HERE Predictive Traffic (video}

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What is the key to ensuring the worldwide acceptance of self-driving cars? Is it the data-driven services they use? Or the level of road information they have access to? While both of these are vital, trust from both drivers and pedestrians that autonomous vehicles are safe and can be relied upon is equally important.

 

If you are crossing the road, what do you do? Eight out of ten people seek eye contact with the driver to ensure that they’re safe to cross the street. With an autonomous car this is impossible. Well, until now.

Semcon, a Swedish company which works on both digital and physical product development, has created a concept of a self-driving car which interacts with pedestrians and drivers by smiling. We spoke with Karin Eklund, Head of User Experience at Semcon to find out more:
“The Smiling Car is a concept that we’ve been working on for some years now. When autonomous cars started becoming more sophisticated, we noticed that for the most part people were focusing on the interaction between the car and the driver.
“We then realised that this can’t be the only focus, and that the people in the environment around the car had to be taken into consideration.”

Road test

 In order to create the concept of the Smiling Car, the Semcon team had to investigate the way pedestrians reacted to autonomous vehicles in traffic. Karin says, “We wanted to see how people would cross the road if the car letting them through was autonomous. How will the person know it’s safe? Do they know that the car has seen them?”

This test, which used a faux-autonomous car with rigged cameras to see how pedestrians would react, resulted in an amusing but informative video. People were completely unsure about the intentions of the autonomous vehicle, and trepidation and fear was the order of the day when crossing a road.
Indeed, non-autonomous vehicles have break lights, indicators, and the reactions of the driver to give cues and comfort to people around the car. Karin explains how they tried to mirror this with a driverless vehicle:
“The basis for the concept was, how do we let people know that the car has seen them, and that it’s safe? We needed a means of communication that was universal, letting people know that the car has registered their presence in a clear way, that’s obvious to everyone. Everyone needs to feel safe, so we wanted to provide a human touch.”

Cheshire car

 

This lead to the development of the Smiling Car – a means of expression universal enough to work, wherever it’s used. The Smiling Car would let pedestrians know that it’s safe to cross by, you guessed it, smiling. How, though, would this work?




Karin explains: “The Smiling Car would work using radar, and through data collection points in the city. The latter is because the car not only has to interact with pedestrians, but also understand the road networks and other autonomous cars and drivers on the road.”
“With such a huge number of data points all around us, we’d have to look at how the vehicle could combine these in clever ways in order to make smart decisions. This is a challenge, but we’re working on it.”
Karin describes the other challenges that the team faced when developing the Smiling Car: “People are unpredictable! When developing technology, you know what you have to do, but making it safely interact with people who are unpredictable is difficult.”
“Another challenge is that, in order for this to work, there has to be a lot of interaction between different systems within the vehicle, and this technology is growing increasingly complex and communicating in new ways all the time. This can lead to complexities and poses a challenge for developers.”

In transition

 

The transition to self-driving cars will, of course, see a degree of debate. Karin stresses that when people aren’t used to a technology there is a lack of trust to begin with and that the people behind the technology have to work hard to gain the trust of the user. She adds:
“However, when this level of trust is achieved, and the technology is accepted, people can’t imagine their lives without it.”



Indeed, Karin goes on to explain that by using human expressions, Semcon hopes to help drive this
widespread adoption. She uses the example of self-propelled lawnmowers, which are often made to look less machine-like in order to gain trust.
She adds, “A level of familiarity inspires trust, which means you’re more likely to use it. You’re also less likely to leave it out in the rain!”
When asked on the wider implications of the Smiling Car, Karin concludes:
“It’s very easy for developers to focus on the tech and the people using it, while forgetting about bystanders who are also affected. What’s most important is finding a universal way for automotive cars to communicate, not only amongst themselves and the driver, but with everyone else, too.”
“A balancing act is required. Humans are just as important as the technology, and we should never forget that.”

