Even before Tesla revealed that a fatal accident had occurred, while one of its cars was in semi-autonomous driving mode, a debate was well underway between researchers and engineers: Is it possible to get a driver to safely take back control of a car once the vehicle has started driving itself?
The question is relevant not only for cars of the future but also for ones already on the road.
While the Tesla Model S has been getting all the attention in the last week, the fact is that many cars, including models from BMW, Mercedes-Benz and Volvo, now have systems that use a combination of adaptive cruise control, lane-keeping and automatic braking to enable drivers to briefly take their hands off the wheel and their eyes off the road.
Some Tesla drivers have reveled in making videos of themselves using the autopilot feature. But the more conventional automakers have designed their systems to take control of the car for only a few seconds at a time; the driver must be ready to resume command at any time.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration classifies such vehicles and their limited automation as Level 2 cars. So what level should come next?
In the safety agency's taxonomy, the next step would be Level 3, which describes vehicles that can drive on their own in specific circumstances, such as on the highway, but still require a human driver to be "available for occasional control, but with sufficiently comfortable transition time."
But the technology giant Google, as it continues working toward what the company hopes will one day be a commercially available autonomous vehicle, has concluded that meeting such a requirement is not possible and the only safe way to proceed is to take the driver out of the equation. Some conventional automakers are beginning to agree.
Volvo, whose Level 2 cars include the 2017 S90, has decided to skip the Level 3 stage. Like Google, Volvo is pursuing Level 4 cars - fully autonomous vehicles that don't require any driver input aside from setting a destination.
A car changing lanes at 50 miles per hour should not expect a driver to be able to suddenly take control, said Erik Coelingh, who leads Volvo's autonomous-vehicle research programme, Drive Me. "Some people can take control in 10 seconds, but if someone fell asleep it could take two minutes," he said. "I was in a driving simulator a couple of weeks ago, and they asked me to play Dots on my phone" while the virtual car was in control, Coelingh said. "Then there was a voice asking me politely to take control, and I was like, 'Just give me a couple more seconds to beat the high score.'"
Experiments conducted last year by Virginia Tech researchers and supported by the national safety administration found that it took drivers of Level 3 cars an average of 17 seconds to respond to takeover requests. In that period, a vehicle going 65 mph would have travelled 1,621 feet - more than five football fields.
Despite such startling findings, some automakers and researchers say it is too soon to abandon human intervention as vehicles become more autonomous.
"I'm hesitant to write off Level 3," said Shane McLaughlin, the director of the Center for Automated Vehicle Systems at Virginia Tech, who thinks additional technology may yet solve the human handoff problem. "I feel like we can get the machine to give the person enough time to react," he said.
Such solutions might involve video and infrared systems in the car that monitor the driver's attentiveness. So-called electronic horizon technologies might also give drivers more time to react by "seeing" farther down the road, with cars able to automatically communicate with one another.
Those in favour of taking a step-by-step transition that includes Level 3 cars point to the serious challenges still facing developers of fully autonomous Level 4 vehicles.
Gill Pratt, who was recruited to lead Toyota's five-year, $1 billion project in automotive artificial intelligence, gave a presentation in January highlighting the ways a completely autonomous vehicle would need to be able to handle unusual situations.
A viable autonomous car would need to be able, he said, to avoid a mattress falling off a moving truck on a crowded highway, even if it had never encountered such a situation before.
Manuela Papadopol, the director of global marketing at Elektrobit, a technology supplier to the auto industry, advocates a gradual evolution by carmakers like Ford and General Motors that lets consumers become accustomed to the technology, while automakers gather more data on the systems.
Audi also supports incremental advances, rather than trying to leap ahead to fully autonomous cars. "We're making sure the conditions are right to begin Level 3," said Brad Stertz, Audi's director of government affairs. "The key part is focusing on driver availability."
Stertz said that when Audi was ready to offer Level 3 features, its system would give drivers audible and visual warnings if they appeared not to be paying attention. The system, planned for an Audi A8 in model year 2018, would at first be able to drive itself only under specific circumstances, such as in stop-and-go traffic on the highway at 35 mph or slower.
Stertz and McLaughlin, of Virginia Tech, both stressed the importance of industry standards for partly autonomous Level 3 vehicles.
BMW's recent announcement that it was working with Intel and Mobileye to bring Level 3 and Level 4 cars to market seemed to acknowledge the idea that standards were needed. BMW said the result of the collaboration would be an open platform that could be used by other manufacturers.
©2016 The New York Times News Service
