“I like the word autopilot more than I like the word self-driving,” Musk said in the interview. “Self-driving sounds like it’s going to do something you don’t want it to do. Autopilot is a good thing to have in planes, and we should have it in cars.”

Musk told Bloomberg that he’s discussed the autopilot concept with Google’s engineers and even mentioned the possibility of Tesla and Google jointly developing such a system. But Musk later tweeted from his Twitter account that his comments to Bloomberg were meant to be off the cuff, and that Tesla and Google weren’t announcing any big new initiative.

“Creating an autopilot for cars at Tesla is an important, but not yet top priority,” Musk tweeted. “Still a few years from production.”

Musk’s notion of an inexpensive autonomous driving system is an interesting one as it does away with the complex light detection and ranging — or Lidar — sensors that use 360-degree scanning lasers to render a 3D construct of the world around the vehicle. You’ve seen such funky laser arrays on top of mapping vehicles before, so the technology is readily available, but even a scaled down version of such systems would add enormous cost to car. According to Ford engineers, those costs are among the principal reasons why fully autonomous cars are still many years away from becoming reality.

But Musk posited that a car could simply use cameras to collect the data the car needs from its surroundings. The approach has its limitations compared to lasers. Cameras take pictures, while Lidar is registering physical objects, tracking their distance and relative speed to your car. Cameras would extrapolate that data from images. Stereoscopic lenses could allow for better depth perception on the road, but ultimately a camera-based system would depend on a lot of image-processing muscle to cull critical life-saving information from a massive pool of pixels.

Luckily for Musk, he’s not the only one thinking this way. Many of the new advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) systems that warn drivers of impending accidents or alert them to lane drifting are camera based. It’s also no coincidence that graphics card giant Nvidia is making a big play in the connected car space. The silicon vendor believes that its years of crunching real-time image and spatial data in PCs and game consoles make it the ideal company to power future car sensor systems.

Eventually cars won’t just sense the other vehicles and objects in their vicinity. Those vehicles will actively communicate with one another and those objects. Using a secure form of long-range Wi-Fi, a car will tell all the vehicles behind its about brake or change lanes. Transmitters on the highway will tell you a big curve is coming up. (For more info on the connected car see our infographic.)

Such vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure communications could never replace sensors entirely since it would take decades for every vehicle on the road and every stretch of asphalt to become connected. But those technologies would allow cars to evolve cars beyond autonomy into a kind of ad hoc network, in which they would collectively make decisions instead of merely reacting to each other’s actions.

Returning to Musk’s remarks, though, I find it particularly interesting how he’s positioning the concept of the driverless car. He’s calling it a form of autopilot not too far off from the adaptive cruise control we use in our vehicles. Musk is downplaying the idea of car usurping control from the driver. He’s keyed in on the biggest obstacle facing the autonomous vehicle today: consumer perception. Few people are ready to cede act of driving to computer.

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The RobotCar U.K. project is using a modified Nissan Leaf, an all-electric vehicle, which is fitted with around £5,000 ($7,750) worth of prototype navigation equipment. That system includes a controller PC in the trunk — which can control every function of the car — as well as cameras in the front, lasers discreetly tucked under the front and rear bumpers, and an iPad for the user interface up front.

In time, the researchers hope to develop an autonomous navigation system that costs just £100.

“We are working on a low-cost ‘auto drive’ navigation system, that doesn’t depend on GPS, done with discreet sensors that are getting cheaper all the time. It’s easy to imagine that this kind of technology could be in a car you could buy,” Professor Paul Newman, the project’s co-leader, said in a statement.

Mapping and learning

The system doesn’t use GPS because the satellite-based system is not accurate enough for the researchers’ needs. Instead, twin cameras keep an eye on the road ahead for pedestrians and so on, while the lasers create a three-dimensional map of the world around the car — this is a similar approach to that taken by Google in its autonomous vehicle research, except far cheaper (Google’s LIDAR unit alone costs $70,000) and less conspicuous.

This is where the car’s part-time autonomy comes in — at least in city environments. As Newman put it:

“Our approach is made possible because of advances in 3D laser mapping that enable an affordable car-based robotic system to rapidly build up a detailed picture of its surroundings. Because our cities don’t change very quickly robotic vehicles will know and look out for familiar structures as they pass by so that they can ask a human driver, ‘I know this route, do you want me to drive?’, and the driver can choose to let the technology take over.”

