Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
Autonomous
Cars
Contents 1
Introduction 2
Mapping 6
Safety in the Expected: I-94 Accident 6
Planning 7
Mapping 7
Localization 7
Challenges 8
Hacking 8
Hacking Concerns with Autonomous Cars 8
Different Methods to Hack Cars 9
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Example of Car Hacking 10
Current Security Solutions 10
Conclusion 11
Annotated References 12
Introduction
There is much buzz around autonomous cars today. It seems like every major car
manufacturer has a horse in the race and they also have some stiff competition from a few
tech giants. As they design and test their cars, safety is at the forefront of the publics mind.
In this research paper, we will walk through the storied history of autonomous cars, dive
into the technology behind them, and discuss some of the controversies surrounding their
current and future use including how the cars map their surroundings and the possibility of
hacking.
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the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHSTA), which ranged from L0 to
L4, but they adopted the SAE model in October 2016.
L0 denotes a car with no automation, while L5 is the full automation of all driving
systems. The in-between levels have varying degrees of partial automation. A distinct break
is made between the first three levels (L0-L2) and the last three (L3-L5), in which at L3 the
monitoring of the driving environment switches from being the responsibility of the
human driver to being integrated into part of the automated system (SAE, 2014). There are
currently no L3 cars on the market.
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1980s, 1990s, and 2000s: Continued Research into
Autonomous Vehicles
There were two hallmark research projects into autonomous cars during the 1980s:
Project PROMETHEUS and Autonomous Land Vehicle (ALV). PROMETHEUS, an acronym for
Program for European Traffic with Highest Efficiency and Unprecedented Safety,
concentrated on civilian vehicles in urban environments, while ALV, funded by the United
States Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), was interested in all-terrain
autonomous cars. Project PROMETHEUS ended in 1994, but much of its research would
enhance the results of Project ARGO, a joint project between the Italian Research Council
and the University of Parma. In 1998, the ARGO vehicle traveled 200 km autonomously
through Italy (ARGO, n.d.).
DARPA would continue its research into autonomous cars into the early 2000s with
the funding and organization of the DARPA Grand Challenge. They believed that the
vehicles created for the challenge could be applied to military requirements (DARPA,
2004). The challenges ran in 2004, 2005, and 2007 (where it was renamed the DARPA Urban
Challenge). In 2004, DARPA offered a $1 million prize for any team that could build an
autonomous vehicle that could complete its course. No team completed the challenge and
the most successful vehicle, completed approximately 7 miles of the 142-mile route
(DARPA, 2006). In 2005, five teams successfully completed the course. The Stanford Racing
Team won the grand prize of $2 million by being the fastest vehicle, which averaged 19
mph and completed the course in just under seven hours.
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How Autonomous Cars Work
Autonomous cars rely on a sophisticated system of hardware and software. In this
section we will discuss the three main components that allow modern autonomous cars to
navigate the world around them. First, a global positioning system (GPS) is used to
determine where in the world the vehicle is located and defines the overall path the vehicle
will take. Second, a host of sensors are used to determine the location of the vehicle on the
road and other objects within the driving environment. Lastly, there is the computer that
ties the GPS and sensor data together provides a real-time view of the world and controls
the movement of the vehicle.
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Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR)
LiDAR is one of the most heavily utilized sensors used by autonomous cars. Like
radar, LiDAR is used to detect objects in the environment in real-time. LiDar is also similar
to radar in its method for gathering data. Rather than using radio waves, LiDAR uses beams
of light, in the form of a laser. When a beam of light is transmitted and reflects off the
surface of an object, the LiDAR is able to determine the objects location in space. The
LiDAR units used for autonomous cars are typically mounted to the roof of the car. The
units are designed to continuously spin, giving it a 360 field of view of the cars
surroundings. While the unit spins, it rapidly sends out pulses of light beams, called points.
Some modern LiDAR systems, like the Velodyne HDL-64E, used by Googles autonomous
cars, send over 2 million points per second. As the points bounce off objects in the
environment, they they are collected by the LiDARs sensor to form a massive collection
point called a point cloud. The point cloud is what is used to create a real-time map of the
cars environment. The points collected by the LiDAR are extremely accurate and are able
to precisely identify an objects location within two centimeters at ranges over 100 meters
away.
