Transcripts For CSPAN2 The Communicators 20161017 : vimarsan

This week the communicators goes to the university of michigan near detroit where Car Companies are using a new test site called mcity. Car makers are experimenting with technology that allows cars to talk to each other and roads and traffic lights so there will be fewer traffic accidents. We spoke with a transportation analyst who studies this technology and with the director of the university of michigan Mobility Transformation Center. Host so, debra bezzina, where are we right now . Guest we are at the university of michigan in what we call mcity. It was built specifically to test, develop connected and Automated Vehicles. Host and this is a fake storefront in your background here, right . [laughter] guest this is a fake storefront. Basically, it can create different scenarios for connected and Automated Vehicles. And most of them youre trying to target the ones that are difficult, and you want to test and be able to repeat. When youre out on the street, its hard to repeat consistently. So here behind us is a facade. You can move that back, further up, make it a suburban or urban area. We have many different road types, intersections, many different ways to park be, we have a pedestrian you can use. But again, the basic principle is that youre able to repeat the test anything a consistent manner. Host whats your goal with all this testing and this, essentially, a fake city and fake roads . [laughter] guest so our goal is really to help all the stakeholders in the industry have a facility that they can come and do this testing. So the goal is to commercialize both connected and Automated Vehicles. Host and who are some of the stakeholders . Who are some of the people involved in this research . Guest well, theres a lot of stakeholders. You know, you look into the automotive industry, and you have your automobile manufactures, so chrysler, gm, sol low, etc. , etc. , you have a lot of startups in the area, so its huge. The communicators talked with huei peng at mcity. Hes the director at the university of michigans Mobility Transformation Center which runs mcity. Hes researchinged car safety and technology for 0 years. 20 years. Guest todays cars dont coordinate too much with each other except that you look at the size of the car in front of you, the brake light, the turn signal. Thats the only communication. But communication can be so much richer and so much more efficient if we start to have a communication between vehicles and between vehicles and traffic signals. Traffic can become much safer and much more efficient. Congestion can be reduced. There are a lot of potentials. Host so, essentially, cars are talking to other cars. What kind of equipment . Guest yes. The simplest way to understand it is its just like wifi. As a matter of fact, much of the fundamentals are the same. Host so you have this equipment in your car, but what if nobody else does . Guest so sometimes people look at this situation just like in the early days, nobody want to buy the first fax machine. Theres nobody else to talk to. So we are, we are having that dilemma. Indeed, nobody want to be the first one investing on this equipment and nobody else to talk to. Everybody want to be a fast follower. But thats a problem, right . We need leaders, and we need someone who is looking at the long term rather than the short term to lead the effort. And we took a test drive at mcity to see how connected technology works. Guest im going to demonstrate for you today for vehicle to vehicle and vehicle to infrastructure. Well start with vehicle to vehicle, and it has emergency Electronic Brake light and forward collision warning. So emergency Electronic Brake light gives the driver a warning that a vehicle ahead of it has slammed on the brakes. So panic braking, not just braking. And it doesnt have to be the vehicle directly in front of you. Most sensorbased systems see the vehicle in front of you, but thats the only information they know. This, because its transmitting over the air a minimum of 300 meters, that, you know, i can hear a car four or five vehicles ahead. So ill get a nice warning that i need to look up and potentially brake. Ready for eebl. Okay, brake. And so really all that said is someone ahead of you is panic braking. Host and what shows up in your Rearview Mirror . Guest this is like an icon, its a red triangle that says brake. Host is this communicating directly car to car or is it going somewhere else . Wifi system or what . Guest no, this is car to car. Host a sensor on this vehicle guest its not like a sensor, its more like a radio. Host okay. Guest hold up just one second. So really its, if you think of a radio, its tuned to a specific channel. So our vehicles communicate with each other, and its called dedicated short range communication. Thats really the protocol. Its very much like wifi, except it has a lot lower latency and it is more secure. Host can a third vehicle get into that communication guest oh, absolutely. Really what you want is everyone equipped. So everyone around you is transmitting, and then youre doing a threat assessment on the vehicles, and its really the vehicles interest is the only one host now, debra bezzina, youre calling this a threat assessment, but guest its really to provide driver a warning for connected vehicles. You could get into where the vehicles took control. So, for instance, if youre and this is kind of way out there. For instance, youre