Transforming the Landscape of Mobility

It was the 2007 DARPA Urban Challenge, where self-driving cars made by teams from all over the world competed against each other, that awoke Alexander Mankowsky’s fascination for 'Autonomous Mobility'. The goal of the competition was to traverse a 60-mile obstacle course in less than six hours while observing the Californian traffic regulations – a real challenge in those days and mostly just an event for car geeks. Today, eight years later, the developments in this field have long become critical to the future of an entire industry. The race between OEMs such as Daimler, BMW and Volkswagen and tech giants like Google, Apple and Baidu to produce the first series of self-driving cars is in full swing. Image: re:pubublica/Gregor Fischer CC BY-SA 2.0 Alexander Mankowsky is a part of this development. As a knowledge engineer and future researcher, he analyses the interactions between mobility and society. His field, "Culture and the Car" is integral to Daimler's R&D department. The vision of self-driving cars is certainly not only a question for the distant future anymore. Just this year, Daimler has sent the first self-driving truck for testing in the streets of Nevada, Google has already racked up more than 1 million test kilometers with its autonomous fleet and Great Britain is running several regional pilot projects with automatic transport systems – the so-called ‘low-speed autonomous transport systems’ (L SATS). It just remains to clarify why we should be looking forward to the new age of autonomous mobility and how we as a society can intelligently make the transition to this new technology. Mr. Mankowsky, what exactly do you believe is the fascination with autonomous driving? These days, people are more mobile than ever before. There are always more opportunities for mobility. And this diversity, especially in an ever denser environment, produces a lot of stress. And every bit of stress relief – this starts with assistance systems and ends with fully automatic vehicles, but also with information systems like Google – everything that takes away stress is gratefully accepted. Mobile robots are playing an ever larger role as we move into the age of self-driving cars, simply in helping people get used to the coming scenario. We are in the middle of a process right now. The industry can't simply say, "So, now we begin." Both society and the economy are much further on than people realize and that's not just us at Daimler, Google or other famous companies. In Great Britain for example, they are developing small, automatic transport systems – so-called 'pods'. In Masdar, in the model city in the United Arab Emirates, these pods are already being driven in underground parking lots. On the other hand, Daimler Trucks has presented the first automatic HGV that is allowed on the streets of Nevada. That's also a different dimension. In addition to that, there are production robots in factories and people now work with them ‘hand in hand’, so to speak. Robotics is being applied across a wide range of sectors. The car is just the most noticeable of these. From a cultural perspective, it is a well-known object, and people are used to it. And now it is suddenly changing its character. Where can this be seen in vehicles that are already available? Take a look at the current Mercedes-Benz S-class: The adaptive cruise control DISTRONIC PLUS with steering assistance helps the driver to keep the desired distance to the vehicle in front, even with stop-and-go driving, and also automatically helps them stay in the correct lane. You can really see the stress levels falling when people use this. Even the skeptics who say, "I don't want to give up control. I grew up behind a steering wheel," are convinced after half an hour's driving on the highway with DISTRONIC PLUS. It totally changes their mind. People have to physically experience many of these technologies. The more people experience them, the more likely they are to be ready for something new. We as researchers have to set a process in motion so that people learn how to work with the machines, and how to cooperate with them. That's why I also call autonomously driving vehicles ‘mobile robots’. That's supposed to give people a nudge to say, "That's a machine. It does things automatically. Can it do things well or not? Why does it do that?" People have to learn to understand them. We as a manufacturer have to facilitate the best channels of communication so that people can learn how to deal with the mobile robots. It’s a dialogue process, but one that of course relies heavily on practical experience. At the end of the day, the central point will be how we as humans communicate with these robots, and later with the advanced systems. There are already a few examples in HMI, "voice and gesture control" for example. Will that continue to play a role? In and around the car, at first sight it looks like speech will disappear for the time being. The largest part of human communication is non-verbal. And, this non-verbal communication is not one hundred percent gestures. It’s also things like the posture we choose to adopt. Gestures are very detailed. For road traffic and for robots on production lines this means that, alongside tone and posture, light signals are the best foundation for communication. Light signals can show the status of the robot. Where does it want to go? Has it seen me? This puts people in the active role where they can draw their own conclusions and decide for themselves whether to cross the street or to wait. Or in heavy traffic, the person allows the autonomous vehicle to drive into the gaps, because he or she knows that the robot car won't just force its way into the other lane, because of the safety margin. They start to cooperate, and that’s the decisive factor. You