Not quite here.. but I do say it was very oddly short! C'mon I didn't get my "informative fix" without needing to read the article! *I feel cheated here..*
-- Store with salt
It wasn't my fault, officer. It was my car.
by
Oncogene
·
· Score: 5, Informative
Okay, so I don't know his salary and crap like that, and you can't put "professional liar" as your occupation, but you can enter that he makes millions, is a CEO, etc. and you probably want to have fun with his "interests" in that section, anyhow... (travel, marketing/business opportunities, cigars... whatever).
The only problem is now that I've mentioned that, the NYT might wonder why Darl has signed up for their story that many times. Oh well... maybe he has nothing better to do with his time these days?:)
I mean, it's not like SCO actually makes software or anything. The only people doing real work these days seem to be the lawyers... I mean, what was the last feature they added to their ancient, cruddy old UNIX? RPMs or something ironic like that, I think... No wonder they want to sue RedHat. Might make it easier to copy features from them. Provided they don't convince a judge that their non-literal reimplimentations thereof are unlawful or something...
Err, sorry. My train of thought seems to have become derailed. Have fun!
This is just the first step towards having the machines dominate us all!
-- This is my sig. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Re:God help us...
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 0
"This is just the first step towards having the machines dominate us all!"
But I, for one, welcome our new automobile overlords!
Wow
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 0
That was a short article summary.
Could be good for safety
by
erick99
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
I like the idea of a car that can intervene to prevent an accident. The lane changing technology mentioned in the article sounds great. I wonder, though, if you are already doing an emergency maneuver that makes it look like you are unsafely changing lanes, would the car put you back into the lane? Possibly in harms way? Perhaps there is a way to override some of these systems. In terms of fully automatic driving, the world is such a complex place and a lot of decisions seem like they would exceed what software can (at leastly currently) provide. However, in terms of safety, I can see where this technology can save lives.
Happy Trails!
Erick
-- http://www.busyweather.com/
Re:Could be good for safety
by
gooberguy
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
For the more complex systems (pretty much everything besides ABS) there are usually buttons or switches to turn them off. For example, in most Toyota vans, there is an automatic traction control system that will slow the wheels down if they slide from the driver pressing the gas too much. This is great for people who just don't want the car to slide when they hit the gas too much, but it really gives a feeling of being disconnected from the car. It can be turned off, but it's on by default every time the car is started. Also, the anti-slide feature puts a lot of stress on the transmission, and decreases its life. Normally, women leave it on and men turn it off.
--
Karma: Meh (Mostly from meh.)
Re:Could be good for safety
by
iminplaya
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· Score: 4, Funny
If it detects your age and automatically turns off the blinker if you're older than say 65, it's ok with me.
-- What?
Re:Could be good for safety
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
It detects your gender and if you're a woman, automatically shuts down until accompanied by a man.
Re:Could be good for safety
by
zakezuke
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· Score: 1
I've heard of a technology where you can actually hook up a large series of passanger areas that are driven by a single engine along a singular pathway known as rails. Changing lanes is impossible, but it's not nessicary because of the scalability of the technology. You can add or remove passanger areas, or add and remove engines to create a mass transportation system over these rail roads. Conjection is far less of an issue because the volume per person needed on a rail road is far less then that of a traditional road.
-- There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary.
SHUT UP!
There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
Re:Could be good for safety
by
BrainInAJar
·
· Score: 1
Some of the earlier airbus aircraft had technology which detected if the pilot was doing something erratic and corrected for it.
They had this affinity for throwing themselves in to the ground, through a process of taking control untill the computer thought it was ok, then handing off to the pilot, who'd be trying to correct himself, then the computer'd take control again, and so on untill plane + passengers = crater.
Re:Could be good for safety
by
thedillybar
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
Also, the anti-slide feature puts a lot of stress on the transmission, and decreases its life.
Where did you read that? Most traction control systems either
1) Adjust the throttle position so the wheels don't spin more than 5mph (i.e. if the gas is on the floor and the drive wheels are on ice, they only spin slowly).
or 2) They brake individual wheels to gain traction. This isn't stressing the transmission any more than normal driving. The differential is simply distributing more torque to the other wheel. And there's no way to do this without traction control or a limited-slip/locking differential. So it's not always a bad thing.
Re:Could be good for safety
by
Mister+Moose
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
differential locks can put more stress on a rear due to the fact that no two wheels are going to turn at the same exact speed (more tread on one wheel, turning, etc)
braking an individual tire puts less stress on the rear, but more on the brakes and robs some power.
but i'd agree that they are helpful. nothing worse than a wheel slipping and no way to get the others to turn. but that doesn't mean that they don't stress certain parts
Re:Could be good for safety
by
gooberguy
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Toyota's method, at least on the Sienna, is to repeatedly quickly engage and disengage the clutch. So while the engine runs at higher RPMs, the clutch slips like crazy. This heats up the transmission and causes more wear and tear than normal. It's good for normal drivers who don't know how to drive in icy weather, but it really messes up anyone who is used to snow driving.
--
Karma: Meh (Mostly from meh.)
Re:Could be good for safety
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 0
Some of the torque is lost through the torque converter on automatics, which heats up the ATF way beyond tolerances, heating up the clutches and bands and causing premature wear. This is why TCS systems usually stray from applying the brakes unless used in conjuction with a manual transmission. Even so, most TCS stray away from brake application in general, and use engine torque reduction. (IE by manipulating the throttle on ETS, retarding the ignition timing, or altering fuel delivery). I don't have any links, but I am ASE certified and this is pretty much common knowledge in the automotive world (amongst those in the know, not the parts guy at AutoZone)
Re:Could be good for safety
by
drinkypoo
·
· Score: 1
This is why decent traction control includes the use of limited slip differentials. In basically every case where the ABS system is worth leaving in the car the vehicle has a limited slip diff. Traction control systems usually limit throttle for brief periods, as well. VW and Subaru both had AWD ABS vehicles with front and rear LSD and they are some of the best-handling cars around.
-- "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Re:Could be good for safety
by
awtbfb
·
· Score: 2, Informative
if you are already doing an emergency maneuver that makes it look like you are unsafely changing lanes, would the car put you back into the lane?
When I drove one of these prototypes, it would fight you at first, but ultimately relent and let you overpower the automation. Most of the prototypes I've seen have easy to use kill switches to shut the computer off, but I can't imagine the lawyers letting such a feature hit the market.
Re:Could be good for safety
by
bishiraver
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· Score: 1
I would think if you had your turn signal on it would let you change lanes.
It just makes sense.
Re:Could be good for safety
by
fucksl4shd0t
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· Score: 1
Toyota's method, at least on the Sienna, is to repeatedly quickly engage and disengage the clutch
That's funny, I thought the Sienna didn't have a manual transmission option. Can we say "torque converter"?
Re:Could be good for safety
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 0
I generally hate traction control, because most systems modulate it by controlling the throttle inputs (limiting fuel injection...), which does not respond quite fast enough.
Something about pulling out into the roadway with less-than-stellar traction conditions, and realizing half-way that you really need to floor it to get going, so you do, all the while your engine and brakes are "keeping" your traction, and you feel almost certain that w/o TC you could be accellerating slightly faster and hoping that the vehicle bearing down on you, obviously breaking, doesn't rear-end you for your idiotness, albeit more out of control (throw in some fishtailing action and loud noises).
TC is great for when you KNOW you're in a world of hurt traction-wise, like in an icy parking lot, and you already are being careful and the little extra of TC keeps you from getting out of your limits in a slow situation already.
I guess that is what seems so cool about Audi's Quattro system, in that it is passive instead of active.
Re:Could be good for safety
by
fucksl4shd0t
·
· Score: 2, Informative
I generally hate traction control, because most systems modulate it by controlling the throttle inputs (limiting fuel injection...), which does not respond quite fast enough.
Hmmm. Traction control is a nebulous concept. All it really amounts to is some mechanism taking some control over wheel speed, somehow. "Most" traction controls work completely differently from one another.
My old '91 Mazda 626 had traction control. It was a little button you pushed next to the shifter, and all it did was prevent your transmission from rolling backwards and prevented you from putting too much power through the transmission. I never used it.
Limited slip/positrac differential is another kind of traction control that keeps power to both drive wheels at all times, and lets up on a drive wheel when turning, or when it starts to slip.
BMW came out, a number of years back, with a traction control that used wheel speed + abs to improve handling and smooth out a ride that would otherwise toss you around your sleep.
ABS itself is traction control, it prevents your wheels from losing traction during braking.
And subaru has had that fancy system where you push the brake and the clutch all the way down together, and then the transmission clicks itself into place to hold you on a hill (called a hill holder). So you don't spin out when you take off on the hill, and so you don't drift backwards when slipping the clutch.
Fact is, "traction control" is just an automotive buzzword, and has been implemented in a variety of different ways. Now, newer and fancier cars are starting to add more layers of systems that all deal with traction in some form or other, but the words "Traction control" mean very little by themselves.
Re:Could be good for safety
by
Thing+1
·
· Score: 1
with front and rear LSD
I've tried the former but the latter sounds like an awkward delivery mechanism.
-- I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
Re:Could be good for safety
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 0
You know what else isn't always a bad
thing? Skids. Yes, that's right.
Traction control is nice, but I did
enough stupid/foolish driving maneuvers when
I was a teenager to have PLENNNNTY
of experience controlling my car in
a skid. A skid doesn't even phase
me anymore. When I go into a skid, my
heart rate stays just as the same rate
where it always is, I do not breathe
heavily, there is no adrenaline,
and I steer out of it.
Assuming I need to. If there is no
pressing need to get out of the skid,
I may just let the car recover on its
own, which it does quite nicely. At
least when you are at a low rate
of speed. If you are at a high speed,
you normally want to end the skid as soon
as possible.
What is my point in describing this?
My point is that I don't really understand
why traction control has any value at
all to the driver who is comfortable
maneuvering the car while it's skidding.
Granted, the steering wheel, brake,
hand brake,
and accelerator only give me general
control and not individual control over
each wheel (which is something traction
control systems have that I don't as a
human driver), but I don't really see
the problem that the system is trying
to solve. Well, I guess I do see how
it solves a problem if you have a driver
behind the wheel who feels the back
end slide a bit and instantly
goes into OHMYGODOHMYGODIAMGOINGTODIE
mode and slams on the brakes as hard
as possible. But honestly, this is
the type of person who should be taking
public transit.;-)
Could you provide some form of referencce for this? Because is sounds very much like a garbled, misunderstood version of the actual facts.
Airbus aircraft always have been fly-by-wire, with a computer-style joystick instead of a traditional full-sized stick-and-yoke. Boeing is now also fly-by-wire, but keeps the big stick, which is now entirely electronically connected. There is no question of "early Airbuses being different" - on the contrary, Boeing have followed a path pioneered by Airbus.
Both systems normally fly the aircraft according the pilots commands. There is only a difference at the extreme edges of the envelope that they differ. The Boeing philosopy is that the pilot demands maximum nose-up, he gets it. The Aurbus philosopy is that if the pilot demands a nose-up that woukd cause the aircraft to stall, it will limit the pilots input to just before the stall. It will not "fight back" or try to counteract the pilot, it will jus clip his input to the edge of the pre-calculated envelope.
Thare have, as far as I know, been no examples of the kind of "software vs. computer" fight you describe. In fact, as far as I know there have been no examples of accidents directly attributable to fly-by-wire software from any manufacturers.
Where fly-by-wire has been associated with accidents, it has been because of overconfidence by the pilot. The pilot has assumed that the aircraft will not let him do anything wrong, and therefore entered extreme input believeing that the aircraft will keep him inside the envelope. True - in so far as the aircraft itself is concerned. But the computer cannot see outside. This has led to accidents where then aircraft has flown, under perfect control, into some ground or trees the computer could not possibly see.
While not causing these accidents, computer-induced overconfidence has been a factor in them. Aircraft designers are actively working on keeping the pilot in the loop and flying the aircraft with assistance, rather than being a supervisor who has to jump into action at an emergency. However, while we see these few accidents in which FBW has had a small influence, we don't see the accidents which didn't happen because FBW, working with the pilot, got the best possible performance out of the aircraft. Total air accidents per year are steady or falling slightly, while total flights and miles flown are rising steadily. Air travel is getting safer, and FBW has contributed to that.
-- Consciousness is an illusion caused by an excess of self consciousness.
Re:Could be good for safety
by
ishmaelflood
·
· Score: 1
" This is why decent traction control includes the use of limited slip differentials."
Complete bollocks.
The trend is towards using open diffs and using the brakes and engine control to simulate an LSD. Guess what, I do this stuff as my job.
Check out the BMW X5, as an example where I was not involved at all, and almost any Bosch based traction controlled car. We don't need a mechanical system when the brakes are better.
Re:Could be good for safety
by
ishmaelflood
·
· Score: 1
"Airbus aircraft always have been fly-by-wire, with a computer-style joystick instead of a traditional full-sized stick-and-yoke. Boeing is now also fly-by-wire, but keeps the big stick, which is now entirely electronically connected. There is no question of "early Airbuses being different" - on the contrary, Boeing have followed a path pioneered by Airbus."
Bollocks. Early Airbuses were not fly by wire. The first Airbus I know of was A300 in 1972, FBW was introduced on the A320 in 1988
http://www.airbus.com/media/fly_by.asp
Or do you know better?
Re:Could be good for safety
by
ishmaelflood
·
· Score: 1
I'm glad this is common knowledge. Can you explain how applying the brakes will cause an auto trans to wear? Cos I'm buggered if I can.
There again, you are ASE certified, so you must be telling the truth.
I'm just a mechanical engineer, but I work on these things (developing transmissions for 4 years, modelling electronic chassis control systems for 2), and I have never heard such a crock in my life.
Re:Could be good for safety
by
paul_pick1
·
· Score: 1
I like the idea of a car that can intervene to prevent an accident.
The problem comes when that same car intervenes to cause an accident.
-- http://www.switch2firefox.com/
Re:Could be good for safety
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 0
Some of the torque is lost through the torque converter on automatics, which heats up the ATF way beyond tolerances, heating up the clutches and bands and causing premature wear
I just explained it. Besides, you're an engineer, you should be able to figure it out.
Yeah, I was being sarcastic. I don't believe you're an engineer at all.
