The User Experience of Autonomous Vehicles

Editor's Notes

• #2: Very excited to be here, excited to hear what Ian has to say. John Weatherford, Faculty at the NMI in the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication at UGA.
• #3: The NMI is an interdisciplinary certificate program in Grady College of J+MC at UGA Develop expertise in the real-world application of cutting-edge technology + teach technical skills to students largely from non-technical majors Just shy of 500 students
• #4: We explore emerging technologies like drones, virtual reality, wearables, 3D printing and more
• #5: On to the talk.
• #6: In just a few minutes, Ian’s going to cover the industry side of things. My job is to provide a big-picture view of where AVs stand today and where they’re headed in the near-to-medium term future, and to give you all some things to consider about the experiences that AVs will create for their users. So, let’s get started.
• #8: Starting state: “the U.S. was made up of loosely connected, largely agricultural communities. If you wanted to travel over long distances, the covered wagon was pretty much your best option.”
• #9: “By 1860, more than 30,000 miles of railroad track spread out across the U.S. — and as tracks linked together, so did communities, economies, and people. Wherever these transportation networks went, small outposts were transformed into thriving cities. Chicago, Baltimore, and Los Angeles exist as they do today because of transportation innovations that helped spark their growth.”
• #10: Now fast-forward into the next century, when the assembly line automobile came onto the scene. For individuals, this brought almost unprecedented freedom. But for our cities, car ownership started a vicious cycle: as more cars filled the streets, more roads had to be built to accommodate them, reshaping our cities.
• #11: Now, we’re at the cusp of a third revolution, AVs, that have the potential to reshape not just mobility but also our cities and our day-to-day lives.
• #12: Science fiction writers thought of self-driving cars as soon as there were cars, and then the idea appeared in the General Motors Futurama display at the 1939 New York World’s Fair. Computing power didn’t catch up with our imaginations until the 1980s, when Carnegie Mellon University came up with a robot Chevy van and Bundeswehr University Munich developed an autonomous Mercedes van. Consumers got their first taste of autopilot in the 1990s when Toyota, Mitsubishi and Mercedes began offering adaptive cruise control, which uses radar to automatically adjust vehicle speed to keep a set distance from cars ahead. As the cost and size of the sensors and chips have plunged, autonomous features have proliferated and can now be found in everyday Hondas and Fords. And today, the technology’s accelerating even more quickly.
• #13: So, where does the tech stand today? Best way to understand is look at the major players today, and to do so through a unified scale.
• #14: So, the Federal Automated Vehicles Policy was released just last month Actually really good reading—seriously. Decides to use SAE (Society of Automotive Engineers) rankings. The FAVP makes a divide between levels 1-2 and levels 3-5. Level one is things like anti-lock brakes, while level two is traditional cruise control. HAV (Highly autonomous vehicle) are level 3 and above. And I want to look at two companies, Tesla and Uber, to show you those levels.
• #15: Level 3 is like what you’d see with Tesla, which in addition to being an electric vehicle pioneer is also a strong proponent of AVs.
• #16: Already shipping level 3 automated feature called Autopilot, which is almost exclusively for highway driving. Includes things like autosteer, auto lane change, and hazard warnings. However, this is all still partial automation—you can’t disengage from driving the car.
• #17: Moving past Tesla, we see Uber, who’s begun testing L4 AVs in Pittsburgh. L4 AVs aren’t fully ready yet, so they have a lot of human safeguards. Take a look at this video to see what the experience is like:
• #19: This is the next step in automation. While eventually the human driver and engineer will no longer be needed, the rollout will likely be limited to certain geographies and even certain conditions, like clear weather or slower speeds.
• #20: Of course, Tesla and Uber are not the only ones active in this space. While they’re the only ones available to consumers today, both Silicon Valley and Traditional Manufacturers are working hard to change that. Here’s a quick quote from Bloomberg that gives you an idea of the number and the scope of the deals happening today.
• #22: Call attention to one major effort from each side. On the Silicon Valley side, Google accelerated the pace of development by logging more than 2 million miles testing its driverless cars on Silicon Valley roads, but is possibly rethinking its plans (as is Apple).
• #23: On the traditional side, Mercedes is taking a two-pronged approach, developing test vehicles based on current platforms.
• #24: While also wildly imagining new concepts for the future. I really like this work because it pushes you to reconsider fundamental parts of the driving experience, including ones very relevant to OOH advertising: will passengers still face forward when rear-facing seats are safer and front-facing seats are no longer needed to ride. And, will augmented reality views overlay windows when driving’s no longer a primary task?
• #25: After today, here are some anticipated events for the next ten years or so. Even looking this far out has its perils—who could’ve foreseen the iPhone in 2002?—but it’s worth a look. 2017—next year—will see the introduction of Tesla-like features on a Cadillac; this reinforces the idea that AV tech will trickle down from higher-priced cars to more affordable vehicles. I’d also call particular attention to the AV adoption curve. Very slow at first, taking at least a generation to achieve widespread adoption. This seems sane based on historical penetration rate of earlier technological innovations, such as cruise control.
• #26: So, now that we’ve looked at the present and the near future, I want to leave you with a few big ideas about AVs that might be helpful as you’re thinking about what new experiences they’ll enable.
• #27: The big, obvious win is convenience. Freed from the need to attend to driving—and the possibilities offered by ride hailing and AVs—the possibilities for reimagining the transportation experience are nearly limitless. Jeff Zients, who led the White House’s work on AV policy, said that…
• #28: US especially has a lot to gain, w/ double the fatalities of most nations Mark Rosekind, NHTSA’s administrator, has said the self-driving car plan would be key to the agency’s attempts to reduce human error, which the agency estimates is a factor in 94 percent of fatal car crashes. Those crashes killed more than 35,000 people in the U.S. last year. HAVs also hold a learning advantage over humans. While a human driver may repeat the same mistakes as millions before them, an HAV can benefit from the data and experience drawn from thousands of other vehicles on the road. DOT is also encouraged about the potential for HAV systems to use other complementary sensor technologies such as vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) capabilities to improve system performance. (FAVP)
• #29: This also introduces the question of liability (http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/04/who-is-at-fault-when-a-driverless-car-gets-in-an-accident/361250/)
• #31: I mentioned earlier how cars have reshaped the world around us. Next time you walk outside, pay really close attention to the space around you. Look at how much land is devoted to cars — and nothing else. How much space parked cars take up lining both sides of the street, and how much of our cities go unused covered by parking lots. It’s a world built around cars, not people. AVs let us flip that equation, with some estimates stating that AVs and ride hailing apps would allow us to operate with only 10 percent of the cars we have today. Not only will that dramatically increase our capacity without pouring a single new truck load of concrete. Eventually, we’ll be able to turn parking lots back into parks and to make other changes to improve quality of life.
• #32: Driving is the largest category of employment in many states across the US. However, Jobs that can be performed by machines eventually will be performed by machines. That’s been the steady march of progress since the dawn of the industrial revolution. It’ll be fascinating to understand how AVs affect taxi drivers, truck drivers, and more.
• #33: Will people trust AVs to ride in them? How about non-riders, who aren’t given that choice? Also, what about sharing vs. ownership?
• #34: Technology has redefined entire industries around a simple reality: you no longer need to own a product to enjoy its benefits. With Netflix and streaming services, DVD ownership became obsolete. Spotify has made it unnecessary to own CDs and MP3s. Some people argue that cars are relatively immune to trends like that, but many major players are making large bets that they won’t, and that most people will eventually look at owning a car in much the same way.
• #35: Very excited to be here, excited to hear what Ian has to say. John Weatherford, Faculty at the NMI in the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication at UGA.