have to remember how long it took before people understood what a car actually is. In Germany and Europe, mass motorization started after the Second World War. It took about 15 to 20 years. There were TV shows like "Siebter Sinn" ("Seventh Sense"), traffic training was introduced and traffic signs were invented. In the fifties, another accident came out of nowhere. No one realized that somebody would drive through a city at 80 km/h. It simply started happening, and it took a long time for a consciousness of cause and effect to develop. Do people generally find it difficult to get used to moving objects and machines in everyday life? Unfortunately, we have no natural sense for kinetic energy and we have to learn it. Compare it to horses. Horses can build up a lot of kinetic energy. When they're moving fast, they can't stop immediately, just like cars. They have ways of communicating that humans simply do not possess. For example, though a horse will use sight, it will also use its ears to signal attention. And people just have to learn this type of communication. Similarly, people have to learn how to handle mobile robots. They have to learn to understand them. For example, "This robot is moving quickly, but it has seen me and can stop." And if the machine can actually show you that you can cross the street, like the concept car F 015 with its projected zebra crossing, then trust can develop – informed trust, not blind trust. At the moment it seems that the advanced assistance systems are mostly features in the upper class or luxury class of vehicles. So, if there is to be a revolution, will it be a revolution from above? Initially it will come from above, because certain sensors are still very expensive. But as we know, prices are coming down rapidly. The software can be built in everywhere. We mustn't forget that a significant driver of change is the HGV, in logistics, farming or mining and quarrying. This is often overlooked. There are many other drivers, such as drones, that use the same technologies at their core. Nowadays every smartphone has an inbuilt camera – and it is indeed very cheap. Certain technologies will become ever cheaper, so that autonomous vehicles will not just be luxury limousines. That's really unlikely. For example, it could make good business sense to have a vehicle fleet of small, autonomous cars and to use a Smart for autonomous car sharing that doesn't need any parking spot. The march of technology cannot be stopped. But where do you see the trouble areas that will decide whether or not we adopt it successfully as a society? The point is this: Will we manage to integrate mobile robots in society? Will people accept them? Will they interact with them? These are our success criteria. Otherwise, we will fall at the final hurdle after 99% perfection. To get the final percentage point we need people. Not to take the wheel, but because humans can improvise and robots can’t. For example, the vehicle will ask the passengers, "There are lots of people up ahead who are crossing the street even though the light is red. What's that? What should I do?" Social situations. They have to be able to reply, "That's a demo, turn off the engine and we'll wait half an hour." Or, "Turn around. We'll go back home." People have to have the option to decide. That is one percent, but it is the deciding percent. [inlinead] Also decisive is the effect on city planning, on careers, on living, our work, our lives. There won't be much that remains unaffected. As a person gets older, for example, they might want to keep living in their own house, even if it's too big. Or maybe they have to go to the doctor but can't get there because there's no public transportation. That means that an automatic mode of transport can make it possible for people to stay on in their own home. That's a really nice idea. If you look at how the prices of real estate in proximity to railway lines are changing, you notice a significant increase the closer you get to a station. This no longer has to be the case. If you can be brought to the station automatically and cheaply, you can also live further away, which can improve the quality of life in concrete ways by reducing population density in cities. That has a real potential to change our lives. Even if people are quick to realize the benefits of autonomous vehicles, where is the element of fun? Driving a vehicle is often a lot of fun. There will always be motor sports, just like we still have horse sports. Everyday mobility will become increasingly automated while people will continue to have fun with classic cars, sports cars and behind the wheel – all these feelings will be experienced on special courses with special vehicles. The portfolio will increase. We'll have real race cars – sports and leisure cars – without a lot of electronics and away from full automation. Just think about motorbikes. Motorbikes have almost completely lost their practical use as a mode of transport in Europe and the USA. It's over. They have become pleasure machines. Something similar will happen with cars – people will drive on racecourses because it’s fun. Think of the renaissance of vinyl and record players. Good record players used to be completely automatic. Today, they’re all manual. Look at that in the context of mobility – it means our normal lives will be automated. The act of mobility, when automated, will at the same time continue life as a hobby, as art, and as sport, where it will be further perfected. Like cooking on an open fire – you don't have to do it anymore, but there are the most exotic, fantastic things. And so everything will get increasingly further away from everyday life, simply because it's too stressful. We're looking forward to it. Thank you very much for the conversation.

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