If you are, you should be able to tell me two common gearset designs and their names, but I doubt it.
Re:Could be good for safety
by
drinkypoo
·
· Score: 1
Just because that's the "trend" doesn't mean it's a good system. A good limited slip will limit the amount of braking you're going to have to do, and reduce the amount of necessary throttle reduction, which in turn will provide better, more "connected" (you could read this as "predictable") response. The only advantage of an open differential is the simplicity, but a suitably-specified torsen differential will last damn near forever anyway, just as an open diff will. The torsen will slip at some point (my understanding is that VW and Audi Torsen diffs have a maximum slip ratio of 5:1) and then of course you're going to have to use the ABS again.
Using a system which is inherently more stable and then adding traction control is a much more sensible way to go about it than using a system which inherently has bad traction and then trying to fix it all with a patch later.
-- "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Re:Could be good for safety
by
ishmaelflood
·
· Score: 1
Ravenaux (4 speed epicyclic)
Hypoid
"I don't believe you're an engineer at all." Fuck you.
Re:Could be good for safety
by
ishmaelflood
·
· Score: 1
"In basically every case where the ABS system is worth leaving in the car the vehicle has a limited slip diff. "
Is what you said. This is just plain wrong. Few manufacturers use Torsen diffs, which admittedly are at least durable, unlike most LSDs. However, using an LSD, any LSD, forces a compromise in the handling.
If, on the other hand, you have an open diff then you can adjust the slip ratio of every wheel on the car to give the desired handling characteristic.
And for that matter for >>90% of the drivers out there (including me) the ABS should be left switched on in most conditions. Almost any 4 channel ABS is better than no ABS.
Re:Could be good for safety
by
zero_offset
·
· Score: 1
I'll go a step further and say ABS should be on 100% of the time (certain serious off-roading situations are an exception, but in those cases you wouldn't be moving fast enough for ABS to kick in anyway). Numerous tests have shown that even professional race car drivers can't out-brake an equally skilled driver in an ABS-equipped car. When ABS started showing up on high performance cars, it was universally scoffed at by experienced racers, but those days are gone. There just isn't any good reason to disengage it.
--
Slashdot quality declines as the number of hot grits posts decreases. - Provolt's Law, Apr-09-2005
Re:Could be good for safety
by
iminplaya
·
· Score: 1
Where fly-by-wire has been associated with accidents, it has been because of overconfidence by the pilot.
You might want to read the links I provided here. Ganted, they were "minor" incidents, but people have died, and one of the accidents was caused by a bad chip. I know a lot of people would disagree, but I don't think fly-by-wire is quite ready for prime time. Maybe the 777 can prove otherwise.
I can just see it now. People will start hacking into cars' computer systems... you'll start seeing random crashes, or cars doing 360s constantly. Or driving off cliffs.
Not to mention that the market for off-road vehicles will either boom or bust if self-driving cars become a standard.
Though I imagine that most of America will hate the cars anyway. How will people possibly deal with their road rage?! (And don't tell me that people won't have road rage if cars are self-driving. Don't you ever get the urge to just ram old ladies off the road just because?)
I can just see it now. People will start hacking into cars' computer systems... you'll start seeing random crashes, or cars doing 360s constantly. Or driving off cliffs. Not to mention that the market for off-road vehicles will either boom or bust if self-driving cars become a standard.
Easy... install OpenBSD
How will people possibly deal with their road rage?!
How will people possibly deal with their road rage?! (And don't tell me that people won't have road rage if cars are self-driving.
Yeah.. whenever they automate or standardize something, they always go overboard with the safety. People wouldn't get road rage if the speed limits were higher. But the self driving car will always go the limit, navigate off-ramps at 25 kph, always leave the recommended 2 second gap from the car in front, never run a yellow light, brake for pedestrians half a block in advance, etc. I'll have road rage in 5 minutes.
Ok, so YOU'RE the one who blows by at 85 on the highway, takes off-ramps on two wheels, tailgates me, nearly takes off my front end running a stale yellow-then-red light, and nearly runs me over when I'm walking?
-- ...
Re:Uh oh!
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 0
Sounds like you're just the kind of asshole who needs this kind of technology mandated.
A car is not a freakin' toy and if you just calm down and follow the rules, you'll more likely get where you're going alive.
People wouldn't get road rage if the speed limits were higher.
Um... road rage is usually caused by the behavior of other drivers, i.e. getting cut off dangerously, etc. How does the speed limit have anything to do with that?
About the only way that I can see the speed limit affecting road rage is when someone gets in the number 1 lane and feels they have the right and responsibility to drive exactly the speed limit. But usually traffic is free-flow, and you can get around them, and the moment passes.
-- Don't you wish your girlfriend was a geek like me?
feels they have the right and responsibility to drive exactly the speed limit.
Yes, there are those, blissfully running on cruise control, and they stay in the left lane because it cuts way down on the number of times they have to take corrective action, resetting the speed slighlty to miss some dumb-fsck yakking on his cell phone or arguing with the kids in the back seat.
Those bother me, but the one that really bothers me is the jerk with a 120+hp car, who creeps up on a truck or other slightly slower vehicle, pulls out to pass just as the truck starts up a hill, further slowing the truck. Instead of maintaining their speed and sailing by the truck in good time since the truck is now down by 4 gears doing 37 miles per hour, this jerk also slows down, very, very carefully maintaining only a.5 mph advantage on the slower vehicle and taking 3/4ths of a mile to pass and another half a mile to pull back in, by which time they are both over the hill and headed down the other side and *both* are doing 77 mph in a 70 zone. I don't know of the times I've seen this same personality suddenly discover he is speeding, nail the brakes, and damned near get flattened by that same truck as the truck driver struggles to either brake hard enough, or repass cause theres another hill coming and he doesn't want to lose the speed. Your car weighs 2 to 5k lbs, but that truck, with 3 to 5 times the horsepower, weighs 80k lbs and gets 4 mpg on flat land. Do the math. What speed you can gain to do a decent pass costs you a couple of teaspoons extra fuel, for him its half a gallon or more for everytime he has to hit the brakes and dump 15 mph to miss some candidate for the darwin award.
I drive a vehicle like its a ballistic missle, planning my lane changes, braking and so on usually well in advance, based on what the other traffic is doing. The idea is to synchronize my motion so that when I get there, the gap in the traffic in the left lane has opened up, I can swing out, pass and pull back in, often without having to tweek the cruise control with anything but a gentle nudge of my right foot to pick up 2 or 3 mph and 'get synchronized'. And I do all this without causeing anyone else to have to take *any* evasive action a very very large percentage of the time.
In the above case, my steam gets let off when, as soon as he/she has cleared the slower vehicle, I'm down 2 gears, will have passed the slower vehicle, pulled back into the right lane, and if I don't see any motion of the pokeymobile still in the left lane in front of me, moving toward the right lane, will blow by him at a 25+mph speed advantage while not personally exceeding the 70mph local interstate speed limit. Illegal most places, but it does send a message unless the other driver is truely unconsious. Obviously the left foot is laying on the brake pedal about an ounce for reduced reaction times in case the jerk does decide to pull in. I've had to use the brakes maybe once in 500 times because the other driver is usually that unconsious and doesn't even know I'm there until my front end is 6 to 8 feet in front of theirs, by which time there isn't anything they can do about me, they don't have the horsepower.
My wife thinks the truck I just pulled in front of is going to hit us, when in reality, that truck isn't even a measureable part of the picture once I'm past it unless he suddenly fires a 8 pack of jato bottles giving him an extra 50,000 horsepower to overtake and hit me with. I've not seen such an equipt truck anyplace but the drags. It went 200+ mph, but he wasn't pulling a 50 foot Wilson with 55,000 bushels of corn under the tarp either.
Are you guilty of the 'just barely creep by pass' syndrome? If you are, you cause at least as much road rage around you as any other bad driving habit anyone can have. If you are gonna pass, check the left lane, if clear then get the hell out there, give it enough of that Good Gulf to maintain your cruiseing speed and do the pass, then get back in
Re:Uh oh!
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 0
If every car had self-driving, it would be like riding a bus. However, not every car will have it, so I agree with you.
Is that "slow passing" syndrome really something to get THAT worked up about? I mean, honestly, how often do you see that on a one hour drive? Two times, maybe three? How much does it slow you down? If it lasts one minute at a 15 mph speed differential (55 instead of 70mph), that's a quarter mile you could have travelled further in that time, which at 70mph would be 20 seconds gained. 20 seconds! You've just spent 20 minutes complaining about something that at most costs you one minute during a one hour drive. Isn't that just crazy?
And then doing such a dangerous maneuver as passing to the right of someone at high speed... well, that WILL come back to haunt you one day. Most people seem to not realise that the only thing that keeps someone from crashing their car is not their reaction speed (which is horribly slow at such high speeds), but the predictability of traffic. When you add unpredictability to it, to the point of doing an illegal maneuver, you're endangering traffic far more than those slow passers are.
People wouldn't have road rage if they'd realize that their destination will still be there if they get there 2 minutes later, relax and realize that everyone else on the road has the same rights as they do. A few years ago I decided to lighten up and go the speed limit or a few below. I just set the cruise, sit in the right lane, and relax. Driving is much less stressful and more enjoyable that way. I'm pretty convinced that people get road rage because the highway belongs to THEM, and they're totally pissed that the world doesn't realize it and get the hell off THEIR road and let them do whatever the hell they want.
I don't know about you, but I've got places to go and things to do. Spending 40% longer on the road every day is not appealing to me. Every minute longer I spend on the road is one minute earlier I have to get up in the morning, and I'm not a morning person.
So you're going > 40% over the speed limit? In order to take 40% off your commute, unless your house and work are right on an onramp, you must be doing 60+% over the speed limit, and are able to sustain that in traffic. This means 112 MPH in a 70 zone.
I used to drive about 80 on the expressway in the 70 zone. I tried switching to 65. I found it made about 2 minutes difference on a 30 minute commute, because much of the commute time is taken up by sitting at stoplights, etc.
I also found that many of the assholes that were really being a danger on the road, driving really fast (20+MPH over the limit, weaving lanes a lot, etc) - quite often if they got off on the same ramp as me, they'd be like, 2 cars in front of me 10 minutes after they passed me. Big deal.
Part of the social contract of using the road is to respect the fact that you're in control of a lethal weapon, and the rules are there to protect everyone. If you're not willing to live within the rules, you need to take alternative steps, like moving closer to work. Either that, or you can petition to have the laws changed. Those are your choices.
I also found that many of the assholes that were really being a danger on the road, driving really fast (20+MPH over the limit, weaving lanes a lot, etc) - quite often if they got off on the same ramp as me, they'd be like, 2 cars in front of me 10 minutes after they passed me. Big deal.
That's because you specifically remember those times, whereas you don't remember all the times when you didn't catch up to them.
Anyway, in Canada, we don't have a lot of 70 zones. For most highways, the speed limit is 100 kph (60 mph), and in BC it's 90(54) or less, which I find ridiculous. Anyway, when I lived near a highway, I used to drive 140-145 in a 100 zone. For long-distance trips (between cities), I did 150. I did so perfectly safely, and without getting into any accidents. I was only forced to stop because I got a couple of speeding tickets while driving through NY state and I was in danger of losing my license. (Some people love NY, but not me.)
I have a fairly typical 45 minute commute, which means that anything seen 2 or 3 times an hour I see 3 or 4 times a day. I'd suspect the parent poster to be in a similar situation. Of course I have to do this in Minnesota where predictable traffic patterns are a pipe dream at best, indeed, predictable road design is wishful thinking around here...
-- Forget diamonds, copyright is forever.
What does this mean?
by
ttldkns
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
So now kids will effectively drive themselves to school?! There are lost of uses for this but the emergency reaction times will never be as good as a human.
the technology needs to be made fool proof before it can be set loose on the roads.
-- How many computers are too many?
Re:What does this mean?
by
damiam
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· Score: 3, Insightful
Machines have far better reaction times than any human. This technology has a lot of downsides, but that's not one of them.
-- It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
Re:What does this mean?
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Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 1, Insightful
There are lost of uses for this but the emergency reaction times will never be as good as a human.
Excuse me, but electronics can react MUCH MUCH more faster than a human ever could.
Why do you think the space shuttle uses electronic guidance to land?
Re:What does this mean?
by
Timesprout
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· Score: 5, Insightful
There are lost of uses for this but the emergency reaction times will never be as good as a human
Superman is that you? Loads of machines adjust faster then me about every computer known to man can react faster than I can. As for the technology needing to be foolproof before it can be set loose on the road what about all the accidents and deaths caused by 'foolproof' drivers not paying sufficient attention or doing dumb things like speeding and insane overtaking manouvers.
-- Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth What truth? There is no dupe
The reaction time will be better than humans. These cars should be able detect a problem well before a human can. Most humans have reaction times in the milliseconds, whereas a computer can react in microseconds.
Re:What does this mean?
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CosmeticLobotamy
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· Score: 4, Insightful
Human reaction time can be negative. A computer probably won't be making any decisions regarding the guy who's swerving in and out of lanes six cars up who might run someone off the road until the guy one car up has already started braking like crazy. Probably.
Re:What does this mean?
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NSash
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· Score: 2, Insightful
That's true, but only within its scope.
A human being can see the car running the red light at an intersection. The radar-based system wouldn't even know about the other car until right before it sideswiped you (if they even bothered to mount a lateral detector).
A human being knows whether its safer to swerve into the lefthand lane or off the road.
A human being can hear someone else honking his horn.
A human being can see a "Deaf Child" sign.
A human being can tell whether the road is wet.
There are many things electronic systems can do well, and some that they can do better than humans. The safety advantages of automated driving may outweigh the disadvantages, but that doesn't mean the disadvantages don't exist.
Re:What does this mean?
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inertia187
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· Score: 1
Why do you think the space shuttle uses electronic guidance to land?
Yeah, great example.
-- A programmer is a machine for converting coffee into code.
As for the technology needing to be foolproof before it can be set loose on the road what about all the accidents and deaths caused by 'foolproof' drivers not paying sufficient attention or doing dumb things like speeding and insane overtaking manouvers.
