A round-up of just some of the recent robocar news:

Stanford Shelly at 120mph

While the trip up Pikes Peak by Stanford's Audi TT did not offer the high speeds we had hoped for, they have recently being doing some real race driving tests, clocking the car around a track at 120mph. Even more impressive because this car drives with limited sensors. Here the goal is to test computer driven high-speed tactics -- rounding corners, climbing hills and more. While they didn't quite reach the times of professional drivers, chances are someday they will, just from the perfect understanding of physics.

Driving this fast is hard in the real world because you're going beyond the range of most sensors (radar and special lidars can go further, and cameras can see very far but are not reliable in all lighting.) The Stanford team had a closed track to they were able to focus on cornering and skidding.

KPMG report on self-driving cars

The consulting firm KPMG has released an extensive report on self-driving cars. While it doesn't contain too much that is new to readers of this site and blog, it joins the group which believes that car-to-car communication is going to be necessary for proper deployment of robocars. I don't think so, and in fact think the idea of waiting for it is dangerous.

Speaking of V2V communication

For some time the V2V developers have been planning a testbed project in Ann Arbor, MI. They've equipped 3000 cars with "here I am" transponders that will broadcast their GPS data (position and velocity) along with other car data (brake application, turn signals, etc.) using DSRC. It is hoped that while these 3000 civilian cars will mostly wander around town, there will be times when the density of them gets high enough that some experiments on the success of DSRC can be made. Most of the drivers of the cars work in the same zone, making that possible.

If they don't prove the technology, they probably won't get the hoped-for 2013 mandate that all future cars have this technology in them. If they don't get that, the 75mhz of coveted spectrum allocated to DSRC will get other hungry forces going after it.

I owe readers a deeper analysis of the issues around vehicle-to-vehicle communications.

Google cars clock 300,000 miles

Google announced that our team (they are a consulting client) has now logged 300,000 miles of self-driving, with no accidents caused by the software. It was also acknowledged that the team has also converted a hybrid Lexus RX-450h in addition to the Toyota Prius. Certainly a more comfortable ride and the new system has very nice looks.

Google will also begin internal testing with team members doing solo commutes in the vehicles. Prior policy is vehicles are always operated off-campus with two staff onboard, as is appropriate in prototype systems.

Political attack ad goes after robocars

Jeff Brandes pushed Florida's legislation to allow robocar testing and operations in that state, 2nd after Nevada. Now his political opponents have produced an ad which suggests robocars are dangerous and you shouldn't vote for Mr. Brandes because of his support of them. While we should expect just about anything in attack ads, this is a harbinger of the real debate to come. I doubt the authors of the ads really care about robocars -- they just hope to find anything that might scare voters. My personal view, as I have said many times, is that while the technology does have to go through a period where it is less safe because it is being prototyped and developed, the hard truth is that the longer we wait to deploy the technology, the more years we rack up with 34,000 killed on the roads in the USA and 1.2 million worldwide. And Florida's seniors are among the first on the list to need robocars. Is Jim Frishe's campaign thinking about that?

Collision Warning strongly pushed in Europe

The EU is considering changing its crash-safety rules so that a car can't get a 5-star rating unless it has forward collision warning, or even forward-collision mitigation (where the system brakes if you don't.) These systems are already proving themselves, with data suggesting 15% to 25% reductions in crashes -- which is pretty huge. While the law would not force vendors to install this, there are certain car lines where a 5-star rating is considered essential to sales.