Shift Magazine - February 2022 - 18

Continued from page 17
such as one without a steering wheel.
However, it's highly possible that drivers
will buy vehicles with features that in
certain conditions enable Level 4 driving.
This is different from Level 3, where the
driver is expected to be a fallback-ready
user. This would be a condition where
the vehicle makes all the decisions when
the automation is enabled.
There are key technological gateways
as well as perhaps, more importantly,
the need for changes in global policy to
enable the future of automated mobility.
Selika Josiah Talbott, founder, Autonomous
Vehicle Consulting: If you're
talking about John Q. Public owning their
own autonomous vehicles, I think it will
be like EVs: very early adopters and an
elite few who can afford what they will
cost in terms of personal ownership at
the very beginning.
And then just
like electric vehicles,
[because we perfect technology,] there
will be things that may not even be
invented today that will make movement
of autonomous vehicles much safer and
much more readily available.
Taking all that into account, I see no
reason why we won't be at that stage [in
2035]. Looking down the road at 10-plus
years, I'd say absolutely.
Would there be personal ownerships?
If we're really about problem-solving -
and AVs solve a host of problems we have
- we don't want to encourage everyone
to have one, putting more vehicles on the
road and creating more congestion. We
have to find a way to make an autonomous
vehicle something that's more shared so
multiple people are utilizing vehicles.
Q: WILL WE EVER SEE TRUE
LEVEL 5 AVS THAT CAN OPERATE
WITHOUT RESTRICTIONS?
A: Bailo: Yes. I don't know when. I've
always said 2050 or after because, fundamentally,
I believe you need to have
a world where all vehicles operating are
autonomous, or at least a big majority of
vehicles being autonomous, so humandriven
vehicles have no choice but
to
18 shift * february 2022
TALBOTT
follow the rules. But the intermingling of
personally owned and computer-driven
products is very difficult and hard to control.
Yes, but only when we have a world
of autonomy.
Carlson: Being able to drive anywhere in
any circumstance that a human being would
be capable of driving I think is attainable.
But being able to replicate human behavior
in so many different situations is quite a huge
challenge, especially when we're talking
about interacting with the outside world.
But I'm an optimist. On a long enough
timeline, I believe we get there. I don't
think it will happen anytime soon.
Koopman: With current technology,
I do not think it's practical to get to an
unlimited operational design domain.
Instead, what will happen is we'll see
increasing capability over time, emphasizing
the places with the best return
on investment. Because machine learning-based
systems can only perform
tasks they've been taught, it won't make
economic sense to teach vehicles very
obscure tasks that most vehicle owners
don't care about.
Complete Level 5 is a science-fiction
dream. It makes a lot more sense economically
to get to 95 percent or 99 percent
of all possible operational scenarios
and not try to automate everything.
Liu: If Level 5 is what SAE has defined,
to what the average human driver can
handle, I'm actually very confident Level
5 will occur.
Don't expect Level 5 vehicles to handle
the situations that human drivers cannot.
If you have a snowstorm, and a human
driver cannot drive in that situation, don't
expect an automated vehicle can do it. So
that's my clarification.
It's hard to predict when that will
happen, but I think it will. A very raw prediction
is within 30 to 40 years we should
be able to make that leap, but that's very
rough. It is hard to predict the commercialization
timeline for L4. Prediction for
L5 is even harder.
Reimer: True Level 5 autonomy is generally
viewed by many as synergistic with
general artificial intelligence in the context
of a vehicle that can make ubiquitous
decisions at any time.
It is unlikely that within the bounds of
current engineering capabilities, where
we design and develop systems to specifications,
we can build a Level 5 vehicle.
With that said, I am hopeful that in the
centuries to come, humankind will devise
artificial systems with the intelligence to
achieve Level 5 autonomy. But I expect it
is beyond my lifetime.
Talbott: Yes, there will [be Level 5 vehicles].
There will be because the science/
technology can get there. We may not be
there perfectly today, but I see no reason,
impediment or barrier from science/technology
perfecting the autonomous vehicle.
Though I think that public policy and
social good have to be part of the equation,
and what we must not do is further
congest or crowd our roadways.
We don't have enough truck drivers to
bring our goods to ports and to our neighborhoods.
If for no other reason, to secure
the supply chain, we're going to have to
get creative, and we will have to incorporate
new mobilities, and AVs will be part
of that new transportation network. n
Shift Magazine - February 2022

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