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system. While the radar system verifies the validity of the objects found by the LiDAR, it
also gathers an estimate of the objects velocity using an average of radar measurements.
Mapping
Safety in the Expected: I-94 Accident
On January 9th 2015, there was a 193 vehicle pileup in West Michigan. This
catastrophic accident happened in whiteout conditions around the 90-mile mark on I-94.
Included in the pileup were two semi-trucks. One of the semi-trucks was carrying 44,000
pounds of formic acid, a hazardous material. Another was full of fireworks (News 8, 2015) .
The incident resulted in one death, 22 injuries, substantial property damage, and a
subsequent three-mile evacuation due to the hazardous materials. These results are one of
the biggest arguments for autonomous cars according to Ryan Eustice, a professor at
University of Michigan, who has been working on autonomous cars since 2007. While
speaking at a Carnegie Mellon Robotics Institute seminar about his work on autonomous
cars, Eustice said, This is an area where through connectivity, beyond physical line of sight,
if this information could have been relayed through the network it might have had some
potential for helping to mitigate for situations like this (Eustice, 2016). The network Eustice
is alluding to is a network of information and data that could be used for mapping,
localization, and planning for autonomous cars. He does not mean platooning, which is a
group of vehicles traveling closely together that are in constant contact with a lead vehicle
that controls speed and direction (Darren 2017). What Eustice is discussing is the ability of a
single car to adapt to changes in its environment in real-time.
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Autonomous robots have been using mapping and localization systems to help
them plan their routes since the 1970s. This type of system is now making its way into
autonomous cars. One of the concerns about this technology is safety. In a world where
the environment is constantly changing by the second, from cars to pedestrians to
construction zones and so on, we need a dynamic way to handle this ever changing
environment.
Planning
Mapping
Planning is the method that autonomous cars use to control their movements. The
first computational step of this process is mapping. Mapping, for our purposes, is the
mapping of a 3D environment so that an autonomous car can localize or pinpoint its
position within the space. Mapping helps the autonomous car maintain its position on a
given path and remain safely within the confines of the roadway. Road geometry
information of the roadway map is used as a base frame by the on-road navigation
algorithm that generates a drivable road path(Jo, Sunwoo, 2013). This process starts
before the autonomous vehicle is put on the road. First, the routes are driven by a person
in a vehicle that takes geometric measurements of the roads using LiDAR and various other
sensors to build virtual 3D maps of the roadway. At the same time, satellite imaging of city
streets is inserted with metadata by a technician. The metadata refers to semantics of the
roadway like angles of turns, locations of crosswalks, and stop light information. The next
step is to merge the sensor data with the roadway metadata to build an optimized map of
the route the autonomous car will use. The reason for this exhaustive pre-work in the
mapping stage leads into localization (which is handled through LiDAR, radar, and GPS) and
a philosophy held by some autonomous car developers, expect the expected, reason
about whats different.
Localization
Through the use of mapping, autonomous cars are able to predict the terrain and
environment it will traverse, and be able to react to anything out of place. With localization,
an autonomous vehicle is able to know where it is in the mapped environment. As an
autonomous vehicle drives, it overlays its own visuals and sensor data about its
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environment onto the already provided mapping and GPS information. This meshing of
data gives the autonomous car an idea of what to expect as it travels. This means that the
vehicle can plan for the expected environment prior to travel, then make course
corrections, safety maneuvers, or handle any drift in the autonomous vehicles position. An
example of this is when the view of a stop light is blocked by a bus or another large vehicle.
The philosophy creates a safer experience and cuts the time of executing plans down.
Instead of a car spending computing power on constantly building new environments while
trying to react to them, the computing can be focused on the unexpected, creating more
processing power for safety as a whole.
Challenges
The future of this technology still has its challenges though. To get to a realized
future, much more study must be done into the realm of mapping, localization, and
planning. Some of the present and most salient challenges are: how to map during adverse
weather conditions, social interactions with police, creating a robust connectivity network
system, dealing with novel or rural roads, making sensors smaller, and lengthening sensing
distances.
