Driverless Cars
© folienfeuer / Adobe Stock not. Since 2010, most major automotive companies and several tech and electronics firms have forged partnerships and entered the race to develop the driverless car. The majority of these companies expect to have fully autonomous vehicles ready by or before 2021, and some have already succeeded. For example, autonomous Ubers are currently roving the streets of Pittsburgh, Tempe, Arizona, and San Francisco. In October 2016, Otto( an Uber subsidiary) conducted the first driverless commercial shipment in Colorado, where a transport truck full of Budweiser drove itself 120 miles from Fort Collins to Colorado Springs. In 2015, Google put a fully autonomous vehicle with no pedals or steering wheel on the streets of Austin, Texas. In the same year, Delphi completed a 3,400-mile driverless road trip from San Francisco to New York City in an Audi SQ5. Ford continues to test autonomous vehicles at Mcity( the University of Michigan’ s 32-acre mock city designated for driverless testing), and on city streets in Michigan, California and Arizona, with plans to begin testing in Europe. It is estimated that 10 million autonomous vehicles will be present on public roads within the next three years, and by 2040, over 75 per cent of the vehicles on the road will be driverless.
To keep pace with technology, U. S. legislation governing autonomous vehicle testing has developed recently and proliferated quickly. In 2011, Nevada became the first state to allow autonomous vehicles. As of June 2017, 33 states
34 Q3 2017 www. amcto. com have introduced legislation to permit the testing of autonomous vehicles. Eighteen states have passed this legislation, and an additional four state governors have issued executive orders related to autonomous vehicles.
While our neighbours to the south have already embraced the driverless revolution, Canada is the last G7 nation to begin planning for autonomous vehicles. In October 2015, Ontario Transportation Minister Steven Del Duca announced that Ontario would be the first Canadian province to test driverless vehicles on public roads beginning Jan. 1, 2016. Under the pilot project, corporations and researchers are permitted to apply to test autonomous vehicles on public roads, so long as a licensed driver is behind the wheel to take control of the vehicle if necessary. The pilot is scheduled to run for 10 years and is restricted to testing purposes only. More recently, the Ontario government announced that it will invest $ 80 million over five years to create the Autonomous Vehicle Innovation Network in partnership with Ontario Centres of Excellence. As part of the 2017 provincial budget, the Ontario government identified the City of Stratford as a demonstration zone for autonomous vehicles. Details are still forthcoming, but it is understood that driverless technology will be tested in research locations around the province, with actual vehicle testing on the streets of Stratford, the province’ s only demonstration zone. Finally, the 2017 federal budget allocated $ 76.7 million to modernizing Canada’ s transportation system, which will include the development of regulations for autonomous vehicles. However, Ontario remains the only Canadian province to allow driverless vehicle testing.
In conjunction with the 2015 provincial autonomous vehicle pilot project announcement, the City of Stratford partnered with the Automotive Parts Manufacturers Association( APMA) to position itself as Ontario’ s first reallife testing ground for autonomous vehicles. APMA chose to partner with Stratford because of the substantial investment the municipality has made in digital infrastructure. Today, Stratford offers a citywide wireless network that includes 60 kilometres of buried fibre optic high-speed internet cable and 400 communications towers. The presence of this digital infrastructure saved APMA several million dollars and made Stratford an ideal location to demonstrate new automotive technology in a“ living lab” environment.
Autonomous vehicle testing began in Stratford in 2016 when Renesas Electronics partnered with Blackberry QNX and the Waterloo Centre for Automotive Research( WatCAR) to test an autonomous car prior to the Las Vegas consumer electronics show. An autonomous Lincoln MKZ circled the Stratford Festival parking lot for six weeks during the holiday season. In June 2017, Stratford city council approved a three-year lease agreement with Renesas to use a portion of cityowned property for autonomous