It’s really a matter of machine learning, the science of probability and good guesswork; and the data the researchers are using comes from the cameras and lasers, but also from road plans, aerial photographs and internet queries. The car needs to learn its environment before it can, metaphorically speaking, take the wheel. (The driver can always take back control by tapping the brakes.)

Check out this video showing car driving through a gradually-updating “semantic prior map” — in other words, all the fixed stuff such as road markings, curb locations and so on, with dynamic objects being mapped along the way:

As for next steps, the team will try to get the system to understand traffic flows and learn how to evaluate best routes.

“Whilst our technology won’t be in a car showroom near you any time soon, and there’s lots more work to do, it shows the potential for this kind of affordable robotic system that could make our car journeys safer, more efficient, and more pleasant for drivers,” Newman said.

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Last month at CES, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski announced that the commission was moving forward with a plan to clear 195 MHz of spectrum in the 5 GHz band for Wi-Fi use. Those new frequencies, however, abut the 5.9 GHz airwaves the government has set aside for future vehicle-to-vehicle communications networks.

On Monday, the Intelligent Transportation Society of America (ITSA) sent a letter to the FCC — signed by a veritable who’s who in the transportation industry such as AAA, Chrysler, Mercedes-Benz and Hyundai  – warning the FCC of the potential for these new Wi-Fi networks to interfere with the wireless transmissions between connected cars.

“We support efforts to identify spectrum that may be utilized to expand Wi-Fi applications,” ISTA said in a statement. “But with over 30,000 deaths on our nation’s roads every year, we also believe it is critical that efforts to open up additional spectrum do not come at the expense of revolutionary life-saving technologies.”

As we’ve described before, the auto industry and the U.S. Department of Transportation have big plans to use a highly secure variant of Wi-Fi technology to network vehicles on the road, allowing them to share information about their trajectories, speed, accelerating and braking — even their destinations. These massive ad-hoc networks would allow cars to get early warning of highway conditions, react automatically to avoid accidents and eventually allow cars to coordinate their driving, making them semi-or even fully-autonomous vehicles. (See GigaOM’s infographic on the connected car of the future.)

If the commercial Wi-Fi signals were to bleed out into the protected Wi-Fi signals of the car network, the letter said, the public safety and transportation management benefits of the network could be nullified — along with the hundreds of millions of dollars automakers and the government have invested in developing the technology. The auto industry doesn’t want the FCC’s Wi-Fi plan stopped, but it did ask regulators to guarantee that safeguards would be in place ensuring that such interference doesn’t occur.

That might be easier said then done. Interference issues have killed more than one big spectrum proposal as LightSquared can attest. In this case, the cars and the Wi-Fi devices would be using short-range wireless technologies, which might help mitigate interference issues. But as anyone who has ever turned on their smartphone’s Wi-Fi radio in a car knows, you can pick up a Wi-Fi signal almost anywhere. And as outdoor Wi-Fi deployments become more prevalent, those signals are only going to get more powerful.

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Adelaide-based Cohda designs the radio systems and software that will allow cars to form ad hoc mesh networks while on the road. Cars within those networks will not only be able to communicate critical safety information such as their speed and heading and whether they’re braking or accelerating, but they will also be able to link up with roadside sensor nodes and eventually a larger cloud-based intelligence – all of which would gradually take over the act of driving our vehicles.

While that might sound a bit far-fetched, Andreas Mai, Cisco product management director for smart connected vehicles, said he expects that within two years today’s adaptive cruise control systems will develop partial autonomy, allowing drivers to merge onto a crowded highway, flip a switch and let their cars drive themselves until they reach their exits.

Those systems will depend largely on the increasingly sophisticated sensor arrays being installed in new vehicles, but as more cars sport car-to-car and car-to-infrastructure connectivity, they’ll begin sharing information rather than just observing their surroundings, Mai said. That will allows cars to “platoon,” grouping together in configurations that ensure every vehicle gets to its destination in the quickest, yet safest, manner possible. Automakers like Ford believe the technology to create these kinds of autonomous highway networks is ready. It’s just a question of cost and convincing a skeptical driving public.

Cisco and NXPs’ entrance into the autonomous vehicle market is particularly telling though because of their expertise in traditional networking and radio communications. Car-to-car networks are essentially gigantic meshes, which Cisco builds everyday. Meanwhile NXP’s forte is radio modules. The wireless links that will connect cars are based on the same Wi-Fi technologies that connect our laptops and tablets.