I do agree with your sentiments, and I find it outrageous we entrust the equivalent of 1 stick of dynamite to some of the most inferior humans to walk the earth since the first cro-magnons walked the earth, I think the idea is a person can be imprisoned, executed, whatever... whereas a computer is not motivated by punishment.
-- I don't read or respond to AC posts
Re:What does this mean?
by
RobinH
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· Score: 4, Insightful
There are lost of uses for this but the emergency reaction times will never be as good as a human.
Hmmm, I'll tell you what... do you have a car with cruise control? Next time you're on the highway, set it, and watch how closely it's sticking to the set speed, even when you go around bends in the road, up and down hills, etc. Now try staying that close to one speed without the cruise control...
The cruise control operates by measuring the actual speed, comparing it to the desired speed, and controlling the throttle. It can react to small changes in speed MUCH faster than you can.
If you gave it some kind of sensor to anticipate slope changes before they happen (laser range finders perhaps?), then it would be almost perfect.
-- "I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
I think his statement implies under unexpected circumstances may arise.
What happens to cruise control when you start hydroplaning?
-- The Kruger Dunning explains most post on/. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
Re:What does this mean?
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Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
>I think his statement implies under unexpected circumstances may arise. >What happens to cruise control when you start hydroplaning?
Computer's reaction times are still way better than what we'll ever be able to achieve.
The parent does have a very strong point if you replace "reaction time" with "judgment".
Re:What does this mean?
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BrainInAJar
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· Score: 1
"Why do you think the space shuttle uses electronic guidance to land?"
To make it boring... Any idiot can land an engine-less airplane (glider) with about 20 hours of training, which after re-entry the shuttle amounts to
Re:What does this mean?
by
Mal-2
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· Score: 4, Insightful
A human being can see the car running the red light at an intersection. The radar-based system wouldn't even know about the other car until right before it sideswiped you (if they even bothered to mount a lateral detector).
A fully autonomous system damn well better have a 360 degree field of vision. That said, it still could miss the car running the red light if that car is screened until it pops out a lane to pass the guy who DID stop... but a human would most likely fail to spot them as well.
Advantage: Computer, because it doesn't have to turn its head to look.
A human being knows whether its safer to swerve into the lefthand lane or off the road.
Agreed, but not all humans pay attention closely enough, or at least not all the time. I know when I drive I always keep an eye out for which side has free space should I suddenly need it. Then if something DOES happen, I don't have to waste that fraction of a second looking around before making a move. Joe Cellphone probably isn't doing that.
Advantage: Human, under ideal circumstances. The best workaround for this is to not let the computer tailgate in the first place. It's probably a wash against real drivers in real conditions.
A human being can hear someone else honking his horn.
Computers can hear too, and parsing a honk is much simpler than parsing speech. Most of the car horns I hear on the road aren't directed at me, and the few that are have a variety of meanings. Could be a buddy in the next lane, could be someone telling me I left my turn signal on, could be someone is mortally offended by the bird shit on my car. If the computer can't figure it out, it could always ask the driver.
Advantage: none really. If the computer can't figure out how to respond, it will have made such a determination long before the human has had a chance to figure things out. At the very least, it'd be nice if the car automagically lowers the volume of the radio when people start honking.
A human being can see a "Deaf Child" sign.
ID tags or beacons can be placed under or near roads to serve as electronic signs for the car. They could even be mounted to the same poles as the human-readable signs just to keep things neat. Sure they don't exist now, but it's hardly a technology problem. Even simpler, we could just paint barcodes right on the street, which the car scans as it rolls by. Paint them in infrared and the humans don't even have to deal with them.
Advantage: none. Both human and computer should be able to figure out where they are and what they are supposed to be doing, if appropriate markings are in place.
A human being can tell whether the road is wet.
So can electronics. Detecting water is something they're reasonably good at. A diligent monitoring of ground and weather conditions could even keep the car watching out for black ice, which tends to sneak up on even the best drivers.
Advantage: Computer. A human in a heated cockpit simply will not know when they go from a road warm enough to maintain rain or slush to a road cold enough to sustain ice. Even without an autopilot, a friendly warning that icing conditions are present would help an awful lot of people.
Mal-2
-- How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
Re:What does this mean?
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Pantheraleo2k3
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Fast forward many years. Imagine your typical highway. All of the cars are equipped with their own senses, but also wireless networking. Road signs could have wireless adapters as well that would broadcast their prescence. Let's say a pedestrian dashes out in front of the car. The cameras catch it and hit the brakes. At the same time, that is transmitted to the other cars so we don't have a pileup
Not only are mechanical and electronic cruise controls excellent and maintaining an exact throttle, but electronic cruise controls can go well beyond that. My 2002 Dodge Ram 1500 will gear down on a slope to prevent going to fast. My Mom's Mercedes will even slow down if the speed she set is faster than the car in front of her.
Both vehicles have antilock brakes and hers has traction control. Both vehicles have GPS navigation and 'know' pretty well were they are.
Whether or not you believe vehicles are capable of driving themselves is not the point of the article. The article is making the argument that cars will be able to drive themselves due to function creep. You keep adding more and more automatic driving features and eventually you have a car that capable drive itself, no matter if it actually does or not.
Re:What does this mean?
by
firewrought
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· Score: 2, Insightful
I'll tell you what... do you have a car with cruise control? Next time you're on the highway, set it, and watch how closely it's sticking to the set speed, even when you go around bends in the road, up and down hills, etc.
Umm... the cruise control on my 2002 Honda Accord is pretty lame, actually. It generally sticks within +/- 3 MPH, but I can do much better if I am controlling it myself.
The part that sucks is that sometimes the cruise control decides to gun the engine when going up a hill. It's unacceptable for a human driver to spike the tachometer to 4500 RPM near the top of the hill just because he's 5 MPH under his desired speed.
Of course, as you point out, the human has more information to work with than the car. Still, I think the grand-parent post has a point: Real Life is notorious for finding unanticipated circumstances to throw at "autonomous" devices.
One day machines will exceed human performance, but it's going to be a long road (pardon the pun). It's not just a matter of having faster reflexes... it's a matter of having superior judgement and reasoning. If a situation starts to unfold on the interstate, how much time should be spent looking for escape paths? If you try breaking hard, will the driver behind you have time to react? Are you fscked already? If so, is there something you can do to minimize damage (e.g,. hit a car instead of a tractor trailer?).
What's going to be impossible is to have BOTH human drivers and machine drivers on the road at the same time. This is a lot more difficult than just having machine drivers, because it requires that machine drivers be able to interpret social cues (and perhaps even fake them). Can the machine analyze another driver's face and tell that they are distracted/tired/busy? How will right-of-way psychology unfold when one of the participants is non-digital? If you're waiting for the traffic signal at a shady intersection and you start to get a Bad Feeling about the thugs approaching the car, will it be smart enough to do a risk evaluation and run the red light?
There's a lot of stuff to think about and be addressed before this is viable...
-- -1, Too Many Layers Of Abstraction
Re:What does this mean?
by
awtbfb
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· Score: 4, Informative
Human reaction time can be negative. A computer probably won't be..
Actually, the next generation of adaptive cruise control (or intelligent cruise control, depending on the marketer) is cooperative cruise control. In this mode, cars communicate in real time within their local area on traffic conditions, braking rates, speed, etc and adjust cruise control accordingly.
This has other benefits beyond emergency situations in that this sort of tech will suck up shockwaves in traffic, thus improving dense driving for everyone. There was a simulation paper on this a few years back that showed you didn't even need a majority of the cars to have this for these results.
Re:What does this mean?
by
Ironica
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· Score: 4, Insightful
I think the idea is a person can be imprisoned, executed, whatever... whereas a computer is not motivated by punishment.
That's a point, but... a computer is not "motivated" by *anything*. This is the part I never get about people who freak out at the idea of speed cameras: you'd rather have a human being come up behind you, run your plate, and then based on the type of car you're driving, what you look like, and whether anything interesting comes up there, decide whether or not to give you a speeding ticket... than making sure that *everyone* who is speeding gets one? (Which, by the way, is the fastest way to ensure we get good speeding laws...)
Same goes here. A computer is not motivated to tailgate the blue-hair in front of it because she's going "too slow." A computer is not motivated to cut the asshole in the Lexus off. A computer is not going to get in an accident because it was distraught over breaking up with its girlfriend.
But you have a point. We like revenge in our society. When someone hurts you, you want them to *pay*. If a computer hurts you, there's no way to make it pay... it doesn't care if you turn it into scrap.
-- Don't you wish your girlfriend was a geek like me?
Re:What does this mean?
by
corngrower
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· Score: 1
I'll tell you what... do you have a car with cruise control? Next time you're on the highway, set it, and watch how closely it's sticking to the set speed, even when you go around bends in the road, up and down hills, etc. Now try staying that close to one speed without the cruise control...
Not all cruise controls are the same. In one of my vehicles the cruise control speed varies by 8-12 mph on hills, curves. I certainly can beat that. The cruise on my other vehicle is much better.
Then make it a bunch of little rocks falling down a hill in front of a great big rock. Or a flooded road. If we're just talking cruise control and there's still a driver that can hit the brakes, then fine. If we're talking about an autonomous vehicle, then I still don't want to have to sit there and watch the garbage can on the side of the road as the wind gets ready to blow it in front of me without being able to do anything about it no matter how improved traffic would be.
Okay, the garbage can thing wouldn't be so bad, but there's other stuff that would really suck.
Of course, as you point out, the human has more information to work with than the car. Still, I think the grand-parent post has a point: Real Life is notorious for finding unanticipated circumstances to throw at "autonomous" devices.
Right. Perhaps what he meant to say was that humans are still better in ambiguous or new situations, but he said reaction time, and that's what I was replying to. A machine's reaction time is much faster. Cars don't have manually activated airbags, and that's for good reason.
I think that more research into adaptive systems, and artificial neural networks will bring machines closer to our abilities.
What's going to be impossible is to have BOTH human drivers and machine drivers on the road at the same time.
I think what you'll see is special highways or special lanes dedicated to auto-drive vehicles (to steal a term blatantly from Demolition Man). You would need to have a car with the auto-drive feature, and it would have certain properties of the road that would guarantee a safe trip. For instance, markings on the road would have to be within a certain specification, etc.
I still hope there would be a manual override too. A big frickin red button in the middle that says, "you're scaring me... let me drive."
-- "I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
Re:What does this mean?
by
Unregistered
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· Score: 1
Humans can anticipate. Cars cannot. Case in point: the automatic transmission. Try merging onto the interstate with a short merging lane while going uphill with an auto and see how fun it is.
Re:What does this mean?
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 1, Interesting
Which means it should make for more cars through an intersection, instead of having to wait for the 0.1-sec/driver slinky effect to work back through the line. Wouldn't it be great if every driver was aware of the green light changing, and started driving at the same instant? It is especially obvious in Oregon how much of a positive effect this could have.
I also wish more through-way streets had synchronized lights. What is fun is finding the streets (Salem, OR - Center Street through downtown) where the synchronized speed is slightly higher than the speed limit...
Re:What does this mean?
by
fucksl4shd0t
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· Score: 1
Why do you think the space shuttle uses electronic guidance to land?
Um, when was the last time the space shuttle actually landed, anyway?
Re:What does this mean?
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Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
No, if you know what is coming ahead, you still can manually shift down to a lower gear before you start the difficult section.
Much like driving downhill on a snowy road and needing to slow down. To avoid the downshifting loss of control (because the momentary braking action by the gear change is enough to make the front wheels slide), start the descent in a lower gear manually. So the engine revs a little bit more, but then you don't have that hard downshift when you don't want it...
Re:What does this mean?
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
A human being can see a "Deaf Child" sign.
Honestly, how often have you seen someone that might fit this description (better is "blind child") attempting to cross the street in these neighborhoods (and they're in residential neighborhoods)?
How many municipalities remove the signs after the person no longer resides in the area?
Re:What does this mean?
by
fucksl4shd0t
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· Score: 1
Humans can anticipate. Cars cannot. Case in point: the automatic transmission. Try merging onto the interstate with a short merging lane while going uphill with an auto and see how fun it is.
Ever hear of what's called "Wide Open Throttle"? That's a handy little gadget, implemented on, hmm, let's see now, all automatic transmissions where when you push the accelerator to the floor, the tranny downshifts. That means you've requested more power for some reason (transmission doesn't care what) and it gives it to you. Older systems were vacuum-controlled, newer systems tend to have little switches. Both systems adjust timing and stuff at the same time to give you the most power from the engine they're capable of.
If you don't know that you can do this, you probably shouldn't be taking an automatic transmission on the freeway. Luckily most people discover this fact somehow anyway, early early in their driving career.
If you are putting the pedal to the metal and not getting the power you need, and the tranny is shifting, you have what's generally referred to as "runnability problems", and you should take your car in and have it checked out. I do not know of a car that was so poorly designed it couldn't accelerate up a hill when you put the pedal to the metal, although many older cars suffer this fate as a result of wear. But the feature you're looking for is already there.
Re:What does this mean?
by
fucksl4shd0t
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· Score: 1
The cruise control operates by measuring the actual speed, comparing it to the desired speed, and controlling the throttle. It can react to small changes in speed MUCH faster than you can.
Some can, but many (especially older ones and ones you might find on the bottom-of-the-line models) operate solely on engine vacuum, since engine vacuum is a somewhat accurate measurement of vehicle speed combined with certain road conditions, provided you don't switch gears, which would, of course, defeat the purpose.
Re:What does this mean?
by
fucksl4shd0t
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· Score: 1
The part that sucks is that sometimes the cruise control decides to gun the engine when going up a hill. It's unacceptable for a human driver to spike the tachometer to 4500 RPM near the top of the hill just because he's 5 MPH under his desired speed.
Actually, it's not that unacceptable. That's where the Honda motor's power peak is, after all, and for it to regain that 5 MPH that's what it has to do. In order for it to react in a completely acceptable fashion, it would have to be able to sense the topology and know that it shouldn't do anything if it's close to the top of the hill.
I don't use cruise control.:) When it's available, I sometimes set it, but then I spend a lot of time micro-managing it. Better off without it, I think.
Re:What does this mean?
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
This is news? I already, as a human driver,
intentionally do a small amount of low-pass
filtering on the velocity of the car(s)
in front of me as a way of doing my part
to help smoothe out traffic.
