Author: Dr Daniel Coren CEng MIMechE FHEA, Director of Studies for Automotive MSc Courses
In this fifth post in the series, Daniel discusses convenient mobility and the progress of vehicular autonomy.
If vehicle ownership is not an appealing responsibility or financial proposition, then ride-hailing (now mobility as a service) might be preferable. From waving down a Jitney in the street in 1914 to booking an Uber on your phone in 2024, this means of mobility can be convenient. Uber racks up 14 million rides a day worldwide but how much more will its popularity increase? And how will vehicle autonomy influence this?
Only connect
Navigating our daily lives relies on connections, both physical and digital, and making these connections faster and easier is a real challenge to our infrastructure. Minimising transit times for people or data impacts our cities and living arrangements. Just compare city layouts before and after the introduction of light passenger vehicles. Our streets visibly changed as importance was given to vehicular movement. We can also see how building infrastructures have evolved with the internet. Now there is a greater emphasis on person-to-device interactions over person-to-person. Ebenezer Howard and Victor Gruen were pioneers in designing integrated public and industrial spaces with mobility in mind. Their legacies include the UK Garden City movement and the ubiquitous USA shopping mall.
Vehicular autonomy provides another way to move convenient mobility forward. We can trace the concept of mechanised autonomy to the Automaton designs of Da Vinci in the 15th century. In 1939, Bel Geddes explored the application of automation to road transport in his 'Futurama' exhibition for General Motors. This was followed in 1940 with the associated publication 'Magic Motorways'. The first practical implementation came in 1925 when engineer Francis Houdina trialled a radio-controlled car around the streets of New York. Houdina operated the Phantom Auto in a following car - much to the amazement of onlookers. Not everyone approved - the magician Harry Houdini saw it as artistic infringement. This could have been the world's first legal case involving autonomous vehicles!
In 1958, General Motors partnered with the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) to develop a working prototype system. It featured road-embedded radio frequency signalling and light-based motion detection. The UK Technology Research Laboratory (TRL) took a similar approach in the 1960s, using a Citroen DS, tested at speeds up to 80 mph. In the '80s and '90s, Mercedes led the Eureka Prometheus project - programme for a European traffic of highest efficiency and unprecedented safety. It attracted €750 million of investment and resulted in a road-going van, lab-tested up to speeds of 60mph. None of these projects resulted in an autonomous vehicle fit for the public road.
Collaboration is key
Vehicle autonomy as a practical and reliable product relies on sector expertise from both vehicle manufacturing and digital communications. With a central tenant of information dissemination, academia also has an important role to play. Charles Babbage and Ava Lovelace's 'Difference Machine' is an early example of groundbreaking collaboration between engineering and computing. Launched in 1984, the UK Joint Academic Network (JANET) built on the South West Universities Computer Network (SWUCN) of the late 1960s. In the US during the '70s and '80s, UCLA supported the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET). This is considered to be the foundation of the internet. Team member Bob Khan, an electrical engineer, later worked at the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). In 2004, they launched the autonomous vehicle 'Grand Challenge'. In 2005, the Stanford Racing Team won it with an adapted VW named Stanley. Nevada, USA, authorised the first official public autonomous car zones in 2011. By 2016, the Society for Automotive Engineers (SAE) had published a six-level definition for vehicle autonomy.
Are we there yet? It's now widely recognised that a collaborative approach is needed for commercial success. Just look to partnerships between Google-backed Waymo and vehicle manufacturers ranging from Audi to Jaguar Land Rover. Between 2014 and 2017, sector-wide investment was in the region of $80 Billion (The Brookings Institution). And $9.7 billion in 2021 alone (Forbes). This has led to Advanced Driver Assist (ADAS) technologies such as ‘Lane Keeping’ and ‘Driver Status’. But estimates for when full commercial road-based vehicle autonomy will arrive are wide-ranging. We can expect progress to speed up as application-readiness and benefits become clearer. How will it impact public highways, vehicle parking and stations, or airport cargo carriages? To date, Tesla vehicles have accumulated around three billion road miles in 'autopilot' mode. And the Google-backed Waymo vehicles have covered around nine million road miles.
In the future, will we own cars, or buy mobility as a service? Will cybersecurity concerns replace range anxiety? What things will future automotive engineers need to develop and with whom will they need to work?
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