The investment in Cohda, though, will strengthen Cisco and NXPs’ respective portfolios, the companies said. Cisco will license Cohda’s software, while NXP will license Cohda’s firmware and IEEE 802.11p radio designs.

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Using a variant of Ethernet that Broadcom has developed specifically for cars, Hyundai hopes to replace older, slower data networks used to connect infotainment and telematics components in vehicles. Hyundai also wants Ethernet to power the new wave of Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) such as lane departure sensors and surround view cameras.

Why Ethernet? It’s fast, it’s cheap and it’s the standard used by billions of networked computing devices in the world today. Today’s cars contain a hodgepodge of networks based on different automotive standards. Control Area Network (CAN) systems handle everything from power steering to the critical drive-train communications between the engine computer and the transmission. Local Interconnect Network (LIN) systems handle simple electro-mechanical functions such as moving the power seats and toggling the cruise control.

All of those different isolated networks could be replaced with a single Ethernet network, simplifying the mess of the cabling and protocols needed to run the modern vehicle, said Kevin Brown, VP and GM of Broadcom’s PHY group. Broadcom has formed an organization called the One-Pair-Ether-Net (Open) Alliance Special Interest Group with the aim of furthering Ethernet’s automotive ambitions.

So far the group has attracted 81 members, including many of the heavyweights of the automotive industry: Ford Motor, General Motors, Daimler, Honda, BMW, Nissan and Volvo. In addition, the Alliance has garnered support from two of Broadcom’s competitors, Freescale and NXP. The current standards the group proposes can deliver up to 100 Mbps of capacity to share between a car’s hundreds of different subsystems. Eventually that number will scale to 1 Gbps, according to the Alliance.

An Ethernet fit for the highway

The “One-Pair” in the alliance’s name refers to the fact that the automotive version of Ethernet will use a single pair of unshielded wires in the network’s cabling, as opposed to the four pairs used by standard Ethernet. Brown said that configuration greatly shrinks the size of the cables themselves, making it much easier for automakers to cram these networks into the nooks and crannies of their vehicles.

Apart from the physical interface, there’s no difference between the Ethernet going to Hyundai’s future sedans and the Ethernet jack in the back of your PC or Wi-Fi router. Broadcom and other one-pair component makers will also be able to incorporate full-Ethernet ports into their switches, which would allow standard Ethernet cables to connect to the car, Brown said.

Don’t expect all of your cars varied networks to give way to a unified Ethernet system overnight, though. Automakers are still a bit a cautious about changing up the networks on their cars’ most sensitive and critical driving functions. Also, automakers keep many of their subsystems separate for a reason. They want to take no chances that a malware loaded into a vehicle’s infotainment dash system could somehow infect the computers controlling acceleration and braking.

For that reason the Alliance is focusing initially on non-critical connected car features, such as the infotainment, comfort control and ADAS systems, Brown said. But eventually Broadcom hopes that Ethernet will become the unifying network of the car. Virtual LAN technology could be used to wall off different subsystems from one another, but as connected car technologies become more sophisticated, those subsystems will need to communicate in some form.

Sensors won’t just warn drivers of dangers, they’ll cause the car to act, braking or accelerating away from potential accidents. As we enter the age of the autonomous car, navigation systems will start directing car engines rather than car drivers.

“In the future, these applications are going to blur the lines between infotainment and the drive control systems in our cars,” Brown said. Consequently all of those systems will need to be internetworked.

Though many automakers have joined the alliance, only two have made specific public commitments to use the technology. Hyundai hasn’t stated specifically which future vehicles will get the Ethernet upgrade. BMW, which chairs the Alliance, has promised an actual car. Its 2013 X5 sport utility vehicle will be the first to host an Ethernet network, which will control its 360-degree surround view parking system. Image sensors, all connected via Broadcom’s Ethernet, detect the relative distance of obstacles on all sides of the vehicle, allowing drivers to tuck their SUVs perfectly into tight spots.

Feature image courtesy of Shutterstock user Mopic; Ethernet photo courtesy of Flickr user Ryan Franklin

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“There is no technology barrier from going where we are now to the autonomous car,” said Jim McBride, a Ford Research and Innovation technical expert who specializes in autonomous vehicle technologies. “There are affordability issues, but the big barrier to overcome is customer acceptance.”

McBride said Ford has already built research vehicles with high-resolution omnidirectional cameras that can see the road and the cars surroundings far better than any driver with a few mirrors. Those vehicles also have scanning lasers that can model the world around it in 3-D. Vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communications standards have been finalized that would allow cars not only to broadcast their location and speed to one another but also create ad hoc vehicular networks — hive minds that could coordinate the actions of thousands of automobiles on the roadway.