If that doesn't make sense to you, it means
that I try to keep a good overall following distance and I try to vary my speed slightly
less than the person in front of me, which
I hope will lead to smoother traffic instead
of "stop and go" traffic.
(I try to avoid doing too much
low-pass filtering, though, because then
I am hiding valuable information about
hazardous situations ahead.)
Re:What does this mean?
by
stephanruby
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· Score: 2, Interesting
the technology needs to be made fool proof before it can be set loose on the roads.
In this age of class action lawsuits, I don't think car manufacturers are stupid enough to let a less than foolproof system on the roads.
Re:What does this mean?
by
ishmaelflood
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· Score: 1
Seems pretty easy to me. There again I have a 32 valve V8 with an auto trans, 0-60 in never mind I'll stop giggling soon.
If you refuse to learn to anticipate then I can see that is a problem, there agian I used to have a Mini automatic, which had a 38 hp engine, and it would cruise at 83 mph, and never, ever, did not respond appropriately to the throttle.
Your inability to drive the machine is, frankly, not the machine's fault.
Re:What does this mean?
by
ishmaelflood
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· Score: 1
"The part that sucks is that sometimes the cruise control decides to gun the engine when going up a hill. It's unacceptable for a human driver to spike the tachometer to 4500 RPM near the top of the hill just because he's 5 MPH under his desired speed."
Yes, that's where the current level of automation is failing.
In the next generation you might tie the cruise control into GPS so it knows it is near the top of the hill, and you might have an option in the menu indicating how slack you want the cruise control to be, ie some sort of logic like " only downshift if the speed error is >6 mph", and "don't downshift if the top of the hill is within 50 yards".
As it is cruise and transmission calibrations are separate beasts, usually, and the cruise just drives the throttle according to some fairly simple control strategy.
When the car in front of you suddenly slams on the brakes, I'd rather have a computer do emergency braking than do it myself. Studies have shown it takes one whole second if you're averagely distracted (listening to the radio, thinking about your day) to get your foot on the braking pedal. Then you have to actually press down on it. A computer starts breaking within a matter of milliseconds. Human reaction time (the point at which you know you should brake) is 300 milliseconds, a computer knows the same in 30 milliseconds. And it isn't hampered by having to move physical appendages. Simply put: humans are the snails compared to the rabbit that is a computer. And yes, you can find a situation where the snail wins the race, but in real life the rabbit wins most often.
Emergency maneuvering is a crazy thing to leave up to humans. We're just not designed to do it at those high speeds. Our reaction time is designed for a top speed of 25mph. Anything faster than that, and we're out of our league.
What happens to cruise control when you start hydroplaning?
Well, about the same as if you hydroplane without cruise control. The speed of the drive tires is going to shoot way up, then the cruise will drop out (it's a safety thing, keeps from blowing the engine if you drop into neutral or push in the clutch). Without the cruise, the speed will shoot up and you'll take your foot off the brake. In both situations, you're in trouble, better hope you're lucky and good enough to get out of it.
If you're driving in hydroplane conditions and don't disengage the cruise and slow down, then you're a bad enough driver that you're going to get yourself into trouble even without it.
If you had the new stuff, traction control, you're going to be better off than manual reactions, if you get into a hydroplane situation; it's specifically designed to react to low-traction situations, and it'll do better than human reactions; also, it can feather brakes on individual wheels, which humans can't do. Again, you should be aware of your conditions and not drive that fast in the first place.
Re:What does this mean?
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
I think the real question is, who would insurance lawyers sue? Obviously not the computers. The engineers who wrote the computer software? The car company? The owner of the car, even though he didn't do anything?
For warning of possible icy conditions every BMW since the 80s that is equipped with the trip computer will sound a ding ding ding warning when ambient temp drops under 35 degrees F.
Computers are not the end-all-be-all of automation. Especially in a society where such concepts as light rail fail to catch on. If you could build a car that can tell every single possible road condition including sublayer ice-under-snow conditions, soft shoulders, and other conditions and be able to detect every possible traffic hazard that could possibly happen farther than the human eye can see plus contain a near infinite amount of safe evasive maneuvers for each possible situation then maybe the system might work. I will never trust a computer system to know 100% of the time what the best possible situation is that can be taken under every circumstance. True, humans are generally much worse, but what about situations such as snow and/or ice on the road or blizzard/torrential wind and rain conditions? I live in a climate where it takes years of practice to safely drive under unpredicatable and slippery snow/ice conditions. Driving safe at these times, especially, is when you throw out textbook driving and drive on experience alone. The only problem is that people will become even *more* ignorant of how to drive properly and the society will get even more lazy than it already is. Why not simply build a nation-wide mass transit system across the country and make owning a vehicle almost monetarily impossible...sort of like Europe?
Whatever. Most of the posts here are from people who can't see the application from the paperwork. It looks good on paper. But, will it actually work in practice? That is yet to be seen. The first time the computer SEGFAULTS when I am driving 65MPH down a crowded highway is when the computer gets ripped out and thrown in the garbage...if I survive the accident that it might cause, that is.
Cheers.
Re:What does this mean?
by
U.I.D+754625
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· Score: 0, Offtopic
The cruise control on my 90 Beretta isn't too great, but I use it to keep my speed down. It's nice to set at 65-70MPH on the highway and not worry about getting one more speeding ticket. What's funny is that I once accidently shifted into neutral with the cruise control set and the damn computer nearly blew the motor (The needle went into the red). Heh. Better off without it.
--
//Blessed are they that run around in circles, for they shall be known as wheels.
I live in Los Angeles. We're TRYING to do public transit, but it's making the ground sink in places, and there's just nowhere left to build this stuff aboveground. Also, it would be of little use for someone who has to carry equipment to their job, as musicians do. The trains also don't typically run at the hours I'd need them to. Further, I live a good ways (and a big hill) from the nearest bus line, and light rail is completely out of the question without a bus or car. In other words, forget working in certain fields without your own car.
As for driving in difficult conditions -- having the computer observe an expert, then share the program with everyone else, is much more safe and efficient than having everyone learn to be an expert driver, with all the intervening mayhem. Also, not everyone is capable of being an expert all-weather driver. In bad weather, wouldn't you rather have a computer trained by someone like you at the wheel than some vacationer from El Paso who has never even seen snow?
The computer might not be better than you, but that doesn't mean it won't be better than 95% of the other drivers out there.
Mal-2
-- How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
I had in mind something more than a temperature senso -- more like something that can not only check temperature but humidity, the temperature of the road itself, and even be watching for the conditions of the road itself that will lead to water pooling and freezing, rather than running off the road. A temperature sensor alone is useful, but the number of false alarms it generates lead to it being ignored in fairly short order. Drivers also usually know it's cold just by walking to the car, unless it's garaged. They need to be told more than "it's cold enough to be icy", because they already knew that. They need to be told (or have the computer automagically handle) that conditions indicate icing is not only likely, but likely in specific places. THAT will save lives.
Mal-2
-- How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
True, I rate 95% of the people in the world as complete idiots with IQ's and especially driving talents slightly above the average dairy cattle.
When the day comes that completely self-learning systems dawn on the age of man, a completely self-aware computer systems driving my car would be a very interesting phenomenon to observe. Since I race SCCA ProRally and dream of someday racing in the leagues of FIA WRC, I would love to see the computer learn from me >:D
It appears that Europe can work perfectly fine with rail along with places like China and India (I am aware of the population density differences, but LA isn't much different than Shanghai and they have maglev trains in Shangai), and it isn't impossible. Some people would need transportation to and from places, but like my fiancee' and I did, they should buy a Honda Insight Gas/Electric Hybrid (or Honda Civic 4-door Hybrid) and get +70mpg and only drive during the week when it is absolutely needed. The cars that want to be driven for fun or sport should only be allowed in the evenings and weekends. SUV's and pick-up trucks should be illegal (double when driven by 99.9% of women). So should cell-phone usage while the vehicle is in motion (for everyone). But, this will probably never happen, so what can you say? People believe they *deserve* those things in life. So, it is a matter of society, not technology or geological problems that need to be overcome before safe driving can be a reality.
It's going to take a lot to convince people that driving by wire safe, let alone drive by computer! Sure, aeroplanes have been doing it for years - changing public opinion is going to be difficult.
Besides, most men prefer the control they have while driving
Re:Control
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Yep. The DARPA Grand Challenge results won't give people a lot of confidence that cars can drive themselves any time soon.
Granted, most cars won't be driving across the desert, but they will have other traffic and pedestrians to avoid.
Airplanes have had autopilot for years in open airspace, but there aren't that many planes out there (none in the commercial world that I know of) that can land/take off, or taxi, under computer control. It's easier to have the computer doing things when you have hundreds of miles to play with, and a good radar/navigation system. It's quite another thing to have the computer dealing with a lot of traffic - some of it computer controlled, and some of it not.
One good application for computer control would be on HOV (carpool) lanes. There you only have one lane, and the slowest car ahead of you dictates the speed for all the cars following. Having a computer be able to maximize speeds would be of great benefit in utilizing the HOV lane to the fullest extent - assuming that the HOV lane is well constructed, and actually goes anywhere...
the FAA would have a fit if you let planes land themselves, even though when you're using all the radar equipment modern planes come with in IFR conditions, then you're essentially landing by computer anyways, the only difference being that instead of a computer keeping the needles where they need to be, the pilot does it
Notice they're all Airbus aircraft. I will NEVER set foot on one of those deathtraps. American made or else I'm taking the bus. (And I'm not even American, or one of those who only buy US/CA. My car's a Nissan.)
I think the Boeing 777 is the only other fly-by-wire airliner, and nobody has wrecked one yet. They are kind of new still. As far as autopilots for cars are concerned, I think they should complete the process and put the things in elevated mag lev tubes. That would protect them from the weather, animals, and the drunks in their pick up trucks trying to beat the train to the crossing.
-- What?
Re:Control
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Sure, aeroplanes have been doing it for years
True, but airplanes aren't all travelling in the same plane (geometrically) and there aren't NEARLY as many out there at the same time.
There are plenty of means of transportation where riders don't care about control- subways, busses, and taxis/limousines.
Also, people already use their cars for all sorts of other tasks and drive at the same time, significantly decreasing safety. There would be little risk in applying makeup, making phone calls, watching movies, or using a computer in a self-driving car.
Note that none of these involved the main flight control systems. All involved subsidiary interlocks which will also be present on Boeing aircraft. For example, the first involved malfunction thrust reversers, part of the engine: made by a different manufacturer, and Boeing use engines from the same manufacturer. The third involved the interlock between sink rate and thrust reverser, also on Boeing.
One of my favourite "software induced" aircraft incidents involved the Boeing 747-400. For reasons that will become clear, it never caused an accident, but it shows the way in which interlocking simple systems can produce unexpected results.
On two or three occasions, while rumbling its way across the Atlantic at cruising altitude, one of these aircraft suddenly throttled back all four engines to flight idle. No danger at altitude, of course, and when the pilots commanded the engines back to cruise thrust, they resumed their duties normally. But worying - suppose this had happend just after takeoff? One engine out is planned for, but all four? The aircraft would crash.
Tot cut to the chase, the flaps have a sensor to tell the pilot whether they are deployed. If the flap deployment mechanism breaks, it is important that the pilot knows what the flap is actually in: accidents have happened because an actuator broke and the pilod didn't realis the flaps were not obeying his commands. So there is a feedback sensor which goes to an indicator on the fight deck: a separate circuit, not shared with anything else.
Such sensors have two protocols: a single-byte protocol, which is unchecked and will, therefore, give data errors in the event of a garble, and an eight byte checksummed packet, which will discard garbled packets and will never lie. It may delay the truth, but only til the next packet comes along, which is not vary long. Since this was only an indicator, and the pilot would probably not even notice if the flaps indicator flickered to an unexpected position for a fraction of a second every few hundred hours, they used the single byte protocol.
Then someone wired this into the autopilot, with the best of intentions. Flaps are used only for takoeff and landing. If flaps are deployed at cruise speed, they will be ripped off. So when the flap indicator reported, because of garbled data, that the flaps were down, the autopilot immediately tried to lose speed to stop the flaps being ripped off - not a good thing to happen. Of course, by the time the pilot intervened, the sensor had retransmitted good data and the autopilot was happy to resume normal service.
Of course, by definition this could not have happened at low speed, and thus could not have caused an accident. Switch to the eight byte protocol, and the problem goes away. But is shows how several changes, all made with the intention of increasing safety, can have the opposite effect. (See also Apollo 13).
And it happened on a Boeing, not an Airbus. In fact, I would argue that afull computerisation with an overview of the whole system is likely to be safer than piecemeal upgrading of individual subsystems. And all new Boeings are FBW.
-- Consciousness is an illusion caused by an excess of self consciousness.
so why weren't one of these in the darpa challenge
by
way2trivial
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· Score: 1, Offtopic
?
I have nothing more to add
-- every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
I hate human drivers.
by
iansmith
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· Score: 2, Troll
I would love to have all cars computer controlled and eliminate human drivers completely. People drive dangerous, slow down traffic by being greedy with constant lane changes, don't understand simple driving rules, waste time and energy, falls asleep, get drunk, eat and talk on teh cellphone, continue driving when they are tool old and uncoordinated, start driving too young when they are inexperienced and reckless...
Of course we are so far away from totally computer driven vehicles that I doubt I'll see it in my lifetime. But I can dream.
I like to drive.. I love long cross country trips.. but would give it up if I never had to deal with city traffic or risk my life because somone else (or myself) is being stupid.
Maybe a robot that chewed your food for you would
be a great thing too? And God help us if they start
building these robot cars in China, because we all
know how they drive...
Re:I hate human drivers.
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
>And God help us if they start building these robot cars in China, because we all know how they drive...... on bicycles?
start driving too young when they are inexperienced and reckless...
So when do you think people are supposed to start driving? When they are 30 and inexperienced? There are reckless drivers of all ages, not just teenagers.
-- Hello, this is Linus Torvalds, and I pronounce Linux as Linux!
Re:I hate human drivers.
by
goon+america
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· Score: 4, Insightful
If cars drove themelves than maybe people would see them less as a source for feelings of power, then maybe we would see people starting to drive sensible cars for their uses rather than the modern behemoth and the corresponding social costs of oil dependance.
.... naw, just wishful thinking.
