Category: Driverless transport

Driverless trains; a necessary transformation…

Posted on by The Information Badger in Change, Driverless transport, Smart & New Technology, Transformation

Train travellers in the UK are being inconvenienced by frequent industrial action by rail sector Trade Unions. Finger pointing, ideological differences, and slow progress in dispute negotiations are clear to see. Attempts by the employers to modernise working practices, improve efficiency, and move towards driverless trains, seem to be a red rag to a bull for the Unions, as the following two sentences from an RMT press release neatly illustrate:  

“Driverless trains are a Tory fantasy that should be consigned to the science fiction shelf. They are dangerous nonsense and just another dead cat lobbed on the table to distract from what’s going on in the real world.”

These words bring a wry smile to the Badger’s face, because they capture a holistic general truth, namely that technology is always available to enable change, but it’s the mindset of people and the motives of their leaders that determine whether and when – or not – the technology will be embraced.

The pandemic has seismically changed railway passenger numbers, people’s travel patterns, and reduced train revenues in the UK. It thus seems unrealistic to think that the way things were pre-pandemic is a good model for the rest of this decade, especially when technology like that here can contribute so much for the greater good.  This decade is transformational for society, whether we like it or not, as a result of global health, energy, and economic crises, geo-political redefinition, and rapidly advancing, technological capabilities. No person or organisation is immune to these changes, which need politicians, employers, and Trade Union leaders to cooperate with shared objectives if they are to be navigated effectively for the country’s benefit. Currently this doesn’t look to be the case when it comes to the railways.

Why is that? Well, successful transformations require stakeholder alignment with common, apolitical, objectives. The press release sentences above suggest this clearly isn’t the case with the UK railways. Deep rooted antagonism is obvious. The Badger feels that one reason for this lies with the fact that rail unions are themselves struggling to transform in today’s world. Government statistics show that unions have many membership, demographic, and societal change challenges, a fact fully recognised by the TUC itself.   Rail union belligerence towards driverless trains might thus be just an act of petulant resistance that does not benefit their members, the travelling public, or the country, in the years to come.

Progress towards introducing driverless trains should be more advanced than for driverless cars on the road network, but it isn’t, and it looks unlikely that they will be common on the UK rail network this decade. There are always pros and cons with automation, but the two press release sentences above help to illustrate why UK productivity is 15% below that in the US and France.  Things need to change…and driverless train technology needs to be embraced rather than demonised.

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School kids’ imagination and driverless vehicles…

Posted on by The Information Badger in Driverless transport, Education, Technology

A recent IET item about what school kids expect from driverless cars provides an interesting insight to how our digital-native school children imagine and think about the future. Their internet-dominated world provides lots of content about a future full of driverless cars, robots, Artificial Intelligence (AI), and renewables replacing fossil fuels. It’s unsurprising, therefore, that driverless cars grab their imagination, especially as they have the vehicles operated by their parents as a tangible, modern-day reference point.

It has always been the case that when school kids are asked how they imagine life to be a few decades in the future, their answers are influenced by their awareness of technology advances, hot societal issues, their interests, and factors like their family and schooling environment. When the Badger was a schoolboy, the Apollo Space Programme putting men on the moon was in full swing, nuclear reactors were proliferating to generate electricity, satellites were blossoming to broadcast television pictures around the world, and semiconductors were rapidly changing the size, capability, and quality of radios, televisions, gadgets, and mainframe computers used by major corporations. If the Badger and his school friends had been asked what life would be like some decades later, then living on the moon, human interplanetary space travel, abundant cheap electricity, and less work and more leisure time due to automation would have featured in the answers. Such answers are, in fact, similar to those in this interesting BBC Archive footage of 1960’s kids talking about the year 2000 .

