The news that the Connected Motorcycle Consortium (CMC) has published its first stage 'Basic Specification' to allow manufacturers to plan moves towards a V2V (or at least motorcycle-to-motorcycle) common standard is very important. This will enable rival brands of machines to 'play nice' with each other and other road users in the 'Brave New World' of autonomous driving.
A future in which Level 4 or 5 True Self Driving (TSD) fully autonomous vehicles will be able to read and recognise motorcycles, communicate with them, and vice-versa.
Many so-called collision avoidance devices and systems are already found in vehicles (cars especially), but Advanced Driver Assistance systems (ADA) are just Level 0, 1, 2 and 3 stages on the way to TSD full (but not full-time) autonomy. When Level 4 and 5 are with us, motorcycles will have to be recognisable to all vehicles and be able to integrate their systems with all other vehicles.
Seamless V2X (Vehicle to Everything) is going to need a common communications standard through which to be able to exchange information to make C-ITS (Cooperative Intelligent Transport Systems) practical.
The defining of the 'Basic Specification' isn't the end of the process, but it is the end of the beginning. It has been four years in the making, and an all-important and entirely necessary first step in a process that could give future users of two wheels unimagined levels of safety and convenience.
The Consortium has seen BMW, Honda, Triumph, Yamaha, Suzuki and KTM (ACEM is also a member) form a working party which, through several studies, the development and evaluation of prototype bikes and through meetings and discussions with different major stakeholders, has achieved that critical first stage.
Do not underestimate just how huge this has the potential to be for our industry. As ACEM Secretary General Antonio Perlot stated: "The integration of motorcycles in the C-ITS ecosystem will bring significant safety benefits and will lead to better integration of motorcycles in the transport system."
J3016 keeps the human role
But in fact, it goes way deeper even than that.
It is impossible to underestimate just how far our industry needed to move from the dawning of the first European Motorcycle Multi-Directive in 1996, and equally impossible to overestimate just how far in the right direction the industry has travelled since then.
The 'Gang of Six' are still hoping that other manufacturers will now be minded to 'come on board' as, either way, they will have to work with whatever standards are developed. December saw 'The Six' sign up to a second stage - CMC 'Next' - that already got underway in January.
This second phase will see the approach widened and the work include investigating the conspicuity of motorcycles by ADA systems. This stage will look at creating synergies between on-board sensor systems and connectivity and define further essential functional requirements.
The 'Basic Specification' is a first step to ultimately being able to describe the function of motorcycle V2X systems - which will include 'Vehicle-to-all-Vehicles' and 'Vehicle-to-Infrastructure'.
Motorcycle systems will need to be able to mesh V2X or DSRC (Dedicated Short-Range Communications) with the communication systems in the rest of the road transport industry. For example, motorcycles need to be able to integrate with the on-board sensor systems (radar, camera, etc.) and driver assistance systems being developed in the automotive, rapid transit and road freight markets.
Don't let anybody be under any illusion - this is not trivial. It may be a long-term issue, but it is one that places an opportunity-rich future for the PTW industry in opposition to an otherwise existential crisis with no apparent future for PTWs.
At present, the most advanced so-called autonomous systems being trialled and installed by the automotive industry are delivering Level 2 semi-autonomy, basically 'driver assist' rather than 'driver replace'. If Tesla continues to develop its AutoPilot, then it will break into Level 3 semi-autonomous territory at some stage soon.
From there to Level 4 and 5 is a huge leap, but after that the differences between Level 4 and 5 are subtle.
Both allow Artificial Intelligence (AI) to drive the vehicle. The primary difference is that Level 4 permits engagement of the automatic system only within the scope of the vehicle's pre-defined Operational Design Domain (ODD). In Level 5 there is no such set of limitations. Both are "True Self Driving", but both can also be driven by a human.
The SAE J3016 standard (actually, it's more of a protocol) stipulates that in all circumstances and in both levels the system can be overridden by a human. It is not a prescription for full-time autonomy, neither is it necessarily about 'driver replace' - but neither level stipulates that a human driver MUST be available in the vehicle.
The issues of the democratisation of transport, safety, energy and emissions are so huge that a connected and largely electric future transport policy is a genie that will never go back into the bottle.
However, provided that motorcycles are integrated into that traffic ecosystem, then our industry can continue to co-exist with autonomous vehicles, but it will be in a mixed ecosystem where some vehicles are being controlled by AI some of the time, some by humans some of the time and, in the case of PTWs, by humans all of the time.
With apologies to Yamaha's 'Motobot', without transporting humans as their mission, there would be no practical reason for PTWs to exist. All the other functions to which they could conceivably be purposed to would be better fulfilled by alternate solutions.
SAE J3016 guarantees that the future traffic ecosystem will be a mixed one. Therein lies the potential salvation of the motorcycle market. If motorcycle manufacturers 'get it right', then semi and full autonomy could be the 'Golden Ticket' our Chocolate Factory has been looking for ever since 1996.