HERE Real-Time Traffic improves safety and makes life easier for drivers

Following the announcement of HERE’s new services powered by sensor data from multiple car makers, we are taking a closer look at each of the services and how they will impact drivers, and the wider effect they can have on the automotive industry. In this instalment, we take a look at the updated HERE Real-Time Traffic service.

We spoke with Carrie Cox, Senior Product Marketing Manager on the HERE automotive team, who helped to develop the service.

“We recently announced the launch of three new services, as well as a significant update to HERE Real-Time Traffic service. These enhancements that were made as part of the next-gen service announcement are really benefiting both current and future customers.”

Data-driven

The updated service represents improvements across the board, with more accurate insights into traffic status and disruptions being made available quicker than ever, and with better coverage. Carrie tells us more about how these features are being powered:

“First, we’re getting GPS probe data and, thanks to the consortium of car makers (BMW, Audi and Mercedes), we have access to more probe data, which helps us to make our flow data more precise and more granular, particularly on lower-class arterial roads”

“Second, we now have access to the sensor data of these car makers. What we’re integrating into HERE Real-Time Traffic service is the hard-brake sensor, which picks up a sharp deceleration in the car.”

Carrie explains how the GPS data available helps to identify traffic jams and when vehicles are slowing down for an obstruction, but stresses that this sensor data helps to identify wide moving jams – essentially severe traffic jams that are building very rapidly – much more quickly and with a higher degree of accuracy than ever before.

Faster detection of hard-braking events allows us to deliver Traffic Safety Warnings more quickly – alerting cars in the area that they need to slow down, improving safety on the roads.

Aiding autonomy

Carrie also mentions that the service has one eye on the future and, in-particular, the autonomous vehicle. She explains:

“This data, and HERE Real-Time Traffic can certainly aid the future of autonomous driving. Our HD Live Map product is made of three components – the HD map, the activity layer and the analytics layer. The second piece is what we’re talking about here – live information.”

“This includes traffic flow, accidents, construction sites. All of this is coming through our traffic feed today, and it’s incredibly important for autonomous vehicles to not only know how the road is laid out, but also receive information on traffic, construction and other things that are happening dynamically throughout the day so that the car can prepare and react appropriately.”

So, what next for Real-Time Traffic? Carrie adds:

“First of all, we’d like more car makers to collaborate around these services and share their data because the more data we have, the richer and more accurate the product can be. We’d love to faster identify the hard-braking events, and continue to make Real-Time Traffic an even better product than it is today.”

Carrie also discusses how innovation is still key for the service, with first-to-market features like split-lane traffic a key focus of the team. This is lane-level traffic information for drivers preparing to enter a junction so – is there a queue, is the traffic free flowing, which lane should I be in to avoid congestion?

She adds, “This information is saving drivers time, so we are seeing how we can build upon this success and continue to drive innovation into our traffic service.”

Proof points

The new features were recently demonstrated at the Paris Motor Show, and Carrie explains that the reception was positive:

“People understood the value this data provides, and the fact that HERE Real-Time Traffic is being enhanced and enriched by this data for no extra cost really resonated.”

She concludes: “This is the first traffic service to leverage rich sensor data from multiple car makers, offering better accuracy and improved traffic flow coverage. For the driver, this could be invaluable.”

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New HERE Maps pricing

New HERE Maps pricing Published: October 24, 2016 Effective immediately HERE has launched new licensing for their cloud service. This new licensing enables you to pick and choose additional features without having to pay for features you may not use. Market-leading research and consulting firm Ovum recently rated the HERE Open Location Platform as the most complete on their “Location Platform Index” in comparison to the other 15 location platform vendors (including Google, Apple and TomTom) in mapping and navigation. If you’ve looked at HERE licensing before and are interested in keeping up to date or you have a renewal with another mapping supplier and wish to ensure you are getting the best deal, then call the Grey Matter mapping team to discuss your requirements on 01364 655 133. VIA

The future is HERE

HD Live Map for autonomous cars