Law allows autonomous vehicle testing as long as operators obey existing road rules

6-5-2017, Denver Post -- If you’re thinking about developing an autonomous vehicle in Colorado, go ahead. It’s now legal, as long as you obey all of the existing rules of the road, according to legislation that Gov. John Hickenlooper signed into law Thursday.

“It’s hard to get the right balance between regulation and avoiding the red tape that sometimes stifles innovation,” said Hickenlooper, standing in front of a Chevrolet Bolt EV autonomous test vehicle that was trucked in from Michigan and is on its way for road tests in Arizona. “This is the right balance that allows Colorado to be a hotbed of innovation.”

It wasn’t meant to delve into the nitty-gritty of how autonomous vehicles should operate on the state’s roads. Rather, said sponsor state Sen. Owen Hill, R-Colorado Springs, the new law focused on creating a process that allows for autonomous vehicles to be tested safely.

People in the cars, for example, must still fasten their seatbelts, Hill said.

“We were very clear in writing the law that we’re not changing any of those other laws. Obviously, seatbelts is one of them. Turning indicators, moving aside for emergency vehicles — all of those laws still have to be followed,” Hill said. “If you get into a car and don’t fasten your seatbelt, you’re the one liable. It’s not your car’s job to make sure you as the owner are doing your job.”

The law does require companies who plan to test driverless cars in Colorado to first check in with the state Department of Transportation and State Patrol.

Driverless cars — which use sensors, cameras, GPS and lasers to drive on their own — are being tested on the roads in California, Arizona and Michigan. While most states have pending legislation or have considered rules, Colorado becomes the 17th to pass legislation, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Governors in three other states have issued executive orders related to autonomous vehicles.

“In 2017, 33 states have considered autonomous-vehicle bills and seven states have enacted legislation,” said Amanda Essex, NCSL’s policy specialist on transportation. “State action ranges from establishing a committee to study the technology to developing regulations regarding the operation of autonomous vehicles on public roads. The number of states considering legislation has increased each year since 2012, and at least 41 states have considered legislation addressing autonomous vehicles in the last five years.”

Read the rest of the story HERE.

CNBC -- Samsung Electronics is setting up a new business unit to focus on automotive-related technology such as components for driverless cars, the South Korean giant said on Wednesday.

Details about the team were scarce but Samsung said it is to focus on infotainment systems and autonomous driving technology. Samsung did not say how big the team would be.

The news comes as Samsung looks to find new growth drivers amid slowing smartphone sales and as an increasing number of technology companies look to jump into the automotive space.

Read the rest of the story here: http://www.cnbc.com/2015/12/09/samsung-sets-up-team-to-focus-on-driverless-cars.html

4/7/2016, TechWorld -- Elon Musk predicts that fully autonomous cars will hit the road by 2023, while the British government is trying to figure out how safe driverless cars are going to be, and how they should be regulated. Being in the business of on-demand parking, we’re asking another question – how and where are they going to be parked?

According to a ParkAtMyHouse Survey, the average UK motorist spends a shocking 106 days of their life looking for a parking spot, and it takes 20 minutes to find a spot in London alone, thanks to restrictions like resident parking and yellow lines. Since parking space is limited in cities, private parking spots can sell for more than houses. Recently, a parking spot near Hyde Park in the capital was put on the market at £350,000 – more than the average house price.

Read the rest here: http://www.techworld.com/personal-tech/huge-impact-driverless-cars-will-have-on-parking-urban-landscapes-3637704/

WNCN -- Ever since Henry Ford strapped on four wheels to the base of the Model T back in 1908, society has fostered a growing question: When will we be able to get behind the wheel of a self-driving car?

Cartoons as far back as the 1950’s predicted we would be zipping around in futuristic self-driving cars by the year 2000. Unfortunately, it’s taking us a little longer than that.

But the future of transportation may be closer than you think. A new research project at the University of North Carolina’s Computer Science Department is looking to bridge the gap between fantasy and reality.

“Folks may look back at us today and wonder, ‘Why did these people ever try to drive these cars themselves?’” said Dr. Jim Anderson, a professor at UNC and the principal investigator on the project.

Anderson and his team have partnered with General Motors to create data for a more reliable, safer and cheaper autonomous car.

“General Motors gave us some funding and then together we went and got some additional funding from the National Science Foundation. As a result of these two things, this grew into a fairly large project,” said Anderson

The team was able to secure $300,000 in funding from General Motors and $1 million from the National Science Foundation.

Anderson and his team of four faculty members and four graduate students began breaking down the code; trying to figure out how to fit more computing power in a car in a realistic setting.

“It sucks up a lot of size, weight and power which are important concerns,” Anderson said. “This gets very expensive, very fast.”

The team’s goal is to give an autonomous car the reliability of a human’s split-second thinking.

“If you think about the amount of information that comes to the human brain, the vast majority of it is visual information and a big chunk of our brain is dedicated to this,” said Dr. Alexander Berg, a professor at UNC also working on the project. “These are indications that this is a challenging task.”

Google has also been experimenting with self-driving cars since 2009. Since then, the cars have driven 1.8 million miles and have been involved in several accidents.

However, Google says all of those accidents were a result of human error, but more research is needed.

“I’ve seen estimates on the cost of the hardware of Google self-driving cars being $150,000 and that’s significantly more expensive than most of the cars I’d ever think about buying anyway,” said Berg.

Read the rest of the story here: http://wncn.com/2015/07/08/unc-explores-future-of-transportation/

10-24-2016 -- It's a jungle out there on US roads. There's a near-constant jockeying for position as everyone attempts to get where they're going as fast as they can via overcrowded highways and streets.

In reality, drivers all exist somewhere along a spectrum, with the unnecessarily aggressive on one end, the overly cautious on the other, and the rest falling somewhere in between. Drivers are constantly processing information and anticipating what their fellow motorists may do based on a variety of factors, often without consciously thinking about it.

Most experienced drivers innately assess such situations, but they will soon have to contend with autonomous vehicles (AVs) being thrown into the mix. Like humans, AVs will have to react to the actions of other drivers, but also other drivers' reaction to them. More aggressive drivers could take advantage of AVs' hesitancy, while others may not know how to socially relate to robo-cars. Things could become really complicated, according to a recent study.

Bullying Robo-Cars
Perhaps not surprisingly, a study from The London School of Economics and Goodyear found that AVs could be easily bullied by more assertive drivers. But the survey also found that so-called "cooperative" drivers—those who "see driving more as a social activity and enjoy the interaction with other drivers on the road"—are actually more apprehensive about self-driving cars.

The survey's "driving sociability" index used the common scenario of letting another driver cut in front of you—or cutting in front of another driver—as cars merge into a single lane as a gauge of whether someone would be considered more a "cooperative" road user. Ninety percent of those who landed in the top half of the driving sociability scale said they would never or only occasionally cut the line.

But of the more "combative" half, 42 percent, said that they would "sometimes, usually, or always" cut in on another driver. And aggressive drivers would feel even less remorse about cutting off an autonomous vehicle, while more social drivers may not know how to deal with a robo-car.

"If you view the road as a social space, you will consciously negotiate your journey with other drivers," the survey said. "People who like that negotiation process appear to feel less comfortable engaging with AVs than with human drivers.

Read the rest of the story HERE.