Re:I hate human drivers.
by
drinkypoo
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· Score: 1
I love to drive, admittedly aggressively most times, but if I could get my car to drive itself on the freeway to the level where I could read a book or watch a movie (provided I got enough airflow to avoid carsickness) I would do so. But, we're never(*) going to have autonomous cars which can drive themselves around town, where most accidents occur.
(* As in, by the time we have the technology, I fully expect us to be using some form of travel much more convenient and/or entertaining than automobiles.)
-- "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Re:I hate human drivers.
by
corngrower
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· Score: 1
Of course we are so far away from totally computer driven vehicles that I doubt I'll see it in my lifetime. But I can dream.
How old are you? I'ld bet that this type of vehicle will be around within 50 years.
(Actually I wouldn't as I probabably won't be around by then.)
Re:I hate human drivers.
by
YrWrstNtmr
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· Score: 1
I like to drive.. I love long cross country trips.. but would give it up if I never had to deal with city traffic or risk my life because somone else (or myself) is being stupid.
Take the bus. Or train. Or plane. There are alternatives if you you want them.
Does a car have to be 21 before being allowed to burn alcohol ?
Why do you think it is taking so long for hybrid cars to hit to the market? They made a whole bunch in the late eighties. We are just waiting for them to be mature enough to burn the fuel we feed them.
Actually, flex-fuel vehicles that run on any mixture of gasoline and ethanol up to 85% ethanol are already hitting the market in mass quantities, under the radar. Check out all these cars with the flex-fuel option. On some models, it's even standard.
That's 19 just in 2004. With computerized fuel injection it becomes pretty trivial to modify cars so they can take advantage of those nice environmentalist tax incentives(even if the purchasers of these cars never runs it on e85)
Is it legal to let the car drive if you're drunk?
by
Mal-2
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· Score: 5, Interesting
Are you still considered to be in the care and control of the vehicle, or are you demoted to just another passenger? Will the worst consequence of driving drunk be to end up in the wrong place?
Mind you, that would be bad enough -- to punch in the wrong coordinates, and wake up in the truly seedy part of town to find dwarves stealing your wheels -- but it's certainly an order of magnitude less severe than killing someone unlucky enough to be sharing the road with you.
Mal-2
-- How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
What's Wrong and Right with This Article
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 1, Interesting
"Automobiles Evolve to Live Up to Their Name"
Haven't they already lived up to their names by being able to power themselves. I believe that why they are called "automobiles."
And BTW, good to see short summaries, forcing people to RTFA.
Re:What's Wrong and Right with This Article
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Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
And BTW, good to see short summaries, forcing people to RTFA.
I am posting, and I didn't RTFA. I'm waiting for someone to install linux on one of these.
This is supposed to be slashdot! There's supposed to be some sort of description of the project on the front page.
More importantly, there's supposed to be some sort of biased opinion along with the story. Stuff like:
DarkHelmet writes That asshole Darl McBride is saying that linux is a bastardization of unix. You can see what he's saying here [insert link]. When will he stop? Is he hellbent on taking over the world? I think so. You should too"...
Come on! Us slashdotters want to be TOLD what to think, not make opinions for ourselves... Bastard...
</sarcasm>
-- /^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
Re:Short article
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Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
>Us slashdotters want to be TOLD what to think, not make opinions for ourselves... Bastard...
Finally, someone said it!
Thanks, I wasn't sure what to think before your post!
Geez. The one time that Michael doesn't feel compelled to offer some smart-ass commentary in the article and you're complaining. Please, don't ruin this great moment for the rest of us!:-)
Screw that, wake me up when they bring out the flying car.
-- The world is everything that is the case
Re:Saturday slow down
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Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Egon: Very good Louis. Short, but pointless.
The sensors aren't good enough yet
by
Animats
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· Score: 4, Interesting
Automatic driving is still sensor-limited. The
current generation of millimeter radars can see other cars, but not smaller obstacles like children. No way can they see a pothole. Vision systems are good enough for road following, but reliable obstacle avoidance still seems out of reach.
We, of course, are working on fully automatic driving. We have both a visual road-follower and a millimeter radar. That's not enough.
Even line-scanner laser rangefinders are too limited. We need a true 3D device. Such things have been built, but the market is so tiny (and they're so big and clunky) that they're all one-offs. It's clear that the problem can be fixed, but the market isn't there yet to do it.
Re:The sensors aren't good enough yet
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YrWrstNtmr
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· Score: 2, Insightful
reliable obstacle avoidance still seems out of reach
And not just obstacle avoidance, but sometimes choosing which obstacle to avoid.
Can we make the computer smart enough to avoid the child, even though it will hit something else, like the skateboard or dog he is chasing?
If the computer mandates a minimum 1 meter bubble with other cars, do we allow it to violate that in order to avoid the kid and dog?
It's clear that the problem can be fixed, but the market isn't there yet to do it.
I'm not so sure that is is clear that it can be fixed for other than limited access freeways. Maybe not even then.
Re:The sensors aren't good enough yet
by
drinkypoo
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· Score: 1
Rather than limited access freeways, we'd be much better off installing standardized lockdown lugs on vehicles and attaching them to train cars, and loading and unloading them using automated garage technology.
-- "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Re:The sensors aren't good enough yet
by
Openstandards.net
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· Score: 1
I'd like to see how it handles going into a tree. What if the tree is at the end of a cliff? The hardest thing for automobiles to detect are steep drops ahead, since they are a negative obstacles.
So, you're headed towards that tree near the edge of a cliff, thanking God that it's going to save your life. Your car panics, and steers you a few degrees left to avoid the tree.
That will raise the next question... how much data is saved to investigate severe craches where your car is smashed to bits and burning because of the 1,000 foot drop.
Re:The sensors aren't good enough yet
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NanoGator
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· Score: 1
"If the computer mandates a minimum 1 meter bubble with other cars, do we allow it to violate that in order to avoid the kid and dog?"
I'd recommend waiting for version 3.
-- "Derp de derp."
Re:The sensors aren't good enough yet
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HeghmoH
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· Score: 1
Can we make the computer smart enough to avoid the child, even though it will hit something else, like the skateboard or dog he is chasing?
I'd be shocked if more than a few percent of human drivers could make this decision correctly and execute it without making a mistake, so why does the robot need to?
-- Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
Re:The sensors aren't good enough yet
by
ishmaelflood
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· Score: 2, Insightful
The rule of thumb (as I remember) is that a robot driver would have to be 10-100 times safer than the current idiot behind the wheel, before it could be introduced.
This is driven by product liability issues, whereas a moment's thought would indicate that there is a net benefit to society even if the robot is only as unsafe as a human, since the driver can then be doing something productive rather than failing to observe stop signs, and picking his nose.
Regarding the positive aspects of safety though... a lot of accidents that the average "careful drivers" are involved in are due to other people. Unless every single vehicle on the road is auto-controlled, you're most likely not much safer in a driver-less vehicle than one you control yourself.
Yeah, robot cars would work best only being robotic in HOV-like offshoot lanes, and returning to manual control once they leave the autopilot lane. Control transfers would best be done on an offramp where the car can stop...
Re:Safety
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Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
nless every single vehicle on the road is auto-controlled, you're most likely not much safer in a driver-less vehicle than one you control yourself.
Except that accidents due to "other people" are usually involve to having your attention distracted elsewhere. Like on the asshole cutting you off in front, instead of the asshole rear-ending you. These situations can actually *benefit* from self-driving cars, because us computers *can* look everywhere at once. (Unlike you faulty humans.)
a lot of accidents that the average "careful drivers" are involved in are due to other people.
Probably about half of the two-car accidents.
Road support for robot cars?
by
Mnemia
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· Score: 4, Insightful
Somehow I think fully autonomous cars won't happen very soon unless we upgrade the road system to provide navigation support for these cars. I don't see cars being able to find their way from one place to another given the myriad of road configurations out there unless there are actual beacons and stuff embedded into the road to help them find their way. It wouldn't too hard (ok, it would be, but not impossible) to write software that could pilot a car down an interstate highway with no human intervention. But I somehow think city driving might be a lot bigger challenge, considering that even human drivers usually have to stay very alert in these situations.
Re:Road support for robot cars?
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surgeonsmate
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· Score: 1
If we have guidance devices and beacons embedded into the road surface, then this will probably cut both ways - the road system will be able to tell what car is driving where, and there are all sorts of privacy implications to that.
Yeah, I know that they can track vehicles now using cameras and registration plates, but if you smear mud on them or uses someone else's, the vehicle still works fine. Disable the bit of the auto-driving system that broadcasts your ID and I'll bet the system wouldn't let you move at all.
Re:Road support for robot cars?
by
Mnemia
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· Score: 2
Possibly you are right, and I'm not going to disagree necessarily. I will say however that there are several arguments you could make in the other direction.
First, as others in this discussion have pointed out, this system could end up as a way to legally remove responsibility for one's vehicle in some ways from the owner. For instance, if you are not in control of how fast your car goes and the sensor network is, then you can't be held liable for speeding. And if everyone's car was on this system then the system could safely steer cars much faster because traffic would flow at a constant rate and there would be no element of human error.
Second, what is there to say that they couldn't disable the vehicles of those who refuse to be tracked even without the sensor network? The government could force all the car manufacturers to embed a remote kill device that would shut down the guidance system or even the engine of any car they want right now. While I agree with you that a system involving a network of guidance sensors is open to abuse, I'm not so sure that such abuse is something intrinsic to that technology. It's more of a social policy issue than a technology one, because it involves the people asking the government not to invasively control out lives. They could do that already with or without such a system, and they for the most part do not because people have not been willing to accept such intrusions.
Third, such "privacy invasions" might actually benefit individual drivers if they are not abused by the authorities. For instance, driving safety could be increased, drunk driving could be virtually eliminated, and the authorities could keep unlicensed and uninsured (if those things would even be necessary any more) drivers off the roads completely. Right now in many places car insurance is very expensive because so many drivers illegally do not carry it and thus the cost of accidents caused by those drivers gets passed to those of us who do obey the law. This system could prevent that altogether and the cost of accident insurance could be evenly spread across everyone using the road.
Again, I'm not saying I disagree with you, but that there is another side to the story. Technology can and will always be abused by authorities if laws are not put in place to prevent that. That's why these systems need to have guarantees of things like privacy, but it's not a reason why the technology itself is "bad".
Re:Road support for robot cars?
by
surgeonsmate
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· Score: 1
Yours, and most of the other comments on this story, reveal that there are many things to be considered before such a system comes to pass, and probably the hardware implementation is going to be the easiest problem to solve.
To my mind, this is something I want now. I regularly drive long distances from Canberra to Sydney or Melbourne or even up to Rockhampton, and a lot of these trips are on superb roads, long and straight and flat.
But I must remain alert every metre of the way, even when I have cruise control enabled, because the consequences of nodding off or taking a phone call or something equally trivial can be disastrous.
I have to come out on the side of efficiency and safety over other concerns. I am certain that we will see such a system eventually, and I'd like to see it sooner rather than later.
Pete, who really just wants to be able to use his laptop during the "empty" time of driving on long trips
Re:Road support for robot cars?
by
fucksl4shd0t
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· Score: 1
I regularly drive long distances from Canberra to Sydney or Melbourne or even up to Rockhampton, and a lot of these trips are on superb roads, long and straight and flat.
Dude, you're on crack. As every American knows, all Australians drive 4WD vehicles that kick the ass out of anything we have in America, drive on windy dirt roads, and frequently have to wave their hands in some crazy longhorn pattern to get the livestock to move off the road.
Oh yeah, and they shave with their knives and can tell time by looking at the sun, with the latter power being one that works regardless of which hemisphere the Australian is in or grew up in.
The screensavers did a bit on self driving car challange posed by Darpa. From my understanding most used GPS and they still couldn't complete the course. The only real option I think we have today are smart highways...not cars. It's considerably more practicle considering most of our highways are repainted, dug up and repaved every so many years anyway....and for the consumer it would be less costly...what's going to cost you more...a system that knows about it's surroundings by using visual systems and scanners or a system that is told its surroundings by the road it drives on. If anyone isn't familure with what I'm talking about it's those simple magnets they embed into the road to show a car where the lanes are. I'ld much rather trust that than some system that could get blinded by a perfectly placed June Bug into the front grill.
Re:Screensavers?
by
pontifier
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· Score: 3, Insightful
I'm sorry, but I was there at the DARPA QID. I saw the problems they were having, and I think that next years challenge will be amazing. This field is going to advance rapidly.
I don't want to wait untill every road in the country is retrofitted with magnetic spikes to have my car drive me around. By the time that happens that tech will be obsolete anyway. Also, that kind of "smart road" is actually realy dumb... imagine the mayhem if a malicious prankster dug up the magnets and moved them.
A great many pices of road equipment lie near intersection, yet most of them go wthout being molested, as it were.
You embedded the 'car guidence system' into the road so someone would need a jack hammer to move them, and you put a tag on the system, so it know were the next magnet is suppose to be, and where the last one was supposed to be. Not if somethings out of touch, the cehical can respond automatically.
an auto system would is far easier then people seem to think it is.
-- The Kruger Dunning explains most post on/. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
Also, that kind of "smart road" is actually realy dumb... imagine the mayhem if a malicious prankster dug up the magnets and moved them.
Um... this sounds like a Darwin Award winner: spend enough time on a highway with the right equipment to dig down through a couple inches of asphalt, pull out a hockey-puck sized metal disc, then dig *another* hole in the asphalt, plop the disc in there, and close up the holes...
And you do this without getting killed *how*? It would take many hours just to move one lane over, even if you had pretty good equipment. Maybe if you were able to hijack the machines that the DOT uses to embed the thingies in the first place you could get it done, but you'd need cones and safety vests, and someone would likely work out that you're up to something...
-- Don't you wish your girlfriend was a geek like me?
Personally, I can't wait until every road in the country IS retrofitted with magnetic spikes - preferably, ones that can be deployed on the asshole pushing his way to the head of a highway lane merge (racing along on the shoulder, one hand on the horn, one finger out the window) and slowing up traffic for everybody else.
I suspect that many will not like self-driving cars because they will not drive agressively enough. For example, many dislike the automatic speed-matching systems that maintain a "safe" distance to the next car because they leave too much distance to the next car. Tailgaters honk at the automated cars because they wont close the gap and the others cut into the large gap created by these systems. What the system (and safety experts and the car maker's insurance companies) consider "safe" is too tame for most drivers.
