While the world is still waiting for flying cars, it’s proving just as hard to advance the cause of innovative vehicles with wheels still firmly planted on the ground.

For a field that looked highly promising only a few years ago, autonomous driving has experienced a year of harsh realities. In just the last six months, Daimler AG’s chief executive declared that his company was finding it more difficult to develop self driving cars than expected and Ford Motor Co.’s CEO admitted that his company misunderstood how long it would take to get its autonomous vehicles ready for prime time.

Even Waymo, the Google LLC subsidiary which has actually deployed self-driving cars on the roads today, announced last week that it would close a facility in Texas, following a report by Morgan Stanley which cut the firm’s valuation by 40%.

What exactly is going on here? To sort out the state of the autonomous vehicle world, Western Digital Inc., in partnership with Wired, hosted a set of panel discussions Thursday evening at its corporate facility in Milpitas, California. The data storage company provides technology for vehicle systems, including those designed to meet the storage demands of connected cars.

Uber makes changes

Looming over the development of self-driving cars has been the unfortunate death of a pedestrian in Arizona last year who was struck by an autonomous vehicle being tested by Uber Inc. (pictured). Reports following the accident indicated that Uber had disabled the car’s autonomous emergency brakes and standard collision-avoidance system. It was also revealed that the human riding in the car was watching a TV show on her phone at the time of the accident.

“We remain deeply regretful for the crash in Tempe,” Miriam Chaum, head of public policy for self-driving cars for Uber, said during a panel session. “We learned an incredible amount through this process.”

Since the death in Arizona, Uber has required the presence of two people in all test vehicles, according to Chaum. Uber resumed tests of its self-driving cars in Pittsburgh in December, while the pedestrian’s family has sued Tempe and the state of Arizona for $10 million.

The death in Arizona has forced the autonomous driving industry to reexamine its safety process and led to a public trust issue as communities weigh whether to allow self-driving vehicles on the roads.

“Automated driving safety does not come down to a test,” said Bryant Walker Smith, associate professor at the University of South Carolina’s School of Law. “It’s not a onetime event. It’s a marriage, a lifelong commitment.”

Seeking regulatory help

A major issue for the autonomous vehicle industry and communities confronted with testing on local streets is the absence of clear regulatory standards in the U.S. More than 40 states are weighing controls, but there are only voluntary guard rails so far and nothing at the federal level governing deployment of the technology.

Congressional attempts to pass legislation around the use of autonomous vehicles have been stalled in the Senate, although a major hearing on the issue is scheduled for next week. Ironically, at a time when the tech world has grown fearful of government regulation around issues such as data privacy and antitrust, the autonomous vehicle industry is openly seeking regulatory guidance.

“Nobody in this industry, including Cruise, is advocating against government regulation,” said Robert Grant, vice president of government affairs at GM Cruise LLC. “There’s an innumerable series of variables that go into this. There’s a lot that still needs to be understood here.”

Fight over bandwidth

Grant’s point around the complexity of the technology goes to the heart of being able to trust that a self-driving, rapidly moving two-ton computerized vehicle will make the right decision every time. Autonomous tech is complicated and, as automobile makers grapple with loading more intelligence and connectivity into cars, there’s a fight brewing over the highly coveted wireless bandwidth to power that.

Dedicated Short Range Communication or DSRC technologies use a specific 5.9 GHz frequency band allocated for intelligent transport services. Because it is free, unlicensed spectrum and has attractive low latency, it’s popular among cell phone providers and the cable industry seeking to deploy home WiFi and other “internet of things” devices at gigabit speeds.

In 1999, the Federal Communications Commission allocated a modest portion of the spectrum to be used for intelligent transport services. A lot has transpired since then.

Automobile companies that use the 5.9 GHz band for vehicle-to-vehicle communications are growing concerned that expanded use by cell and cable providers could interfere with autonomous control systems and vital communications.

“It’s in a very interesting part of the spectrum that’s highly coveted,” said Chris Armstrong, vice president of Cirrus/V2X at Panasonic USA. “You can use that spectrum in different ways.”

Urban future

Despite the issues surrounding self-driving vehicles today, the major players in the market continue to pursue a vision that could ultimately reshape transportation, particularly in heavily urbanized areas of the world. In the city of Los Angeles, one of the globe’s most traffic-plagued communities, a public-private alliance has been formed to develop new solutions for transportation innovation.

The initiative, known as Urban Movement Labs, combines city transportation agencies with private sector partners such as Waymo, Lyft Inc. and Verizon Inc. to develop viable transit alternatives, including self-driving technology. It’s part of the long game for this nascent industry.

“Cities are very interested in how to plan their transportation systems going forward,” said Uber’s Chaum. “We have to acknowledge that there’s many other broader objectives for this technology and for the transportation sector.”

Photo: ABC15