Page 727 - Week 03 - Tuesday, 8 March 2016
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Canberra businesses and researchers are working right now on autonomous vehicle technology: in spatial awareness and visual processing; in big data and analytics; in wireless communication, engineering and software development. These opportunities are just the beginning. The big gains will not be just in technology and manufacturing. Technology will change businesses and services in areas like freight and logistics, on-demand transport, insurance, car sharing, the internet of things and other ideas that no-one has even imagined yet.
Autonomous vehicles will have a wide impact on sectors that we might otherwise think of as entirely unrelated. Even parents of international students will be more willing to send their children to our universities if they know there are safe options to get them around their new home city.
Trialling and rolling out autonomous cars is not a question of if, but when. The major industry players are in a race to have ever more autonomous cars on our roads. No-one knows precisely when the first autonomous car will carry a private passenger on a public road, but the frontrunners in the race want to be in that market by 2025. That means children born today may never need a drivers licence.
There will be bumps in the road along the way. There are significant public questions about liability, infrastructure and consumer acceptance to resolve. Every single one of these challenges can be overcome, and I am sure they will be. Research and development in controlled settings has solved many of the technological challenges. More recent testing in public environments in a small number of cities has solved more. Only testing and trials in real-world environments will provide the confidence that will see driverless cars become an everyday part of our lives.
To date, public tests have mainly been restricted to the United States and Europe, with a few states and cities implementing laws governing testing driverless cars on public roads. Activity in the southern hemisphere has been slower, with limited controlled testing and no known testing in open public settings.
In November last year the South Australian government partnered with Volvo to demonstrate the technology on a closed highway as part of the international driverless car conference. In Western Australia the RAC has purchased a shuttle bus and will begin private trials from April, although no date has been set for tests in a public setting. There is ongoing academic research into autonomous cars across Australia. The University of New South Wales has teamed up with car share service GoGet to develop an integrated intelligent vehicular system. Data61 here in Canberra is examining the role of sensors and big data for intelligent transport systems.
The Australian driverless vehicle initiative brings all these streams of work together in collaboration between government, universities and a range of industry partners including Volvo, Tesla, Bosch, Suncorp Group, Toll, GoGet, SMEC and Seeing Machines, amongst others. Work is underway nationally, through bodies such as the National Transport Commission and Austroads, to examine the long-term legal and policy implications presented by the concept of a car without a driver.
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