While many drivers are comfortable in taking risks, the corporate creators of these systems will be risk averse. That excessive risk averseness will hinder public acceptance.
-- Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
A highway full of automated cars could run with very short car-to-car distances and good safety. Highway capacity could easily triple. And millions of people could commute to work doing something useful/pleasurable rather than cultivating fury and frustration. This could be a very substantial improvement in happiness and civility.
-- Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
A highway full of automated cars could run with very short car-to-car distances and good safety.
And then you have the opposite problem from the parent poster: people are terrified to speed down the freeway only five feet from the car in front of them.
How do we know this? Because there's a stretch of Highway 8 in San Diego County where they're testing magnetic guidance for this exact purpose. They have a "platoon" of cars with sensors under them, and little hockey-puck sized magnetic guides embedded in the pavement. Sometimes early on Sunday mornings you can see them whipping by at 60 mph with five feet between them.
But when they put humans in the cars, they panic.
-- Don't you wish your girlfriend was a geek like me?
Highway capacity triples, up until a car has a blowout, and instead of it being a 1 car or 2 car incident, its a 6 car pileup due to how close the automated systems were following each other.
-- If you can't see the value in jet powered ants you should turn in your nerd card. - Dunbal (464142)
With Longhorn at the wheel?
by
SailfishMac
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· Score: 0
since I can't see the article, I have to assume the worse...
Can they drive themselves through Iraq?
by
MillionthMonkey
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· Score: 2, Funny
This would be really convenient. A bonus would be if they still worked after being lit on fire!
In a perfect world they could park themselves underground in an automatic parking garage. Although this would require a hole in the ground large enough to fit a Humvee into, which might not be possible with today's technology. Maybe we can set one up once we have a working space elevator.
From the article - Like, what will lawyers do if self-driving cars get in accidents?
Your car will eventually become an internet device (like everything else). Then, ad-push technology will sense your next collision, and with lightning speed emblazon the logo of Dewey, Cheatham & Howe across the airbag rushing toward your face.
I had a slightly different reaction to that same line (Like, what will lawyers do if self-driving cars get in accidents?)
It was: oh, I wouldn't worry about the laywers, I'm sure they'd find some way to litigate over it.
Re:lawyers
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 1, Insightful
Its perfectly fine for 50,000 people to kill themselves/each other each year on US highways, but as soon as a computer can be blamed for 1 death, the company that built it will have major problems.
Its perfectly fine for 50,000 people to kill themselves/each other each year on US highways, but as soon as a computer can be blamed for 1 death, the company that built it will have major problems.
Hey now! It's down to 40,000 these days... thank you very much!
My Transportation Engineering instructor's theory is that "traffic's getting so bad, when we hit each other, we're not going fast enough to kill each other anymore!"
-- Don't you wish your girlfriend was a geek like me?
From the article - Like, what will lawyers do if self-driving cars get in accidents?
Probably get hurt just like anyone else who gets in a car accident, which creates the problem of people purposely programming lawyer's cars to crash.
Which really doesn't seem to be a bad idea, if you think about it...
-- CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
Re:Is it legal to let the car drive if you're drun
by
Ieshan
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· Score: 4, Funny
If you read the story, you have to take a breathalyzer test before you get in, fingerprint yourself, take a urine sample, submit DNA, and answer a Terrorism survey.
If you fail, it drives you to the Ashcroft.//made that up.
I do enjoy being in control of my vehicle, but I would just as much appreciate the safety of computer control.
It would be cool if I could control the speed and steering but the computer would not allow me to drive off the road... so I could still have a blast highballing through the hills of ohio on a sunday afternoon, but also be auto-driven back from the bars on friday (or thursday.. or wednesday... or...... tuesday....) night.
-- Spoon not. Fork, or fork not. There is no spoon.
It's neat to see how these cars are mimicking organisms in terms of accident and damage avoidance. The Mercedes in particular - " if an on-board microprocessor judges a collision to be inevitable, the car puts itself into a defensive crouch." This is just one more technology solution that when added together with others (the article does mention robotics) will cause to be created something extraordinary, something amazing. Right now is a fascinating time to be alive.
This has been a vision for at least 40 years. They had "prototypes" or "models" or what-have-you -- mock-ups, yeah, that's the ticket -- at the NY World's Fair in 1964. IMO there's another 40 years to wait for this. Artificial intelligence has advanced in fits and starts over the decades, but has a long way to go. Safety concerns are real and no insurance company is going to write policies unless and until thay are at least as safe as what's on the roads today. Infrastructure is another hurdle. In the U.S. there's a huge highway spending bill -- $250 Billion U.S. over 5 years -- pending that represents a hige investment in getting current roads up to snuff. How much would it cost to equip the highways for self-driving cars? A trillion $ U.S.? And that's not going to happen until there's a standard to follow. Even adter the technology has been perfected it will take another decade for pilot programs of competing standards to decide a "winner".
To get really tin-foil-hattish about it, I imagine once self-driving automobile technology is perfected it will be really, really safe. Really safe. To the point where there will be so few accidents that it will result in insurance companies having to lower premiums drastically. To the point where they won't be able to rake in the dough like they do now on auto insurance. My hat is telling me these companies will work behind the scenes to prevent this technology from maturing any time "soon". Once it gets to the point of being usable and practical they will attempt to buy legistlation that outlaws it. In the U.S. anyway. Like I said, I don't expect any of this for another 40 years or so, and by then the techniques of hyper-lobbying (read: legal bribery) will have advanced to the point where today's legislation purchasers (MS, Adobe, RIAA, MPAA, etc.) will look like pikers by comparison.
What pisses me off (sometimes) is all this stuff we were promised as kids. Well, where is it? I don't see any of it.
How much would it cost to equip the highways for self-driving cars?
What the article in question discusses is that the highways won't *need* to be equipped. Cars can be auto-guided by GPS, radar, and cameras.
Me, I'm not so sure about that... it seems like you'd have to have a hyper-accurate map, and heck, ours are often off by several feet currently. But it's an interesting idea, especially if the GPS component was more of a back-up and not really essential to the system.
But the cost of implanting magnetic guidance blips into the pavement is actually pretty minimal... it costs less than putting down Botts Dots (the white reflector thingies that mark the lines). So it wouldn't actually burden the highway budget that much, and given how much it would probably save in destroyed barriers from accidents, it might even be a zero-sum project.
Up on Highway 80 near Big Bear, they recently put in magnetic guidance blips and equipped snowplows with front-grille radar so that they can be driven safely in white-out conditions. This is *saving* them a whole lot of money... before, the snowplows would hug the rail to stay on the road, which meant $200k every year to replace the guardrail in the spring. After about two or three years, the system has paid for itself easily.
-- Don't you wish your girlfriend was a geek like me?
That's pretty cool. I wonder how the mag blips work in the cold weather. I never knew the Botts Dots were called that. I do know the reason they're not used in the Northeast is because the snowplows would wreak havoc on them. Whenever I'm out west or down south I always note to myself how great they are, especially when it's raining at night. In the northeast when it's raining at night it seems like maintaining your lane is optional since nobody can be expected to really see where the lanes are.
Re:Still waiting
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Bots Dots are not used wherever there is enough winter snow.
Of course, they're not replaced often enough on SoCal highways, for instance, that when it rains, you can effectively be driving on a 5-lane highway with no visible lane markers...
I wonder how the mag blips work in the cold weather.
Well, given that the only place I know of (in the US) that they're being used on a regular basis is to guide snowplows, I'm guessing pretty well.
Frankly, I'm a fan of optical guidance systems. Those work by reading a dotted line on the pavement. The really nice thing is, you can scrape up the line and move it a couple inches every couple years, so that the vehicles (in the cases I'm mostly reading about, buses) don't wear grooves in the pavement. The downside is, you can't use that system anywhere that it snows.;-) (I'm in Los Angeles... it snowed in 1948, I've heard. If it ever does again, I'm sure that pretty much the entire city will shut down, and probably a lot of roofs will collapse.)
-- Don't you wish your girlfriend was a geek like me?
I've seen them on rte. 89 going to Vermont, as well as 93 between Boston and Providence. The cool thing is when yr going west to east, you can see them all lit up red in the rear view from the setting sun. I guess that's so if you were drunk enough to get onto the highway in the middle of the night going the wrong way, you'd know it.
Cars too safety conscious?
by
wornst
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· Score: 4, Funny
Obligatory Joke: "That means microprocessors can take control of the most basic driving functions, like steering and braking. "I detect with my "seat scale" that you are overweight and are steering the car to a McDonalds drive-thru. This I cannot allow. Think of your heart."
Re:Cars too safety conscious?
by
shadowbearer
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· Score: 1
Oh, joy. Automated cars with Clippy. Talk about Road Rage...
SB
-- It's old. The more humans I meet, the more I like my cats. At least they are honest.
When will we have self-thrusting love dolls?
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
It's only a matter of time before this technology will be utilized by the porn industry to sense and anticipate their client's wishes. Imagine a love doll that automatically adjusts her pace based on the sound and frequency of your breathing, your body temperatures, your organ's stiffness, and even your pupil dilation. Don't believe me? Think of all the high-tech that dribbled along until the porn industry embraced it and made it a billion dollar industry. VHS, DVDs, cable television, the Internet... What's next?
comic book guy says...
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
shortest article EVER
Closing the sunroof?
by
SmackCrackandPot
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· Score: 2, Interesting
The article mentions:
Mercedes S-Class sedans will even start shutting the sunroof and lifting reclined seats if a collision is deemed likely.
Isn't closing the sun-roof a dangerous think to do. If the impact jams the passenger and driver doors, then the sunroof might be the only way of escape.
Re:Closing the sunroof?
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Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
what seems more danergous is something coming into the car via the sunroof. Contrary to the movies cars don't explore when they hit something.
Re:Closing the sunroof?
by
OverkillTASF
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· Score: 2, Insightful
I'd rather be stuck in my car (Let's think of the situations that could possibly jam windows, doors, etc and still leave the passengers in condition enough to get out consciously) than having my face dragged along the pavement because my car flipped over while my sunroof was open.
Gee, you're right. Those Mercedes-Benz safety engineers should have thought of that. They'll have to go back to the drawing board now. Score another win for Slashdot posters over the dedicated engineers of the world.
-- four nine eighteen twenty-7 thirty-nine forty-7 fiftyeight sixty-nine seventy-9 eighty-8 one-hundred-and-nine one-twenty
The only question would be, how often would these cars crash if they had Windows running on them?
If you want to get modded up, you are going to have to try harder than that. Perhaps this:
The only question would be, if Darl McBride was driving Steve Jobs to Starbucks in one of these cars, and it was running windows, would Steve Jobs' reality distortion field be strong enough to protect them both from injury when Windows crashed?
Shortest. Description. Ever.
by
nycsubway
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· Score: 1
The lack of NYT registration is probably related to the shortness of the description.
Seeing as how that thing was a total flop, I don't see this coming anytime soon.
Obligatory Microsoft quote
by
Nybble's+Byte
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· Score: 0
"Where do you want to go today?"
Not there. I'm tired of my car crashing!
well aren't you a fucking idiot
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
haha. momma gots you hooked to the intarweb i see.
are you a member of the gnaa?
Re:It wasn't my fault, officer. It was my car.
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Mod up please.. I know it annoys some people to have these links on every NYT slashdot article, but having the link modded up saves people from lowering their threshhold to find it, and say what you will, it is handy...
"Imagine getting the blue screen of death at 85mph..."
Imagine crashing because it took too long to read the man page on the hdlghts command.
Tee hee hoddle haw, we made our lame OS jokes for a cheap laugh. Boy I can't wait for the next article involving a car and a computer so we can recycle the humor.
"Imagine getting the blue screen of death at 85mph..."
Imagine crashing because it took too long to read the man page on the hdlghts command.
Dude, both of these jokes are like, so, yesterday, you know? How about:
Imagine driving at 85mph and your scheduler decides to allocate all its time to your webserver.
Or
Imagine driving at 85mph with your headlights off because the car failed to properly understand your double-click. Should've been running KDE, where a single click would have done.
Or
Shit, I can't even drive this car without a mod chip. It won't start unless I give it my special personal key, but they didn't give it to me! So until I can run linux on it, I just can't drive it. Shoulda bought a Toyota. Oops.
Better yet
Damn, why doesn't my Ford run right? Oh. Here's a Certificate of Authenticity. I'll bet if I re-install my OS and upgrade to the latest service pack it'll run fine. Nope. Still runs like shit.
Re:so why weren't one of these in the darpa challe
by
foidulus
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· Score: 2, Informative
Because if you read the article you would see that the cars are not fully automatic, they just have some automatic safety features, the DARPA challenge is/was for fully automatic cars...
Does it have "Asshole mode" so that if the car is actually a Dodge Ram Truck, it will tailgate your ass with aircraft-landing-light-intensity headlights for several dozen freeway exits?
Does it have "soccer mom mode" so it will go 40 MPH over speed bumps for the 200 feet from the grocery store to the bank? Will it then be sure to park itself in two spaces so Mrs. Suburbia can spend 20 minutes getting her family of eight out of the car again so they can all go into the bank?
Does it have "lawn-mower-with-headlights dad mode" so SUVs will cruise at 75MPH on four-lane city streets and accelerate 0 to 60 in 5.5 seconds from every stoplight?
Does it have "Ms. Too-cool-for-you mode" so it will birddog people around corners and then swerve into the next lane at 65MPH so she can get to the next stoplight 2.3 seconds earlier?
If not, why, people might start driving with their heads out of their asses. Imagine that!
-- Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
What are you talking about?
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Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Did anyone even read the article? They aren't talking about fully automated driving or putting magnetic spikes on the road. It's simply about some minor safety features that control the car for at most a few seconds. Besides, no normal person wants to be driven; they want to drive. Look at the continued substantial demand for manual transmissions. People drive not merely for transportation but because its enjoyable.
Re:It wasn't my fault, officer. It was my car.
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mog007
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· Score: 2, Funny
Holy self-driving car Batman! Someone has stolen your idea!
A simpler solution
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Equip a car with a camera, wireless internet, and remote control. Then hire someone in India to drive for you.
