Will Google’s Self-driving Cars Suffer From “Map Anxiety”?

As reported by IEEE Spectrum: A week ago, Google held a press briefing at its expansive campus in Mountain View, California, aimed at showing off the progress it has made in its drive toward producing a self-driving car. The results, according to all who witnessed the company’s fleet of Lexus SUVs make their way around the streets of Mountain View without so much as a hiccup, were, in a word, impressive. (Well, The New York Times’ John Markoff called it “boring,”which is about as high a complement as you can pay an engineering project whose ultimate intention is to remove the “excitement”—meaning the tens of thousands of deaths each year on U.S. roads—from automobile travel.)  

Christopher Urmson, a former Carnegie Mellon University computer scientist who heads the project, gave a brief overview of the project’s evolution from its original goal of driving 100 000 miles safely in highway traffic conditions to driving on city streets. (The fleet has now passed the 700 000-mile mark.) Urmson said that driving local routes was “100 times more difficult than freeway driving.” But despite the constant barrage of stimuli local roads offer, the cars apparently do a (not) bang-up job.

Before Google’s self-driving car can do for all of us what it did for reporters last week, the Internet search giant has another massive project to undertake. As we reported in the Automaton blog back in 2011, it's all about the maps:

First, it relies on very detailed maps of the roads and terrain, something that Urmson said is essential to determine accurately where the car is. Using GPS-based techniques alone, he said, the location could be off by several meters. 

Andrew Chatham, who heads the team’s mapping effort, described it thusly last week as reported in The Atlantic:

“We tell it how high the traffic signals are off the ground, the exact position of the curbs, so the car knows where not to drive," he said. "We'd also include information that you can't even see like implied speed limits.” This keeps the burden on the car’s software to a minimum. “We tell it what the world is expected to look like when it is empty,” said Chatham. “And then the job of the software is to figure out how the world is different from that expectation.”

Therein lies a big problem—and the next, rather massive, challenge. The vehicles in Google’s fleet definitely qualify as smart cars. But if you plunked one down in a random city that the Google team has yet to exhaustively map, it would be akin to Superman being unable to switch out of his guise as mild-mannered reporter Clark Kent. When the digitized female voice says “Autodriving,” indicating the switch to automated-driving mode, it would be no more capable than the car you drive to work every day.

Google has so far done the work of having human drivers traverse the roads in the vicinity of its campus. But that’s only 3200 kilometers of road out of the roughly 6.4 million kilometers comprising the U.S. road network.

And although Google has sent drivers down all these roads for its Google Maps project (I can’t remember the last time I even saw a paper map), the level of detail required for automated driving is far higher than what you need to ensure that you don’t get lost on the way to the restaurant your friends raved about during their last vacation.

So, how long will this mapping take? Though Google cofounder Sergey Brin has said publicly that the suite of sensors and the compilation of gadgets that apply the captured data would be commercially available by 2017, Urmson suggested a date closer to 2020. By then, perhaps, Google will have spread its mapping, and the “boredom” of automated driving, over a much greater swath of the United States.

Group Flies Drone Over World's Tallest Building

As reported by IEEE Spectrum: Team BlackSheep is back with another of its dubiously legal but undoubtedly epic aerial drone videos. This time they have their camera-enabled quadrotor shooting some spectacular footage in the skies of Dubai in the United Arab Emirates.

The video includes a high altitude view of the Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world at 829.8 meters (2,722 feet). And by "high altitude view" we mean, holy sheep, the drone flies above the antenna atop the building. To get an idea of how tall this thing is, consider that you have to stack two Empire State Buildings to get one Burj Khalifa!

Skip to 1:04 to see the stunt.

Team BlackSheep flies its own custom quadrotor, called the TBS Discovery Pro, which has a fully stabilized camera gimbal and range of 500 meters to 3 kilometers (with a more powerful transmitter and antenna, users can supposedly extend the range to some 10 kilometers). 

Team leader Raphael "Trappy" Pirker might be feeling confident lately, having won a favorable court ruling against the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration, which had fined him for using drones to shoot a promotional video (the FAA is appealing).

But while many in the drone community applaud the stunning videos made by Team BlackSheep and others, some wonder if they could backfire and lead to unnecessarily tough regulation if one day a drone causes an accident and hurts someone.

