen by the eyes. This conflict will potentiate motion sickness7,11.

These vehicles can’t be seen as leaving rooms, offices or lounge areas with wheals7. In the future, some product changes will be required in order to avoid these issues and make the user aware. Several tests, either in a simulator or with real vehicles, are being developed to identify an acceptable solution for this problem.

The dark side

An autonomous vehicle (AV) is not something that will be easily introduced, there will be several obstacles until we can use such an advanced technology. We ´re not just talking about hardware or software issues, but to general issues like the passenger´s confidential data, the vehicle data safety, the insurance or the ethical issues relative to life or death decisions.

Imagine yourself inside an AV facing an hazardous situation caused by a package falling from a lorry in front of you. The vehicle will have to avoid the package and choose one of the following options:

a) kill a person on a zebra crossing on the left; or
b) kill a dog on the right.

What option would you chose? There´s no place for “none of the above”. Even if the answer could be easy in this case, from our point of view, we can add some complexity. Imagine that you would have to choose between:

a) kill a cyclist without a casket that is not respecting safety rules; or
b) seriously injure a cyclist with a casket that puts safety first.

Things get tricky don’t they? More comparisons can be done. On the MIT website Moral Machine6, you can find a kind of a game where, facing a hazardous situation, you will have to choose one of the options that will challenge your ethics, moral and common sense. You will have to choose between killing an old lady or the young and sporty guy; the thief or your bank manager; or, the most difficult one, from our point of view, 3 people on the zebra crossing or the person that is inside the vehicle. This option leaves you less comfortable, doesn’t it? So would you buy a vehicle that can kill you?

When facing these questions the reader starts realising that the AV will make decisions for you as a passenger, and a question arises: would you trust that the AV will make the “right” decision in a life or death situation?

A quick search on the MIT Moral Machine website6, allow us to conclude that the enquired prioritise saving lives and protect Mankind compared to animals. It also shows that they tend to take in consideration one’s higher social value, youngsters and females as well as the fact of respecting the law and avoid the direct intervention of AV when facing the decision.

Let´s start from the beginning

We´re starting to see on social media something about motor vehicles that are able to go from A to B with little or even without any human input. Different names and designations are given to these vehicles and they seem to be able to do different things; some are able to drive distances in constant speeds, others are able to stop if they spot an obstacle and a few are even able to drive with no human inside. To be able to discuss the pros and cons of any subject is important to properly explain what we are talking about.

We see some news about accidents involving autonomous or self-driven vehicles and very few about the investigation in that area or what exactly is the nature of these vehicles. The subject is new and a lot needs to be done to investigate the technology properly, but without general knowledge, this technology will be even harder to implement, because one always get suspicions about the unknown.

SAE International1 provides a standardisation of the terminology for on-road motor vehicle automated Driving Systems. This classification identifies six levels of driving automation from “no automation” to “full automation” and is consistent with current industry practice.

  • Level 0 – No automation – human driver takes control of all aspects of the dynamic driving task;
  • Level 1 – Driver assistance – a driver assistance system of either steering or acceleration/deceleration is used; the human driver perform all remaining aspects of the dynamic driving task;
  • Level 2 – Partial automation – usage of one or more driver assistance systems of both: steering and acceleration/ deceleration; the human driver does everything else;
  • Level 3 – Conditional automation – an automated driving system drives by itself but the human driver will respond appropriately to a request to intervene;
  • Level 4 – High automation – the driving mode is performed by an automated driving system, even if a human driver does not respond appropriately to a request to intervene;
  • Level 5 – Full automation – full-time vehicle´s performance is controlled by an automated driving system.

Click in the image to open the original SAE table.

SAE automation level