Living In The Driverless City

As reported by Live Mint:  At the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas earlier this month, the roulette wheel of innovation landed on something rather old-fashioned and unexpected: the automobile.

In recent decades, cars have been undergoing a gradual transformation from the kinds of mechanical systems Henry Ford might have imagined into computers on wheels. And that transformation is bringing with it a new wave of digital advances—above all, autonomous driving.

The first autonomous (or self-driving) cars date back to the late twentieth century. But recent increases in sophistication and reductions in cost—reflected, for example, in cheap LIDAR systems, which can “see” a street in 3D in a way similar to that of the human eye—are now bringing driverless cars closer to the market.

As we saw last week, several manufacturers are working toward integrating such systems into their fleets, and expect to start selling premium cars with different degrees of autonomy as early as 2016. According to a just-released IHS report, “sometime after 2050” virtually all vehicles on the road might be self-driving.

But what is the drive behind self-driving cars? Are there meaningful benefits beyond the convenience of keeping your hands off the steering wheel and thus being able to read a book, take a nap, or guiltlessly text?

At the CES, journalists were busy snapping pictures of driverless vehicles zooming through the streets of Vegas. But, had they turned their cameras around, they might have captured something far more interesting: the stage upon which the drama of self-driving will take place—the street itself.

Self-driving vehicles promise to have a dramatic impact on urban life, because they will blur the distinction between private and public modes of transportation. “Your” car could give you a lift to work in the morning and then, rather than sitting idle in a parking lot, give a lift to someone else in your family – or, for that matter, to anyone else in your neighbourhood, social-media community, or city.

A recent paper by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s SMART Future Mobility team shows that the mobility demand of a city like Singapore—potentially host to the world’s first publicly-accessible feet of self-driving cars—could be met with 30% of its existing vehicles. Furthermore, other researchers in the same group suggest that this number could be cut by another 40% if passengers travelling similar routes at the same time were willing to share a vehicle—an estimate supported by an analysis of New York City Taxis shareability networks. This implies a city in which everyone can travel on demand with just one-fifth of the number of cars in use today.

Such reductions in car numbers would dramatically lower the cost of our mobility infrastructure and the embodied energy associated with building and maintaining it. Fewer cars may also mean shorter travel times, less congestion, and a smaller environmental impact.

The deployment of more intelligent transportation systems promises to deliver similar benefits. Real-time data planning and smart routing are already a reality. Tomorrow’s autonomous vehicles will prompt another wave of innovation, from optimization of road capacity to intersection management. Imagine a world without traffic lights, where vehicular flows “magically” pass through one another and avoid collision.

But, while the world’s mobility challenges will increasingly be met with silicon rather than asphalt, encouraging widespread adoption requires guaranteeing that our streets are as safe—or safer—than they are today. That means that various redundancies must be introduced to ensure that if one component fails, another seamlessly takes over.

Traffic accidents, though rarer, would still be a possibility; in fact, they might be one of the main impediments to implementation of autonomous systems, demanding a restructuring of insurance and liability that could sustain armies of lawyers for years to come.

Finally, there is the fresh issue of digital security. We are all familiar with viruses crashing our computers. But what if the same virus crashes our cars?

All of these issues are urgent, but none of them is insurmountable. They will be resolved in the coming years as autonomy redefines mobility and sparks the next generation of innovations in the field. At that point, the smart money might favor something even more old-fashioned than cars: the city itself.

By 2018, Vehicles Could Be Self-Aware

As reported by Computerworld: As the amount of information being fed into in-car telematics systems grows through mobile connectivity, vehicles will expand their ability to capture and share not only internal systems status and location data, but also changes in surroundings in real time.

Cars will be able to communicate with other vehicles, or even traffic lights, and predict how conditions will affect a commute, adjusting in-vehicle navigation or even taking over control from the driver, if so desired.

"Cars will become the first robot most of us experience in our lifetime," said Gartner analyst Thilo Koslowski.
Koslowski, who was speaking at the Consumer Telematics Show in Las Vegas today, said a major theme this year will be service providers, such as ISPs and mobile carriers, expanding their ecosystems into the auto telematics supply chain - providing the connectivity and apps required for a full-mobile user experience.

Like OS and app upgrades on mobile devices today, software upgrades to infotainment systems will happen automatically and wirelessly, he said. Vehicles will be connected to the cloud, enabling users to upload data from wearable devices as well as access personal data stored at home or through cloud services.

Ultimately, your car will become just another part of your mobile data plan.

