As reported by Forbes: Tremendous strides by innovators have resulted in some fascinating and intriguing enhancements to the transportation industry. In fact, in many ways, it feels like the future of the transportation industry is already here. These developments will cause transportation companies to rethink job descriptions and figure out when humans should be at the helm or when they should defer to smart machines for safety, cost savings and capabilities. Even though we haven’t quite hit wide-scale adoption of some of these technologies, many have been tested and prototyped and large-scale adoption seems imminent. Here’s an overview of some of the major developments that are changing the transportation industry. Self-Driving Cars
By 2020, it is expected that 10 million self-driving cars will be on the road while there will be more than 250 million smart cars—cars connected to high-tech networks—sharing the road with them. There are already self-driving features on several vehicles that are available today thanks to Tesla, Mercedes and BMW. We can send our gratitude for this innovation to machine learning and the complex system of sensors, cameras and software that helps vehicles absorb data from their environments and learn and respond to what the data is telling them. Google’s self-driving car project Waymo has already logged the equivalent of 300 years of driving experience on city streets since 2009 and promises to free up our time, lower stress, make our roadways safer and improve transportation for us all. Even Uber is testing out and investing $300 million to further develop a fleet of self-driving vehicles. Autonomous Trucks There’s certainly reason for the 8.7 million people employedwithin the U.S. trucking industry to be concerned about how self-driving trucks will impact their livelihood. Daimler Trucks just launched an 18-wheel, fully autonomous truck to drive on American roadways. Although not completely driverless, it can take over under certain conditions similar to an auto-pilot on today’s planes, as well as stay at a consistent speed, keep a safe distance from other vehicles and more. Swedish start-up Einridetook it a step farther with a prototype of a self-driving truck with no cab that can be completely controlled by a remote operator or drive autonomously without human intervention. Last year, Uber’s self-driving truck traveled 120 miles to make its first delivery of 50,000 beers and in the UK self-driving truck platoonsare being tested to cut down carbon dioxide emissions and improve efficiency.
As reported by Engadget: Truck driving is an exhausting job that requires constant attention to the road. Falling asleep during long stretches is an occasional -- and sometimes lethal -- concern. That's why Ford helped develop the SafeCap, a hat that senses head movements associated with sleepiness and wakes the driver up with sound, light and vibration.
To help celebrate 60 years of producing trucks in Brazil, Ford partnered with the Sao Paulo-based creative agency GTB to make the cap. They researched and mapped head motions, differentiating those made while driving (checking the instrument panel, looking in mirrors) from those made while getting drowsy. The hat has an inboard accelerometer and gyroscope that measure head movements throughout the drive along with components that vibrate, make sound light up. Agency employees explain the design in the video below (in Portuguese):
Obviously, the SafeCap is a nice brand promotion to show Ford as company that cares (well, enough to make a prototype). But as Fast Company points out, the automaker introduced a baby-rocking car seat concept earlier this year in Spain which got enough hype that Ford made it an option for car buyers. There's no word on when (or if) the SafeCap would be mass-produced, but Ford's head of sales in Brazil said their "goal is to share with other countries" after tests.
As reported by Futurism: The Colorado Department of Transport (CDOT) is trying to figure out how to bring a Colorado hyperloop proposal to life. Virgin Hyperloop One has been brought on as a partner on the project, and together with CDOT, they’ll spend the next nine months hashing out the details on the construction of a track that links the Denver International Airport to the cities of Vail and Pueblo in Colorado and Cheyenne in Wyoming. The entire Colorado hyperloop is estimated to cost $24 billion, but the plan is to start by building a smaller section of the route that would cost just $3 billion. That segment would connect the airport with Greeley, CO, which is located about 64 kilometers (40 miles) to the north.
“Moving people rapidly from one place to the next has implications of radically changing how we think about land use, and where people live, and where they work, and how they get between that,” CDOT spokeswoman Amy Ford told The Coloradoan. “We cannot build our way out of congestion, and that’s why we’re looking so widely at technology.” Still, Fort Collins Area Chamber of Commerce President David May emphasized the importance of not expecting a Colorado hyperloop to solve all the state’s transportation problems. “We still need to work within the current transportation technology paradigm,” he wrote in an email to The Coloradoan. “It’s OK to dream about El Dorado as long as you continue to invest in ‘Realville.’” The Competition Colorado isn’t the only potential location for Virgin Hyperloop One’s first route. The Missouri Hyperloop Coalition is currently in the process of raising funds for a hyperloop, and a promising proposal for a track that would link Mexico City with Guadalajara is also gaining traction. Of course, Virgin Hyperloop One could be beaten to the punch by another hyperloop company. Elon Musk’s Boring Company is already tunneling beneath Los Angeles, and earlier this month, signs turned up that their proposed hyperloop route linking cities on the East Coast might actually come to fruition. The feasibility of Hyperloop technology has yet to be proven, but it seems like simply a matter of time before a large-scale project officially gets underway.
