The company tested Driver 2.0, a Level 4 production-ready autonomous driving solution
New video highlights navigating heavy traffic safely and efficiently
Photo: DeepRoute.ai
DeepRoute.ai, an international autonomous driving technology company, has announced the results of its latest fully driverless test of its Driver 2.0 Level 4 production-ready autonomous driving solution.
DeepRoute.ai released a video exhibiting a driverless vehicle retrofitted with the solution on Central Business District roads in Shenzhen, demonstrating its advanced capacity in complex and challenging traffic environments. It was the first legal driverless test in China — Shenzhen unveiled China’s first regulation on intelligent connected vehicles on July 6.
The fully driverless vehicle drove just under 14 miles in one hour, navigating through significant traffic and narrow lanes safely and efficiently. The vehicle:
intelligently maneuvered around double-parked cars and counterflow e-scooters and pedestrians
negotiated with oncoming vehicles to calculate the right timing and trajectory to pass busy intersections
conducted multiple lane changes and unprotected left turns.
“The recent legislation permitting driverless robotaxis in Shenzhen is the first of its kind, a major milestone in advancing autonomous driving technology to wider and faster adoption,” said Maxwell Zhou, CEO of DeepRoute.ai. “As we advance our mission for commercial deployment of autonomous driving vehicles, we will collaborate with automakers to refine our L4 solution to make it as safe and efficient as possible.”
DeepRoute.ai has made significant improvements to achieve driverless capability, with both software and hardware meeting auto-grade standards. The safety mechanism was also upgraded to guarantee driverless safety on the road. In the case of long tail scenarios, the system will alert the remote monitoring center to intervene or take other safety measures.
The Driver 2.0 System
Driver 2.0 includes five solid-state lidar units, eight cameras and other sensors, and a computing platform integrated with its proprietary inference engine. The perception algorithm with sensor fusion can achieve precise object detection up to nearly 220 yards. The planning and control algorithm based on game theory can choose optimal routes and make decisions based on real-time situations when negotiating with oncoming vehicles and other road agents.
With its deep learning approach, the inference engine optimizes compute resources, allowing the algorithm to run on its low-cost and power-efficient computing platform effectively and stably. As a result, Driver 2.0 can be priced at $3,000 for automakers in mass production and the algorithm can work with 2 to 5 solid-state lidars for automakers’ customization needs.
The latest legal and regulatory framework is aligned with autonomous-driving industry developments and is considered the prelude to mass production and commercialization of autonomous-driving vehicles. DeepRoute.ai is working with automakers to mass produce consumer vehicles integrated with Driver 2.0, expected to be available for consumer purchase in 2025. It is also being integrated into robotaxi operations.
While connected cars provide wonderful advantages, their integration with cloud connectivity come with a heightened risk for cyber attacks.
Commentary by Alexander Meisel
When it comes to connected cars, automakers are innovating fast. Consumers are experiencing increasing amounts of futuristic features, be they passenger connectivity, automated speed regulation or autonomous driving capabilities.
However, these innovations and their integration with cloud connectivity come with a heightened risk for cyber attacks. A recent study conducted by U.K. self-driving hub organization Zenzic found that becoming cyber-resilient will be the biggest technical obstacle to successfully deploy self-driving cars on roads by 2030. This mountain will be a big one to surmount, and it’s only growing in size: The auto industry has seen a 94% year-over-year increase in hacks since 2016.
How can automakers prioritize security while keeping up with the demand for innovation in today’s connected cars?
Carmakers must consider security from day one
To make sure that security is built into the very foundations of a car, automakers must make it a priority from the first day of design. This focus is lacking amongst carmakers at the moment. In fact, 19% respondents to one survey said they don’t do enough security testing in the design phase, and only 28% said that they do a lot of the testing during the design stage.
Automakers can use design principles to build in security from the outset. For example, the principle of complete mediation allows for enhanced security as it ensures that a software stem “requires access checks to an object each time a subject requests access.” This means that attackers are only invited to exploit a system on one single occasion due to checks on subjects’ permissions.
Carmakers can also ensure that they are not sacrificing security by considering its importance when purchasing components from separate suppliers. These components must be specific enough to enable security in the system, but generic enough to allow for innovation.
Automakers must make cybersecurity a priority from the first day of design.
Here, companies can leverage the software engineering principle of interface segregation. This means that a shrunken, clear interface should be supplied by the vendor, so that the customer only uses the methods that are of interest to them.
In turn, this allows systems to remain decoupled and thus easier to then build a rich interface on top of. However, carmakers will have to stay on top of the security of the part in the development phase, and ensure that dormant functions are not abused by at least logging their execution once somebody tries to call them out of context.
Developers and cybersecurity experts must become a core part of the team
Software development is relatively new territory for carmakers. Now, cybersecurity is a key component of building connected cars, and automakers need to embrace developers that have expertise in this area and make them part of the core team.
This cultural change must be championed by the business leaders to allow car security to advance alongside the innovative features that the industry is building. This can be done by implementing DevSecOps ideology into the team, in order to “build the mindset that everyone is responsible for security.”