Those assets combined with location-based technologies and growing street-view-image databases from companies like Google can give a car a greater awareness of its surroundings than any driver alone could achieve, McBride said. And while laser arrays and omnidirectional cameras may be price-prohibitive, there are plenty of features already in vehicles today, such as front-and rear-facing cameras and ultrasonic sensors, that could perform many of those advanced technologies’ basic functions, he added.

But while Ford may be ready to take that technological jump, drivers aren’t quite prepared to take the leap of faith necessary to forfeit complete control of their vehicles to an onboard computer or larger network intelligence, said Mike Kane, the Ford vehicle engineering supervisor for driver assistance technologies. It’s not that drivers are adamantly opposed to the concept of a driverless car, Kane said; they just need to be introduced to that concept gradually.

Baby steps

Kane said Ford has hosted clinics and done polling on how consumers feel about autonomous and semi-autonomous vehicles. It found that while people are still uncomfortable with the idea of ceding the driver’s seat to a computer, they are very open to the idea of their cars becoming more intelligent and aware. New capabilities like collision warning for safety, automatic parallel parking and Ford’s Sync voice-control technology have been well received. Ford believes that through the gradual introduction of more automation, drivers will come around to the idea of a car that drives itself.

“People are more accepting of the idea,” Kane said. “They always want their cars to do more. . . . It’s going to take a decade before the masses fully accept the autonomous car, but they’ll get there.”

To help them along Ford is starting to move automation features that were previously only available in high-end luxury cars down to mass-market vehicles. The new Ford Fusion is the first affordable sedan to contain the automaker’s Lane Keeping System, which uses the car’s forward camera to detect when a car is drifting outside the lines. The system alerts the driver through vibrations in the steering wheel and audio warnings, but if the driver doesn’t respond the car will automatically correct, nudging the vehicle back into its lane.

That is an example of automation on the small scale, Kane said. The car isn’t taking over. It’s just giving the driver prompts, along with a slight little push in the right direction. Other technologies like pull-drift compensation, which automatically adjusts steering for crosswinds or uneven roads, automated parallel parking assistance, and adaptive cruise control are all examples of semi-autonomous features that are making it into mass-market cars like the Fusion. Ultimately making those features standard in all vehicle models will begin to alter the average consumer’s perception of automated driving, Kane said.

And what about the thrill of driving?

You’d think in a country as car-obsessed as the U.S., allowing your car to do the driving for you would be anathema to many drivers, especially the ones who invest in high-performance vehicles. But McBride said the opposite true: It’s in sports car and luxury car lines that automation is in highest demand.

That’s explained, McBride said, by how the average U.S. driver actually spends time on the road: commuting from home to work and back, often in bumper-to-bumper traffic. There’s nothing thrilling about a road bogged down by congestion, and it’s in traffic that these automation services are most useful, McBride said. He also noted that customers can elect to turn off those automation features whenever they choose. When on an empty rural highway with the top down, a driver doesn’t necessarily want his car constantly correcting his lane position.

“You still have that freedom whenever you want it,” McBride said. “But if drivers spend 53 minutes of their day in traffic, they get tired.”

There may, however, come a time when that freedom isn’t an option. At Mobile World Congress earlier this year, Ford’s namesake Executive Chairman Bill Ford laid out a “Blueprint for Mobility,” which envisions a world of 4 billion vehicles. All of those cars simply won’t have room to move if all of their drivers are acting independently, Ford predicted. Only through inter-networking vehicles with one another and other transportation networks will we be able to ensure all of those drivers get from point A to point B.

Ford’s notion is interesting, because in that world the driverless vehicle remains automatic but is no longer autonomous. Instead it is working with all the other vehicles on the road to create the optimal traffic patterns for the whole, while ignoring individual drivers’ own inclinations to, say, weave through lanes or tailgate. It’s a sort of enforced social contract on the highway, and, according to McBride, eventually we may not have a choice but to enter into such contracts.

There are already cities like London that place conditions on drivers entering their confines — rush-hour congestion taxes or prohibitions against energy-inefficient vehicles, McBride said. It’s not that far of a stretch to imagine that cities with the worst congestion would require future drivers to hand over the steering wheel as a condition for driving on their streets.

Image courtesy of Flickr user epSos.de

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