Autonomous Vehicle Engineering - July 2022 - 24

Standards
The Partners
for Automated
Vehicle Education
(PAVE) is a coalition
of nearly 90
members tasked
with educating
the public on AV
technology.
it's really easy for people outside of industry to ask, 'Why
are you nerds quibbling over some words that kind of
all sound the same to us. What's the big deal?' I think
that we still have some progress to make on what's-the
big-deal part, as well as clarifying the distinction itself. "
Defining the autonomous convention
An ongoing challenge for engineers is a taxonomy that
keeps pace with the tech. More so than many projects
for SAE's standards organization, J3016 has required
near constant iteration since its publication four years
ago. " Updating every several years might not sound
really fast, " Nichols stated, " but in the standards world,
I would say that that is fairly rapid updating that speaks
to how it is a living document. "
Although the public quickly attached itself to the
term " autonomous, " that has not been the case in engineering
circles. " We have the word 'autonomous' being
a deprecated term, " Nicols detailed. " Right from day
one in J3016, using that term is not appropriate from
our engineering perspective. I think it's been more
reflective of a common use among the public that aren't
involved directly with automation itself... used more
casually or colloquially. "
Within engineering circles, distinguishing among
terms is something well understood. Those working
specifically around automation recognize that using
the term autonomous can be misleading and has its
own connotation, Nicols noted. Describing them as
autonomous could be understood as having their
own decision-making process, almost like a self-governance.
That's not appropriate, he said, as even the
systems not yet introduced to market are programmed;
they follow an algorithm.
" This is not a science fiction type of device. It is
not that something has been created to be used on a
vehicle that basically has its own direction on what it
wants to do, " Nicols emphasized. " You could argue
that sometime in the distant future these vehicles
would operate literally on their own accord, but that's
certainly not the case currently. It's because of that
connotation we think that this is not an appropriate
term - the term autonomous - to use for the technologies
being currently developed. "
According to Nicols, the distinction between
autonomous and automated is easier to discern at the
engineering systems level. " The phrase 'automated
vehicle' is another deprecated term within [J]3016, in
that the automation is part of a vehicle, " he said. " This
is probably a subtlety that isn't as widely recognized,
but what we try to emphasize in 3016 is that automation
applies to a feature or an aspect of a vehicle, not
the vehicle itself. "
Providing an example using windshield wipers,
he noted, " In some sense this is an automated device,
in that you turn a switch and the windshield wipers
operate without any further need for a human to take
some kind of action. It's just that single action being
programmed, " he said. " That's a simplistic and exaggerated
example, but you can take that and extend
it to the systems that we are discussing in 3016 that
are automated for the purposes of operating a vehicle
in motion - operating the steering system, operating
the acceleration and braking, or even more
24 July 2022
AUTONOMOUS VEHICLE ENGINEERING
PAVE
Autonomous Vehicle Engineering - July 2022

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