On YouTube, one user left a comment asking Team BlackSheep if it had "permission to make those flights." "That's not a place I would like to get caught breaking any of their laws," the user wrote.

A member of Team BlackSheep responded: "as far as I'm concerned we did not break any laws. I consider this to be good promotion for Dubai. Please keep in mind we're one of the most experienced 'hobbyist drone' operators on the planet ... several tests were conducted before we were sure to pull off these flights and not endanger the people of Dubai."


Indeed, most other YouTube commenters didn't seem worried. "The awesomeness burns my eyes!" one wrote.

Earth Scientists React to Possible Loss of Russian GPS Stations

As reported by ScienceInsider:  A Russian government threat to disconnect 11 GPS receivers used for geophysical research and to fine-tune the satellite navigation system is drawing concern from scientists—and questions from the country’s minister for industry.

The threat is just one element of the tit-for-tat diplomatic and rhetorical firefight that has broken out between Russia and the United States in the wake of Russia’s annexation of Crimea in Ukraine. Last week, senior Russian officials said they were considering an array of moves aimed at U.S. space programs, including pulling out of the International Space Station in 2020 and barring the use of Russian rocket motors by U.S. firms. Officials also threatened to turn off 11 land-based GPS receivers on Russian soil by 1 June unless the United States agreed to install similar units for Russia’s GLONASS satellite navigation system on U.S. territory.

Experts say the shutdown—if carried out—would have little impact on the GPS. The passive stations, which only receive GPS signals, are primarily used to ensure correct tracking of GPS satellites. “As these stations are very few, their impact on the accuracy of the positional measurements is insignificant,” says Konstantin Kuimov, head of the Moscow State University department of astrometry and time service. “The accuracy of the positioning at present is the question of decimeters. Now, it would worsen a little bit.” GPS users won’t notice any change, he says.

The impact on science, however, could be a bit greater. That’s because earth scientists use data from the receivers to track the slow, subtle movements of continents and land surfaces. “The situation with geophysical measurement is much worse” because the receivers are vital to providing “a serious set of statistical data,” Kuimov says. “The statistical data makes it even possible to measure the variations in the rotation of the Earth and the seismic activity of the planet. It is only the positioning satellites that make it possible to measure the [movements] of the surface in millimeters.” 

Researchers use both navigation systems—GPS and GLONASS—to make such measurements, Kuimov notes. So he and other researchers would like to see GLONASS stations on U.S. territory (a move that has been under negotiation). Ideally, he says, such stations ultimately would be evenly spaced around the world.

If Russia follows through with the threat, the impact will depend on how long the base stations remain inaccessible, says Jeffrey Freymueller, a geophysicist at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks. “If the Russians eventually share the data, we’ll be able to reprocess everything and eventually recover full precision results, but if they actually remove the equipment for the long term then over time it will become an increasing problem, as it will compromise the global coverage,” Freymueller says. “Before there were these stations in Russia, for example, it was difficult to do large-scale tectonic studies in China because we could not define what was the stable Eurasian plate well enough to express motions relative to stable Eurasia. Eventually, we will slip back toward that situation if there is no continuing data from Russia, although we still have the past data so it will never be as bad as it was.”

The threat to turn off the receivers “is a purely political decision,” Kuimov says. “No one needs it except politicians. In fact, it just demonstrates Russia’s disloyal attitude [toward] the U.S., in response to the disloyal attitude of the U.S. [toward] Russia.”

The threat also appears to have sown discord within the Russian government. On 13 May, the day after the threat surfaced, Denis Manturov, Russia’s minister of industry and trade, suggested that it didn't make sense. “Technically, it can be done,” he said. “But what is the purpose of that?”

Street View Data Not Good Enough For Google's Self-Driving Systems

As reported by AutoWeek: If anyone can bring the self-driving car to market, it’s Google. Not only does the company have the necessary funds for such an undertaking, it has the necessary data -- at least one would think.

In a Wired article on Tuesday, Google said that even though it has mapped much of the world with Google Street View, those maps won’t help its self-driving car. The vehicle needs to relearn the road before it can tackle driving autonomously.

Currently, the self-driving test SUVs have mapping hardware, including a laser scanner that rotates 10 times per minute, with 64 beams measuring the distance to nearby objects. The camera and radar bring in more information, which is compiled into a picture of what’s going on. All of this data is necessary for the autonomous function to work.

