AUTONOMOUS VEHICLES TRANSIT LEAP
Figure 2: [top] Feature Creep as expressed in the five-level autonomous vehicle standard, J3016 from the Society of Automotive Engineers. Only the Level 5 vehicle in fully autonomous (no driver controls needed); [bottom] five levels of Transit Leap spreading autonomy by spatial transit extensions rather than by household consumer purchase. All vehicles in Transit Leap Levels 1 through 5 can be fully autonomous SAE Level 5 vehicles
Level 3 before finally adopting Level 5. Essentially, until Level 5 can go anywhere, a good Level 3 is all one needs. What we seldom consider, and David Cummins doesn’t mention, is that the practical barrier to full autonomy is far more than just a few final improvements to a long string of robotic innovations. We will not feature-creep our way to a driverless world, which is why Google wants to take out human steering and acceleration controls (see sidebar (R)evolutionary Hype). In the middle of last year, we wrote about the imped-
ing downslide in market excitement surrounding fully autono- mous vehicles. A downslide that, according to Gartner, Inc., would counter the rising hype for AVs experienced from 2010 to 2015. Our observations match remarkably Gartner’s Hype Cycle assertion that 2016 would begin five to ten years of sobering reas- sessment. Our original article, below, underscores a few reasons for disillusionment, but there are many more. This new edition addresses that shortcoming by adding several sidebars that illus- trate more negative hype. We end with an excellent summary by Robert Poole of Reason Foundation (with permission).
AROUND THE CORNER LIES THE FUTURE Much is written about the expectations for autonomous vehicle technology. The attention is deserved. Surely the switch from driver to driverless is as remarkable as was the switch from horse to horseless 120 years ago? A science fiction fantasy at the 1939 World’s Fair is finally showing up in bits and pieces as automated
CONNECTED CANADA SUPPLEMENT 20
driver assistance systems in many automotive brands. Robotic vehicle features like lane keeping and automatic braking are on their way to becoming the norm. AVs are just around the corner. Or are they? Every year Gartner Inc., an information technology advisory,
publishes its Emerging Technology Hype Cycle (Figure 1). This model based on observations of hundreds of trajectories of suc- cessful technologies, arranges emerging technologies on a time spectrum of five phases from “Innovation Trigger” to the “Plateau of Productivity”. All technologies go through these developmen- tal stages: they get over hyped, disappointment sets in, and after some time the technology is viewed more realistically and settles into a role where it is most useful. With this model, which CeBIT describes as “astonishingly accurate”,2
Gartner is a telling
seer for the progress of robotic vehicle technology. The Autonomous Vehicle first appeared on Gartner’s 2010 Emerging Technologies Hype Cycle3
about a third of the way up
the Positive Hype slope toward the Peak of Inflated Expectations. In 2010 self-driving hype was about Sebastian Thrun winning the DARPA challenge, retellings of the General Motors exhibit at the 1939 World’s Fair, and how many thousands of lives robotic vehi- cles could save since most accidents are caused by human error. From 2012 to 2014 Gartner gradually promoted the Autono-
mous Vehicle from halfway up the Positive Hype slope to the Peak of Expectations, which it reached in July 20154
Gartner positioned the Autonomous Vehicle as “more than 10
www.thinkinghighways.com (Fig 1). In 2010,
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