Car development teams will likely need a group of cybersecurity experts who can educate the rest of the developers and are willing to participate in the development process in order to check and implement safe and secure functions. If a company doesn’t have this kind of expertise in-house, they can partner with an expert third-party to help them along this journey.
Innovation and security can complement each other
Cybersecurity doesn’t mean sacrificing feature innovation: developments are being made in the field of security too, such as biometric technologies that can be integrated into car design.
For example, Blackberry’s QNX technology “has built in concepts for hardware and software trust validation, hypervisor to maintain a separation between the safety critical and infotainment systems, and a core operating system which passes all the functional safety standards,” according to the company’s senior VP SVP, head of QNX, John Wall. Innovation need not suffer at the hands of security, and vice-versa.
Potential AV thieves would first look to use GPS data to disable or falsify a car’s GPS system, making it untraceable.
In addition, the world’s leading electric vehicle provider, Tesla, ensures security in its cutting-edge, connected cars by sending security updates to cars’ operating systems overnight, and even providing awards for hackers that manage to hack its cars.
Looking ahead to the possibilities of autonomous vehicles (AV) that can drive passengers without needing to have their owner inside, innovation in GPS will be necessary to ensure security and accountability of the car. Potential AV thieves would first look to use GPS data to disable or falsify a car’s GPS system, making it untraceable.
However, carmakers can make this impossible for hackers by not just logging the data in its raw form, but also combining it with other car data using cryptographic algorithms. This ensures that the GPS data remains traceable even after the hardware has been taken apart and sold on the auto-parts black market. In this way, the signature of the original data combined with the GPS position adds an additional layer of security.
Integrating security into connected car design is no simple feat, but it’s a necessary one for carmakers that want to ensure the safety of their passengers while on the roads. By using design principles, diversifying expertise within development teams, and understanding that security and innovation need not be a trade-off, they can do just that.
Alexander Meisel is an automotive cybersecurity engineer at intive. He has a computer networking diploma from Hochschule Furtwangen University, and he has served as a CTO and Development Team Director in previous companies. He has experience with venture capital, successful M&As, and product and technical marketing strategies. He is also a public speaker at technical conferences and trade shows.
The importance of sensors, whether they be incorporated in cute dog robots or autonomous vehicles, is gaining more traction.
At September’s Custom Electronic Design and Installation Association (CEDIA) Expo, Sony Electronics President and COO Mike Fasulo told GPS World that its foundation sensors are going into autonomous vehicles, drones, agricultural solutions and other platforms.
“A lot of people also don’t know that more than half of the hardware in most smartphones is ours,” Fasulo said. “These sensors we are working on do things you and I can’t do. They can assess sunlight and darkness. They can put a safety cocoon around a vehicle.”
The Aibo robot dog uses artificial intelligence to mimic a real puppy’s behavior. (Photo: Kevin Dennehy)
At the conference, Sony displayed a nearly $3,000 Aibo dog robot, which has many of the same sensors that go into many of the company’s other products, including its venerable camera line. Aibo has facial recognition technology and uses artificial intelligence to mimic a real puppy’s behavior.
Sony sensors seem to be a cornerstone in several new announcements. Less than two months ago, Sony and Yamaha Motor Co. announced the joint development of the SC-1 Sociable Cart, a small autonomous vehicle that will be deployed to golf courses, amusement parks and commercial facilities, the company said.
The SC-1, which is not for sale, features five seats, replaceable batteries, front and rear scope of view thanks to image sensors, an innovative vehicle design, and other improvements over an original prototype vehicle.
In addition to the image sensors, the vehicle has ultrasonic sensors and a two-dimensional laser detection and ranging (lidar) system, the company said. These sensors allow the vehicle to gather cloud travel data for safe-driving analysis.
Sony is working with Japan’s NTT Docomo to test the vehicle’s 5G mobile technologies for remote-controlled functions, the company said.
Geotab leverages sensor data
Sony and Yamaha Motor plan to roll out the SC-1 later this year in Japan. (Photo: Sony/Yamaha Motor)
Canada-based Geotab has made big announcements this year, although the huge one is from the U.S. government to equip more than 200,000 vehicles with its telematics systems.
While that contract itself is massive, the company believes the more than 2 billion data points gathered each day, from millions of Geotab-equipped vehicles on the road, is the real valuable commodity.
The data gathered with the company’s connected-car technology can help companies and governments assess how their fleets are operating, said Mike Branch, Geotab vice president of data and analytics.
Branch, who leads a team of 40 employees, said the company uses the data to help cities assess road impediments — not only road quality. This includes analyzing ABS activation to look at black ice or other hazards. “While weather companies can only estimate conditions, we have sensors in vehicles that can give hyperlocal reports and ground truth,” he said. “People consistently slamming on their brakes in one area is an example [of aggregative data].”
Back in the day, which is less than 10 years ago, all that many companies expected from their fleet management systems was to let them know where their drivers were, by using GNSS and mapping technology. Today, the sensors — and data provided by them — allow managers to assess dangerous driving areas, save on fuel costs by rerouting trucks and compare routes throughout the United States, not just in big cities, Branch said.