The solution, as Google puts it, is that each car will have the systems required for mapping a road. The company foresees an owner who lives in an unfamiliar area driving the car for the first few times until the vehicle learns the street. After that, it could go autonomous.

The U.S. has approximately 4 million miles of public roads. Google would need to tackle much of that if it wants to meet the goal of co-founder Sergey Brin, who said in 2012 that he wants to have the technology commercialized by 2017.

In the Future, Driverless Cars Could Cripple Law Enforcement Budgets

As reported by NetworkWorld: Shortly after the state of Washington voted to legalize recreational marijuana late last year, opponents made a very interesting, if somewhat counter-intuitive  argument against legalized pot – law enforcement would miss out on the huge revenue stream of seized assets, property, and cash from pot dealers in the state.

Justice Department data shows that seizures in marijuana-related cases nationwide totaled $1 billion from 2002 to 2012, out of the $6.5 billion total seized in all drug busts over that period. This money often goes directly into the budgets of the law enforcement agencies that seized it.

One drug task force in Snohomish County, Washington, reduced its budget forecast by 15% after the state voted to legalize marijuana, the Wall Street Journal reported in January. In its most fruitful years, that lone task force had seen more than $1 million in additional funding through seizures from marijuana cases alone, according to the report.

Naturally, this dynamic is something law enforcement either is or should already be preparing for as driverless cars make their way onto the roads. Just as drug cops will lose the income they had seized from pot dealers, state and local governments will need to account for a drastic reduction in fines from traffic violations as autonomous cars stick to the speed limit.


Google’s driverless cars have now combined to drive more than 700,000 miles on public roads without receiving one citation, The Atlantic reported this week. While this raises a lot of questions about who is responsible to pay for a ticket issued to a speeding autonomous car – current California law would have the person in the driver’s seat responsible, while Google has said the company that designed the car should pay the fine – it also hints at a future where local and state governments will have to operate without a substantial source of revenue.

Approximately 41 million people receive speeding tickets in the U.S. every year, paying out more than $6.2 billion per year, according to statistics from the U.S. Highway Patrol published at StatisticBrain.com. That translates to an estimate $300,000 in speeding ticket revenue per U.S. police officer every year.

State and local governments often lean on this source of income when they hit financial trouble. Last September, Atlanta’s Channel 2 Action News reported that the city’s police union chief claimed in an email to city police officers that Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed had “designated traffic court/ticket revenue for future pay increases” for police officers. There are countless other examples of police officers increasing their ticket-writing efforts in order to help spike revenue.


And a study released in 2009 examined data over a 13-year period in North Carolina, finding a “statistically significant correlation between a drop in local government revenue one year, and more traffic tickets the next year,” Popular Science reported.

"If a county got one percentage point less money, they gave out around a third of a point more tickets," according to the Popular Science report.

Of course, it’s unclear what exactly the driverless car ecosystem will look like. Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who says his company's autonomous car will be ready for on-street adoption by the masses by 2016, doesn’t believe consumers will adopt fully autonomous cars, but rather those with "a form of 'auto-pilot' in most situations that would allow the vehicle to take over control."


"My opinion is it’s a bridge too far to go to fully autonomous cars," Musk told the Financial Times last September. "It’s incredibly hard to get the last few percent."

Musk makes a good point. A car that can drive you home when you’re tired or have had too much to drink seems like a great idea, but consumers may not be crazy about being restricted to speed limit-abiding robots when they’re running late for a meeting or about to miss a flight. This could also explain why Google has reportedly had difficulty finding a manufacturing partner for its fully autonomous car, as the Financial Times pointed out in its article about Musk.




The question, however, is how much of an impact any autonomous driving ability has on the reliable revenue source that traffic violation fines have been in the public sector. If and when drivers decide to switch off their autonomous drivers and double the speed limit on a joy ride, will police be able to pay enough officers to stop them?

SpaceX Has Gone From Suing The Air Force To Possibly Launching Its Satellites

As reported by Business Insider: SpaceX, billionaire Elon Musk's aerospace startup, is reportedly taking its first steps towards securing lucrative U.S. defense contracts. 

Bloomberg News reported today that the Air Force — which SpaceX sued over anti-competitive practices as recently as last month — now plans on spending $60 million to certify SpaceX for carrying its payloads.