doing green intersectioning, and so we have a signal controller thats broadcasting the signal phase and timing. So what color the light is for each of the lanes, how long itll remain in that state. So if you wanted to do a safety application, you would do red light violation. So youd tell the driver youre not going to make the light, you need to stop. If you were doing a sustainability application, you would day, hey, if you do 30 miles an hour, driver, you dont have to touch the brake or the gas. So youre increasing your fuel economy, decreasing your carbon footprint. If you wanted to get into the automated world, whos the best person to determine who goes in the intersection . Well, thats the signal controller. But all the vehicles need to be connected. So it would be taking control or telling your vehicle to take control and guiding you through the intersection. So if you ever see those futuristic renderings of how an intersection works and the vehicles are zooming through, thats really what you would need. Host how far are we away from that . Guest thats a good question. [laughter] if i had a crystal ball, id be able to tell you. But connected vehicles being on the road in large scale is still a few years away, so i think connected and autoa mated are a few more years away. Host debra bezzina, were on this test track. Are these legitimate road signs were seeing . Guest actually, yes. And its a very good crosssection of road signs. So theyre not all brand new. Youll see some of them that are faded or have graffiti, and again, thats more along the lines of the automated side. So if you have any type of vision system that is doing a detection on the sign type, that they need to be able to figure out what sign that is, and so they cant all be pristine. Thats not how it is out in the real world. In fact, i think well go by one that is absolutely horrible. [laughter] its right up here on the way out. Host now, are the signs connected . Do the signs have venn sores sensors at all . Guest the signs do not, but our intersections, the work theyre doing now is putting up the infrastructure portion of the connected vehicle. So they do have the signals up there, but they dont have the roadside units. So thats the next step at mcity, is to put in the vehicle to infrastructure side. Host whats our next experiment . Guest i think that were going to take you out on the road, and were going to show you an rsu, and we will show you host rsu . Guest roadside unit. So thats the infrastructure portion of it. Well show you an ice warning and then a curb speed warning. So ice warning, we have sensors embedded on the road down in the deployment area, and when it is snowy [laughter] and icy, that when you drive by, youll get a warning to say that there is ice on the road. Now, what we have sewn is we have an weve done is we have an rsu installed, and it is it is broadcasting that there is icing on the road. So every time i go by that location, well get an ice warning. Its not quite a true demonstration, but really its showing that i am communicating with the infrastructure. If you notice, theres two white boxes are little antennas up on the roof of the [inaudible] host no. Guest well be able to see them as we go by. They are the the roadside units that are broadcasting connected vehicle technology. Host and what is that by the way . Guest university of Michigan Transportation institute. Host oh, right there. [audio difficulty] guest and we use those a lot to do with testing, for installation, making sure its working properly before we get out in the field, and we also use them for demonstration purposes. So that rsu, the one on top, is broadcasting traveler information message, and thats telling us theres a patch of ice on the road up ahead, and its also telling us information about a curve along baxter road. Host so you have to install the taj in the road itself technology in the road itself, correct . Guest well, theres different ways to do that. You can use information gatheredded from a lot of vehicles in the area so heres our ice warning. Host oh, that was the ice warning. [audio difficulty] guest thats our ice warning. The light in the mirror. And its geofenced in this location. Host but we are on a public road or on an active street, not a test track anymore. Guest correct. [laughter] correct. And so this curve right here on baxter road, we have it broadcasting that the speed limit is 19 miles an hour, and thats just so we can do a demonstration in a safe environment. So actually its 30, but well get the warning nonetheless. Host the curve warning. Guest yeah. Host so where is the senator installed . Guest so theres no sensor, its the information from the rsu being broadcast host to the car. Guest theres a curve up ahead im getting an icon in the mirror. Now it says im going too fast [audio difficulty] host and thats just coming directly to this car and any other car thats connected. Guest correct. I think what ill do host now, debra bezzina, youve been in the Auto Industry for a long time, how advanced would you say this technology that were seeing is . Guest i think it is getting ready to go. Gm announced that they want to put this technology on their 2017 cadillac cts, is so its ready to be deployed. I think the application that you can use, the basic applications have been developed, so curve speed warning, forward collision warning, theres some, you know, the red light violation, things like that. But other applications need