Towards Full Automated Drive in Urban Environments: A Demonstration in GoMentum Station, California

Each year, millions of motor vehicle traffic accidents all over the world cause a large number of fatalities, injuries and significant material loss. Automated Driving (AD) has potential to drastically reduce such accidents. In this work, we focus on the technical challenges that arise from AD in urban environments. We present the overall architecture of an AD system and describe in detail the perception and planning modules. The AD system, built on a modified Acura RLX, was demonstrated in a course in GoMentum Station in California. We demonstrated autonomous handling of 4 scenarios: traffic lights, cross-traffic at intersections, construction zones and pedestrians. The AD vehicle displayed safe behavior and performed consistently in repeated demonstrations with slight variations in conditions. Overall, we completed 44 runs, encompassing 110km of automated driving with only 3 cases where the driver intervened the control of the vehicle, mostly due to error in GPS positioning. Our demonstration showed that robust and consistent behavior in urban scenarios is possible, yet more investigation is necessary for full scale roll-out on public roads.Comment: Accepted to Intelligent Vehicles Conference (IV 2017

A Mindful Moral Compass for Twenty-First Century Leadership: The Noble Eightfold Path

Marques reviews contemporary leaders in business, human rights advocacy, and social entrepreneur circles as examples of individuals who have channeled their efforts to guide their careers in a sustainable and morally responsible manner within the context of the ancient “Noble Eightfold Path,”— a core Buddhist philosophy. Applied to a secular world, Marques further identifies, explains, and applies the eight elements of the Path as a model for modern-day leadership

Uganda: Data Strategy and Capacity Building

As part of Uganda's commitment to the Sustainable Development Agenda, the country has made substantial progress toward improved national development data—including the launch of a Development Data Hub supported by Development Initiatives and a review of open data readiness jointly undertaken by the government and the World Bank. Uganda however, lacks an organized framework for collecting and sharing reliable and comparable data on philanthropy. As such, the newly established Uganda National Philanthropy Forum (UPF) represents a key mechanism for the sector to consolidate its e orts and hone its contributions to national development. The forum was established in October 2015, facilitated by the East Africa Association of Grantmakers (EAAG), in partnership with Independent Development Fund (IDF), Development Network of Indigenous Voluntary Associations (DENIVA) and GoBig Hub. Its objective is to explore strategies for consolidating and organizing the philanthropy sector in Uganda.As a follow up to the UPF agenda on advancing philanthropy data in Uganda, EAAG and the Foundation Center in partnership with IDF and DENIVA hosted a Data Scoping Meeting on October 25th 2016. The objective of the meeting was to explore opportunities to strengthen data sharing and management to enhance the sector's coordination and in uence on national development policy. The meeting brought together 35 foundations, trusts and other local philanthropy organizations

Multi-Object Tracking with Interacting Vehicles and Road Map Information

In many applications, tracking of multiple objects is crucial for a perception of the current environment. Most of the present multi-object tracking algorithms assume that objects move independently regarding other dynamic objects as well as the static environment. Since in many traffic situations objects interact with each other and in addition there are restrictions due to drivable areas, the assumption of an independent object motion is not fulfilled. This paper proposes an approach adapting a multi-object tracking system to model interaction between vehicles, and the current road geometry. Therefore, the prediction step of a Labeled Multi-Bernoulli filter is extended to facilitate modeling interaction between objects using the Intelligent Driver Model. Furthermore, to consider road map information, an approximation of a highly precise road map is used. The results show that in scenarios where the assumption of a standard motion model is violated, the tracking system adapted with the proposed method achieves higher accuracy and robustness in its track estimations

