Autonomous vehicles not far off for B.C. roads, once officials allow them
Autonomous vehicles are on the streets of a growing number of U.S. and United Kingdom cities, and the artificial intelligence behind the technology has 'really turned a corner,' according to Jamie Shotton, chief scientist for the company Wayve.
Shotton was on one of two panels that discussed advances in autonomous transportation during the tech conference Web Summit at the Vancouver Convention Centre on Thursday.
'It's like a lightbulb has gone off in the AI's brain,' Shotton said of his company's artificial intelligence-powered system. 'It's now able to really cope with remarkable complexity, and furthermore it allows us to scale really quickly.'
This spring, Wayve brought a trio of its test cars to Vancouver during a West Coast road trip to prove how well their 'AI driver' is learning to cope with complex environments.
'The more places we go, the more places we learn to drive, the more general purpose (the AI driver) gets,' Shotton said.
Wayve isn't completely driverless yet, however. The Society of Automotive Engineers classifies automated driving in levels from L0, where a driver is in complete control with automated warnings of hazards, all the way to L5, where AI is completely in control.
Shotton described Wayve as 'L2-plus,' which means the use of automatic braking, steering and lane centring in adaptive cruise control, with a driver at the wheel.
'Hands off, but eyes on,' he added. 'Having to pay attention to the road, but you can take your hands off the wheel and it will drive you from point A to point B.'
That falls within B.C.'s rules, which prohibits automated systems higher than L2.
Getting to L4, which allows for cars to be driverless under specific conditions — the technology used in so-called 'robo taxis' such as Waymo — is probably closer than people realize, even in rainy cities such as Vancouver, said Edwin Olson, CEO of the company May Mobility.
Olson spoke during a second session on the conference's centre stage, and in an interview explained that, 'Our rule of thumb is, if the windshield wipers are intermittent, you're probably fine.'
'If they're going faster than that, I think most (autonomous vehicle) companies would balk at that.'
Technology is rapidly improving though, and Olson expects by 2027, 'We'll be able handle almost all the weather you can throw at us.'
The difference in the technology, Olson said, is that a decade ago, the 'hype was well before the technical reality' for autonomous transportation.
'Now, I think it's the other way around,' Olson added. 'Right now, what you're really seeing is an inflection point.'
People can travel to cities such as San Francisco, Los Angeles or Atlanta and ride either Waymo robo taxis or May Mobility's shuttles, 'and it's real,' Olson said.
The next step for a wider rollout of light-duty vehicles will be devising business cases for using what will be expensive vehicles, which will likely rule out strictly personal use.
When a reporter asked if he saw a case for individual ownership soon, his answer was, 'God, I hope not.'
The philosophy of Olson's company, which runs fleets of L4-capable Toyota Sienna shuttle vans in 19 cities (but only two locations without safety drivers), is to use autonomous vehicles in a way that reduces the need for individual automobile ownership.
To date, the business cases for autonomous vehicles has been stronger in industries such as mining or trucking, where the products involved are high value, but where getting enough drivers might be an issue, said Qasar Younis, CEO of the company Applied Intuition, who spoke on the same panel as Olson.
For light-duty vehicles, 'it's going to be pure economics,' Olson added. And that will be based on whether vehicles can command enough revenue from ride-hailing services such as Lyft or Uber to pay for the cost of expensive sensors used in the vehicle, before the car wears out.
depenner@postmedia.com
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