a little bit more work. So the pedestrian detection, the bicycles, things like that. So more work on vulnerable road users plus maybe more work on the sustainability and mobility type applications. Host a lot of cars today have sensors already and collision warn examination things like that, dont they . Warnings and things like that, dont they . Guest they do. So this can be, well [laughter] you can replace the sensors with this technologied to do the same type of thing. You can also use it to augment the road to Automated Vehicles which we belief is very important. We think that is the enabling technology to get Automated Vehicles on the road. Host is this in any way connected to the Driverless Cars and to the fully Autonomous Cars . Guest well, we believe that it is in that it is a technology, so it can be used as a sensor, another sensor for an Automated Vehicle. We dont think that were going to have Autonomous Vehicles in the sense that autonomous works on their own. Where we think theyll be connected and automated. So necessarily, theyre not autonomous, because they talk to each other. I truly think that being connected to the infrastructure is very important in Automated Vehicles as well. So my view is that a really safe way to deploy Automated Vehicles is using the equivalent of the hov lane and so that they can get into the lane, the infrastructure is connected, theyre talking to each other, theyre talking to the infrastructure, and it really gives you a nice care a caravaning that you can do. We learn more about Car Technology from professor peng. Host what do you do here at university of michigan . Guest im a professor in the Mechanical Engineering department. Im also the director of the new Mobility Transformation Center. Host and what is the Mobility Transformation Center . Guest it is a Public Private partnership focusing on the research, development and deployment of connected and Automated Vehicle technologies. Host when you say connected, what do you mean by that . Guest yes, great question. So there are several ways to connect to a car. There are, you can use your cell phone, wifi be, bluetooth, and thats what Men Companies are push Many Companies are pushing for. Buts there is a new technology that we focus on which is called dsrc, dedicated [inaudible] communication. The main reason we push for a dedicated frequency in short range communication is mainly for safety purposes. So if we have different Communication Technology that is solely and not interfering by many other applications safety of cars can be more guaranteed. Host so in a world where we are very reliant on our cell phones, why not connect through the cell phone . Guest excellent question, again. So cell phone or [inaudible] associated with cell phone, they were designed not to have guaranteed communication. For example, when you pick up your cell phone and you try to tile a number, sometimes dial a number, sometimes you wonder why its not responding immediately. And the reason is that all the communications are going through a tower, and the tower was covering a cell, and then the tower then tried to connect with the correct tower covering the cell of your target call. Caller. And for dsrc its actually a simple peertopeer communication meaning were not communicating with a tower, we directly talk to everybody. We see a short range, for example, about 1,000 feet radius. Everybody within this range will hear us immediately. Theres no delay. And delay is very fatal. So imagine yourself driving on the highway 60, 65 mileperhour. Roughly speaking, youre driving 100 feet per second. So if you delay that by one second, thats 100 feet, and we dont want that. Host so essentially cars are talking to other cars. What kind of equipment, whats this dsrc look like . Guest yes. The simplest way to understand it is its just like wifi. As a matter of fact, much of the fundamentals are the same. They follow a very similar standard. Its called ao2. 11p, and thats a little bit different from your home wifi, and thats ao2. 11a, b, g and c. These are all the variations we have refind over the years following refined over the years following this concept. Ao2. 11p is similar, but it is operating in a different channel. But think of it as a wifi. Host so if youre a driver in a connected car, other connected cars around you, what kind of signals are you getting . Whats the interactivity . Guest yeah. So there are actually, like, 15 different message sets defined. People dream up all these possible applications. But the simplest one that we always use and we tested on every car is the socalled basic safety message. Literally, this basic safety message only tells everybody else heres my position, velocity, acceleration, heading angle, my vehicle weight. Thats basically it. If theres very important event such as heavy braking, you add that to the basic safety message set. Is so literally youre telling everybody, im here, dont hit me. Host if there is a heavy braking incident, what registers in the carsome what happens . Guest right. Ing so you can imagine if the car in front of you or actually the car in front of you but theres a heavy truck in between, you dont want to wait until you see the brake light. You dont want to see that the car seems to be looming bigger. You want to start reacting sooner because its a heavy braking. So what the message received from the following car will be position [inaudible] the acceleration. And your controls on board can start to