"AT&T has already said they will have that in GM vehicles going forward," Koslowski said. "Cars will be the predominant platform for the Internet of Things. It may even be mandated that your car have connectivity, instead of it being a luxury."

There could even come a day when cars will be discounted -- or free -- depending on how long consumers are willing to commit to a data plan, Kowlowski said. "Maybe you'll get a car for free if you sign up for lifetime data contract," he said. "If you change this to something a little less dramatic, and talk about a discounted vehicle purchase with an eight-year contract..., how many people would be interested in this?

"I was surprised to see quite a few [of those surveyed] were interested in this - 38%," he continued.

"Obviously, you're not going to get a Ferrari or Porsche or Audi heavily discounted because you sign up for a data contract, but a smaller vehicle, absolutely."

Kevin Link, general manager of Verizon's Telematics division, said telematics systems have developed from a first iteration of on-board help services, such as GM's OnStar system, to vehicle diagnostics that provide manufacturers with data about mechanical performance.

The next generation of connected cars, or "telematics 3.0," will expand the value chain beyond the obvious, offering traffic condition info to the car as well as emissions data to the driver.

Telematics 3.0 will also offer service providers a great deal of information they can use for marketing purposes. For example, the systems will be able to tell streaming media services what you're listening to, and point of interest (POI) services in on-board GPS systems will tell companies when a driver has searched for them, and whether the driver stopped in.

A driver who visits a particular coffee shop or a golf course might be targeted for marketing and advertising via mobile apps available through the car's telematics system.

"Why is Google getting into the auto space? If you think about what Google has and what they don't have, location is one of the missing elements of the Google model," Link said. "They know everything else, except where we transact."

Car manufacturers falling behind

In the meantime, vehicle manufacturers risk falling behind or even being left out of the mobile telematics equation. "I'm a little worried these big Internet companies may dominate this space and leave very little for automotive companies," Koslowski added.

He pointed to Google's announcement Monday of an Open Automotive Alliance, aimed at bringing Android OS to the telematics systems of several vehicle manufacturers. Google announced plans to bring Android to cars by the end of this year.

Audi, General Motors (GM), Honda, Hyundai and chip maker Nvidia were all part of the launch of the Open Automotive Alliance.

"Having your own secure cloud of information connected to your vehicle, that's what Google's...announcement was all about," Koslowski said.

For example, the owner of a car would be able to connect his or her Android smartphone and any cloud services enabled through that. At the same time, if another family member wanted to borrow the car, they, too, could use Android by simply connecting their smartphone to the car's telematics system.


Tech companies such as Google are expected to have increasing influence in the mobile options vehicle makers can offer - and consumers want it that way.

According to a Gartner survey released today, 57% of vehicle owners said they want technology vendors to influence decisions about their car's mobile capabilities in the years ahead. Forty-three percent want automakers to be the main influencer of mobile tech.

The survey also revealed that 47% of respondents want to use mobile apps while driving. At the same time, 89% said they're concerned that access to in-vehicle mobile apps will be a driving distraction.

Jaguar, Land Rover add mobile apps to telematics

Peter Vrik, head of connected technologies and apps for Jaguar, said his company will now be offering iOS and Android mobile apps natively on its infotainment systems through a partnership with Bosch SoftTec and its mySPIN app integration software.

Jaguar's InControl Apps mobile application platform connects a car's telematics and infotainment system to a mobile phone or tablet through the use of a standard USB cord. Once connected, apps that have been enabled through Bosh SoftTec's in-vehicle integration software automatically show up for use on the infotainment system.

For example, iHeart Radio streaming music service, parking location assist Parkopedia and real-time traffic navigation system INRIX will all be available in upcoming vehicles, Vrik said. Vrik listed 11 apps that are currently available, but said that list will continue to expand.

"By 2010, we target to have 20 million smartphones connected via mySPIN," said Dietmar Meister, director smartphone and cloud solutions at Bosch

"Customers want the latest apps and updates in their car. They want to use the apps that are already there," Vrik said. "Users want to make sure the app has the DNA of the original app. Don't try to make them look different."

India Certifies GAGAN for En Route and NPA Flight Operations

As reported by GNSS: India's Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) provisionally certified the nation's Satellite Based Augmentation System (SBAS) — the GPS Aided Geo Augmented Navigation (GAGAN) system — to RNP0.1 (Required Navigation Performance, 0.1  Nautical Mile) service level on December 30, 2013.