Comparing what the Badger and his friends would have imagined with how things turned out just confirms what mature adults know, namely that the future is always different to what kids think it will be! After all, humans are not living on the moon or engaging in interplanetary space travel, nuclear reactors haven’t given everyone abundant cheap electricity, automation hasn’t really produced less work and more leisure time, and no one imagined the internet. It’s a certainty, therefore, that what today’s school kids are imagining the future to be will not happen as they envisage. There’s a quite simple reason for this and it’s this; kids’ imagination is unencumbered by the hard realities of politics, finance, economics, bureaucracy, legalities, and liabilities. It’s these realities that explain why the future is never quite what they imagine.

Today’s school kids should always be encouraged to imagine the future, but will what they imagine for driverless cars journeys on public roads become a reality in a few decades time? Unlikely, because delivering what technology can do into real use is always constrained by non-technological factors. Where the non-technological barriers are lower, however, things happen faster. For example, the school kids of farmers who imagined driverless tractors many years ago are seeing this come to fruition. Truly driverless tractors for use in fields will be coming off the John Deere factory line later this year.  

From Self-driving cars to the Thought Police and Big Brother…

Posted on by The Information Badger in Driverless transport, Internet of Things, Legal matters, Privacy and Surveillance, Smart & New Technology

As widely reported, for example here, here and here, a Law Commission of England and Wales report recommends a new system of legal accountability for vehicles with self-driving capabilities, anticipating the future when vehicles drive themselves for a part, or all, of a journey without a human driver paying attention to the road. When the vehicle’s driving itself, the Commission recommends that the ‘human driver’ is immune from prosecution if anything goes wrong. Instead, liability will rest with the company or body that produced and approved the vehicle and its technology for use.

The Badger read this while taking a break from entertaining his energetic grandson who’d tired himself out and was having a nap on the sofa. The mass use of completely driver-less cars at level 5, a nirvana for some, is still years away, but the report illustrates that there’s more than technology to be addressed if vehicles with higher levels of self-driving capability are to be introduced and used safely on busy public road networks.

Three thoughts came to the fore. The first was that at the higher levels of self-driving capability, cars are like aeroplanes for the roads, and so manufacturers and operators will need to adhere to airline industry-type standards in order to keep vehicle occupants safe. The second was that enormous amounts of data needs to be stored and available for use as evidence in insurance claims and legal disputes when there are, for example, accidents. Who stores it and where? Who has access to it and under what circumstances? How is privacy and personal freedom protected? The answers aren’t yet clear, at least to the Badger. The third was that insurance companies will progressively find ways of minimising their liabilities as the higher levels of self-driving cars become commonplace in the mix of traffic. The Badger has thus resolved to henceforth read his motor insurance policy terms with a laser-like legal focus on renewal every year! Overall, it seems clear that the requirement for a vehicle to have a human driver will be with us for a very long time yet.

The move towards driver-less cars is just another example of how the relentless march of technology means the toddler sleeping peacefully on the sofa will grow up in a world with similarities to that in Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four.   That’s an uncomfortable thought, but for all the conveniences and benefits, the internet and digital revolution of recent decades has eroded privacy and made surveillance in society easier. The Badger’s wife chided him for being gloomy before confidently saying that our grandson will grow up to be a scientist or engineer solving life’s real problems and won’t worry about such matters. The Badger chuckled. Regardless of his career choices, the toddler already has the rebellious independence and intelligence that means he will never succumb to the Thought Police and Big Brother!

A ‘man in a van’ and his drone…

Posted on by The Information Badger in Business, Delivery, Driverless transport, Drones, Legal matters, Life

If you believed the hype of five or so years ago, then commercial drones delivering the packages we buy online should be commonplace in the sky today. That clearly isn’t the case, and the downsizing of Amazon’s  Prime Air outfit in the UK makes you wonder if delivery to the doorstep by drones will ever happen.   There’s still technical, regulatory, and legal issues to be overcome. Regulatory matters are complex and never progress speedily, as this interesting article about drones in the US illustrates.    

Drones have been used commercially for surveys and aerial photography for many years, but in recent times there’s been a significant increase in the number of companies offering drone services and many assessments of the economic potential, see here, for example. However, few regular members of the public – including the Badger – have had dealings with someone using a drone for commercial purposes. That changed for the Badger last week.   