Mapping in adverse weather conditions may be one of the most difficult challenges
because LiDAR is unable to see the road when covered with snow or dense water. In snow,
a human would normally follow the tracks of the car in front of them but an autonomous
car, as it stands, would use pre-mapped information as a guide causing safety concerns as
the car would not be able to find a suitable lane to drive in. Another big challenge is social
cues from police officers. If an autonomous car is traveling towards an intersection with a
green light meaning go, the car will need to know how to handle a police officer telling it to
stop. Autonomous cars are getting safer, but they still have a long road to travel before
they are ready for us.
Hacking
Hacking Concerns with Autonomous Cars
As more companies develop their own autonomous cars, one topic for discussion is
the concern of hacking. Car manufacturers are well known for exerting a lot of time and
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effort into creating cars that are safe. For example, they perform comprehensive crash
tests to improve the safety of their cars. However, car manufacturers are not experts in the
field of security. With many of the cars that were produced in the past, there was no need
for considering security issues since cars were not connected to the internet. However,
many autonomous cars rely on an internet connection, along with a host of sensors, to
navigate their environment. In addition to considering the safety aspects of their car,
manufacturers are now dealing with a new problem of security issues and hacking.
To investigate the security of the current technology, several researchers are
engaging in car hacking experiments. For example, Sasan Jafarnejad, Lara Codeca, and
several other researchers from the University of Luxembourg have conducted
experiments to analyze the vulnerability of the embedded systems in an autonomous car.
Their results show that the current state-of-the-art internal communication system used in
modern cars, are not ready to handle threats from external attackers (Jafarnejad, 2015).
Until the auto industry handles security issues properly, many believe that it is too early to
send autonomous cars onto the road.
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Another concerning and dangerous way hackers can attack an autonomous car is
through tricking the sensors. LiDAR, one of the main sensors autonomous cars use to
safely negotiate their surroundings, is highly susceptible to this type of attack. Hackers, in a
less technical sense, are able to easily deceive a LiDAR system to ignore objects in the
environment or detect objects that do not exist. In one example of this type of hacking, a
man named Jonathan Petit was able to spoof an autonomous cars LiDAR system with only
$43 and a laser pointer, causing the car to make unnecessary movements (Muoio, 2016).
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since the crucial systems are all stored on local computers aboard the car (Condliffe,
2017). However, there are consequences for taking cars offline as well. Without internet-
access, the autonomous car cannot partake in vehicle-to-vehicle or vehicle-to-infrastructure
communication, which can improve safety through communicating valuable information
with other cars or infrastructures like traffic lights (Condliffe, 2017).
Conclusion
The journey of autonomous cars started when General Motors introduced the
concept in the Futurama Exhibit at the 1939 Worlds Fair. Through our research we have
unpacked the history of autonomous cars, shown how the technology works, and revealed
some of the controversies around the safety of autonomous cars. Our research shows how
autonomous cars can safely navigate roads through planning routes and using a system of
sensors. In many ways, this technology exhibits distinct advantages over human drivers by
how they see the world. As technologically sophisticated as the current autonomous cars
are, they do exhibit some limitations. The different sensors each have their own
shortcomings which can potentially leave holes in the systems sensory input. The current
cars rely heavily on pre-mapping because of the high computational load of crunching real-
time sensor data. Similar to the sensors, internet connected autonomous cars and vehicle-
to-vehicle communication may give autonomous cars an edge over human drivers by
collecting in-depth data about the environment and other vehicles. However, this
connected state makes autonomous cars vulnerable to hacking which could put the
general public in harm's way. Autonomous car technology is moving at a fast pace but
theres still many questions to be addressed regarding their safety.
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Annotated References
ARGO Project. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.argo.ce.unipr.it/argo/english/index.html
Asimov, I. (1964, August 16). Visit to the Worlds Fair of 2014. The New York Times. Retrieved
from http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/03/23/lifetimes/asi-v-fair.html
This is an article that Isaac Asimov published after the 1964 Worlds Fair. He
comes from the perspective of a science fiction author and wrote this article for the
general public. In it, he tries to predict what the world will be like in 2014. It is
supposed to entertaining and reflective of the state of the world at its publishing.
Brain, M. (2000, April 01). How Radar Works. Retrieved February 27, 2017, from
http://science.howstuffworks.com/radar.htm
C. (2015, October 30). RI Seminar: Ryan Eustice : University of Michigan's Work Toward
Autonomous Cars. Retrieved March 05, 2017, from
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cEtpoeFZxCw
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This seminar was given by Ryan Eustice about his work with autonomous
cars at the University of Michigan. Ryan Eustice is an associate professor at the
University of Michigan. He received his B.S. in mechanical engineering at Michigan
State University and his Ph.D. in ocean engineering at Massachusetts Institute of
Technology. In this lecture, Eustice talks about how his work with University of
Michigan has progressed with his partnership with Ford and the breakthroughs he
hes had in the field of autonomous cars.
