More than 500 global industry leaders and experts from companies including Aptiv, Audi, BMW, Bosch, Infineon, NVIDIA, Mercedes, Mobileye, Volvo, and Amazon Web Services, recently joined The Autonomous’ flagship Main Event in Vienna and online. Under the maxim “It’s Time To ACT”, they discussed the importance and urgency of collaboration to achieve safe autonomous mobility.
The global autonomous vehicle market is expected to reach $1.6 trillion by 2030, with automated ‘eco-driving’ able to reduce fuel consumption by 15% to 20%. Autonomous technology continues to advance and deliver improvements to the daily lives of millions around the world, sometimes in ways consumers might not even consider when thinking about ‘autonomous’ transport. That is if vehicle safety is guaranteed.
Automation is moving into modern vehicles on different levels. Adaptive cruise control is Level 1, Tesla’s Autopilot Level 2 (excl. FSD) and Mercedes’ Drive Pilot is a Level 3 function for highway use up to 60 kph. Consumers can reap these benefits every day. But vehicles at SAE Levels 1-3 all share one thing: they require human presence, involvement, and intervention.
This is why many companies are working with vast resources on Level 4 technology to make true autonomous driving a reality in the form of self-driving cars. But barriers still exist.
“The mobility industry is facing a historical chance,” said Ricky Hudi, Chairman of The Autonomous, in his introductory remarks. “Especially the safety of autonomous mobility is not an area to compete or compromise on. Safety is about getting it right! Let us not wait until harmful accidents force us to collaborate.”
At the Main Event, participants from more than 200 companies across the ecosystem discussed the obstacles safe autonomous mobility faces and how the industry can hurdle them together to success.
Autonomous driving: A systems problem
The automotive industry is progressing in developing software-defined vehicles, which will not only strongly influence self-driving capabilities but also allow consumers to bring their digital life into the vehicle.
“By 2025, we could see software-defined architectures in the hands of OEMs,” explained Nakul Duggal, Sr. Vice President & General Manager Automotive at Qualcomm, in his keynote. He described autonomous driving as a system challenge: “I don’t think this will be solved in two, three, or five years. Technology will keep improving, and the types of transportation ecosystems that will benefit from safety and autonomy will keep expanding.”
How to make L4 systems safe
Level 4 (L4) systems will be the basis of autonomous driving. Experts discussed the current industry challenges and how to move forward with safe L4 self-driving.
“Level 4 is the most challenging question the auto industry has ever faced,” stated Jens Kötz, Connected Architecture, Energy, and Security Lead at Audi. “Because it’s the first time, everything [including infrastructure] interconnects with the overall car and the system. The total system – in-car and off-car – has to be evaluated in terms of safety requirements.”
“The other underlying topic to solve is to make the systems safe, secure, and highly available,” added Peter Schäfer, Executive Vice President and CMO Automotive at Infineon. “If we have a wonderful Level 4 system and it’s not available, consumers will ultimately lose trust in new systems.”
“It’s very clear that we need to have redundancy; no single chip, sensor or software component can do it alone,” said Stefan Poledna, CTO at TTTech Auto. “You need to make sure that any single failure can be mitigated.”
‘How safe is safe enough?’ Phil Koopman, Associate Professor at Carnegie Mellon University, answered: “The baseline is at least as safe as a human. Also, consider the distribution of fatalities: it’s not okay if fatalities are cut in half, but every single one is a pedestrian.”
Indu Vijayan, Director of Product Management at AEye, added that metrics to validate and a standard metric “are the missing things we need to work toward to make sure L4 systems are safe.”
Mr. Schäfer summarized the need for collaboration to close in on a standardized way: “We need to spearhead working groups to define a feasible approach and share it with the community.”
Industry working groups: calling all car manufacturers to participate
The Autonomous initiative supports the future deployment of safe autonomous mobility by facilitating various events, including its annual flagship event in Vienna, and Working Groups that support industry-wide cooperation on safe reference solutions and recommended best practices.
“At the time of last year’s Main Event, we had one Working Group. Today, we are announcing two more thanks to our members and our ecosystem,” said Christoph Schulze, Technology Manager at The Autonomous.
Infineon leads the second Working Group on Safety of Embedded AI, and the Working Group on Safety & Regulation will kick off soon, under the direction of software company Kontrol. Both Working Groups are still open for additional participants.
The first Working Group on Safety and Architecture, established in June 2021, is now delivering initial results: “We worked together with industry participants on a conceptual architecture, in this case, a Level 4 highway pilot,” said Christoph Schulze.
The next phase is the evaluation; Mr. Schulze encourages full ecosystem participation, “especially car manufacturers to bring in their requirements and thoughts concerning safe system architecture and design.”
The Future is now – It’s time to ACT
The Autonomous welcomes everyone from the industry, government and public who share the same collaborative vision to join the growing ecosystem and answer the industry’s biggest questions. What started as an event in 2019 became a global initiative ready to scale further with help from several international companies and pave the way toward safe autonomous driving while developing a common understanding of safety.
“We laid the foundation within the automotive industry to collaborate on a global scale,” said Philip Schreiner, Head of The Autonomous. “Now, we are inviting the autonomous driving ecosystem to participate and bring industry collaboration to the next level. Only through active and broad participation of all stakeholders can we create the much-needed synergies and solve the biggest safety challenges. This will, in the end, set the basis for customer trust, reduce risk of liability for the industry players, and speed up autonomous driving development.”
SOURCE: The Autonomous.