The certification process will likely involve close analysis of each launch of SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket, as the Air Force tries to determine whether it thinks that SpaceX is competent to carry its payloads. The Air Force will be looking at factors like the Falcon 9's launch environment and at whether the rocket, which is built to be reusable, can still deliver payloads if some of its engines fail in-flight.

That SpaceX is now on track for military contracts is a sign of the changing nature of the U.S. space industry. As Kieth Cowing, a former NASA astrobiologist and current blogger at NASA Watch told Business Insider, the U.S. government likely never thought it would have to certify another potential launch company because of larger companies' long-standing dominance of aerospace-related government contracts. "The government did not expect to ever have to do this again, because you've got a sanctioned monopoly with Boeing and Lockheed Martin," says Cowing.

SpaceX reusable rocket tested to 1000 meters.

SpaceX has been trying to change that. Last month, the company sued the Air Force over its allegedly non-competitive process for awarding launch contracts. And earlier this week, SpaceX's Dragon capsule, a reusable cargo module, successfully returned to earth from the International Space Station.

The company's emergence, and the government's sudden openness to aerospace newcomers, comes at an opportune time: Both Boeing and Lockheed rockets use engines built in Russia. SpaceX's delivery systems are built and designed in the U.S. — so its work isn't potentially hamstrung by Russia's aggression in Ukraine and increasing alienation from the U.S. and its allies.

Rogue Google X Internet Balloon Initially Identified as a UFO

As reported by Motherboard: The hardest thing about Google X's Project Loon hasn't been the engineering challenge of beaming high-speed internet down to the far-flung corners of the world from 60,000 feet up in the sky, explained Richard DeVaul, the founder of the moonshot project. It's trying to control all those freaking balloons.

DeVaul, sporting a pair of Google Glass onstage at the Smithsonian's "Future Is Here" event this weekend, gave us a rare behind-the-scenes glimpse at one of the secretive lab's most high-profile snafus.

"I can tell you about one of the unexpected things that happened," he said. "We created mass UFO sightings across the US."

The most famous of these occurred two years ago in Pike County, Kentucky. Alien-minded amateur astronomers spotted and captured footage of an aerial object unlike anything they'd ever seen before floating high up in the sky.

"I don't understand how it could stay up there in one place. There was no sign of propellers or any kind of proportion system. No gas is coming out," wrote Allen Epling, who first spotted the flying object. The airline industry reported they didn't have any planes in that area, and police were equally stumped.

After much speculation, conspiracy theories, and subsequent sightings in Virginia and Tennessee, Google admitted the mysterious floater was one of the balloons they were testing for Project Loon. The UFO community wrote the claim off as a publicity stunt, and remained skeptical.

On Saturday, DeVaul revealed to the public for the first time the once-unidentified flying object. It was the "Falcon 11," a 120-foot long transparent mylar balloon made in-house at the secret Google X lab.

"This is a balloon that went rogue," DeVaul said.

The Loon team launched the massive spherical, internet-carrying balloon from California on what was supposed to be a short-duration test flight. But it "ran out of juice" and they lost track of it.

They then followed its course eastward by checking in on UFO forums online.

"We tracked the balloon by outsourcing to the internet UFO community," DeVaul said. "It drifted all the way across the country, getting to Kentucky, to the Eastern Seaboard, all the way up to Canada."

"No one outside Google X knows this."

I caught up with DeVaul after the event and asked him if the Falcon 11 was still in use, or if that particular model was benched after its extraterrestrial disappearing act.

Turns out it was one of many models. All the balloon prototypes are named after birds, starting with "A," he told me. So that gives you some sense of how many attempts there have been to get the design right—and the "Falcon" is from back in 2012. 

When I asked DeVaul what letter they're on now, he laughed and said unfortunately he wasn't able to talk about that (surprise surprise), but suffice to say they were a lot further along. He then hinted that the lab is now working on totally something new—he wouldn't confirm if it's even a balloon—that, if successful, could stay aloft forever.

Typical Google X vaguery and dramatic flare. We’ll be on the hunt for more details on that mysterious object, and in the meantime, the Project Loon team will ostensibly keep trying to perfect its balloon design. Note to UFO chasers everywhere: It might not be an alien spacecraft, it might just be an internet-carrying “Toucan” balloon gone rogue.