In the smart cities space, Branch said that Geotab is working with municipalities for fuel intersection insight mapping. “This means if 20 vehicles, or even just two, are stopped at an intersection, our sensors can detect the wait times,” he said. “The big thing for us is looking at this smart-city deployment to leverage organic data in a private manner.”
Because of the nature of data procurement, privacy is big topic for the company, Branch said. “We treat it with high importance. Our view is that the data is owned by the customer,” he said. “They have full access to it. We will go through it, aggregately, so we can improve our customer’s experience.”
Keeping OBD port secure
The future of open on-board diagnostic (OBD) vehicles — and procuring secured and open data from them — is a concern for Geotab, Branch said.
“We have a full port safety committee with the goal of security and access to the port,” he said. “We believe in open access to this port. This gets to be a concern with mixed-fleet Fords, Mercedes, BMW and others as the data can slow down the port at any time.”
Branch said the company does not want to remove the entrepreneur, who is interested in working with the port in a safe manner. “We work with the OEMs on the future of telematics not just by pulling the data from our device, but pulling it from their feed,” he said.
Branch said that technology may make the port dongle obsolete in five to 10 years, but until then, the company has created an ecosystem to enable the use of the data. “There is going to be an aftermarket as cars are lasting an average of 11 years,” he said.
The U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) convened leaders from state departments of transportation, stakeholders in academia, and representatives from the auto industry in Washington, D.C., to discuss the importance of preserving the 5.9 GHz spectrum for transportation safety.
The 5.9 GHz band supports vehicle-to-everything (V2X), a wireless technology that enables data exchanges between a vehicle and its surroundings. Starting with advanced technology development and demonstrations about 20 years ago, America has deployed 54 operational V2X projects, improving safety today, with more in the pipeline.
Vehicle manufacturers are planning to equip new cars with the technology. This next generation of intelligent transportation communications promises to improve safety for drivers and for vulnerable roadway users, such as pedestrians, bicyclists, disabled persons and transit users.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) estimates that full adoption of just two V2X safety applications would prevent about half a million crashes and save approximately 1,000 lives a year. As more safety applications are developed for vehicles, more lives could be saved.
V2X will also support an efficient, safe, and smooth transportation system, with vehicles communicating with traffic lights to improve the flow of traffic. V2X applications such as dynamic traffic signal control and prioritization have the potential to reduce travel times by up to 27% and reduce fuel emissions.
Link to video of CV2X demonstration in Hawaii in June. (Photo: USDOT)
Comtech Telecommunications Corp. has been awarded $1.9 million navigation contract by a U.S. automotive manufacturer, according to the company. The automaker’s identity was not revealed.
The contract is with Comtech’s Enterprise Technologies group, which is part of Comtech’s Commercial Solutions segment, and is for developing a new navigation product for two of the automaker’s top vehicle programs, including motorcycles.
“With this agreement, our turnkey navigation solution will be introduced to an entirely new automotive segment and is included as a lead product for this manufacturer supporting multiple languages and is deployed globally across all major markets,” said Fred Kornberg, president and chief executive officer of Comtech Telecommunications Corp. “It also represents a new stage of growth for our navigation and mapping applications, made possible through our Location Studio platform that has been a leading source of product customization for OEMs across a number of vertical markets.”
The Enterprise Technologies group specializes in precise device location and messaging platforms. Its fully virtualized and API solutions are available to mobile network operators, enterprises, internet of things (IoT) developers and automotive manufacturers.
Comtech Telecommunications Corp. designs, develops, produces and markets innovative products, systems and services for advanced communications solutions. It sells products to a diverse customer base in the global commercial and government communications markets.
Mercedes autonomous car on display at Mobile World Congress 2016. (Photo: Kevin Dennehy)
BARCELONA, Spain — Most attendees at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) wouldn’t mistake the huge mobile phone show to be a gathering of auto manufacturers and their suppliers. However, the show, which broke 100,000 participants this year, has seen a rise in auto companies who are outlining connected and autonomous vehicle strategies.
MWC was held Feb. 27 to March 2 in Barcelona.
At MWC, Ford CEO Mark Fields said the company is tripling its investment in new technologies over the next five years with the ultimate goal of fully autonomous vehicles.
Ford also rolled out the new Kuga SUV, which features the company’s new SYNC 3, which Fields says should be in 43 million vehicles by 2023 (SYNC 3 is upgraded to include improved voice commands and easier to get to applications on a driver’s smartphone).
Fields said Ford, which attended its fourth straight Mobile World Congress, was transitioning from an auto company to one that is a dual auto-mobility entity. In addition, just as with GM’s decision to invest $500 million in Lyft, Ford is getting into the sharing economy with its own car-sharing, ride-sharing and other mobility services.
This new mobility strategy includes GoPark, an app that directs drivers to parking spaces; FordPass, a platform that connects services and partners; and FordGuides, a problem-solving app. According to published reports, another Ford app is MyBoxMan, which allows drivers in Europe to make money delivering boxes.