Condliffe, J. (2017, January 10). Why Some Autonomous Cars Are Going to Avoid the
Internet. MIT Technology Review. Retrieved from
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/603339/why-some-autonomous-cars-are-
going-to-avoid-the-internet/
This is the website for the DARPA Grand Challenge 2004 that has been
archived by DARPA. It explains what the challenge is in a way that the general public
would understand. It also records the results and schedule of the event. It is also
biased in the fact that it is a large proponent of the positives of autonomous
vehicles.
Cottingham, D. What is Vehicle Platooning? (2015, August 30). Retrieved March 05, 2017,
from https://www.drivingtests.co.nz/resources/what-is-vehicle-platooning/
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This article was written by Darren Cottingham who is a member of the
Institute of Advanced Motorists and the NZ Motoring Writers Guild. This article
explains how autonomous car platooning works. The article also gives potential
upsides and downsides and gives a brief look into how the downsides of
autonomous platooning may be solved.
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. (2006, March). REPORT TO CONGRESS: DARPA
Prize Authority - Fiscal Year 2005 report in accordance with 10 U.S.C. 2374a.
Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.
This is DARPAs report to Congress after the 2005 Grand Challenge. This
report was necessary because they had to award prize money to the winning team
using government funds. The document overviews the background of the challenge,
the teams and vehicles that competed, and the results of the challenge. This is
another source that strongly supports the use of autonomous technology and may
be increasingly biased because of their need to use government funding for the
event.
Forrest, A & Mustafa Konca. (2007, May 1). Autonomous Cars and Society. Retrieved from
https://web.wpi.edu/Pubs/E-project/Available/E-project-043007-
205701/unrestricted/IQPOVP06B1.pdf
Gibbs, S. (2015, July 21). Jeep owners urged to update their cars after hackers take remote
control. the guardian. Retrieved from
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/jul/21/jeep-owners-urged-update-
car-software-hackers-remote-control
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This article was written by Samuel Gibbs who is an assistant technology editor at the
Guardian. He has been with the Guardian since 2013 and some of his focuses are on
security and privacy of technology. In this article, he talks about the 2015 Jeep
hacking that occurred where two researchers were able to successfully hack a Jeep
through the Uconnect system. This article was used in our research paper to give an
example of how car hacking is a serious concern.
Gilmore, C.P (1967, October). How Youll Drive the Amazing URBMOBILE. Popular Science.
75-77, 208.
This is an article from Popular Science from 1967. In it they talk about the
possibility of an autonomous vehicle system by the 1980s. It is supposed to be
entertaining and is written for the general publics understanding. It is not written
with technical jargon, instead it simply outlines what the URBMOBILE is and how it
can change transportation.
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HDL-64E. (n.d.). Retrieved February 27, 2017, from http://velodynelidar.com/hdl-64e.html
Hwang, L.S. (2013, October). Taking the Wheel. Popular Science. 96.
Hwang, S., Kim, N., Choi, Y., Lee, S., & Kweon, I. S. (2016). Fast multiple objects detection and
tracking fusing color camera and 3D LiDAR for intelligent vehicles. 2016 13th
International Conference on Ubiquitous Robots and Ambient Intelligence (URAI).
doi:10.1109/urai.2016.7625744
The authors of this article work for the Robotics and Computer Vision
Laboratory in the Department of Electrical Engineering within the Korea Advanced
Institute of Science and Technology. In this article the authors discuss the detection
and tracking of moving objects (DATMO) using both 2D and 3D LiDAR information.
This article was used in this paper to describe the use of LiDAR to tackle the DATMO
problem.
Jafarnejad, S., Codeca, L., Bronzi, W., Frank R., and Engel T. (2015). A Car Hacking
Experiment: When Connectivity Meets Vulnerability. 2015 IEEE Globecom
Workshops (GC Wkshps), 1-6. doi: 10.1109/GLOCOMW.2015.7413993
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experiment, the method they used, and their results and findings. Our research
paper refers to this article in order to provide more supporting text to show the
perspectives of people who believe that autonomous cars are not ready to be used
on the roads.
