Sacramento’s core mission is to open its doors as a real world test zone to develop Autonomous Transportation Open Standards (ATOS). As a set of open communication protocols, ATOS would accelerate the time to market of Autonomous Vehicles (AVs) up to Level 5 Autonomy around the world. There are a number of obstacles that are currently slowing this process:
All aspects of the cities of the future will be connected via the Internet: infrastructure, citizens, homes, buildings, parks and autonomous vehicles. While the U.S. Department of Transportation is working on a Connected Vehicle Standards Development Plan to identify and prioritize standards necessary to support connected vehicle implementation, currently there is no set of standards for how these parts of the city of the future will communicate with one another. A leading example of this in practice are Autonomous Vehicles. AVs share information with one another, across different manufacturers and software developers. This prohibits AVs from being as safe as they can possibly be, delaying the time to market.
There is no regulatory framework that currently exists that will assure both the quickest and safest path to deployment of Level 5 AVs. Currently, AV manufacturers in most areas are required to have a safety driver and/or engineer on board. This almost completely rules out manufacturers of Level 5 AVs.
The various interdisciplinary implications that AVs present to our society are not fully understood. How do we ensure future employment for today’s automotive workers? How can AVs (especially powered by alternative fuels) combat global climate change and air quality concerns? How will society adjust to a new, sharing, model of car ownership? There is much uncertainty around AVs, worrying consumers and regulators alike.
ATOS seeks to overcome each of these three distinct obstacles in the following ways:
- Bring industry leaders together to test and develop ATOS: standard communication protocols for the networked sharing of information between vehicles, city infrastructure, and citizens in a real world setting.
- Work with California policymakers to create appropriate AV regulation, built around ATOS, that works for everyone, and create a model for the rest of the country, and the world to follow.
- Work with university partners to shape innovative and responsible public policy, as well as study the numerous ripple effects caused by the introduction of AVs to the world at scale.
Sacramento plans to pool the collective strengths of AV development, research and government involvement in California’s state capital, which offer the ideal setting for the creation of industry best practices for the large-scale deployment of AVs. The Lab offers members the chance to maximize their R&D dollars by collaborating within a demonstration city and open lab to build a set of protocols for the sharing of data among different AVs.
ATOS Lab is about more than just the networked communications protocols that will bring AVs to the world. It is also about human interaction with the AV opportunities. A real world citizen interaction where the social contract of citizen and autonomous transportation can be built, measured, and iterated on. A platform to ask and answer how to best to scale for the benefit of the public.
The ATOS Lab is a zone containing over 100 miles of roads for the testing, development and deployment of AV technology. The ATOS Lab encompasses Midtown, Downtown, and the Interstate 5 corridor from Sacramento International Airport to the urban core, and will be utilized as a testing area for Level 5 (and below) AVs. All AV developers and manufacturers, big or small, are welcome to come to Sacramento and begin testing their products in the real world.
The ATOS Lab proposed permanent headquarter is in the Sacramento Downtown Railyards.
The ATOS Lab only succeeds if its participants willingly share data and freely interact with one another. Only through this open source philosophy will the Lab participants accomplish the goal of bringing AVs to the world. Developers, manufacturers and their technology will act as connected nodes in a system to improve the knowledge of the group as a whole. For example, if one vehicle encounters an unexpected road obstruction, that information must be shared with all vehicles.
However, private and corporate IP will be protected and not required to be shared. This includes telemetry system designs, LIDAR sensors and other proprietary technology assisting in the autonomous functions of these vehicles. Participants agree to share any IP developed within the lab that relates to the sharing of street conditions data between vehicles and across manufacturer lines. This is intended to promote the scaling of the ATOS communications protocol beyond just the Sacramento Lab.
The ATOS Lab ecosystem is open to all AV manufacturers and technology developers, big or small. Small companies and corporations alike are welcome. Competitors may be driving alongside one another. This is our intention. If the industry as a whole can come together to develop best practices for the safe deployment of AVs, each individual member of the industry stands to gain as much as any other. The ATOS Lab’s goal is to bring a superior, and safe, method of AV deployment to the world. Members of the ATOS Lab should pursue this goal collectively, which does not preclude them from developing a superior product to bring to market.
To ensure the responsible use of AV technology, all members of the ATOS Lab must seek to further technology or policy development in at least three of the following areas:
- Transportation (Personal and mass transit)
- Consumer Services (Food delivery, couriers, etc.)
- Municipal Services (Waste removal, street cleaning, etc.)
- Health Care (Delivery or transport)
- Freight (Particularly last-mile and delivery)
- AV Public Policy and Regulation
- Emergency Responses with AVs
- New classifications of vehicles
- Employment and Workforce Development (i.e. new employment in the AV era)
- Land use and redevelopment in an urban setting with AVs
- Environment and clean air
- Shared Ownership Model (vs. personal ownership)