A variety of pieces for you this weekend:

A Reuters article giving an overview of autonomous vehicles. Article predicts driverless cars “in our lifetime”.

Meanwhile there is an anti-self driving car piece over at caranddriver.com, see Part 1 and Part 2.

It appears there may be another firm working on driverless technology this article notes that French car parts maker Valeo has joined the race with a driverless Volvo.

Also IEEE Spectrum has a short interview up with one of Volkswagon’s R&D bosses on safety, electronics, road trains and mapping in autonomous vehicles.

Happy reading!

This one literally JUST came through via email so apologies for the late notice.

On Thursday, May 24, 2012 Time: 2:00 PM – 3:30 PM EDT; the GTMA (Geospatial-Transportation Mapping Association) is running a webinar on driverless car technology.

I’ll let them explain it:

 In 2012, Utah DOT awarded a contract to Mandli Communications to digitally collect roadway assets using the latest in mobile network technologies. The data captured under the Utah project is not only valuable in improving asset management and roadway safety; it may also help unlock the door to the autonomous vehicles of tomorrow. This GTMA sponsored webinar features Mandli President, Ray Mandli, providing an overview of the project. How will the data be collected? What technologies are involved and what quality control measures are in place to ensure accuracy? Mr. Mandli will endeavor to answer these questions. Professor John Leonard (MIT), co-director of the Ford-MIT Alliance, and James McBride, Ph.D., Technical Expert in Ford Motor Company’s Research and Advanced Engineering Department, will then discuss how the data collected under the Utah project could be enhanced to increase its value for researchers developing the first generation of autonomous vehicles. The state of Utah is a great location for collecting data for autonomous vehicle researchers. It has mountains and desert, straight and curved roads, city and urban topographies. Digital asset collection technologies have tremendous potential in improving the way states manage assets today. This webinar is designed to enhance its ability to bring us a new generation of safer and more efficient vehicles tomorrow.

Register here to be a part.

The presence of John Leonard and Jim McBride promises to be a real treat.

One of the big obstacles facing Driverless Car technology has been the inability of GPS systems to provide location with pin-point accuracy.

This looks like it has been solved, by Broadcom. Here’s a link to the press release.

The chip accesses a multitude of data points including multiple satellite constellations and even in some cases, WIFI, to create pinpoint accuracy.

From Singularity Hub:

Disregarding Intel’s proclivity to dub their chips with ethereal names, the latest chip offering from Broadcom Corp. is simply called the BCM4752. Broadcom reports that the chip communicates with four different satellite constellations, which means access to the 59 satellites hovering over our heads, in addition to cellphone towers. It establishes indoor positioning by pulling from a bunch of different wireless sources, like Wi-Fi, near field communication (NFC), and inertial sensors plus its built to capitalize on emergent technologies, like Bluetooth beacons and 5G Wi-Fi access points (using the new 802.11ac standard even though everyone is still catching up with 802.11n). The more precise vertical and horizontal positioning is accomplished by communicating with a host of various sensors, like accelerometers, step counters, gyroscopes, altimeters, and magnetometers.

In the last couple of months, Utah awarded a contract to a company called Mandli Communications to conduct detailed mapping of their transport infrastructure.

The ostensible purpose is to improve infrastructure management but at the same time this move will solve a great problem faced by Driverless Car engineers – the lack of centimeter-perfect mapping data available.

Mandli has since recognized the potential for the data to be used for autonomous vehicle systems and has taken the initiative to set up the Geospatial Transport Mapping Association (GTMA), launching in May.

The GTMA  ”seeks to improvedecisionmakers’ ability to create a safer, environmentally sound and efficient transportation infrastructure through the use of state-of-the-art mapping technologies.” We had envisaged that the mapping effort would be conducted on a collaborative basis, due to the economic efficiencies of sharing the load.

For anyone interested they will be conducting a webinar on the 24th of May, featuring Professor John Leonard (MIT), co-director of the Ford-MIT Alliance, and James McBride, Ph.D., Technical Expert in Ford Motor Company’s Research and Advanced Engineering Department.

(HT: Bryant Walker-Smith)