Experts talk automation in Acme – Traverse City Record Eagle

ACME The people responsible for shaping the future of transportation have gathered this week at the annual Center for Automotive Research Management Briefing Seminars.

The five-day conference attracts major players in the automotive industry from around the globe. Speakers include Michigan Lt. Gov. Brian Calley and the director of Ministry of the Economy of Mexicos Trade and NAFTA Office. But executives from BMW, Toyota, Tesla, General Motors, AM General, Bosch, Mazda, Volkswagen, IBM, Nissan, ExxonMobil and Lear Corporation took center stage, along with experts from dozens of development companies and suppliers.

Governors Hall at Grand Traverse Resort & Spa was filled with business people in dark blue jackets and black pantsuits, all of them focused on one thing the future of the automobile. Transportation is big business on a global stage, and the industry is in the midst of a technological upheaval.

Gasoline and diesel displaced horsepower a century ago. Electricity now is pushing fossil fuels off the worlds roads. At the same time, computers are in the early stages of removing humans from the drivers seat. Thats the gist of this weeks meeting in Acme electricity and automation.

As seen here today, highly automated driving is no longer a dream, but a reality, said Continental North America President Jeff Klei.

He spoke Monday afternoon outside the resort, where two cars a Cadillac ATS and a Chrysler 300 fitted with autonomous technology created by Continental and Magna International completed a 7-hour, 300-mile journey, 92 percent of it without any human driver input. The cars began in Detroit, drove through the Detroit-Windsor tunnel to Ontario, returned to the U.S. on the Bluewater Bridge, then cruised northwest to Acme.

Klei referred to the technology installed in the cars as a cruising chauffeur. Technically, that level of automation is called Level 3 or conditional automation. The designation means the vehicle can drive itself in certain environments, such as on a highway. Human control is required at toll booths and in complicated situations like busy city streets.

Levels 4 and 5 are designated as fully automated, technologies in which a human driver never is required. Level 4 is limited to a certain geographic area, such as on a proving ground or within a certain pre-mapped region. Level 5 would allow a vehicle to travel anywhere.

Current technology cant provide full automation, Ryan Eustace, vice president of autonomous driving for the Toyota Research Institute, told the crowd in Governors Hall.

Theres a lot of top-down human awareness that needs to be built in, he said.

He described the constant stream of unknowns on the road pedestrians, animals, broken water mains, traffic cops, accidents, poorly-marked detours as the social dance of driving.

It will be years, he said, before the eventual goal of an automated car that cant crash (because it warns the driver or automatically intervenes to prevent a crash) becomes reality.

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Experts talk automation in Acme - Traverse City Record Eagle