At least one industry expert believes that car sharing and autonomy is the future for auto companies. “Full autonomy is coming. We will see fleets of driverless public transport vehicles on the roads due to their low overheads,” said Kevin Curran, senior member of IEEE and senior lecturer at the University of Ulster. “Regarding non-autonomy, we will see that cars ownership will change in a number of ways. We will start to see more ride sharing. Uber and other ride sharing models will rise to supersede existing traditional models. That is quite obvious even now, and a proper ride sharing model should also emerge, too.”
Ford displayed the Kuga in its main booth, and also had a booth featuring its Developer Program. One of its development partners, Magellan, showed off its SmartGPS in-vehicle technology.
The Magellan unit delivers local information to the car that is equipped with SmartGPS, including speed trap alerts, weather, traffic and lowest gas prices, said Matt Erstling, Magellan product manager, connected platform.
Magellan’s connected auto strategy was outlined, in part, by its new CEO, Pierre Parent, at CES in January. Parent said that the company will continue to put location capability in connected devices.
Large industry players make MWC auto announcements
At its press conference, Hans Vestberg, Ericsson president and CEO, said 5G will provide the latency needed for autonomous cars. The company is jointly developing a connected car with Geeley Automobile Holdings, the Chinese owners of Volvo. Besides Ericsson, Nokia, SK Telecom and others believe that 5G, which is expected to rollout in 2020, will be critical for mobile Internet applications — and, therefore, for better safety in connected vehicles.
Qualcomm announced its partnership with Audi to integrate the Snapdragon 602A into the automaker’s 2017 vehicles. The company showed off connected car technologies with Formula One Team Mercedes AMG Petronias.
One of the cooler pieces of equipment at MWC was the folding steering wheel developed by Harman and Rinspeed. The companies are also co-developing an autonomous car.
Harman showcased its new folding steering wheel at Mobile World Congress 2016. (Photo: Kevin Dennehy)
Besides rolling out Galaxy S7 phones, Samsung announced its Connect Auto dongle that adds LTE connectivity for older vehicles. The dongle plugs into a diagnostic port to let drivers monitor a vehicle’s performance. It also makes the vehicle a Wi-Fi hotspot. It should be available in the second quarter, with AT&T as the U.S. wireless partner.
Saying the partnership is a giant step toward driverless vehicles, Panasonic and Ficosa announced at MWC that they were developing a Smart Connectivity Module that enables passengers to be securely connected through a vehicle’s own internal connection. The system provides both inside and outside connections and works in V2V and V2X environments.
“A lot of people don’t know that 33 percent of our business is in auto and industrial systems. Consumer is only 14 percent,” said Tony O’Brien, deputy managing director, Panasonic Systems Solutions, Europe.
Inside the Mercedes autonomous vehicle. (Photo: Kevin Dennehy)
In other MWC news:
The Consumer Electronics Show (CES), which automakers and their suppliers are heading to in droves, now has 115 exhibiting companies. While far fewer in numbers, and with so many large wireless and device manufacturers involved, auto execs realize that MWC is an important stop before the Geneva Auto Show.
At MWC, I could actually talk to people, even see folks again at events and sometimes passing by in the huge exhibit halls at the Fira Grand Via. You can’t say that about CES. Unfortunately, MWC is getting huge…more than 100,000 people with the requisite traffic congestion, public transit strikes, expensive housing and airfares.
Join Lyft, BMW Group, HERE and 25 other speakers at Driverless, The Business of Autonomous Vehicles, which is March 22-23 at the Crowne Plaza Hotel, San Francisco Airport. Panels feature new technology, executive insights on the future, investments, legal and cyber security and mapping. For more information, go to www.driverlessmarket.com or [email protected].
May flip transportation industry more than Henry Ford did
The future rollout of the autonomous vehicle will disrupt transportation in way not seen since the automobile’s introduction. A new conference, Driverless, March 22-23 at the Crown Plaza Hotel-San Francisco Airport will explore future autonomous vehicle markets and policy; outline technological and cultural challenges; detail legal, cyber and privacy issues; and assess the investment opportunity in this potentially game-changing technology.
Silicon Valley — not traditionally an automotive center — is the new autonomous driving hotspot, as computer and software firms rapidly develop solutions and prototypes. Teaming with established automakers, new ventures and established Silicon Valley giants alike are testing systems worldwide for both passenger cars and commercial fleets. The Driverless conference takes advantage of its proximity to the computing capital to draw influential speakers and knowledgeable, motivated attendees in a high-level gathering.
Headshot: Alain Kornhauser
In the future panel, titled “The Way Ahead: The Road to Autonomous Driving,” industry experts assess the technological challenges facing full-blown autonomous driving. Who leads the effort to reduce component prices? What is the single most important decision that will unleash for ubiquitous rollout?