Obama era plan would have created standards for vehicles to 'talk' to each other.
As reported by The Verge: The proposed mandate to add vehicle-to-vehicle communications to all new cars appears to have been killed by the Trump administration. The White House and US Department of Transportation are not going to push forward with a mandate that would have required new cars to be equipped with dedicated short-range radios that allow vehicles to send some data — such as crashes, road hazards and weather conditions — to other vehicles, The Associated Press reported Wednesday. “The Department of Transportation and NHTSA have not made any final decision on the proposed rule-making concerning a V2V mandate,” the department said in a statement Wednesday. “Any reports to the contrary are mistaken. In all events, DOT hopes to use the dedicated spectrum for transportation lifesaving technologies. Safety is the Department’s number one priority.” DOT added V2V was a significant part of its plan and is still reviewing more than 460 comments in response to the proposal. Under the Obama administration, then-Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx said V2V technology would greatly enhance autonomous driving technology to, “provide 360-degree situational awareness on the road,” and improve vehicle safety. The Trump administration’s decision comes at a time when traffic fatalities in recent years have jumped to levels not seen since the 1960s.
The Mercedes-Benz E-Class received V2V technology in 2016, and Mercedes added it to the 2018 S-Class this year. General Motors also introduced V2V early this year on the Cadillac CTS. “We are happy to have customers experiencing V2V technology on the road today in our Cadillac CTS sedan,” Cadillac spokesperson Donny Nordlicht said in an email to The Verge. “While we don’t discuss future product plans, we are supportive of the mandate and open to sharing the 5.9 Ghz spectrum, as long as it can be established that there is no harmful interference with the live-saving DSRC technology.”
Mercedes-Benz USA Communications Manager Christian Bokich said the automaker was continuing to monitor the status of the V2V mandate. “That said, as a leader in the pursuit of accident-free driving for the past few decades, we plan to continue to innovate new technologies that bring us closer to that goal,” Bokich said in an email. “It’s too early to speak to the what and when of V2V technology with respect to that goal, particularly as we await the details of 5G integration.” The Transportation Department under current Secretary Elaine Chao has also been relaxed on rules self-driving vehicles. In September, the department decided to continue with the guidelines introduced under Foxx amid actions by the House of Representatives and Senate to adopt national regulations.
Because tests proved that people tend to act like passengers inside autonomous cars anyway.
As reported by Engadget: Waymo has begun testing truly autonomous vehicles that don't even need to hand off control to human drivers in dangerous situations. Alphabet's autonomous car development arm has shown off the latest version of its Chrysler Pacifica minivans at an event in California, where the vehicles drove people around without a person sitting in the driver's seat. According to Reuters, the company decided to drop the driver handoff feature after experiments conducted in Silicon Valley back in 2013 showed that users acted like full-on passengers inside the vehicle. Testers napped, put on make-up and used their phones on the road. In other words, they'd lost context of where their car was going or how fast it was and would've been taken by surprise if they were suddenly given control of the vehicle in dangerous situations. Waymo has been working on ditching the handoff feature since then to allow "passengers to stay passengers." The latest version of Waymo's minivans feature display screens mounted on the back of the front seats. They show messages explaining why the system just did what it did (say, if it stopped to let a pedestrian cross) as well as visualizations of the surroundings. More importantly, they have a new panel with buttons allowing passengers to start the ride, pull it over, call for help and unlock the doors. While the buttons still give passengers some semblance of control, Waymo chief John Krafcik said his team is working on a technology that will make their ride-hailing dreams more feasible. That feature will give their vehicles the ability to recognize the person who hailed them even if they're not in the exact spot where they called for a ride. If you're in Phoenix, Arizona, you might have already seen Waymo's new minivans driving people around. You might not have to wait for years on end to see one even if you're not in Phoenix, though: Krafcik said they're "really close" to unleashing their self-driving vehicles on public roads.
As reported by Futurism: Tesla fans and pundits alike were pleasantly surprised when CEO Elon Musk announced the coming addition of Powerpacks to Tesla’s Supercharger network. Musk also announced his intention to bring charging stations to nearly all off-grid stations on the network. Early deployments of the Powerpacks to a number of Superchargers have already demonstrated their usefulness during infrastructural hiccups. The Tesla Supercharger station in South Mimms near London, UK, is ostensibly no different than other Superchargers in the surrounding region. Located at the ‘Welcome Break Services’ installation, the South Mimms station also features petrol, an Ecotricity charging station, amid other necessary amenities. However, when Waseem Mirza stopped by for a refill at the Supercharger station with his Model X last week, a power outage suddenly ripped through the whole service area, leaving the man what you might call up recharge creek with no current. Without amenities, little was left for customers and bystanders to do. As many began to reluctantly leave the site, Mirza realized that the Supercharger docks had remained powered.