After heavy rain, lumps of mortar appeared on the patio at the back of the Badger’s home. They had fallen from the crown of the chimney. The chimney cowl was askew, and it looked likely to come tumbling down too. A local ‘man with a van’ who undertakes chimney repairs was contacted to provide an estimate for repairs. The man arrived in his Ford Transit with ladders strapped to its roof.  The Badger anticipated that he would use the ladders to get onto the roof, inspect the chimney, and then provide the worrying shake of the head and sucking of teeth that usually precedes being told the price for repair.  It was a pleasant surprise, therefore, when it wasn’t like that at all!

On arrival, the man slid the van’s side door open, took out a small drone, and expertly flew it up and around the chimney. In just a couple of minutes, we were both watching the captured video on the man’s laptop. The footage immediately raised the level of trust in the tradesman regarding the repair work needed because it removed any scope for ambiguity and embellishment. A competitive price was quickly agreed for a new cowl and re-cemented chimney crown.

The ‘man in a van’ said the drone was one of his key tools. It was quick to use, built trust with his potential customers because they could see the repairs necessary for themselves, and it meant that he climbed fewer ladders and roofs which lowered his risk of accidents and injury. He finds the drone so useful as a tool that he carries a spare one as a backup!  When a ‘man with a van’ says it’s a key tool of his trade then you know that we will definitely be seeing more and more drones used as tools in routine daily life.  Industrialised, coordinated, fleets of delivery drones, on the other hand, still seem a very long way off.

Fully autonomous cars – time for realism

Posted on by The Information Badger in Automation, Change, Driverless transport, Project Management, Smart & New Technology

Evangelists, visionaries, ‘blue sky’ thinkers, idealists, innovators; it doesn’t matter what you call them, they are needed for progress. For real progress that ‘sticks’ to happen, however, then we need realists too. The Badger, whose career centred on delivering difficult IT-intensive programmes, is a realist even though he did his fair share of ‘blue sky’ thinking in his time!  It’s this realism that’s behind why the Badger always maintains a healthy scepticism about predicted timelines for when the next wave of technology will be rolled out to the public.  This timeline scepticism has always stood the Badger in good stead.

Predictions by excited, future-gazing, tech evangelists may attract lots of media attention but their timelines often grossly under-estimate what’s really involved in getting something rolled out to consumers or end users at serious scale. Things in the real world are often more difficult than anticipated – that’s just life!  So, it wasn’t a shock to the Badger that Uber has sold its autonomous vehicle division to a start-up and that some are wondering whether driverless cars have stalled.  Trials on public roads, of course, continue, there are companies investing in the technology and jockeying to gain commercial advantage, the technology is still coming to terms with the hard to quantify human variable that pedestrians do unexpected things, and there are still many  legal and ethical issues to resolve. And so it seems a pretty safe bet from a realist’s perspective that fully autonomous cars will not be in the majority navigating the UK’s roundabouts for many years yet.

Anyone who has run a major IT-intensive delivery programme knows that Transition and Transformation phases when moving from the old to the new are fraught with risk, challenge, and delay due to the unexpected. The scale of the Transition and Transformation challenge in moving to a fully autonomous car system can be seen simply by a quick look at published UK government figures. There were over 38 million cars on British roads in 2019 and only 1.6% of them were fully or partially electric. It will take at least another decade just for electric rather than fossil-fuel powered cars to be in the majority, so if you are grounded in reality then it’s difficult to believe that fully autonomous cars will be the general public’s ‘go to’ method of transportation anytime soon. It looks like 2021 will see lots more autonomous vehicle related tech, but the Badger feels little of it will shorten the overall timeline for getting complex fully autonomous vehicles operating safely at scale with conventional people-driven vehicles on the country’s roads.

You may feel the Badger has started 2021 as anti-tech, anti-progress, and anti-autonomous vehicles. That’s not the case, he’s just pro-realism and a prudent sceptic – which is always a sensible position to take if you want to retain some objectivity in today’s, instant, globally, connected, digital world.  