When you want to go somewhere, connect to a call center where a pool of drivers are available. Select your destination. The GPS computer calculates the route. Then sit back and let Vijay do the work.
Re:Easy motherfucking E, baby
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Lord+Kano
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· Score: 1
It was Eazy E. You dumb ass.
-- "Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Lane drifting
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 1, Interesting
From the article:
On Wednesday, Nissan's Infiniti division said that it would embed a camera on the rearview mirror of its 2005 FX sport utility vehicle. It is part of a system that warns drivers if they drift from their lane, the first such system in the United States. In Japan, Honda sells a similar system that actually steers the car back into a lane if a driver does not heed a warning.
Great. So, what do you do if you want to make a lane change? In most places, using the turn signal is out of the question since it's an obvious sign of weakness on the part of the operator.
Who is driving?
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Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Oh, no! Car is driving!
What about having Network Controlled driving?
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
I think cars should eventually have no steering wheel, period. can you imagine how much more productive and relaxing it would be to just sit in your own private vehicle that drives you to work?
What I see being reasonable and possible in the future is to have cars that drive automatically and are wirelessy hooked up to a RoadNet (tm) that is managed by a central system (ie a mobile traffic controller). This would regulate traffic (ie individual cars) like p2p networks regulate chunks of data to their locations, using the cars most efficiently on the road.
All you do is step in to your car (with no steering wheel) and with voice recognition tell it where you want to go. And when you arrive to work or other familiar location, the car would park in available spots, amongst a list of favorite locations.
You sit inside, take a nap, read, listen to music, talk on the cell phone, watch tv, whack off, whatever... i definitely would take advantage of taking a nap.
no more aggressive driving, cutting people off, etc. plus I think the commute would go faster, because things like merging lanes, making turns and all that stuff would be managed by the network efficiently. This way all differences in driving styles are eliminated and every car is driven to their destination in a cooperative and efficient fashion.
this is the only way a society that values individual mobility over public transport will ever work.
3-5 km/h for 30 minutes, all the time in the same lane.
A car that could keep a speed as constant as possible, instead of advancing in fits and jerks, would help all traffic more fluidly.
With the sensors they have, this should be easy enough. And if they can't do that, I don't think we should trust those companies to program cars to move without your intervention when you're going 100km/h.
-- Information: "I want to be anthropomorphized"
Many more thoughts on these
by
btempleton
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· Score: 1
I've been interested in this topic for a while. You may wish to check out some articles on the subject in my blog.
I also talk about how self-parking might be the big early application. Not the already existing parallel parking, but the ability to do automatic valet parking in special parking lots.
Following the story of a few hours ago, I picture a minivan full of little soccer-playing robots being transported to the pitch for practice by their autonomous self-driving minivan mother.
What? Please stop looking at me like that.
-- The cure for cancer is coming: Reovirus
More reduction of traffic congestion
by
jesterzog
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· Score: 2, Interesting
This is completely true. Another major advantage of autonomous cars is that they could simply follow more closely, letting more cars occupy the road at once, travelling at higher speeds, getting to where they're going more quickly and reducing much of the energy waste and pollution that's often associated with low speed stop-start driving.
With a road that's designed for it, as well as cars that are designed to communuicate with the road and the other cars on it, traffic congestion could be reduced hugely. As long as they have reliable data, computers are capable of reacting several orders of magnitude faster than humans are.
It might be substantially more difficult to implement a system like this for city driving, mostly due to uncontrollable parameters like pedestrians. But it doesn't seem that unreasonable to implement it on high speed roads. The main barriers are upgrading the roads to support the cars, and making the cars capable of driving on the roads. Perhaps, to do this, you might allocate a lane or two at a time for a while, as the infrastructure changes.
Re:More reduction of traffic congestion
by
zhenlin
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· Score: 1
What if, unexpectedly, a car's engine stalls? If computers could brake immediately, there is still the issue of decelerating...
Centralised autodriving has other advantages as well... for instance, you could have more efficient route planning. Knowing how crowded other roads are is very useful. What is the point of travelling the shortest path if you have to travel at snail's pace?
Re:More reduction of traffic congestion
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jesterzog
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· Score: 1
What if, unexpectedly, a car's engine stalls? If computers could brake immediately, there is still the issue of decelerating...
Well I'm not a physics expert, but the thought that immediately comes to mind is that if an engine stalls, a vehicle still has momentum and won't stop suddenly unless the brakes are actually applied. Consequently, everything behind could still decelerate at the same rate.
But maybe you really meant what might happen if one vehicle simply has to stop suddenly by slamming on the brakes. You'd certainly hope that if one car did that, then all of the following cars would immediately do the same to avoid collision... almost certainly, all following cars could quite easily be stopping before their occupants realised there was a problem. If this were all done well, with proper inter-car communication, there doesn't seem to be much reason why it might not work.
Depending on the types of cars, the computer in each car would still need to allow for some gap in the following distance, based on what it knows about how much time it would take to stop, versus how much time the car in front would take to stop. It'd also need to take into account a required safe deceleration rate that wouldn't kill the people inside the car if it had to stop suddenly. (Irrespective of debates about whether governments should force people to wear seat belts, I still think it's stupid not to wear one.)
A lot of the distance that's presently needed for safe driving on roads is because of driver reaction time. Lots of drivers seem to have the impression that because they're driving a modern car, it's safer for them to drive faster and (to an extent) more recklessly. Unfortunately, as long as a human is controlling the car, you can't beat the human reaction time. It simply takes x fractions of a second for people to react, irrespective of how fast they think they're reacting, and irrespecting of how suddenly their vehicle can stop after they've hit the brakes. A computer controlled car would remove most of this reaction time, making it easier to reduce the safety gap between cars.
Re:More reduction of traffic congestion
by
Cid+Highwind
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· Score: 1
"If this were all done well, with proper inter-car communication, there doesn't seem to be much reason why it might not work."
I was with you until you mentioned inter-car communication. Now you're allowing a whole new source of untrusted data into the decision-making process. What happens when a group of script-kiddies figure out how to DDOS a freeway with fake emergency brake messages?
-- 0 1 - just my two bits
Re:More reduction of traffic congestion
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jesterzog
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· Score: 1
I was with you until you mentioned inter-car communication. Now you're allowing a whole new source of untrusted data into the decision-making process. What happens when a group of script-kiddies figure out how to DDOS a freeway with fake emergency brake messages?
Probably the same thing that would happen if someone hacked the railway signalling system to force a few trains to stop (or worse, crash). Some people may be killed or injured, lots of people get annoyed (many more people than a few sysadmins), the police chase them down, and they quite possibly get into a hell of a lot of trouble.
From the way you describe it, though, you also seem to be implying that this whole system may be somehow connected to the Internet. Bureaucratic decisions aside, there shouldn't be any need for the system to be connected to anything. The road indicates it's shape (edges, lanes, corners, turnoffs, etc), and the cars drive themselves on it.
Other ways that it might be broken could be to hack your car's driving system, or to simply stand near the road waving around some fake transmissions (depending on how the communications worked). My personal belief is that worrying about this type of thing happening is starting to get a bit too cautious. To me it doesn't seem like the sort of apparently harmless activity that most script kiddies would be interested in, aside from being a lot more cost and effort, and probably worse consequences.
Sure, the information provided by another car is untrusted. But so is just about everything about another car already that's usually taken for granted. When you're out driving on the road, for instance, you normally assume that the drivers around you are suitably trained to drive, that the bits of their vehicle aren't going to fall off, that their wheels have enough tread to properly grip the road, that the other drivers haven't been drinking, and so on.
The need to make sure that people and vehicles who drive on the road are using it safely is the reason that most governments operate systems that both require drivers to be licensed, and (in this case) require cars to be maintained to a certain standard and operate in particular ways. This is for the safety of everyone else as much as the safety of any particular vehicle's occupants. There shouldn't be much reason why such requirements can't be extended to the implementation and interface of an auto driving system that would work in this way. Probably people will hack them from time to time to provide false information to other parts of the system, and probably those people will get into an appropriate amount of trouble because of it.
In any case, I'm just brainstorming at the moment as I was when I wrote the previous comments. My personal belief is that untrusted information would not be a very serious problem under the circumstances.
Solve traffic jam waves yourself
by
Osty
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· Score: 2, Interesting
You cando something about it, if you care to. The biggest causes of stop and go traffic jams on freways are onramps and offramps, and the "gotta win" mindset that doesn't let people merge into traffic flow or change over to exit flow. Start leaving a few car lengths of space ahead of you when you drive on freeways. By doing this, you're giving people room to merge in and out, and you're also giving the wave time to break up before you reach it. I've gotten into the habit of doing this, and wouldn't you know it that if I leave enough space ahead of me, traffic jams just seem to break up right as I approach. Most times, I don't even have to brake as I come up to them.
Yes, people will move into the gap you're leaving. That's the whole point. Most people in traffic jams don't try to change lanes, so they won't know or care that you have a few car lengths of space ahead of you. For the people that do care, they're free to move into that space (when they do, just open up another car length of space). You don't even have to go slow to do this. A few miles per hour slower than the average speed will easily open up a nice gap you can carry to the next traffic jam. As the traffic clears, you can speed up. If you do find that you misjudged your leading distance and end up having to slow or even stop, just pause a moment before starting again. That will open up a space in front of you.
None of this would be necessary if people actually had adequate driver training, but sadly that's not the case in the States. Driving is consider a "right" rather than a privilege, and driver training suffers because of that (Joe Sixpack or Jane Soccermom will throw fits if they fail a driving test and have to give up their license).
Re:Solve traffic jam waves yourself
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
No, best thing is to leave enough for you to minimize your brake use, anticipate when other breaks in the traffic are around you (and squirt into them to maintain your rolling average speed), etc. Some days it works better than others, but more often than not, with a little bit of patience and moderation (if the gap to your side has a nob going -20mph than you in it half way up, let it go until you get past the nob. Especially satisfying when you see the lane hoppers behind you jumping into that lane, speeding forward, and getting jammed even further back than they were before...), and looking ahead to anticipate good spots to change back to keep moving forward, it is possible to calmly drive through bumper-to-bumper traffic at a higher average speed than the rest of the cars...
Your method (no method will, actually, except for doing what everyone else is doing) will not work when driving from Las Vegas to LA on I-15 on a sunday afternoon. It is not possible to maintain an average speed when traffic speeds up to 60 and drops to 0 as soon as you reach 60 mph, so you just try to keep the space in front of you from being too tempting... It's a fun thing to do for 90 or so miles...
Re:Solve traffic jam waves yourself
by
Osty
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· Score: 1
Your method (no method will, actually, except for doing what everyone else is doing) will not work when driving from Las Vegas to LA on I-15 on a sunday afternoon. It is not possible to maintain an average speed when traffic speeds up to 60 and drops to 0 as soon as you reach 60 mph, so you just try to keep the space in front of you from being too tempting... It's a fun thing to do for 90 or so miles...
I take it you didn't actually read the page I linked, did you? The 0-60-0 wave is exactly what it's referring to. You're hitting a standing wave, and then you accelerate away from it only to hit another, and then another, and then another. Rather than accelerating away like a maniac, why not speed up to a speed of 45-50mph or so, leaving 10 or so car lengths ahead of you, so that the next time you hit a wave it's eaten up by that space (depending on traffic, you may have to go slower and leave a larger gap). People like you will merge into that gap, but that's fine. Most people on the road aren't that stupid. They figure they're in for the long haul, and so they don't bother weaving through lanes like a loon. You may only be going 30-40mph but I guarantee that your trip will go faster at that speed than it will rocketing up to 60 and then braking right back down to 0 every few miles.
I'm sure I've been trolled, but I had to respond:)
Car Ownership
by
emacs_abuser
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· Score: 5, Insightful
If a fully automatic car was developed, I think that could spell the end of individual car ownership.
I know we all love our cars, but we build way too many of them. Most of them sit parked 90% of the time. A fully automatic car could come to us when we need it. With just a fraction of the cars we have now, a car could reach anyone in under a few minutes. You would just push a button and get a fully fueled and serviced SUV or compact as needed.
In my mind, the reasons people like to have their own car are: (1) always available to go anywhere (uh, unless it's broken), (2) less hassle due to the insurance infrastructure, and (3) they keep all their junk in there. People are filthy animals.
-- THE NERD IS THE COMPUTER.
Self-driving cars date back to the 50's
by
cstec
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· Score: 2, Informative
It's been a long time coming. Check out the Firebird III here - http://www.conklinsystems.com/firebird/ - it was one of a series of G.M. turbine-powered cars and it had self-drive in 1959.
If cars ever are built with emotions, I'll name my first car Sally.
OB Simpsons Quote.
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Homer: "Oooh! This car has cruise control! Home, Please!"
automated off road driving
by
werdnapk
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· Score: 0
If full automation is the goal then will off-road driving be covered by all the automation in the future? Farmers (as an example) drive around their fields where there is no predetermined path, so if a car was programmed to look for roads and the usual types of objects then they for one would be out of luck.
"Oh! Oh! I can do that too!"
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
We, of course, are working on fully automatic driving. We have both a visual road-follower and a millimeter radar.
Funny, you've been trashing Carnegie Mellon in the Grand Challenge threads, but they did visual road following back in 1995. They even drove across the country this way. MMW radar is nothing special, it's been a factory option on trucks for some time now. I'm not saying autonomous driving is easy, I'm just suggesting that you not toot your own horn so loudly for something other people have been doing for a long time.
Re:It wasn't my fault, officer. It was my car.
by
Geoffreyerffoeg
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· Score: 2, Informative
I don't get it. Seriously, what's wrong with registering? I don't expect the NYT to come to my house and mug me or anything, and the amount of spam e-mail/phone calls I get is enough not to warrant keeping a potential threat from NYT out. It's convenient to be able to use a real link instead of a partner one.
Hm...what if Slashdot arranges to be an NYT partner?
What if MS discovers the opportunity
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 1, Funny
...to develop Windows GT for the new market of car-driving OS's? What if, after monopolizing this market, they leverage their monopoly into "destination software" and bundle it with the OS? Then your car will drive itself to the stores of selected MS partners (whether you like it or not,) while the resurrected Microsoft Bob is beamed full-screen onto your 65k-color widescreen windshield HUD to present you with a few selected ads of products that you'll find there. And if, God forbid, you should mistakenly enter directions to the Apple Store or your local LUG, some incompatibility bug may manifest itself and boom... BWOD.