Collective Perception: A Safety Perspective

Vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communication is seen as one of the main enabling technol-ogies for automated vehicles. Collective perception is especially promising, as it allows connected traffic participants to “see through the eyes of others” by sharing sensor-detected objects via V2X communication. Its benefit is typically assessed in terms of the increased object update rate, redun-dancy, and awareness. To determine the safety improvement thanks to collective perception, the authors introduce new metrics, which quantify the environmental risk awareness of the traffic par-ticipants. The performance of the V2X service is then analyzed with the help of the test platform TEPLITS, using real traffic traces from German highways, amounting to over 100 h of total driving time. The results in the considered scenarios clearly show that collective perception not only con-tributes to the accuracy and integrity of the vehicles’ environmental perception, but also that a V2X market penetration of at least 25% is necessary to increase traffic safety from a “risk of serious traffic accidents” to a “residual hypothetical risk of collisions without minor injuries” for traffic participants equipped with non-redundant 360° sensor systems. These results support the ongoing world-wide standardization efforts of the collective perception service

The Backside of Habit: Notes on Embodied Agency and the Functional Opacity of the Medium

In this chapter what I call the “backside” of habit is explored. I am interested in the philosophical implications of the physical and physiological processes that mediate, and which allow for what comes to appear as almost magic; namely the various sensorimotor associations and integrations that allows us to replay our past experiences, and to in a certain sense perceive potential futures, and to act and bring about anticipated outcomes – without quite knowing how. Thus, the term “backside” is meant to refer both the actual mediation and the epistemic opacity of these backstage intermediaries that allow for the front stage magic. The question is if the epistemic complexities around sensorimotor mediation gives us valuable insights into the nature of human agency and further how it might begin to show us new ways to think of the mind as truly embodied yet not reducible to any finite body-as-object

From Forced Revolution to Failed Transition: the Nightmarish Agency of Revolutionary Neo-Liberalism in Iraq

Este artículo explora los esfuerzos realizados para fomentar el mercado y aplicar técnicas de ingeniería constitucional como medios para el cambio liberal en el Irak de posguerra. Al identificar los intereses, tácticas de coerción e ideas previamente asumidas acerca del entorno político en el que se han aplicado estos proyectos, se identifica su culpabilidad en la generación de la situación actual. El articulo profundiza además en como las narrativas contemporáneas de la transición global y de su carácter novedoso articularon una visión del régimen iraquí como fuente de esfuerzos de transformación. Sugiero que esta visión, y los proyectos de revolución y transición forzadas que se basaron en ella, era más atractiva por su lógica interna que por una apreciación realista de la situación en Irak. En ultima instancia, los resultados de los proyectos de neoliberalismo revolucionario y transición en Irak requerirán que hagamos algo mas que señalar los fallos de EE.UU. al implementarlos o las carencias culturales de los iraquíes; estos deberían hacernos considerar las limitaciones de fomentar el mercado y la metodología de transición como técnicas para comprender y actuar sobre el mundo político

Can islands of effectiveness thrive in difficult governance settings ? the political economy of local-level collaborative governance

Many low-income countries contend with a governance syndrome characterized by a difficult combination of seeming openness, weak institutions, and strong inter-elite contestation for power and resources. In such countries, neither broad-based policy nor public management reforms are likely to be feasible. But are broad-based approaches necessary? Theory and evidence suggest that in such settings progress could be driven by"islands of effectiveness"-- narrowly-focused initiatives that combine high-quality institutional arrangements at the micro-level, plus supportive, narrowly-targeted policy reforms. This paper explores whether and how local-level collaborative governance can provide a platform for these islands of effectiveness. Drawing on the analytical framework developed by the Nobel-prize winning social scientist Elinor Ostrom, the paper reviews the underpinnings of successful collaborative governance. It introduces a simple model for exploring the interactions between collaborative governance and political economy. The model highlights the conditions under which coordination is capable of countering threats from predators seeking to capture the returns from collaborative governance for themselves. The relative strength in the broader environment of two opposing networks emerges as key --"threat networks"to which predators have access, and countervailing"trumping networks"on which protagonists of effective collaborative governance can draw. The paper illustrates the potential practical relevance of the approach with three heuristic examples: the governance of schools, fisheries, and road construction and maintenance. It concludes by laying out an agenda for further empirical research, and suggesting what might be the implications of the approach for future operational practice.Governance Indicators,National Governance,Public Sector Corruption&Anticorruption Measures,Environmental Economics&Policies,Economic Policy, Institutions and Governance