The certification will enable aircraft fitted with SBAS equipment to use the GAGAN signal in space for en-route navigation and non-precision approaches without vertical guidance over Indian air space. India is the fourth country to offer safety of life, space-based satellite navigation services to the global aviation sector. The availability of GAGAN signals in space will bridge the gap between the European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service (EGNOS) and Japan's  MTSAT-based Satellite Augmentation System (MSAS) coverage areas, thereby contributing to seamless navigation across the regions.

The GAGAN infrastructure includes 15 reference stations, three uplink stations, mission control centers, navigation payloads on two geostationary Earth orbit (GEO) transmitting GPS corrections in C and L bands, and associated software and communication links.

GAGAN's service area includes India, the Bay of Bengal, South East Asia and the Middle East expanding up to Africa.

The GAGAN System, jointly developed by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) and Airports Authority of India (AAI) is scheduled for additional enhancement in the days to come, including the APV1/1.5 level of certification in the near future to offer precision approach services over the Indian land mass. The GAGAN signal is being broadcast through its GSAT8 and GSAT10 GEOs, covering the entire Indian Flight Information Region (FIR) and beyond. An on-orbit spare GAGAN transponder will be flown on GSAT-15.

Hot Technology: Smart Radio Chips

The smartphone battle moves from software to hardware with
crucial components to cut power consumption while allowing
faster data transmission.

As reported by MIT Technology Review:
Beyond the glitz of the International Consumer Electronics Show, the wireless industry faces a fundamental problem: more features and faster data transmission are draining phones’ batteries faster than ever. 

Fortunately, there’s room for improvement inside the devices, in parts known as power amplifiers that turn electricity into radio energy. In phones, they typically consume more power than any other component but waste half of it along the way, as lots of people can attest if they’ve watched their battery die (and their phone get warm) after an hour of streaming video. The same problem bedevils wireless networks’ base stations, which send and receive signals to and from individual phones.

Now a major effort is under way to develop smarter power amplifiers that significantly reduce waste. Eta Devices, an MIT spinoff based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is preparing a base station module and a chip that it says not only decrease battery drain but work well in high-bandwidth applications for 4G LTE and future ultrafast technologies.

The fundamental problem is that the power needed for radio output fluctuates rapidly when a device is transmitting data at high rates. Existing power amplifiers maintain their voltage at a fairly high level at all times to be prepared for peak needs—but this is wasteful. Newer approaches adjust that level on the fly, following the “envelope” of the actual radio signal.

Such “envelope tracking,” or ET, technologies are the hottest hardware development in the mobile-phone industry. Last fall Qualcomm became the first company to ship a chip with such technology, which it says is the industry’s first for 3G and 4G LTE mobile devices.

The company says the chip helps lower electricity consumption by 20 percent and helps reduce a related problem—heat generation—by up to 30 percent, “allowing for longer battery life for end users, as well as enabling manufacturers to shrink the size of their devices,” says Peter Carson, Qualcomm’s senior director of marketing.

The envelope tracker is already in 10 phones, including the Samsung Galaxy Note 3 and Nexus 5. Many other component makers are scrambling to catch up, including Mediatek, RF Micro Devices, Skyworks, Texas Instruments, Analog Devices, Nujira, and Eta Devices.

The difficulty with ET, though, is that its efficiency plunges at higher data rates. Envelope trackers often require a relatively large capacitor to store and release bursts of energy while maintaining smooth and continuous voltage changes.

Eta Devices takes a radically different approach, favoring fast, abrupt changes with a smaller capacitor. Using a smaller capacitor is more efficient; the downside is that the changes in energy cause more noise in a wireless signal. That problem is overcome by cutting-edge digital signal processing, says Joel Dawson, one of two MIT electrical engineering professors who cofounded the company.

Mattias Åström, the company president, reaches for an automotive analogy to compare the two approaches. “Envelope tracking is basically a continuous variable transmission, compared to our manual gearbox,” he says. “Fuel consumption is always better when you have a manual gearbox.”

The company’s work hasn’t been published and the chip is now being fabricated for the first time, but the concept has been built out for base stations and may be commercialized this year. The Eta module, a little smaller than a shoebox, is the first 4G LTE transmitter in the world to achieve average efficiency greater than 70 percent, a big jump from the 45 to 55 percent in currently available technology, says Dawson.

Vanu, a company that makes low-power wireless base stations (see “A Tiny Cell-Phone Transmitter Takes Root in Rural Africa”), is testing the technology and may become an early customer. “We think this can give us a ‘green’ benefit as well as an operating cost advantage,” says David Bither, direct of platform engineering at Vanu.