Tesla confirmed Mirza’s observations: the Supercharger station had remained online thanks to its connection to a Powerpack battery system. One of the first stations equipped with the cutting-edge system, the Powerpacks were not added to provide backup power. But this is nevertheless a noteworthy example of what high-standard engineering can do. Infrastructural Metamorphosis The Powerpacks’ primary purposewas to reduce peak power demand when multiple vehicles charge simultaneously. According to Tesla, this allowed them to increase the number of Superchargers at the station from two to 12 bays last year.
Despite Tesla’s headway on fulfilling its promise to provide both solar power and energy storage systems at its Supercharger stations, Tesla currently operates just a handful of stations running on solar panels or Powerpacks. Above all, this dispels the notion that electric cars are not useless when electric grids go down. Since we’re not living in a dieselpunk novella, gas pumps can’t power themselves with gasoline; they need electricity, too. While the Tesla Superpack-equipped stations can’t stay online for long at the moment, it’s expected the proliferation of Powerpacks, combined with renewable solar power, will allow the energy supply service to go completely off-grid, according to Musk. We shouldn’t be surprised if Supercharger and solar power systems see increased deployment as Tesla expands their network of service toward their goal of 10,000 Superchargers by the end of the year. At the moment, the automaker runs more than 7,300 Superchargers at more than 1,000 stations. So once solar power is conjoined to the network, the sky’s the limit.
As reported by Space.com: Another day, another rocket launch and landing for SpaceX. A two-stage Falcon 9 rocket topped with the Koreasat-5A communications satellite lifted off from NASA's Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida today (Oct. 30) at 3:34 p.m. EDT (1934 GMT). About 8.5 minutes after launch, the rocket's first stage came down for a pinpoint landing on the SpaceX drone ship "Of Course I Still Love You," which was stationed in the Atlantic Ocean a few hundred miles off the Florida coast. A fire smoldered at the booster's base shortly after the landing, but SpaceX quickly put it out. [In Photos: SpaceX's Koreasat-5A Launch & Rocket Landing] "A little toasty, but stage one is certainly still intact on the drone ship," SpaceX lead mechanical engineer John Federspiel said during launch commentary today.
The Falcon 9 second stage, meanwhile, continued powering Koreasat-5A to a distant geostationary transfer orbit, eventually deploying the satellite 35.5 minutes after liftoff.
The first stage of a SpaceX Falcon 9 sits on the deck of the drone ship "Of Course I Still Love You" shortly
after launching the Koreasat-5A satellite on Oct. 30,2017. Credit: SpaceX
The rocket landing was the 19th that SpaceX has pulled off during orbital launches. These dramatic events are part of the company's plan to develop completely reusable rockets and space vehicles, a breakthrough that SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk has said will slash the cost of spaceflight.
To date, SpaceX has re-flown three of these landed Falcon 9 first stages, as well as one Dragon cargo capsule. In addition, the company's next resupply mission to the International Space Station for NASA will feature a pre-flown Dragon. (The Falcon 9 that launched today was a brand-new vehicle.)
South Korean company KT Sat will use the 8,160-lb. (3,700 kilograms) Koreasat-5A to provide direct-to-home broadcast and broadband services to customers in Japan, South Korea and the Philippines, among other nations. The newly launched satellite will take over for Koreasat-5, which launched in 2006.
"As a replacement for Koreasat-5, Koreasat-5A will expand KT Sat's coverage across Asia and the Middle East," SpaceX representatives wrote in a mission overview. "Unlike other satellites in the Koreasat fleet, Koreasat-5A will provide maritime coverage of the Persian Gulf, Indian Ocean, South China Sea and East China Sea."
Today's launch was the 16th of the year for SpaceX, one more than the company pulled off in 2015 and 2016 combined.
The Falcon 9 lifted off today from KSC's Launch Complex 39A, which previously hosted Apollo moon mission and space shuttle liftoffs. In 2014, SpaceX signed a 20-year lease to use the pad.
There’s certainly reason for the 8.7 million people employed within the U.S. trucking industry to be concerned about how self-driving trucks will impact their livelihood. Daimler Trucks just launched an 18-wheel, fully autonomous truck to drive on American roadways. Although not completely driverless, it can take over under certain conditions similar to an auto-pilot on today’s planes, as well as stay at a consistent speed, keep a safe distance from other vehicles and more. Swedish start-up Einride took it a step farther with a prototype of a self-driving truck with no cab that can be completely controlled by a remote operator or drive autonomously without human intervention. Last year, Uber’s self-driving truck traveled 120 miles to make its first delivery of 50,000 beers and in the UK self-driving truck platoons are being tested to cut down carbon dioxide emissions and improve efficiency.