say, hey, whether thats going to be a threat and how heavy should i brake, or do i need to Start Talking thinkint other actions such as making a lane change. Host how advanced is this technology . Guest ing we are yeah. In terms of defining the standards, making sure that all the Companies Agree on the same message set, the standards, it has happened for about 16, 17 years. However, in terms of commercialization we are just at the cusp of that. So General Motors Just Announced that they will have the src equipment on their 2017 cadillac cts. So that will be the first vehicle in the u. S. In japan toyota offer the equipment on two models. Host professor peng, when you look two or three years down the road, are we going to see a fundamental change in cars and in their Communications Devices . Guest absolutely. So i think we have witnessed the evolution of very useful, very powerful personal computers being connected by internet. They are now so much more useful. I cant imagine many of our youngsters who can live a day without a connected computer or a connected smartphone. Imagine now we are at the same stage, but now were trying to connect cars together. Todays cars, they dont really coordinate too much with each other except that you look at the size of the car in front of you, the brake light, the turn signal. Thats the only communication. But communication can be so much richer, so much more efficient if we start or to start to have a communication between vehicles and between vehicles and traffic signals. Host so technology in the future will also be inserted into traffic signals, lanes, etc. . Guest maybe i dont know you are aware of the fact ann arbor has 19 intersections instrumented with these devices. So not only we had at one point as many as 2800 vehicles today its more like 1600d they talk to each other, and they talk to the 19 intersections. Host what have you learned from your demonstration project here in ann arbor . Guest we have learned quite a bit. First of all, a lot of people worry when you start the instrument hundreds of thousands of units on cars. Its a retrofit. A lot of ann arbor [inaudible] and our university of michigan bus systems volunteered their buses to be instrumented. And people wonder whether you can actually put in this dsrc and gps assistance and start to broadcast the vehicle position with enough accuracy. And what we found is, actually surprisingly, roughly speaking 80 of the time the gps accuracy is below 1. 5 meter. How do we change this accuracy requirement . 1. 5 meet makes sure that you can differentiate the vehicle position [inaudible] so whether you are on the left lane or right lane, with enough confidence and whether you are, indeed, trying to make a lane change, 1. 5 meter insure that we know which lane the vehicle is. Thats very important thing. So thats one thing we learned. Technology is almost ready. They are not cheap yet. Were trying to make sure that they are cheap enough so there will be a quick deployment, a large number. But the learning we have help us also learn many other things. First is that we understand the traffic condition of the city very, very well, because we know 3 of the cars where they are, how fast they are driving day and night. Basically, 24 7. So we learn a lot about the city. We also learned that these signals can be used to train smart algorithms. For example, in the past not too many people are able to estimate the traffic flow accurately, but we have developed technologies to understand the traffic flow accurately with only 3 of the vehicles being instrumented. Knowing the traffic flow will help us to direct or control the city traffic well even though we havent really started to program the traffic signals. But the potential is there. We are able to control the traffic signal to respond to the traffic flow in realtime to reduce congestion. Host youve mentioned a couple times that this is pretty expensive technology. Whos funding the mobility transformationing center . Guest the Mobility Transformation Center, again, is a Public Private partnership. So what we try to do is leverage the resources. U of m actually started the investment, about 10 million to get the center going, and now we are having, we have 60 industrial members, and we have a twotier structure. But together we collect about 6 million of membership fee every year, and we also try to work with our faculty members to write proposals to get support from department of transportation, department of energy and other sources. So its really a effort trying to get resources from any place we can get. Host so all the major Car Companies are partners in this development. Guest yes. We are very fortunate that our view of building a living laboratory, instrumenting a large number of connected vehicles and the infrastructure is getting very [inaudible] support. And right now gm, ford, toyota, niece nissan, honda, bmw, these are the oems that are our members. But these are only six of the 60 members. We have many telecom companies, technology companies, Insurance Companies and so forth. Host well, you mentioned youre also studying Autonomous Vehicles. How is the connectivity related to Autonomous Vehicles . Guest ing another excellent be question. So we think that todays Autonomous Vehicles, they primarily rely on three kinds of sensors; camera, radar, lidar. And also they rely on gps and map. So these are the primary sensors. But none of these sensors are perfect. They all have their