Shift Magazine - July 22, 2019 - 12

FIX A BUG, UNFIX OTHERS

Improving sensor technology will be crucial to AV development.

CHALLENGES continued from p. 11
structure communication. Take, for example, the ability for
autonomous vehicles to be able to communicate with smart
traffic light systems, which helps to create a more robust environment for AVs.
"Some of the traffic lights are 30 years old ... so there is a
very low common denominator that you can rely on everybody
having," Montemerlo said.
"We'll take advantage of that infrastructure when it becomes
available. But you have a chicken and egg problem, where you
can't rely on it until it exists. And nobody wants to build it everywhere until it's needed."
Still, experts such as Marnat contend that developing more
cohesive infrastructures for AVs is pivotal to creating a safer and
more seamless self-driving experience for consumers.
"Functions like valet parking, for instance ... can be heavily
assisted by the investment in infrastructure," Marnat said.

SAUCE?
2008

* Engineer Anthony Levandowski
rigs a Toyota Prius to
autonomously deliver a pizza
across the San FranciscoOakland Bay Bridge for Discovery
Channel's "Prototype This!"
12

shift * july 2019

Testing and validation for self-driving vehicles will have a major
impact on their advancement, experts contend.
"Back in the DARPA days we did do all kinds of testing,"
Montemerlo said. "We spent almost three months living in the
desert before the race. But our testing was still antidotal, that we
would find a bug and then we would fix that bug. But we were
never sure when we would fix that one bug that we weren't
unfixing three more."
The advancement of AV technology will require companies to
rely more on simulated data testing, which enables them to run
thousands of variations of driving scenarios.
"There are two realizations that the industry has had over the
past three to four to five years," Shapiro said. "People were initially projecting, 'Oh, self-driving cars in 2020, they're going to
be on the road.' That was a little underestimated in terms of
complexity, but the amount of infrastructure needed in a data
center is mind-boggling now." ■

Waymo's self-driving vehicles - including the modified Jaguar
I-Pace crossover, above - have come a long way in recent years.

The long history of pizzas
and self-driving vehicles
2017

* Domino's and Ford launch
a research project in Ann
Arbor, Mich., to see how
consumers interact with a
self-driving delivery vehicle.

2018

* Ford expands the Domino's
pilot to Miami-Dade area.
* Pizza Hut teams with
Toyota to explore driverless
delivery.

2019

* Domino's and robotics company
Nuro reveal plans to test
autonomous pizza delivery
in Houston, using a custom
unmanned vehicle named R2.

Shift Magazine - July 22, 2019

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Shift Magazine - July 22, 2019