August 13, 2017

Designing An Autonomous Vehicle

Here’s a nifty podcast from NPR in the USA.  I learned about it when I met Gordon Price, who was riding a Mobi westbound on the Comox/Helmcken Greenway the other day while I was eastbound.
The podcast participants discuss the level of vehicle control designed into an autonomous vehicle.  It contrasts the commercial airliner with the elevator. Both are quite ubiquitous, but one carries human operators (pilots), and the other has minimal controls available to its passengers. This is a fundamental design choice, and the current leader (Google) has already made it for their robocar.
Listen on. The Big Red Button.

Automation is all around us: elevators, automatic doors at the supermarket, and auto-pilots on airplanes. For the most part, we never think about it. It makes our lives easier, cheaper, and safer. But with every new automation, there is this transitional moment. When something first goes automatic, it is disorienting. It freaks us out.
And the big question surrounding automation isn’t just about economics or technology. It’s about psychology. How do designers make us comfortable with something that can be really scary?

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  1. I put down $1000 for a Tesla 3 a few weeks ago, primarily for the AV features. I find it fascinating. As stated at length elsewhere, AV comes in 5 stages, bit by bit, every year a bit more:
    1) foot off
    2) hands off
    3) eyes off
    4) brain off
    5) person off
    It shall be an interesting few decades ahead. When will we see stage 5 AVs in BC in earnest that I can hail like Car2Go or Evo today ? 2025 ? 2030? 2040? 2050?

  2. When I was first ever on the Skytrain, I rode it for a few days before discovering that there were no drivers. That spooked me at first but then I got over it. Now it’s just normal.

    1. Yet, airplanes could do the same and do not. Why ?
      Also not too many pedestrians, dogs and non-trains on the Skytrain track usually. The system could not handle many exceptions.
      We shall see when stage 4 and stage 5 AVs roam the roads … not on Mars but on earth populated with unions, lawyers, police force, rules, politicians, laws, bikers, dogs, strollers, errors i.e. humans ??

    2. Apparently automated control allows metro lines to become more efficient through increased frequency and capacity within limited operations budgets. They are planning for automated control in the Toronto subway system, starting on London’s Piccadilly Line, and already have it in place on a few parts of the Paris Metro.
      The central issue for urbanists regarding AVs is not the automation or the future switch to EVs (though lower per capita emissions would be welcomed), but the continuance of the gluttonous use of space for roads and car infrastructure, which will still be required even if the entire fleet of private cars was shared.
      It’s far more advantageous from many perspectives to build or convert to walkable and transit-linked communities where the human body is given priority over all else.

      1. Begs the question why green Vancouver isn’t doing it downtown which could function today without cars, given its decent subway, seabus, car share, bike and bus network, plus a few hundred e-golf carts ? There isn’t even a pedestrian zone yet. Why isn’t Robson closed for cars from stadium to Stanley Park as one green/shopping street ?

  3. The elevator analogy is a useful way to think about urban transport if we extend it past just “how is it controlled”
    Allocation of Space
    In a building, every additional elevator shaft will result in a less waiting, less congestion and higher productivity for tenants, however each additional shaft incurs a direct loss in leasable space. The owner of the building has to make explicit trade offs between the value of space during the design phase. Importantly the costs & benefits of this decision are focussed on the same party. There is no perfect answer but because the building is an enclosed space – the costs cannot be borne by any other party. You can’t add shafts in a way that takes away your neighboring building’s leasable space, only yours.
    Safety
    Elevators are dangerous to people not in elevators so they are 100% “grade separated. There are not “pedestrian crossings” of the elevator shaft.
    Priority
    Buildings are designed around people – the tenants, visitors, customers who will use the building. Elevators are designed around serving those people. The building is not designed to be “a great place to use an elevator”, it’s designed to be a place to be, to live, to work, to learn, to shop and while the elevator experience is part of that, it’s not dominant.
    Single Occupancy vs Mass Transit
    Some elevator users might prefer single occupancy elevators. However because the space tradeoff cannot be foisted upon a 3rd party, a building that chose to offer single occupancy elevators would end up being mostly elevator. What little space was left over would have to pay high rents to cover the rest of the non-rent generating space. There is a free market in elevators – building designers are free to offer single occupancy but unlike streets, they cannot force someone else to pay for it.
    Funding
    No one debates that elevators are an important part of operating taller buildings. It’s so essential that is just included in rents of the people who benefit from good elevator service.
    Parking and Vehicle Selection
    Users are not asked to bring their own elevator. Poor and rich alike use the same vehicle. Building tenants are not expected to devote space away from work/living areas so as to store people’s elevators after they arrive.

      1. Sure, but note this is about reducing the amount of space required for moving more people in buildings, moving the tradeoff further toward “more leasable space” and away from “building is mostly elevator” The challenge in cities is that we do the opposite – we refuse to put prices or any sort of feedback on the use of land for transport, so it expands without limit and we end up with a city that is more road than city.

        1. …. more road than city.
          When public and private automobile infrastructure are added together here, you end up with about 45% of the entire urban land area consumed by cars. You are only about six or seven percent short of proving that statement here, but it’s true in Vegas or Phoenix where the auto-oriented space / infrastructure exceeds 50%.
          What other element has had as much impact on our cities?

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