Panel members include: Adrian Pearmine, National Director for Smart Cities and Connected Vehicles, DKS Associates; Alain Kornhauser, Professor, Operations Research & Financial Engineering, Director, Transportation Program, Princeton University; Grant Mahler, Advanced Technology Engineer, BMW Group; Mike Jellen, President and COO, Velodyne; and Randall Iwasaki, Executive Director, Contra Costa Transportation Authority
Headshot: Alain Kornhauser
Kornhauser recently stated that autonomous vehicles will, like Ford’s Model T nearly a century ago, disrupt transportation. “Other disruptive technologies include intermodal container shipping, personal rapid transit, the rise of intelligent transportation systems and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Challenge 10 years ago that flipped the industry from automated highways to the automated vehicle,” he said at the Transportation Research Board annual meeting. “It may flip the transportation industry more than Henry Ford did.”
Headshot: Mike Jellen
BMW, with its longstanding interest is assisted driving (see 2007 GPS World article, Pass/No Pass, is also a leader in autonomous driving. BMW Group, consisting of BMW, Rolls Royce, MINI and BMW Motorrad, recently powered the first self-driving car in China. Baidu, “the Chinese Google,” announced in December that its autonomous car successfully navigated a complicated route through Beijing. According to the company, the modified BMW 3-Series drove an 18.6-mile route around the capital city that included side streets as well as highways. The car made left, right, and u-turns, changed lanes, passed other cars, and merged onto and off the highway.
A Mapping Panel at the Driverless conference will feature HERE and San Francisco-based Civil Maps. Maps will be integral to any company’s strategy to introduce autonomous vehicles to the roadway.
Headshot: Randall Iwasaki
HERE recently unveiled its HD Live Map, an advanced cloud-based map asset. Ready to be deployed in connected vehicles in North America and Western Europe, HD Live Map creates a highly detailed and dynamic representation of the road environment, enabling a vehicle to effectively “see around corners” beyond the reach of its on-board sensors.
In 2015’s largest location-industry deal, three German luxury auto manufacturers, Audi, BMW and Daimler, purchased HERE for $2.8 billion from Nokia.
Civil Maps launched its lidar to GIS online platform at last year’s Esri User Conference. The software extracts and classifies features from 3D laser scans for export to popular GIS software. By leveraging proprietary artificial intelligence graph search powered by a supercomputer, Civil Maps says that its approach reduces turnaround times by 75 percent and yields more accurate maps than human-based processing, providing a streamlined approach to asset management and planning.
Other panels at the Driverless conference focus on:
Why Are Autonomous Vehicles Hot?
The Autonomous Vehicle Investment
Autonomous Vehicle Project Updates
Driverless Product Liability, Cyber Security and Privacy Issues
Driverless Conference Schedule. The full-day program on Wednesday, March 23, will feature 30 speakers from BMW Group, Peloton, USAA, Farmers Insurance, Velodyne, HERE and many others. The conference begins with an early evening reception on March 22, and ends with a similar reception on the 23rd, featuring exhibits from top companies.
Register here to attend. Driverless will be held at the Crown Plaza Hotel-San Francisco Airport, which has some of the lowest hotel rates in the Bay Area. Registration and hotel reservation rates go up March 9.
Sponsorships and displays are still available. Contact Global Technology Communications, (303) 369-3230, or email [email protected].
Automotive and transportation companies are supporting the GSMA Embedded SIM Specification to help accelerate the growth of the connected car market, according to the GSMA.
Automakers. The interoperable specification has been backed by international brands including General Motors, Jaguar Land Rover, Renault Nissan, Scania and Volvo Cars, and will enable automakers to remotely provision connectivity over the air to vehicles with an operator of their choice.
It will help to deliver a range of in-vehicle services such as real-time navigation, infotainment, insurance and breakdown services, as well as telematics and remote diagnostics. The use of the specification will also help to quickly connect vehicles with local operators, regardless of where the cars are manufactured.
Mobile Operators. To date, 22 mobile operators worldwide have commercially launched solutions based on the GSMA Embedded SIM Specification. New operators to launch commercial solutions include AIS, América Móvil, KPN, MTN, Rogers Wireless, Swisscom, Taiwan Mobile, Telenor, TIM as well as members of the Bridge Alliance and the Global M2M Association.
The adoption of an interoperable specification will reduce fragmentation and help the industry to take advantage of the Internet of Things, an addressable market estimated to be worth US$1.1 trillion by 2020 according to Machina Research4. Bell Canada, Deutsche Telekom, Etisalat, Indosat, NTT DOCOMO, Orange, Tele2, Telefónica Brasil, Telefónica Group, TeliaSonera and Vodafone have already made commercial solutions available to the market.
“The GSMA Embedded SIM Specification has progressed from the first availability of commercial solutions to industry adoption in a very short space of time. The automotive sector is set for huge growth and it is clear that a common, global standard will help mobile operators to provide scalable, reliable and secure connectivity to vehicles regardless of location,” said Alex Sinclair, Chief Technology Officer, GSMA. “This approach will help car manufacturers offer any type of in-car connected service through a single SIM, which can be provisioned with the profile of a mobile operator once the car is shipped, as well as at the end of a contract, without the SIM needing to be changed.”