weakness. Some of them are still very expensive. If you are able to use communication to augment the sensing systems, you can do such a better job in terms of per senting per cepting and localizing where you are. So ill give you three examples how connectivity helps Autonomous Vehicles. First, we think that communication is a better sensor. The range of communication is, again, about a thousand feet, but many of the camera, radar can, lidar cannot see very clearly beyond, say, you know, 100 meter or 300 feet. So communication is at least three times longer range. Second, if theres a little kid who is, you know, standing behind a bus but hes going to walk there behind the bus or theres a car around the corner but your view is blocked by the building, in both cases communication help you to perceive the driving condition better. So we say that communication is a better sensor than most of the onboard sensors you you have on Autonomous Vehicles. Second, communication provides you actuation power. So, for example, the fire truck, the ambulance can tell the traffic signal changing to red, all red, every direction. Nobody move so you can cross the intersection more quickly and probably that will save a life or two. The third is in the past cars drive just like personal computers. They may be very smart. Google cars, tesla vehicles are getting smarter every day. But they still basically work on, basically sometimes we say gritty little stuff, right . You only worry about your own safety. Whats in the small region. When you coordinate with other vehicles, you can really build a traffic system, again, which is more safe, safer, more efficient and less congestion. So communication is like the internet. We can connect very smart cars together and build a Smart Transportation system. The autopilot is a little too automated egos. Not a journalist, not autonomous vehicle, but level two. Today most of the cars to come by on the years camera radar documented with a third type which is ultrasonic that works similar to radar but even cheaper. None of them you can buy on the market today is like ours because they are too expensive. The vendor for the google car. Google used 64 00 p. M. , about 70,000. That is why they are not under production vehicles yet. How many sensors per car do they have . Is there a number . Does it matter . It sort of does. Hundreds. For example, you have to measure a lot of things with speed, transmission speed, a lot of pressure, voltage for batteries you need to measure temperatures. So if you add all the senses together, hundreds of sensors and typically 100 micro processes. So they are already getting smarter. Now we are talking about applying the same day, communication, control technologies to interact with other vehicles, which we are at the beginning of making cars intelligent enough to cooperate with other vehicles. Professor, what has been your biggest frustration in this project . Thats a tough one. Host or a frustration. Guest you know, this is a very complicated problem not just limited to technology because after all technology is doing something good for society otherwise we probably shouldnt be doing it. We need to interact with so many different people, companies, government so on and so forth. Trying to bring awareness to society is very tough. I would say im frustrated. Its a tough job. It certainly takes more than what i used to do, which is just my own research teaching. Now i actually have to branch out to many other aspects. But im enjoying every minute of that. Host behind you have a map of the test track. What is that . Guest that is called mcd. Maybe some people dont agree with that, but the worlds first built automated and connected vehicle test facility. 32 acres designed to emulate the real world but a small footprint, only 32 acres. We tried to include a very rich environment. We have 17 different lights. If you look closely to reap in the parking meters, they are all different pivot angle parking, parallel parking we try to emulate a railroad crossing. We try to emulate an underpass situation. So we see such a small book print to imagine all the challenging trading conditions for connected in Automated Vehicle technologies. Many of these features. It has received unimaginable popular cities. So im not exaggerating when i say we have been visited more than 500 times in a year. So they just had the grand opening on july 20th, 2015 and we have hosted again more than 500 visits. Host secretary transportation anthony fox, rick snyder to this day. What have you learned . Have you gotten benefit at Mobility Transportation Center Transformation Center . Guest yes, certainly. This is a small test facility. We are trying first to understand how individual vehicles interact within individual infrastructure and then we gradually try to extend it beyond. One company that has taken advantage of this facility is forward. They demonstrated the idea of smell economy, meaning they can drive in snow with just a time in may. No driver, even when the road is fully covered by snow. They argue of course this is the first time anybody has demonstrated technologies in the world. Host when you see some things going on in the research you are doing, at what point will we be using technology and a regular basis . Guest thats a great question. Some of the technologies have already been put into production vehicles. Lexus, mercedes, acura, so on on, so forth. The number will keep increasing. Many people try to give