The result could be to expand connectivity and make it affordable to more people in the developing world, where expensive diesel fuel powers at least 640,000 remote base stations at a cost of $15 billion.
The Eta technology was first revealed as a lab-bench setup in late 2012 (see “Efficiency Breakthrough Promises Smartphones That Use Half the Power”). The company was funded by $6 million from Ray Stata, cofounder of Analog Devices, and his venture firm, Stata Venture Partners.

California Court Dismisses Google Glass Traffic Ticket

As reported by ComputerWorld:  A court in Southern California has dismissed what was apparently the first-ever traffic citation issued for wearing Google Glass while driving.

Cecilia Abadie was stopped for speeding in late October. When a California Highway Patrol officer approached her, he noticed she was wearing the Google Glass device and issued a second ticket for that.

Section 27602 of California's vehicle code bans video screens in the view of the driver, with the exception of GPS-style car navigation devices.

On Thursday, a court commissioner in San Diego dismissed the Google Glass ticket, saying he could find no evidence that the device was in use while Abadie was driving, according to several local news reports.

The CHP officer apparently saw the light from the screen, but Abadie said the headset activated when she looked up as the officer approached.

The initial incident and Thursday's dismissal have attracted a lot of media attention, and it may not be the last time the issue plays out.

While dismissing the ticket, the commissioner said he does believe Google Glass falls under the definition of a video screen in state law.

If a Time Traveler Saw a Smartphone

As reported by The New Yorker:  Are we getting smarter or stupider? In “The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains,” from 2010, Nicholas Carr blames the Web for growing cognitive problems, while Clive Thompson, in his recent book, “Smarter Than You Think: How Technology Is Changing Our Minds for the Better,” argues that our technologies are boosting our abilities.

To settle the matter, consider the following hypothetical experiment:  A well-educated time traveler from 1914 enters a room divided in half by a curtain. A scientist tells him that his task is to ascertain the intelligence of whoever is on the other side of the curtain by asking whatever questions he pleases.

The traveler’s queries are answered by a voice with an accent that he does not recognize (twenty-first-century American English). The woman on the other side of the curtain has an extraordinary memory. She can, without much delay, recite any passage from the Bible or Shakespeare. Her arithmetic skills are astonishing—difficult problems are solved in seconds. She is also able to speak many foreign languages, though her pronunciation is odd. Most impressive, perhaps, is her ability to describe almost any part of the Earth in great detail, as though she is viewing it from the sky. She is also proficient at connecting seemingly random concepts, and when the traveler asks her a question like “How can God be both good and omnipotent?” she can provide complex theoretical answers.

Based on this modified Turing test, our time traveler would conclude that, in the past century, the human race achieved a new level of superintelligence. Using lingo unavailable in 1914, (it was coined later by John von Neumann) he might conclude that the human race had reached a “singularity”—a point where it had gained an intelligence beyond the understanding of the 1914 mind.

The woman behind the curtain, is, of course, just one of us. That is to say, she is a regular human who has augmented her brain using two tools: her mobile phone and a connection to the Internet and, thus, to Web sites like Wikipedia, Google Maps, and Quora. To us, she is unremarkable, but to the man she is astonishing. With our machines, we are augmented humans and prosthetic gods, though we’re remarkably blasé about that fact, like anything we’re used to. Take away our tools, the argument goes, and we’re likely stupider than our friend from the early twentieth century, who has a longer attention span, may read and write Latin, and does arithmetic faster.
 
The time-traveler scenario demonstrates that how you answer the question of whether we are getting smarter depends on how you classify “we.” This is why Thompson and Carr reach different results: Thompson is judging the cyborg, while Carr is judging the man underneath.

The project of human augmentation has been under way for the past fifty years. It began in the Pentagon, in the early nineteen-sixties, when the psychologist J. C. R. Licklider, who was in charge of the funding of advanced research, began to contemplate what he called man-computer symbiosis. (Licklider also proposed that the Defense Department fund a project which became, essentially, the Internet). Licklider believed that the great importance of computers would lie in how they improved human capabilities, and so he funded the research of, among others, Douglas Engelbart, the author of “Augmenting Human Intellect,” who proposed “a new and systematic approach to improving the intellectual effectiveness of the individual human being.” Engelbart founded the Augmentation Research Center, which, in the nineteen-sixties, developed the idea of a graphical user interface based on a screen, a keyboard, and a mouse (demonstrated in “The Mother of all Demos”). Many of the researchers at A.R.C. went on to work in the famous Xerox PARC laboratories. PARC’s interface ideas were borrowed by Apple, and the rest is history.