Jo, K., Sunwoo, M. (2014, June). Generation of a Precise Roadway Map for Autonomous Cars.
Retrieved from IEEE Xplore
Lindner, P., & Wanielik, G. (2009). 3D LiDAR processing for vehicle safety and environment
recognition. 2009 IEEE Workshop on Computational Intelligence in Vehicles and
Vehicular Systems. doi:10.1109/civvs.2009.4938725
The authors of this article both work for the Department of Electrical
Engineering and Information Technology and have a Professorship of
Communications Engineering at Chemnitz University of Technology in Germany. In
this article the authors discuss the current automotive safety systems in use in
todays cars. This article was used for this paper to explain how these existing
technologies are tied to autonomous cars.
Muoio, D. (2016, December 15). Self-driving cars are prone to hacks and automakers are
barely talking about it. Business Insider. Retrieved from
http://www.businessinsider.com/driverless-cars-hacking-ricks-2016-12
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This article is written by Danielle Muoio who is a transportation reporter for
Business Insider. She mainly reports about self-driving and electric cars. This article
reveals her perspective of self-driving cars as being prone to hacks by providing
details of past experiments where autonomous car were successfully hacked. She
mainly communicates the opinions of people, such as researchers, who think car
manufacturers do not prioritize security when developing their cars. Towards the
end, she briefly mentions how the different car manufacturers are addressing
security. This article was used in our research paper to provide an example of how
autonomous cars hacked through tricking the sensors.
This fact sheet was written by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration
(NHTSA) to provide information about the new technology of V2V communication.
NHTSA is responsible for providing grants for state government so they can keep
the citizens safe through traffic safety programs. They are currently working on a
proposal to make V2V communication technology a requirement for future cars and
see this technology as a way of increasing safety on the roads. With NHTSA being
supportive of the use of V2V communication, they provide a fact sheet that is used
to introduce V2V communication by explaining what it is, how it works, and the
advantages and benefits are implementing this system into vehicles. Information
about V2V communication was used in our research paper.
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SAE International. (2014). AUTOMATED DRIVING: LEVELS OF DRIVING AUTOMATION ARE
DEFINED IN NEW SAE INTERNATIONAL STANDARD J3016. Retrieved from
https://www.sae.org/misc/pdfs/automated_driving.pdf
Sasaki, K., Suzuki, N., Makido, S., Nakao, A. (2016, September). Vehicle control system
coordinated between cloud and mobile edge computing. Retrieved from IEEE Xplore
This article was written by Kengo Sasaki, Naoya Suzuki, and Satoshi Makido, and
Akhiro Nakao. The first three authors work at Toyotas R&d Labs in Japan and the
last author, Nakao A., is a professor at the University of Tokyo in Applied Computer
Science Course, Interfaculty Initiative in Information Studies, Graduate School of
Interdisciplinary Information Studies. This article is about cloud based control of
autonomous cars. The article speaks about the challenges to such a network and
proposes some solutions to them.
Vu, T., Burlet, J., & Aycard, O. (2008). Grid-based localization and online mapping with
moving objects detection and tracking: new results. 2008 IEEE Intelligent Vehicles
Symposium. doi:10.1109/ivs.2008.4621305
The authors of this article work for the Grenoble Computer Science
Laboratory which is a research laboratory of Informatics in Grenoble, France. In this
article the authors discuss a proposed real-time algorithm for simultaneous
localization and mapping (SLAM) with detection and tracking of moving objects
(DATMO). SLAM and DATMO are two of biggest challenges facing the safety of
autonomous cars. This article was used in this paper to describe the SLAM and
DATMO problems that face autonomous cars.
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24 Hour News 8 web staff. (2015, November 30). 193-vehicle pileups shut down I-94 for 2 days.
Retrieved March 05, 2017, from http://woodtv.com/2015/01/09/i-94-closed-in-both-
directions-near-galesburg/
This news article is about a real incident in Battle Creek, Michigan. This news report
was made by a local news organisation on the car crash. This article was used in this
paper to describe an example of how autonomous car technology could prevent
traffic accidents according to Ryan Eustice, associate professor at the University of
Michigan.
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