SAE Launches Office of Automation

June 1, 2019

Jennifer Shuttleworth

Highway Pilot, shown here in a Freightliner prototype truck, consists of assistance and connectivity systems that enable automated driving on the highway.

SAE International announced at its 2019 Government/Industry Meeting the creation of a new unit, the Office of Automation, focused on helping industry coordinate the development and dissemination of automated-driving technologies. The Office of Automation will align SAE’s internal activities in this fast-moving area and serve as a bridge between other SAE Group organizations, while providing technical resources to facilitate the flow of automated-vehicle (AV) information.

Office of Automation director Edward Straub describes the unit as “a first effort to deal with the broad and cross-disciplinary nature of automated vehicles.”

Vital SAE activities under way include Standards Committees that are addressing aspects of automation; professional education, messaging and public education; and a growing number of industry and public demonstrations of AVs.

Straub joined SAE International in August 2018 from the American Center for Mobility, where he was the Technical Program Director and Chief Safety Officer. Previously, he was a Program Manager with US Army Tank-Automotive Research, Development and Engineering Center (TARDEC) where he planned and led Applied Robotics for Installation and Base Operations (ARIBO).

SAE’s Office of Automation is set up as a matrix organization, Straub noted. He along with Patti Kreh, the Office’s Program Development Specialist, work with people across SAE and SAE ITC (Industry Technologies Consortia) toward a common objective and goals.

“When I say coordinating activities related to automated vehicles, it’s not just awareness from one committee to the other. It’s also co-ordinating the functions and making sure we are leveraging the right people, toward the right end that’s better for industry and better for SAE,” Straub explained.

The initial goals for the Office of Automation are to minimize any duplication of effort and to leverage SAE’s position as a neutral convener, to help increase public awareness about what AVs are. “Also, from the education side, a goal is to prepare the workforce and the next generation of engineers for what’s coming,” Straub said.

While the office’s current focus is light-duty vehicles, incorporating work with the commercial heavy-duty trucking industry may come since similarities between the two spaces exist. Straub noted that the office is maintaining awareness of what the commercial trucking industry is doing and the challenges it faces.

It really comes down to application. “A lot of the technology will be similar if not the same — as well as the testing and the validation processes would be similar,” he told Truck & Off-Highway Engineering. “It’s about integrating the technology onto vehicles and accounting for the different size and weight and form factor, etc, and then what those potential commercial applications are.”

Straub’s first milestone as director was to work with the SAE ITC to establish the Automated Vehicle Safety Consortium. The AVSC also was announced at the Government/Industry Meeting. It was founded by Ford, General Motors and Toyota in collaboration with SAE International to quickly establish safety principles, common terminology, and best safety practices for automated driving. The members believe that consensus on these items will accelerate the development of industry standards and increase public confidence in the safe operation of SAE Level 4 and Level 5 light-duty passenger and cargo on-road vehicles ahead of their wide-spread deployment.

Although the AVSC is focused on work with the membership passenger-car companies, there is a possibility of consortium membership for trucking companies and Tier 1s. The same technology that applies to passenger cars applies to heavy trucks. But for now, the AVSC is taking a measured approach to growth.

The Office has worked to establish industry consortia through the SAE ITC and engage industry OEMs and developers to build program governance, operations, and funding models. There are active efforts to develop safety principles and best practices that “will feed back to the SAE committees and lead to new standards,” Straub said. “That is another aspect of the Office of Automation — to sort of act as that bridge between ITC and SAE International.” That includes advising the consortium and accelerating standards and identifying the right committees and bringing that information to them.

No one industry is leading the race to autonomy, according to Straub. “You are seeing a lot of advances in both of those spaces right now. It depends who you ask, which one will be the first place where you see autonomy.”

There are companies working on automation for personally owned passenger cars, while others are focused on shared mobility and automated mass transit. And, of course, a number of companies are working on automated trucking applications as well.

“It’s definitely a technology that’s going to impact all modes of the transportation ecosystem,” Straub noted.

“SAE is at the center of the universe for automated vehicles,” he said. “It’s got a lot of great people and I’m excited to work with them all—dedicated to industry and making things better.”