Since then, the real project of computing has not been the creation of independently intelligent entities (HAL, for example) but, instead, augmenting our brains where they are weak. The most successful, and the most lucrative, products are those that help us with tasks which we would otherwise be unable to complete. Our limited working memory means we’re bad at arithmetic, and so no one does long division anymore. Our memories are unreliable, so we have supplemented them with electronic storage. The human brain, compared with a computer, is bad at networking with other brains, so we have invented tools, like Wikipedia and Google search, that aid that kind of interfacing.

Our time-traveling friend proves that, though the human-augmentation project has been a success, we cannot deny that it has come at some cost. The idea of biological atrophy is alarming, and there is always a nagging sense that our auxiliary brains don’t quite count as “us.” But make no mistake: we are now different creatures than we once were, evolving technologically rather than biologically, in directions we must hope are for the best.

Tim Wu is a professor at Columbia Law School and the author of “The Master Switch.” This is the first in a series of posts he will be writing about technology and intelligence.

Public Safety Needs a Competitive Wireless Industry

Charles L. Werner is the fire chief for the City of Charlottesville
Fire Department.  He also serves on the Department of
Homeland Security (DHS) SAFECOM Executive Committee.

As reported by The Hill:  As a fire chief and first responder, it’s critical that I be able to communicate.  And I recognize that for me and for all, mobile phones are no longer a luxury, but an important part of everyday life, especially necessary in times of crisis.  We all need robust communications, and we need them all the more during emergencies.

Ever since 9/11, there has been renewed public debate focused on how we can provide our nation’s police and firefighters with an advanced communications network that enables full inter-operability across multiple jurisdictions/departments/agencies and functionality even in the most difficult and trying of circumstances.

After more than 12 years, we’re making progress.  Plans are in place to develop a nationwide, high-speed network dedicated to public safety.  And the board of FirstNet is providing the leadership and collaboration with emergency responders across the country to bring the network to life – with the objective of protecting the homeland, saving more lives, preventing law breaking, solving crimes and keeping our communities safer.

As you can imagine, this massive undertaking will not come cheaply.  However, FirstNet will be funded from the proceeds of several spectrum auctions conducted by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).  Spectrum provides the highways that enable wireless communications, and for first responders, the proceeds from upcoming spectrum auctions will endow the creation of a network dedicated to improved broadband communications.

In 2015, the largest auction of spectrum in years will occur – the FCC Broadcast Incentive Auction.  All first responders should be watching this very closely as a portion of the proceeds from this auction will go a long way toward helping to fund FirstNet, though important, it’s not the only source.  This spectrum, in the 600 MHz band, is extremely valuable because it can both travel long distances and allow wireless signals to penetrate building interiors to provide broadband connections where they can be hardest to reach.  This is why they call it beachfront spectrum, and that’s why  it is absolutely critical that the spectrum is auctioned in a way that will ensure a competitive marketplace.

The FCC auction process is complicated, but these auctions will have ramifications for our future.  Importantly, public safety wants the most competitive auction possible, with a wide variety of bidders to drive up revenues.  My hope is the FCC will create an auction structure that provides all bidders a reasonable chance to win some of this low-band spectrum.  That outcome will be good for auction revenues, and good for a competitive wireless broadband landscape in the future. 

And there’s an important aspect of this auction no one is talking about – that a healthy competitive wireless industry in itself is good for public safety.  As a first responder, I want to know that all carriers in the market have robust networks.  So that during emergency situations, we’ll all be able to communicate better, no matter whose network we’re making a call on or relying on for transmitting critical data.

Ultimately, we in public safety want the auctions to be successful.  Success for us means that enough money is made to fund the public safety network AND a wireless industry is still intact that enables public safety departments across the country to have carrier choice and competitive pricing.

We also know what auction failure looks like.  A failed auction would discourage participation from a wide variety of carriers and create a wireless industry that offers limited network and hardware partners for FirstNet.  Costs would be driven up and quality would be driven down.

After more than 12 years of waiting and with lives on the line, we want the FCC to know that failure is not an option.

Charles L. Werner is the fire chief for the City of Charlottesville Fire Department. He also serves on the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) SAFECOM Executive Committee, the DHS Homeland Security Information Network Advisory Committee, the DHS Virtual Social Media Working Group, the FirstNet Public Safety Advisory Committee, the International Association of Fire Chiefs Technology Council, the National Alliance for Public Safety GIS and the National Information Sharing Consortium.