Understanding the levels of autonomy.
I'm not sure which will be mainstream first, autonomous vehicles or autonomous engineering. Here's my take on the stages to adoption.
The transition from where we are today to where we’ll be in the not-to-distant future.
With all the recent news about autonomy, I thought I’d do my part to educate the masses about the different levels. You may have heard that the Society of Automotive Engineers defines 6 levels of driving automation ranging from 0 (fully manual) to 5 (fully autonomous). These levels have been adopted by the U.S. Department of Transportation, and get all sorts of publicity on webinars and blogs.
Well that’s not what I’m going to teach you about. Somebody (a bunch of somebodies) is behind the infrastructure required by autonomous vehicles. Regardless of the deployment type, engineers are busy engineering. You know engineering has a direct connection to human behavior, so let me show you how technology will save the human race.
The Society of Safe Engineers defines 6 levels of engineering automation ranging from 0 (fully manual) to 5 (fully autonomous). These levels have not yet been adopted by the National Society of Professional Engineers.
Level 0 (No Engineering Automation)
Most engineers at the office today are Level 0: boss-controlled. A human boss is licensed to provide the "dynamic engineering task,” although there may be software systems in place to help the engineer.
An example would be the AutoCAD software―since it technically doesn’t "engineer" the street, it does not qualify as automation.
Level 1 (Engineer Assistance)
This is the lowest level of automation. The office features a single automated system for engineering assistance, such as bike lane templates.
Bike lane templates, where the office staff can be kept at a safe distance from criticism, qualifies as Level 1 because the human engineer monitors the other aspects of engineering such as lane width and striping.
Level 2 (Partial Engineering Automation)
This means advanced engineer assistance systems. The office can control both engineering and client comments.
Here the automation falls short because a human sits at the computer and can take control of the software at any time and revert to dangerous engineering, such as ignoring the “minimum” columns in AASHTO’s Green Book for lane widths and design speeds.
Level 3 (Conditional Engineering Automation)
The jump from Level 2 to Level 3 is substantial from a technological perspective, but subtle if not negligible from a human perspective. Level 3 engineering has “environmental detection” capabilities and can make informed decisions for office staff, such as alerts for 12-foot wide car lanes and bi-directional bike lanes.
But―they still require human override. The engineer might remain alert and override the task of safe street design.
Level 4 (High Engineering Automation)
The key difference between Level 3 and Level 4 automation is that Level 4 engineers can’t intervene if things go right or there is a system success. In this sense, these software programs do not allow human interaction in most circumstances.
Human engineers can only override the design within a limited area (usually an isolated highway in Montana or Alaska). This is known as geofencing.
Level 5 (Full Engineering Automation)
Level 5 engineering does not allow human intervention―the “dynamic engineering task” is eliminated. Level 5 won’t have any need for university degrees or PE licenses.
The programs will be free from geofencing, able to design any safe street and deliver any bike-friendly infrastructure that a human boss would have historically prevented. Fully autonomous engineering offices are undergoing testing in several pockets of the world, but none are yet available to government agencies or consulting firms.
Zero traffic deaths on our streets.
Once we reach Level 5, Vision Zero is achieved. Technology has more upside than you thought.