Who Gets To Level 5 Self-Driving First
The hard facts that prove it can’t be done in current timelines
0. Setting the Stage
There are six areas it does not seem most of the folks trying to get to Level 5 understand or properly appreciate. Success will depend on who understands these items best and executes on all of them first.
This comes from my many years leading aerospace engineering teams at Lockheed Martin. The FAA is the aviation safety equivalent to automotive’s NHTSA. The sophistication required by Level D flight simulators as well as safety proceedings for aviation far exceeds the current state of affairs in Big Auto. If we hope to get to our self-driving car future, the industry will need to find a way to bridge that gap.
Below is the high-level overview of what’s required to do that.
In addition, we have a newly formed ADAS Safety Consortium with a group of self-driving, automotive, and safety experts to help drive this process forward. Current team members include:
- Michael DeKort — Former Aerospace Systems Engineer, Program/Engineering Manager Lockheed Martin
- Sean Everett — CEO of PROME building Biologic Intelligence
- David Pickeral — Mobility Technologist
- Lee Woodcock — Global Product Director — Intelligent Mobility at Atkins
- Susan Shaheen — Co-Director, Transportation Sustainability Research Center and Adjunct Professor, CEE, UC Berkley
- Susan Eileen Smith — Creator of IBM’s Defect Reduction Method & former IBM Master Inventor
- Nick Gerhart — Chief Administrative Officer FBL Financial
- Catherine Kargas — Business strategist, VP at MARCON, Chair at Electric Mobility Canada
- Carlos Eduardo Germani Santi — Civil Engineer — Traffic and Transport Management specialist -Master in Urban & Road Mgmt. and Infrastructure
- James McPherson — Founder SafeSelfDrive.org — Attorney
- Anthony Griffith — President A. W. Griffith Transportation Consulting LLC
- Edward Lockett — Driver Trainer — Tractor Trailers and Buses
If you’d like to get involved, give us a shout.
I. Simulation vs AI
Unless you want to shadow drive 1 Trillion miles and spend over $300B you will have to use simulation and simulators as the primary means of AI and testing. There is also the issue of shadow driving being dangerous because of slow reaction times and drivers falling asleep. (That alone can stop your program due to lawsuits and even criminal action.)
A Trillion miles takes 228k vehicles driving 24x7 for 10 years. That is 684k drivers. Do the math on that cost. My $310k estimate is on the low end. Just cars, drivers and gas.
Yes simulation and simulators can do what is needed. Again, the lessons learned from aerospace can help bridge the gaps.
II. Sensor Redundancy and Accuracy at All Times
Every sensor must be redundant. All the way down to power and the sensors.In order to have the highest data accuracy in all situations multiple sensor types are needed.
Each sensor has strengths and weakness. Especially LIDAR and cameras who have weaknesses in bad weather, spoofing, certain textural situations and spoofing. You need to either resolve those or go to 3D radar, (Anyone talking to Lockheed’s Aegis radar folks?)
Those multiple sensor types have to be integrated or fused in a system that ensures the best solution is chosen at all times. This will need to be a probability and priority filter,
Regarding detailed mapping. I never see this discussed. You have to have a worldwide process that ensures every map is the same for everyone. You cannot, at any time, have vehicles in the same area having different critical ground truth. And you have to deal with near or actual real time updates and integrating with the other sensors. (I understand the crowd sourced map updating idea. Not easy to do, lots of redundant data to deal with and it’s a long way off).
III. Scenario Matrix
As MCity (University of Michigan) suggests there is a set of scenarios that if experienced and handled properly encompass all scenarios. The industry needs to either ascertain that or determine the minimal set of scenarios and their variations to cover the highest level of community due diligence. Clearly perfection is not possible. But let’s not let perfection deter our best due diligence. Get all the experts together from across the domains and do the best humanly possible.
Even if you have hundreds of thousands or millions of vehicles driving around stumbling and restumbling on scenarios you need a checklist to at least ensure minimal scenario redundancy or to avoid missing obvious things like unique traffic patterns and their variations.
IV. Using Actual Best Systems Engineering Practices
No not even A-Spice is enough. A-Spice is far better than the Commercial IT world which has almost nothing. But it falls short in several areas. Go to NASA and DoD systems engineering practices. (If you stay with A-Spice I do not believe that is automatic failure. But it will cost you valuable time).
Using only Agile and ignoring top down scope, design, integration and test.
Using text based Use Cases and Stories vs Diagramming and creating a progressive and integrated set of requirements, design and testing.
Stove-piping teams and not having an over arching engineering team who works across all teams with one chief engineer.
Not using coding practices suggested by DoD or JPL. (Beyond DO-178C). The key being exception handling and tripping over yourself. Commercial IT rarely deals with exception handling.
Not having a single baseline with proper software configuration management. That doesn't mean just Git. You are far better off with Clearcase and a CM team. But if you use Git you need a team and they need to know actual best practices for maintaining a single baseline and branching to many sublines and smaller branches from that. You must be able to resource and build anything and everything at all times. No patching for eternity or avoiding whole baseline builds because you lost or never had real Cm control.
Using actual systems engineers not BAs and QA. While this one can be dealt with it will make things much harder. The people who know the scope the best should test to make sure they got what they asked for. Use QA (who is really QC) to verify the integrity of that arrangement by providing test over sight.
V. Do the Hardest Things First
If you do not create a special team to go off and solve the hardest scenarios and the cumulative impact of them, you may doom your business. That is for two reasons:
- You don’t have the time or money when you figure out you have a problem later or you have to make a massive architectural change that ripples through the system.
- If you do not have a group putting together ALL of the items I mentioned here and trying to solve them you are making a huge mistake. Yes some of the activities will need to be in series. But a lot of it can be done in parallel and merged or integrated over time.
VI. Cybersecurity: Hacking & Weaponization
Most organizations, be it commercial or government, don’t actually use most best cybersecurity practices. Especially around Privileged Account Security. And they don’t properly encrypt data or data links.
Unless you actually do these you will get hacked, your data will be taken, you may be sabotaged and your vehicles turned in to weapons.
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