The connected car market is set for exponential growth. Gartner Research has forecast that one in five vehicles will have some form of wireless network connection by 2020, equating to more than 250 million connected vehicles in service.
Additionally, Machina Research estimates that the total number of connections in the connected car market will grow at a CAGR of 31 per cent from 182 million in 2015 to 693 million in 2020.
Analyst house Berg Insight also notes that in-vehicle embedded telematics systems shipped 1.9 million units in 2014, a figure that is expected to reach 15 million by 20203.
“Jaguar Land Rover is putting connectivity at the heart of its vehicles to deliver a range of safety, security, convenience and infotainment features for our customers. The GSMA Embedded SIM Specification allows Jaguar Land Rover to reduce manufacturing complexity, adapt to changing regulatory frameworks and work with the best mobile operators, on a country-specific or regional basis, improving the customer offering to deliver the next generation of connected services over the lifetime of our vehicles,” said Mike Bell, Global Connected Car Director, Jaguar Land Rover.
“The GSMA Embedded SIM Specification solves a number of fundamental issues in auto manufacturing principally in-market localisation and lifecycle management that enable us to provide an efficient, robust and global product,” said Fredrik Callenryd, Senior Business Strategy Manager, Scania CV AB.
“The Renault – Nissan Alliance is a global industry innovator for technology for mainstream and mass-market consumers. Supporting the GSMA Embedded SIM Specification will help sustain our innovations by enforcing a reliable and stabilized solution and enable us to offer more flexible and agile solutions. We will be able to offer our customers ease of use and a high quality of service which are Renault – Nissan’s main objectives,” commented Alexandre Corjon, Renault-Nissan Alliance Global VP, Electrics Electronics & Systems Engineering.
GSMA Intelligence research highlights that 76 percent of global M2M connections are now serviced by mobile operators that are deploying or are committed to the GSMA solution, underscoring the momentum behind the specification.
GSMA Connected Living Programme at Mobile World Congress 2016
The GSMA’s Connected Living Programme will showcase the GSMA Embedded SIM Specification at Mobile World Congress, Feb. 22-25 in Barcelona. There will be a number of live demonstrations of the specification in the GSMA Innovation City located at Stands 3A11 and 3A31 in Hall 3, Fira Gran Via, including scenarios from Bridge Alliance and the Global M2M Association.
There will also be a number of workshops, seminars and presentations highlighting the impact of the GSMA Embedded SIM Specification on the international market.
The GSM Association (GSMA), formed in 1995, is an association of mobile operators and related companies devoted to supporting the standardizing, deployment and promotion of the GSM mobile telephone system. It represents the interests of mobile operators worldwide, uniting nearly 800 of the world’s operators with 250 companies in the broader mobile ecosystem.
In what was 2015’s largest location-industry deal, three German luxury auto manufacturers completed the purchase of HERE. But that wasn’t the only recent acquisition as location-based services provider TeleCommunication Systems, or TCS, was bought by Comtech Telecommunication Corp. Both deals indicate the growing, and continued growth, of location services going forward into 2016.
Three German automakers are now in the location business following the finalization of a $2.8 billion deal to buy Nokia’s HERE digital mapping company last week. Audi, BMW and Daimler are now equal owners of HERE following quick regulatory approval.
While some say there was much Nokia-driven hype about who was bidding on HERE, including Uber and Baidu, ultimately others breathed a sigh of relief that automotive companies, not Google, bought the digital mapping pioneer.
The deal, which was originally announced in early August, shows the continued value of accurate maps to the automotive industry as it transitions for connected to autonomous vehicles. In addition, the number of big suitors interested in HERE shows the rise in the potential and real market for location-based services in both smartphones and connected vehicles.
Many of the early suitors balked at HERE’s early price tag, estimated to be more than $4 billion. Uber, which some felt would be a good match for HERE because of their autonomous vehicle intentions, decided to go in another direction, buying mapping company deCarta.
While it’s too early to analyze the consequences of the deal, some analysts say it will be interesting to see if the new owners keep the mapping giant neutral to not alienate future clients.
It remains to be seen whether its competitor, TomTom, which also has been talked about as an acquisition target, should stay as an independent company or form its own consortium.
Nokia purchased HERE, the former Navteq, for $8 billion in 2007. The sale of HERE is part of Nokia’s transformation as it completes its $16.6 billion acquisition of Alcatel-Lucent, which is expected to close early next year.
In another big deal since our last column, Annapolis, Md.-based TeleCommunication Systems was acquired by Comtech Telecommunication Corp. for $430.8 million deal. The deal is expected to close in March 2016.
TCS was one of the first companies to do it all in the consumer location space, buying entities in automotive navigation and also making inroads in the fleet management and indoor positioning/9-1-1 space. The company most recently was developing location technology for mobile, or m-health markets.
Cyber Security Big Connected Vehicle Concern in 2015
As we review the past year, one of the biggest connected vehicle trends in 2015 was when cyber security became real for the automakers, said Jon Allen, Booz Allen Commercial Solutions principal.