Dark comedy and driverless cars…

Posted on by The Information Badger in Automation, Driverless transport, Opinion, Press & Media, Smart & New Technology, Smart Motorways, Technology

What do you do if you if you’re just a neutral onlooker in another country and want some light relief from the dark comedy of the USA’s Presidential Election? Explore the current world of driverless cars!  At least that’s what the Badger did when the unrelenting media and social media coverage just emphasised the sadness of seeing a superpower having a nervous breakdown over two old men while struggling to come to terms with the threat to it’s world dominance from the powerhouse that’s modern day China.   As Richard Holway put it in a recent TechMarketView post, if these two men are the best candidates to lead the Western world then there is something seriously wrong!  

The dark comedy is not over yet and there will inevitably be a Netflix film in due course, so the Badger’s attention was easily redirected into the realm of driverless vehicles where technology evangelists have been promising for years that completely driverless cars will take over the roads. You’ll find a neat summary of the different levels of autonomous vehicle here. It’s Level 5 vehicles that are fully autonomous and can go anywhere with the presence of a driver completely optional and various companies and organisations are progressing vehicular technology along the path towards this holy grail. Progress is slowly being made and each year more automated assistance aids are finding their way into new vehicles, but that doesn’t mean Level 5 vehicles will be in widespread general use by us, the general public, on our roads in the foreseeable future.  

Why not? Because a) they aren’t in widespread military use yet, b) as this AutoExpress item points out, drivers haven’t been asked if they actually want completely autonomous cars, c) idealists are having to become more realistic, and d) legislation, liability apportionment, and insuring autonomous cars are still work in progress. It’s pretty safe to think that we’ll be driving vehicles ourselves for some decades yet.  The technology will continue to advance but history shows it’s the transition and transformation from a long established way of doing something to something new and different that presents the greatest challenge. People don’t change behaviour quickly, especially if they feel something is being imposed. So far there’s little information available on how driverless vehicles will be introduced for us to use in a way that preserves our freedoms, builds trust, and changes attitudes and behaviours. That’s why the Badger agrees with the AutoExpress item’s conclusion that the driverless car is a vehicle that 99% of us would happily live without!

The rollout of Level 5 driverless vehicles to the public is decades away and it’s likely to be another dark comedy if the Smart Meter and Smart Motorway programmes are anything to go by. Oh dear.  The phrase ‘dark comedy’ is emerging as a common theme in the modern world. Let’s hope things don’t morph from this into ‘horror’…

‘Smart’ motorways help to decide on a car purchase!

Posted on by The Information Badger in Automation, Climate & Environment, Digital devices and the environment, Driverless transport, Education, Technology, Uncategorized

The Badger’s made a decision about whether to replace his car. Three seemingly unrelated events ultimately underpinned the decision. The first was reading ‘Road Traffic Estimates: Great Britain 2017’ published by the UK Department of Transport in 2018. The second was a knock on the door by a man with a large white van. He was delivering a package ordered online 18 hours earlier. The third was being captive in horrendous motorway traffic on the way to and from an exhibition. Progress on the ‘Smart’ motorway was stop-start, maddening, and the lane speeds indicated on the gantries were laughable. It certainly didn’t feel like ‘Smart’ had made any difference to the journey experience whatsoever!

These three events influenced the Badger’s thinking along the following lines. Roads are more and more congested, so there’s little real benefit sitting in a traffic queue in a newer car, and although more UK motorways are being converted to ‘Smart’ – see short articles on the types of ‘Smart’ here and here – there are growing safety concerns as illustrated here, here, and here, for example. In the last 70 years traffic on UK roads has grown ~10-fold and vehicle ownership has grown ~6-fold, driven largely by economic growth and population growth. The upward trend is likely to continue and so there’s little reason to think congestion will ever reduce, even with the deployment of ever more sophisticated technology which, after all, has a habit of producing a peak of inflated expectation followed by a trough of disillusionment. Technology is not a panacea, and the nirvana of a driverless car society seems a long way off.

