BMW Teams With Intel, Mobileye on 5-Year Autonomous Driving Plan

Executives from each of the companies commented in Q&A on the safety question in light of the highly publicized Tesla incident, which was fresh news hours before the BMW-hosted event. Amnon Shashua, chief technology officer of Mobileye, said five years can be viewed as very short, but it’s “sufficient time to do the types of validations that are needed.”

“Millions of kilometers” of validations along with real-time simulations with “artificial, but realistic scenes” are needed to test merging into traffic and other events that are “beyond sensing,” said Shashua. Driving intelligence is needed to merge into traffic, he said. Referring to the Tesla incident, Shashua said, it’s important for companies to be “transparent about limitations” with autonomous driving systems. “It’s not enough to tell the driver you need to be alert. You need to tell the driver why you need to be alert,” he said.

From the BMW side, Chairman Harald Kruger said, “We need the next years,” which is why the company set 2021 as the target date for scale production of autonomous vehicles. “Today, the technologies are not ready for series production,” Kruger said.

Intel CEO Brian Krzanich said, “Enough engineers have looked at this problem and broken it down and tried to understand the systems that have to be developed … the safety systems, the rigor that we have to apply to this.” The three companies are capable of providing the necessary engineering rigor, and Krzanich is “fairly confident that we can do this in the five-year time frame.”

Shashua said Mobileye is devoting 100 employees out of the company’s 700, and Intel is devoting “several hundred people” and “several millions of dollars” on hardware and software for the project.

The project’s goal is to develop “future-proof” systems that enable drivers to take their hands off the steering wheel and reach “eyes-off” driving (level 3), followed by “mind off” driving (level 4), described as transforming the driver’s in-car time into leisure or work time, said the companies. Reaching level 4 autonomy would be the technical stage required to then advance to “driver off” (level 5), where a human isn’t present in the vehicle, they said.

Shashua said level 3 is “highly autonomous driving” limited to highways, offering “eyes-off” driving but also a significant grace period from the time the system is compromised until users have to take control. If a user doesn’t take control, the system will know how to step aside slowly in a safe manner, he said. By 2021, Shashua envisioned fully autonomous driving in a geo-fenced area. In that defined zone, the car provides “completely safe,” level 5, autonomous driving, he said. Kruger said the companies are taking a step-by-step approach and “safety comes first.”

Mobileye will provide expertise in sensing and localization including the processing required to understand the driving scene through a single camera, it said. Mobileye’s EyeQ5 system-on-chip and the collaborative development of fusion algorithms will be deployed on Intel computing platforms. Mobileye’s Road Experience Management technology will provide real-time precise localization and model the driving scene to support fully autonomous driving, it said.

Shashua said the collaboration aims to set an automotive industry standard for autonomous driving, and the companies are making their work open to other companies. Standardization is “very important” because the autonomous driving industry must work with regulatory bodies that need to see standards emerging, Shashua said. If each car manufacturer decides on different sets of sensing, software stacks and validation, “it could create chaos in this industry,” he said. BMW’s leadership role in the standardization will push the industry overall, he said, while still leaving room for differentiation. Krzanich said open standards allow other companies to contribute and advance the technology at a faster rate, comparing autonomous cars to the computing industry.

BMW’s Kruger said the car is the “ideal platform” for developing the technology of the future that includes “machine perception that reaches human capabilities and beyond” and “machine intelligence capable of making split-second decisions in complex driving situations.” If done right, self-driving cars -- with the right focus on safety -- “will change transportation as we know it,” he said. The car that BMW and the others envision will be fully autonomous in urban and highway settings and “capable of supporting new business models of shared mobility,” Kruger said.

Kruger called the collaboration a turning point: “There’s no more building concept vehicles or conducting research or performing fleet testing,” he said. The project is about the “commitment to series production.”

Consumer Watchdog meanwhile urged federal regulators to “go slow” writing new guidelines for self-driving cars. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is expected to issue new guidelines for self-driving cars this month, and Secretary of Transportation Anthony Foxx and NHTSA director Mark Rosekind publicly pressed for the rapid deployment of the technology, said CW. NHTSA should conclude its investigation into the Tesla crash and publicly release the findings before moving forward with guidance, it said. “If a car can’t tell the difference between a truck and the sky, the technology is in doubt,” said Carmen Balber, CW executive director, referring to the cause of the fatal Tesla accident.