“Just as automakers are increasingly demonstrating the power of automation, their momentum is challenged by researchers showing they really can hack into vehicles. While there are engineering challenges ahead to realize the full potential of autonomy, the priority in automotive is to protect the trust of customers and regulators as autonomous capabilities are further developed,” he said. “That puts cyber at the top of the agenda.”
2016, OEMs will need to further embrace a security mindset, Allen said. “These [cyber risk] issues are solved by designing, engineering and testing your vehicle to meet defined standards. But cyber risk has an outside variable you can’t control: cyber threat actors. This means you’re not just engineering a solution — you’re fighting an adversary,” he said.
Allen said that automakers need to identify a single leader to champion vehicle cyber security, supporting them up with an integrated, cross-functional team. “That includes experts from safety, privacy, IT, legal, engineering, manufacturing, customer service and supply chain,” he said.
Autonomous vehicles tout a safety record that far surpasses today’s cars, but a cyber incident has potential to reverse that claim, Allen said. The “doomsday” scenario is attacking multiple vehicles over the air to “brick” multiple platforms, but this may be an unlikely near-term scenario, he said.
“The near-term attacks will be motivated by money. That’s why many of the largest hacks were designed to exploit personal and financial information,” Allen said.
At a Colorado Space Roundup meeting in Denver last week, Thad Allen, former Coast Guard commandant and now executive vice president at Booz Allen Hamilton, said that there won’t be a “cyber Pearl Harbor” as the government and civilian entities should have had plenty of warning it was coming. Allen, who was in Denver working on the GPS Operational Control System, or OCX, also said that it would be catastrophic if the GPS infrastructure was compromised.
“If someone does something to disrupt GPS, it will affect everyone,” said Allen, who oversaw the Hurricane Katrina and Deepwater Horizon oil spill operations.
Indoor Positioning’s Big Story in 2015: Consumer Appliances?
While there were several significant tests and infrastructure rollouts, at least one analyst says the rise of indoor positioning in consumer appliances was huge. Bruce Krulwich, Grizzly Analytics founder, said that such companies as Move ‘n See are putting location chips into electronic devices.
Move ‘n See also has a camera robot, called Pixio, which follows a person moving around a sports field or other indoor site. “What’s huge about this is not the product itself — it’s hard to tell whether it will appeal to the masses or only a niche market–but I believe that it’s the first in a new trend of electronic products that enhance their capabilities by incorporating indoor location technology,” he said.
In other location news:
CalAmp Corp. said it made a $113 million offer for LoJack Corp., which is a pioneer in car theft-recovery using location technology. According to published reports, CalAmp has made three cash offers for Lojack in the past 14 months. LoJack’s car recovery systems use location technology, which seems to be a great fit for CalAmp, which offers fleet tracking software.
It’s been a good run. After eight-and-a-half years, this is my last Wireless LBS Insider column. Many thanks to Alan Cameron and Tracy Cozzens, both seasoned journalists, who steered me on the right course over the years. I will be at CES in a freelance role next month and will continue to operate my autonomous vehicle conference, Driverless.
The value of accurate maps is not lost on the automotive industry as it transitions from connected cars to automated vehicles. Three German automakers are rumored to be making a multibillion-dollar investment in Nokia’s HERE mapping division. If the deal goes through as expected by late July, Nokia, which purchased HERE (then called Navteq) for $8 billion in 2007, will have spurned several deep-pocket suitors.
Although not officially confirmed, Nokia’s HERE digital mapping service is set to be purchased by a German auto consortium of Daimler, BMW and Volkswagen’s Audi unit, according to published sources.
Estimates of the deal place it in the $2.7 billion to more than $3 billion range. The potential sale puts to rest industry concern that Google or another giant non-automotive entity would make the winning bid for a company with increasing importance to connected and autonomous vehicles.
Either way, it’s too early to analyze what exactly are the consequences if the German consortium closes the deal with Nokia, said Thilo Koslowski, Gartner vice president and analyst. “In order to justify the purchase price of the acquisition, it will be in the interest of any acquiring party to keep Nokia HERE’s future role as neutral as possible in order not to alienate other clients,” he said. “I could imagine that contractually the acquiring party might be tied to serving these other clients for a least a certain time. If that doesn’t happen, and the deal would be ‘exclusive,’ then it would certainly boost the appeal of other map data providers and encourage new players to emerge.”
If the deal goes through, the German consortium plans to invite such other automotive companies as Fiat Chrysler, Ford, Renault, Toyota and General Motors, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Another take on the potential agreement could be whether car companies have to weigh the pluses and minuses of to join the consortium — or map competitor TomTom needs to consider whether it has more to gain from remaining independent or creating its own consortium, said Roger Lanctot, strategy analytics associate director, global automotive practice.
Industry old-timers may remember the bitter rivalry between Navteq (formerly Navigation Technologies) and Tele Atlas (formerly Etak). This rivalry has remained, even though the names have changed and the location industry has evolved dramatically since 2007, when both Navteq and Tele Atlas were bought by Nokia and TomTom, respectively, in multibillion-dollar deals.