The environment featured in the Badger’s thinking, but a simple analysis quickly showed that the whole-life carbon footprint of a vehicle owned by the Badger – current or future – is tiny compared to that of one van in the growing army of vans that deliver our internet purchases to our homes. Since 1997 there’s been a 75% increase in the number of vans on the road, and a 67% increase in the miles they travel, with internet shopping and home delivery underpinning much of this rise. This trend will continue for the foreseeable future, and so the environmental incentive for the Badger to replace his personal vehicle is not high.

Replace or not to replace. You’ve surely guessed the decision by now. It’s the latter. The ‘business case’ for changing the vehicle doesn’t stack up! It’s just cheaper, more environmentally friendly, and healthier to keep the current car and change behaviour to reduce its usage. That doesn’t mean taking a backward step in personal independence or convenience, it just means being disciplined, thinking ahead with a moral compass, and taking different decisions on a day by day basis. Like many things in life, just simply adjusting our core behaviour costs little but can lead to a wide spectrum of benefits…

‘People will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think’…Probably not!

Posted on by The Information Badger in AI & Robotics, Driverless transport, Internet of Things, Privacy and Surveillance, Uncategorized

The world is awash with visions, forecasts and opinions about technology’s impact on society and our daily life in the coming decades. Journalists, academics, economist’s, politicians, company marketeers and independent commentators have all set out a future dominated by artificial intelligence, robots, autonomous vehicles, the internet of things, and so on, but in reality, it’s people like you and me that will determine what becomes real.

Humans first developed tools to help adapt to changing circumstances in the Stone Age, and we’ve been doing that ever since. The Badger’s sure of two things – that we’ll continue to use technological advances to provide useful tools, and that we’ll avoid the societal subservience to technology as set out by Aldous Huxley’s ‘People will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think’. Today we are more educated than ever, familiar with tech’s good and bad points, questioning of tech giant motives, and more careful with our personal information. We have already experienced technology’s pros and cons and so we’re unlikely to accept being oppressed or enslaved by it in the future. At least that’s the Badger’s view!

TechMarketView’s recent ‘Down with the kids’ item had the Badger nodding vigorously in agreement. Two points really resonated. Firstly, today’s digital native teenagers still see the control, freedom, and independence offered by really driving a car as a rite of passage. Secondly, its question ‘It’s humans that are driving the invention and application of tech across industries, and its humans that will experience the consequences, good or bad, but will any of us humans be allowed to decide whether we want it or not?’ goes to the heart of what the future will look like for us all. To answer ‘No’ is a slippery slope to the Huxley view mentioned above. It would also mean his statement – ‘Technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means for going backwards’ – has truth and that the dystopia of Brave New World – published 87 years ago – is what we have to look forward to.

The Badger – ever the optimist and chuckling at, and relating to, a piece on whether an AI android could live forever – thinks a Brave New World dystopia will never happen. We’ll always adapt to new technology, just like we’ve done since the Stone Age, but humans are a savvy, unique and dangerous species which makes it improbable that we’ll ever allow technology to usurp our control. Why? Because a species like us that invents an axe to cut down trees to provide shelter and then also sees its usefulness as a weapon against others is never going to allow itself to get into a position of any kind of subservience. So, there you have it. The Badger’s added to the great wash of opinion about the future!

Electric and self-driving vehicles for the masses? One day, but perhaps not soon…

Posted on by The Information Badger in Climate & Environment, Digital devices and the environment, Driverless transport, Internet of Things, IT Project Management, Systems Integration, Uncategorized

The Badger’s considered changing his trusty but aging car for something more current and greener. There’s plenty of choice in the market so it should be easy coming to a decision, shouldn’t it? Err, No.

Why not? Because if you want to spend your money wisely then you have to recognise that entropy in the transportation world is rising dramatically! Entropy, by the way, is a measure of disorder and it always increases with time (as per the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics). The Badger has certainly observed the world become increasingly disordered over his lifetime and this isn’t going to change in the future.