prediction 2020, 2022 and so forth. And our fear the technology itself may already be almost ready so you can marry already have a driver of this vehicle and the recreational part or industrial region with very wealthy environment and traffic. You cannot be deployed and not thomas vehicle pretty reliable. But if we are thinking of a car that can drive itself facing glaring sunlight, heavy snow in very complicated traffic edition, and sometimes we say jokingly immobile or beijing, we are probably a few years away. Depending how challenging the scenarios we are talking about, we are almost ready. However, this is not just a technology issue. We need to figure out whether that government regulations are the rules, traffic rules come as safety rules, insurance and whether the rules are in place so that this vehicle already can be deployed in the real world clearly understanding who is going to pay for the insurance arent reliable. Those are probably lagging behind compared with technology. What about security . Hacking, security, is that big den . That is certainly considered. I will say that because cars are now connected. There a couple maybe 10 years behind internet connecting pcs. We know that internet is under constant attack. We know that hackers are trying to steal government secrets or money from the bank. There will be hackers continuing to attack internet then they will be hackers tried to connect cars so we understand that good the technology were trying to build and to protect cars are on par or similar to what people have been deploying to protect internet. What about privacy . That question again. Certainly we understand that people dont want to be constantly washed where they are every moment. The relative position to other cars are important for safety. We know that, but there are ways of hiding the privacy by using security certificates. In other words, you dont really need to be associated with a fixed license plate. We are associated with a fixed license plate in the electronic world. Your i. D. Can be refreshed regularly. You can imagine every few hours you will be refreshed. They are protecting your privacy in terms of where you are by having a fixed license plate. Some countries have hundreds of thousands of cameras. Your whereabouts is already in the Public Domain even though through this radio stream to expand the knowing where you are is very hard. But can have a refresh idea. Arguably security is different. Finally, where is the u. S. . Where is detroit when it comes to developing this technology is supposed to tokyo, beijing, et cetera . People have been trying to deploy intelligence Transportation Technologies to solve realworld transportation problems. Many countries are making outside of progress in the field of connected vehicles. Youre probably obsolete in a sense we have a very clearly defined spectrum of 5. 9 gigahertz dedicated for Vehicle Safety application and all the standards already defined. So in that sense the u. S. Is ahead. Europe has been investing a lot in real deployment demonstration projects. The investment is a little bit ahead of u. S. Most of their projects are smaller. For example, we have 2000 cars. Most of the dozens have maybe 100. Thats the level they have. On the other hand, their demonstration project technology , the investment is very healthy. So i will say its very hard to say whether the u. S. Is ahead for europe is ahead, but its a friendly competition for sure. U. S. Has a better chance of requiring with d. O. T. Is trying to do. The federal Motor Vehicle standard is now being reviewed. If passed that will require all of the vehicles in the u. S. And that will really be the worlds first. Europe is not likely to pass that with so many European Countries and japan certainly is not ready to do that. China is thinking about it. Debra bezzina explains more about card technology. Do you approach her work as an engineer or as a consumer . You have to do both. Being a good engineer is to understand what your consumers want. You need to make it easy for consumers to use an understandable. There is a balance between function and the human factor interface. As we drive to the next day, what surprised you most about what youve learned . The biggest one was how far said the specifications you need to transmit a minimum of 300 meters. We have found it goes way beyond depending on the geometry of it is pretty much line of sight picture line is huge. Right here in this area is 360 degrees. Simon and ask her if i can only go so far. Still not further that any radar or additions sensor today. This structure with the liars when we are doing testing, we put over what we call a canopy that simulates the tree canopy. If youre going on a treelined street in the trees have grown together and you go wonder basically another timeout, we dont keep it out every day obviously because we want to keep the equipped and in good working order. Typically it will look like leaves scuttling across a number you can lose your gps signal. How will you maintain gps for how long and how quickly recover. Youre talking about satellites. Information from this car is 18,000 miles. It is gps. Where upgrading devices to what they call gms staff which take our system, the american version and add more satellite sudden onset of having our satellite satellite of the bigger sensor is more accurate. Wouldve affected the four wheels and air conditioning in the car. They are really becoming they are very sophisticated