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51 UGVs | Insight An electric Lagonda with a range of 400 km is planned for 2021, although the autonomous version is unlikely to be available until 2023. This approach of opening up the body on autonomous vehicles has also been adopted by Renault, for a design targeted at ride-sharing applications. The EZ-GO allows up to six passengers to walk straight into the vehicle, so that they don’t have to push past people already sitting in it. The opening along the back also provides access for people with reduced mobility or pushchairs, who would benefit from a dedicated access ramp. Unlike other designs, the EZ-GO aims to have full Level 5 autonomy, but would have a lower speed than other vehicles when operating as a taxi, taking itself off to recharge when the batteries are low. It can also make use of batteries recycled from other electric vehicles, says Renault. In the meantime, work continues on proving the autonomous operation of vehicles on public roads, with more than 20 companies testing technology in California. As of the end of November 2017, Waymo had operated vehicles on public roads in autonomous mode for over 4 million miles across more than 20 US cities. During 2017, its vehicles completed 352,545 miles in California in autonomous mode – the vast majority of that on urban roads. One key reporting metric is the disengagement, which is when a safety driver has to take over from the autonomous system. That happens when a failure of the autonomous technology is detected or when the safe operation of the vehicle requires that the vehicle’s test driver disengages the autonomous mode and take immediate manual control, says Waymo. The vast majority of disengagements are not related to safety, as test drivers routinely move in and out of autonomous mode many times during the day. Also, the self-driving vehicle’s computer hands over control to the driver in many situations that do not involve a failure of the autonomous technology and do not require an immediate takeover of control by the driver. During the past year, Waymo saw 63 disengagements for its total mileage in California, or nearly 5900 miles between each disengagement. That compares to 103 disengagements for 125,000 miles for the General Motors Cruise subsidiary, or 1200 miles between disengagements. As well as the 4 million miles of road testing, Waymo has developed a database of more than 20,000 scenarios tested on a private test track, including evaluating the system’s core driving skills and its ability to avoid situations that are common before a crash. The technology used in driverless cars may well be regionally dependent. For the past two years, Chinese chip designer Horizon has been working on a deep- learning architecture and developed two processors for driverless cars in Asia. The chips, Journey 1.0 and Sunrise 1.0, were launched in January 2018 and use the ‘brain processing unit’ (BPU) neural network architecture The Sunrise 1.0 smart camera processor can process 1080p video at 30 frames/s in real time, and can detect, track and identify 200 targets simultaneously in each frame. Typical power consumption is 1.5 W, and the delay per frame is less than 30 ms to give a fast response to the Journey 1.0. This can accurately monitor and recognise pedestrians, motor vehicles, non-motor vehicles, lane lines, traffic signs, traffic lights and other types of targets at the same time. Horizon is backed by Intel and is working with Audi, Chongqing Changan Automobile, the local partner of Ford, and parts supplier Robert Bosch to integrate the chips into autonomous vehicle control systems. By 2025, it aims to have 30 million vehicles using the BPU technology. Mobile commerce Alongside the development of driverless cars, Toyota has adopted the approach of the driverless shop and hotel room. The e-Palette concept vehicle is a fully autonomous, battery-electric vehicle with an open control interface to allow partner companies to install their own automated driving systems for a wide range of applications. This could be a mobile shop, a pizza delivery system or mobile office, as the launch partners Unmanned Systems Technology | April/May 2018 The EZ-GO is designed to allow up to six ride-sharing passengers to walk straight in (Courtesy of Renault)