The bidding war for HERE began in April, when Nokia purchased Alcatel Lucent to transition from the location industry. In addition to the German auto consortium, Uber and Chinese technology provider Baidu, Google and Apple were said to be potential buyers. However, Google’s purchase of HERE would have been disruptive to the auto industry, Lanctot wrote in a LinkedIn column. “Google buying HERE would drive the entire industry into the arms of TomTom while removing the leverage-ability of a map duopoly. Google buying both TomTom and HERE would annihilate billions of dollars in research and development activity by car makers seeking to create a truly driver-oriented browsing experience intended to enhance safety,” he wrote.
Mike Dobson, TeleMapics president, who writes about digital maps at www.telemapics.com, recently said that Uber was playing with fire by bidding on HERE because they were clearly concerned about autonomous vehicles. “Within 10 years, Uber will be producing its own fleet of [autonomous vehicles]. While owning a map company might be beneficial to them, they might be better off licensing map databases,” he said.
Uber, which bought mapping company deCarta and Microsoft’s Bing Maps, ultimately withdrew from the bidding war for Here.
City Built for Autonomous Testing Unveiled in Michigan
A 32-acre simulated city recently opened to test how self-diving cars will perform in the future. The $10 million facility, called Mcity and located on the north campus of the University of Michigan, was created by the school’s Mobility Transformation Center and the Transportation Research Institute.
With all the bells and whistles — a bridge, a tunnel, traffic circle, etc. — the facility will rival anything existing, if it hasn’t already surpassed it, in Silicon Valley or Pittsburgh, which seem to be the centers of gravity for the nascent autonomous vehicle industry.
Mcity, which was a government-industry partnership, plans to “lay the foundations for a commercially viable ecosystem of connected and automated mobility,” said a university press release. [Editor’s note: It is refreshing to see the “commercially viable” thrown in there by an academic institution.]
Another key goal is to implement a connected and automated mobility system on the streets of southeastern Michigan by 2021. The MTC is developing deployments of more than 20,000 cars, trucks and buses across southeastern Michigan, serving as testbeds for evaluating consumer behavior and exploring market opportunities, the university said.
At the same time as the Mcity announcement, also in Ann Arbor, the Automated Vehicle Symposium, which is the largest autonomous vehicle conference, was being held at a local hotel. While the conference had such keynote speakers as Google’s Chris Urmson, and sponsors that included Denso and Uber, it still has the feel of this government/academic/technical conference — not unlike TRB or ITS America.
In fact, like many government meetings, the afternoon “breakout sessions” were closed off to the press. This leads to the question, with so many new, and expensive, autonomous vehicle conferences springing up, why isn’t there a single panel on the future worldwide market opportunity?
In other location news:
IndoorAtlas signed a $3 million deal with South Korea’s SK Planet, a subsidiary of SK Telecom, to target the e-commerce market. IndoorAtlas’ investors include ST Planet and Chinese technology provider Baidu, which made a $10 million investment in the company.
Nokia’s HERE mapping and location services business is developing a new global standard for contactless transport ticketing payments using Near Field Communications-enabled mobile phones. HERE announced the formation of the Open Mobile Ticketing Alliance, or OMTA, to help consumers purchase public transit ticket using a mobile app.
HERE competitor TomTom continues to be a major force in vehicle monitoring and location, recently announcing its telematics division broke 500,000 subscribers. Overall, the company serve 36,000 customers, primarily in the European fleet market.
TomTom is making available Highly Automated Driving (HAD) map content in the metro Detroit area, where U.S. automakers are headquartered. Car makers and HAD-related companies can now use TomTom’s high-definition maps for precise vehicle positioning, enabling future self-driving cars to see beyond their sensors.
The HAD map, covering the stretch of road network between Farmington Hills and Ann Arbor, including I-696, 96, and 275, US-23 and M-14, will be available in June. TomTom discussed the HAD map in a session at TU-Automotive Detroit trade show, held June 3-4.
“By making high-definition map content readily available, we can make HAD a reality faster, enabling further innovation in Detroit, the heart of the North American automotive industry,” said Alain De Taeye, member of the TomTom Management Board. “Intense demand for high-definition maps is fueled by automated driving as a new growth driver. As an independent supplier with one of the world’s most sophisticated mapping platform, we are in a unique position to provide highly precise map content for all members of the HAD ecosystem.”
For the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2015 in January, the Audi A7 piloted driving concept car dubbed Jack used TomTom HAD prototype maps to complete a long-distance test drive, over 560 miles from San Francisco to Las Vegas.
U.S. auto sales may drop about 40 percent in the next 25 years because of autonomous vehicles hitting the road, reports Bloomberg. In particular, shared driverless cars would force mass-market automakers such as General Motors Co. and Ford Motor Co. to slash output, a Barclays analyst told Bloomberg.
Vehicle ownership rates could be cut almost in half because many families would only need one car. However, driverless cars would travel twice as many miles as they return home between trips to ferry a different family member. As a result, automakers would have to shrink their production in order to survive.
The numbers are outlined in a new report by analyst Brian Johnson.