Disruption and disorder in the transport world are easy to see. For example, UK government policy is to ban the sale of new petrol and diesel vehicles by 2040. Electric vehicles (EVs) are deemed to be the future, even though their climate credentials aren’t quite as positive as you might think. Car manufactures are pushing ahead with EVs swiftly, but with a current market share of ~3% across Europe there’s much to do to overcome their limitations and convince the public. In addition, of course, technology marches forward and – if you believe it – self-driving cars will be common on UK roads from 2025 and might improve traffic flow by 35%. Hmm. These are all things to think about if you’re thinking of buying a car today and want to spend your money wisely.

The Badger cogitated and has concluded that the timelines for establishing EVs and self-driving vehicles for the masses on UK roads are very optimistic. Why? Firstly, progress on addressing EV range limitations, charging infrastructure, and take-up by the public is still slow (but improving). Secondly, there’s about 1 billion lines of software in a self-driving car which means there’ll be many bugs when operating and ‘integrating’ with other conventional and autonomous vehicles at scale in the real-world. Thirdly, while the UK government is to report on the autonomous vehicle regulatory framework in 2021, legislation moves slowly and political objectives are rarely met on time, especially at a time of political disorder. And finally, the ‘Introduction to Service’ phase of any programme that changes personal and societal behaviour always encounters difficulties and delay. It took decades for motor vehicles to replace horse and carts, and it will be a similar story for EVs and self-driving vehicles overtaking today’s conventional vehicles. It seems naïve to think otherwise.

So, what did the Badger decide about changing his car? Not to! Because if you do the analysis, currently that’s actually the cheapest, greenest and most future proof option as entropy rises further. Electric and self-driving vehicles for the masses will happen one day, but perhaps not as soon as the hype suggests…

Driverless cars; now there’s a transformation challenge!

Posted on by The Information Badger in AI & Robotics, Digital Transformation, Driverless transport, IT Project Management, Uncategorized

Richard Holway, a respected UK Tech analyst, wondered recently (TechMarketView, 27th April) if driverless cars for the masses would ever become a reality on UK streets. The Badger wondered the same thing, but from the perspective of an experienced programme deliverer rather than a market analyst.

A short guide to driverless cars from the RAC gives a simple insight to the many relevant issues and questions. It’s things like the legal framework, insurance and liability, safety accreditation, ethics and public acceptance, rather than the technology, that need clear resolution for driverless cars to become a reality on UK streets within the aggressive timescales often quoted by advocates.

Advanced trials on UK roads will start by the end of 2019 in order to meet a government commitment to have self-driving cars on UK roads by 2021. The Badger takes this with a pinch of salt. Why? Because the devil is in the detail and such trials will inevitably expose a plethora of unexpected issues. Excuse the Badger’s cynicism but the politicians also have a track record of finding a way to declare success by redefining what they meant in the first place! It doesn’t seem likely that fully driverless cars will be used by the masses as personal transport for many, many years yet. Experiencing the UK’s Bank Holiday traffic this weekend just emphasised the scale of the societal transformation necessary.

The Badger asked younger family members for their views. They were positive about the technology but had reservations about its robustness, security and safety in real-world circumstances. However, they were dubious that the public would adopt driverless transport with open arms. The youngsters had worries about loss of privacy, a ‘Big Brother’ world, liability for accidents and injury, and the potential for carnage when driverless vehicles mix with conventional traffic at scale. They thought driverless cars were overhyped, but that more tech-centred driver aids were a good thing. No one saw themselves using a driverless car on a public road out of choice for the foreseeable future.

The Badger can’t see the timelines for driverless cars in the UK being met. Why? Because it took years for Debit Cards to be widely used across society and a couple of decades for mobile phones to become an affordable part of every person’s life, so why would driverless cars be different? The transformational challenge is much greater. The societal aspects seem to get less airtime than the technology, so don’t hold your breath that fully driverless cars will happen fast in the UK. Perhaps the Badger’s wrong? Time will tell. In the meantime, the Badger’s side-stepping the driverless revolution by moving from cars to motorbikes for personal transport!