ADAS & Autonomous Vehicle Engineering - July 2023 - 2

Editorial
The Level 3 conundrum continues
As the technology and business-case
landscapes for SAE Level 4 and 5
driving automation continue to evolve,
there's concurrent new conversation
about the polarizing Level 3. I thought
Level 3 had been given up for dead,
but new language and new approaches
seem aimed at mitigating the well-established
concerns about Level 3.
Yet are these fresh strategies
actually addressing Level 3's challenges -
chiefly regarding how to maintain driver
attentiveness - or are they just semantic
workarounds for an inherently precarious
state of human-machine interaction?
I'm talking about " hands-off, eyesoff "
automated-driving systems. By now,
most are familiar with the hands-off ADAS
systems in production by GM (Super
Cruise/Ultra Cruise) and Ford (BlueCruise)
and Tesla (Autopilot). Hands-free driving
in certain situations. Neat enough, I
guess, particularly for extended periods
of stop-and-go traffic. But I don't buy
the purported fatigue-reduction merits.
Why? Because you've still gotta pay attention.
If your eyes wander too long from
the straight-ahead, a driver-monitoring
camera cues the system to disengage.
Remember the chief differentiation
between Level 3 automation and Level
4: if there's something going on that
Level 3 automation can't handle, the
driver must be prepared to take over
if the system requires. You presumably
aren't completely ready to take control
if your eyes are off the road. Reading
a book. Watching a movie. Playing a
video game. Texting.
The looming " eyes-off " technology
removes a lot of the restriction
of today's Level 2 systems. But how
much eyes-off is safe seems to be open
to interpretation. Volvo, for one, said in
2022 that with its Ride Pilot, " drivers will
be able to free up time while driving and
spend it on secondary activities such as
reading, writing, working, or socializing. "
That sounds like a lot of eyes-off. Volvo
did concede that the function initially
would be limited to highway use.
The company initially said it
would first make Ride Pilot available in
California; in a story about its new EX90
SUV in our January 2023 issue, Volvo's
head of advanced technology and
sustainability said the company planned
a conservative rollout for unsupervised
driving that likely would at least initially
include geofenced operating domains.
In June of this year, Mercedes-Benz
announced it won California's approval
to deploy its Drive Pilot eyes-off system
in that state. But it seems the company
takes a less liberal view of when eyes-off
is appropriate - sleeping will not be
tolerated, but playing a video game on
the central screen will. Oh, and Drive
Pilot's operating parameters include a
speed ceiling of 40 mph (64 km/h) and
use only on " suitable " freeways with
high-density traffic.
Eyes-off is nibbling around the
edges of Level 3 without saying such.
The operative factor remains: in Level 3,
the driver may be told to take control at
any moment. Eyes-off systems - even
under limited conditions - obviously can
dampen a driver's capability for urgent
reaction. And if there are significant
restrictions on when eyes-off can be used,
doesn't that just confuse things more?
Many experts intimate with AV
development insist that Level 3 is a folly
because of latency. Can a Level 3 system
expeditiously warn a video game-playing
driver - and that driver react in time -
to avert an immediate crisis? Seems to
me the only truly robust eyes-off system
would be one engineered to never
require driver takeover. That's Level 4.
Bill Visnic, Editorial Director
EDITORIAL
Bill Visnic
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2 July 2023
ADAS & AUTONOMOUS VEHICLE ENGINEERING
ADAS & Autonomous Vehicle Engineering - July 2023

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