Phantom Auto | Innovation Day 2018
Channel: SiliconANGLE theCUBE
Date: 2018-01-31

theCUBE team visits Phantom Auto, developing remote operation capability for autonomous vehicles.

#PhantomAuto #SelfDrivingCars #theCUBE

https://siliconangle.com/2018/01/30/the-human-drivers-behind-autonomous-cars-phantom-auto-races-towards-the-future-phantomautoinnovationday/

Phantom Auto races to get autonomous cars on the road – with a little human help

Talk with any company involved in autonomous cars, and it’s likely to insist that it wants to take the driver out of the car, full stop. One startup is taking a different approach. It wants to keep the human driver — just not in the car itself.

Phantom Auto has begun piloting technology for autonomous cars that allows a human driver, sitting in a quiet room up to thousands of miles away, to take control of the vehicle in critical situations where driverless systems draw a blank. Its technology is designed to get both skeptical regulators and wary passengers comfortable with the idea of letting a machine drive a car.

The current climate surrounding autonomous cars offers a good reason why an extra layer of safety might be just what the industry needs. A survey conducted by the American Automobile Association last year showed that 78 percent of U.S. drivers feel unsafe about the prospect of riding in a driverless car. And at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in early January, Secretary of Transportation Elaine Chao warned the industry that the government was not even close to allowing unfettered autonomous driving.

“The reason why we’re still not there yet is because there are many corner cases, edge cases,” said Phantom Auto co-founder and Chief Executive Shai Magzimof, a serial entrepreneur who has sold two companies, one of them to Apple Inc. “I wanted to make [driverless cars] happen faster and sooner, because it’s a life-saving technology. This is going to change the world.”

Jeff Frick, host of SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio theCUBE, met with Magzimof during a recent visit to Phantom Auto’s Mountain View, California headquarters. He also spoke with Elliot Katz, the company’s co-founder and head of business, legal and policy; Jordan Sanders, director of business and operations; and software engineer Ben Shukman (pictured at Phantom’s remote-driving management console, above). They discussed how the company plans to provide safety and trust so that driverless cars will become widely accepted, how the company designed technology to overcome latency issues, and the regulatory future for autonomous vehicles.


A solution for the edge case
The current problem confronting the autonomous car industry is that no manufacturer can guarantee 100 percent safety 100 percent of the time. That might seem like a tough standard, given that 94 percent of car crashes today are caused by human driver error. But it’s the edge case, such as messy construction zones with piles of mud in the road and workers directing traffic using hand signals, where autonomous technology may not be completely reliable. This is the gap Phantom Auto believes it can fill.

“We’re all about safety and giving passengers this psychological trust,” Magzimof said.


Phantom’s solution equips an autonomous car with a combination of software and hardware to allow a human operator to take over control of the vehicle when necessary. The fundamental architecture is drive-by-wire, electronic signals already installed in many cars that enable key features.

“We can create an artificial electronic signal and inject it into a place in the vehicle where it processes that information and artificially moves the steering wheel or the brakes or the gas,” Shukman explained.


Solving the latency issue
Using cameras mounted in the vehicle, an operator in Phantom Auto’s Silicon Valley headquarters can visually see the road ahead and maneuver the car using a steering wheel attached to a computer console. A remote operator can also verbally communicate with passengers inside the car. The tricky problem of being able to gauge how much pressure to apply for braking remotely is solved through the use of sensors and accelerometers.

For now, at least, the company uses largely off-the-shelf components, such as high-end Logitech International SA’s game controllers and control pedals. Indeed, each control module looks like an advanced video game or simulator in which the remote driver sits, watching five screens that include front and side views from the car’s perspective as well as data on latency and other functions.


The biggest technological hurdles for Phantom Auto involved latency and reliability. Remote control of a moving car depends on a reliable, strong cell signal and real-time response. The company’s solution was to use multiple wireless carriers at the same time, combining signals from Verizon and AT&T with T-Mobile and Sprint. A machine learning algorithm directs connectivity across networks in case one signal suddenly gets throttled or degrades.

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