Re:It wasn't my fault, officer. It was my car.
by
Naffer
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Nothing is wrong with registering, but I know that I don't do it because I don't want it to become commonplace. What if every news site on the internet started requiring free registration to view their content? What if other sites started requring registration. What if I had to register at yahoo just to check ticket times or at weather.com just to check if it was going to rain tonight? If the NYT got really positive feedback about its registration system, then other sites might follow suit.
anything that takes the driver out of the equation. automated driving, while useful in some really limited environments (e.g. exploration), is a pretty dumb idea on everyday streets.
if it is a dumb system, we'll end up having something like public transport - then why buy a car?
if it is a smart system, decisions are bound to be fuzzy, and they'll never match human performance until computers pass the Turing test.
either way it's not going to work - on top of that, it takes the fun out of driving.
this idea *might* catch on *after* we've exhausted all fossil fuel. before that, not a chance.
Not that my comment counts, but it's pretty sad when comments are longer than the article posting. Maybe michael was busy when he accepted this submission. Interesting article though.
your post doesn't validate
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
... the greatest benefit to society would come from automating driving for the worst drivers, but they'd be the least likely to consent to it.
But at least now we can point to something and say "But look how SAFE it is," and watch the faces fall on the twits that have been using that line to justify driving a renamed truck with single digit gas milage.
-- "I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
The family's back from long ago
The voices burnt, the voices gold
Vapour trails go by
Voices on the lines
Nothing to come back to can't we fade?
Someone's gone liquid in the sheets
A sudden smell of burning leaves
The old streets overgrown
Somewhere else to go
It's just another switchback can't we fade?
Woah man... That's too much information. If you want, leave me your email address and I can foreward you some of my spam. I think you need it more than me.
wait... isn't "backwards"....
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Now all we need is a car that will fill itself up with gass, tune itself and take the kids to school and automattically pay for drvethrough food, and not give a tip!!!!!
-- Ohh my spleen
Pretty lightweight article
by
serutan
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· Score: 3, Insightful
I was expecting some new information, but this article seems to have been written by someone who just became aware of the idea of self driving cars, and assumes the reader likewise knows nothing about it.
My prediction is within 10 years manufacturers will get beyond the toe-in-the-water stage and fully robotic cars will be approved for highway use. At some point someone will realize that a robotic car need not sit in the parking lot at work. It can drive home and chauffeur the rest of the family around, then return when it's quitting time. The saving on double car payments will far outweigh the cost of the additional trips.
The next step will be to ask why the car has to sit in the garage when it's not in use. Leasing companies will offer the use of their entire fleet of cars. Cars will become robot taxis, summoned by cell phone.
The next step after that will be to ban human-driven vehicles from the highways. When that's done, robotic cars will be able to travel at high speeds with less distance between them. Traffic jams will disappear. The annual highway death toll of 50,000 in America (consistent since the 1960's and half because of drunks) will plummet. I'm looking forward to all of this.
Some people don't think any of this will happen because people won't want to give up control of their cars. Driving a car is fun. Sure it, but so is riding a horse, and people gave that up when something better came along. Robotic cars are something better.
Re:Pretty lightweight article
by
SuperBanana
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· Score: 1
The annual highway death toll of 50,000 in America (consistent since the 1960's and half because of drunks) will plummet.
It would plummet if we actually trained people how to drive, and that would be far easier than making robot drivers. Currently we quiz them on what a seatbelt is for, and how to parallel park...then hand them a license. Or if we took licenses away from senior citizens who are too blind to drive(but they vote en-masse, so that'll never happen). Or actually dealt with drunk drivers(say, addressing their addiction) instead of tossing them into jail for 30 days and then back on the streets(where they'll drive again, even if they don't have a license).
Give any person just a few hours with a good driving instructor to teach them the basics of car control and handling, and they'll be better than ANY robot EVER will be. We're the ultimate robot, remember- we just need good programming.
This reminds me of the recently conducted DARPA Race. Here is the summary: The race, sponsored by the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), had offered a prize of $1 million for any vehicle that could complete the course. Thirteen robot vehicles set out on a 140-mile race. Nine traveled less than two miles. The remaining two managed about 7 miles....more than 130 miles short of target!!
deer detection?
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
My town is in a part of its state known as
the Hill Country, and there are lots of
relatively steep slopes that are pretty
much too steep to build on. So there is
a fair amount of undeveloped land, even
in suburban areas that are heavily populated.
As a result, we have boat loads of deer
running around everywhere. They cross
the streets at night, and sometimes they
just stand in the parking lot of my
apartment complex. If there is to be an
automated car that drives itself, it
will have to handle all manner of
special situations, and this is one.
I want to know, specifically, what
logic such a system has to avoid running
into deer.
And once that problem is solved, I'll want
to know how it deals with driving up
a slight incline across an iced-over
bridge. Does it have logic to tell it
to pay special attention to pickup
trucks, since they are the ones that are
most likely to lose traction and slide
randomly toward you? Because that is
what an intelligent human will do.
receiving broadcasts == bad
by
CAIMLAS
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· Score: 1
I'd not get into any vehicle that has the componentry to receive a broadcast that has potential to control the velocity and/or direction of the vehicle - and only posibly if it's "turned off". There's too much of a likelyhood that someone will learn how to hijack or corrupt the signal and cause havock. And then there's also a chance that if it is turned off, that someone might find a way to turn it back on remotely. Considering that this is a car, and not an easily-updateable computing device (people most certainly wouldn't bring their car into the shop to "upgrade the firmware", because they see no need and certainly wouldn't want to put down a couple hundred for a "needless" upgrade) I suspect such a thing would result in quite a lot of chaos.
Additionally, I see a couple other problems with "automated" vehicles.
- People now "have" to pay attention while they're driving. If they're feeling confident in the vehicle's ability to drive itself, they're fairly likely to space out - or at least the average person is. Surely this will lead in many accidents in and of itself: a car swirves into your lane while you're not paying attention, and your car swirves off the road, right into the 4 year old girl riding her bike. - Roads aren't currently designed to accomidate for these things - what about roads that are in poor repair, with their white and/or yellow lines faded, poorly applied, and/or with an older line conflicting with the new line? A human should be able to relatively easily tell, "well, this line isn't as faded as the other line, so it must be the correct one," but will a computer be able to do as well a job? What about snowy road conditions? - What about precipitation and/or low-cropped bushes or trees? What about objects in the road which the radar/whatever isn't able to detect which would cause a hell of a lot of trouble (such as a child's metal tricycle) at a relatively 'fast' speed (15MPH even)?
-- ~/ssh slashdot.org
ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Re:It wasn't my fault, officer. It was my car.
by
RichardX
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· Score: 1
I don't get it. Seriously, what's wrong with registering?
Simply put it's a pain in the arse. "But it's just one site", you say, "you don't HAVE to read their articles.. if you don't like it, go elsewhere"
Fair enough. But if other sites see that NYT is successful with their registration system, they may well copy. Imagine if you had to register for *every single website* you wanted to use?
Personally, I detest these systems, and I'm perfectly happy to forego an article than help the trend. The worst offenders are some of the download sites - especially for game demos/patches, that kind of thing, where it goes a little like:
Click here to download.. *click* Please wait while we show you this advert... Please select your nearest mirror *click* Redirecting you to that host Please sign up for our premium download service, or register for a free download *click register for free download* Please enter your email, and-... *gives up and walks away in disgust*
-- Curiosity was framed. Ignorance killed the cat.
for cars is a little far off as I see it. So a good stop-gap solution for safer driving. Why not GPS enforced speeds limits? Yes there would be problems (ala security) but surely it's easier than Johnny Cab.
-- I know you are psychotic, but please make an effort.
Of course we are so far away from totally computer driven vehicles that I doubt I'll see it in my lifetime. But I can dream
I not only dream, I hope. I have just been through seeing my parents have to give up driving because of failing senses, and seen how drastically it cut down their personal freedom. Unless you live in a pretty urban area, a lot of the bits that make life interesting (as opposed to the routine ofe everyday) need cars.
I hope that, by the time I reach their age, there will be a totally computer controlled car. Not necessarily fast or long range, not with the capabilities of my current car. But one which will take mes, at perhaps 20 mph, to points of my choosing within a 10 mile radius. At the time of my choosing. Without my having to wait in the rain for it to arrive. With easy storage for my shopping. That I can leave my personal posessions in while visit several shops. So that I can listen to radio or music of my choice. So that I am not opressed by other peoples children, smelly drunks, obstreperous teenagers. That doesn't detour, stopping frequently, round every housine estate in the area. (I live 10 mins drive from town; the bus takes 40-60 mins to do the journey, and is 10 mins walk from the house).
I don't want speed, sex appeal, performance. I want transport optimised to my personal (nay, selfish) needs.
-- Consciousness is an illusion caused by an excess of self consciousness.
BMW already has this
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
check out the last ad with the guy sleeping behind the wheel
Onyer. (No that isn't a scrubber on Buffy, it's an Australian compliment, short for "good on you").
This works very well, and to be honest I have not seen a downside. The rule is leave a two second gap, and watch the brake lights of the vehicles far ahead. I can drive for 40 miles on the freeway on cruise control without touching the brake sometimes, even in heavy traffic.
The downside is that you have to be religous about the gap, and that means accepting that various idiots will slide into it occasionally.
Re:It wasn't my fault, officer. It was my car.
by
stephanruby
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· Score: 1
I don't get it. Seriously, what's wrong with registering?
Nothing is wrong with registering. The article is simply not valuable enough for me to register for it.
In the time it takes me to register, wait for the confirmation email, and delete the expected spam from every news site I actually register to -- I could browse the index of a thousand similar articles that don't require registration at Google News.
The reason for the gap is slow human reaction time. If a machine is driving the car, it doesn't need this gap. You may have seen shows on TV about this, where cars tailgate each other, forming "road trains". This can be done safely if a machine is driving the car, because it has a much faster reaction time.
-- Those who sacrifice security to condemn liberty deserve to repeat history or something. - Benjamin Santayana
What If a car does hit and kill a pedestrian. And you were playing cards with your buddies in the back. Is the driver at fault for not constantly monitoring the road?
I did a paid project like this last year. It was to design the interior of a vehicle like this about 20 years out. While some people today may not really be ready for it, a 20% latino population in the U.S. and the attitude of GEN Y might react differently.
Since speed isn't an issue, we focused on sterio systems, changable interiors, and other things that people looking through windows could see to know how nice a vehicle the owner had, without using speed or engine sounds.
-- Neil is that you? Yeah yeah, it's me... Neil...
Contrarily
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
The thought that automatic-pilot cars would encourage people to make longer commutes at first seems logical, but then...
Every driver seems to underestimate the amount of time they spend driving. Because they are so focused on the task of driving, they lose track of the amount of time invested. Something is always "a five minute drive" but when actually measured, it takes fifteen or twenty.
The point: I think that, if people were forced to sit without concentrating on the minute actions of the driving, they'd realize how long the trips really were. The average meathead would get very bored and would not be willing to travel nearly as far.
Movies and TV and beers may be enough to distract them, though. And, perhaps the greatest long-range benefit, instead of listening to dumbasses like Rush Limbaugh, people would be watching television stations. Perhaps the death of right-wing talk radio could be a beneficial by-product. Mind-numbing TV programs actually look good in comparison! Wow!
Volvo
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Volvo automobiles have always lived up to their name.;)
Re:It wasn't my fault, officer. It was my car.
by
Geoffreyerffoeg
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· Score: 1
I registered at NYT once. It took me a few minutes, but it saves me the time thenceforth of looking for an equivalent free article.
I get no spam from them.
Re:It wasn't my fault, officer. It was my car.
by
Geoffreyerffoeg
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· Score: 1
Uh...you register at Slashdot.
I know that Slashdot allows anonymous viewing and posting, but there's no real need to register unless you want the journal and eventual karma bonus. Not enough people view at 1 instead of 0 to warrant not being an AC with a manual.sig of an identity...and anyway if your posts are worth reading they'll be moderated up.
So why is Slashdot registration OK, but NYT not? Is it because Slashdot requires less info from you? Seriously, what do you think NYT's going to do with the info?
Re:It wasn't my fault, officer. It was my car.
by
Da+Fokka
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· Score: 1
Because it's pretty easy for the NY times to block all requests with HTTP_REFER = slashdot.org
Re:Easy motherfucking E, baby
by
Roydd+McWilson
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· Score: 1
This is Slashdot... you sure it wasn't ECE?
-- THE NERD IS THE COMPUTER.
Re:It wasn't my fault, officer. It was my car.
by
TrickyRick
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· Score: 1
I regitered on NYT a long time a go but have since re installed my OS a few times and lost my password and userid for NYT. I don't read NYT enough to worry about keeping up with it.
Re:Easy motherfucking E, baby
by
Lord+Kano
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· Score: 1
This is Slashdot... you sure it wasn't ECE?
Positive. It was EAZY E!
-- "Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Re:It wasn't my fault, officer. It was my car.
by
stephanruby
·
· Score: 1
I registered at NYT once. It took me a few minutes, but it saves me the time thenceforth of looking for an equivalent free article.
Actually, I don't go even go looking for the article. The news item truly has to be something awesome for me to hunt it down. The slashdot comments are almost always more insightful than the article itself anyway. That's what makes me coming back to Slashdot, the comments.
Need a true 3D device? Try this...
by
Randym
·
· Score: 1
We need a true 3D device.
Try this. If you have *two* interleaved radar generation points -- one on either side of the car, you should be able to come up with a meaningful 3D radar image because you are moving at a known speed. Metaphorically, imagine you are riding a bicycle and alternately blinking your eyes. Your brain automatically integrates the two 2D images it sees into a 3D image. Do the same thing with computers in a car. Remember, you only *really* have to pay attention to the objects that are seen to be moving -- subtract everything that appears 'stationary' (except, obviously, those things directly in your path).
-- DNA is a Turing machine. You, however, being dynamic and emergent, are not.
Slashdot Mirror
That short of a blurb is almost enough to get me to register
Here's a non-account link to the article. Robo-Cars Make Cruise Control So Last Century
- - - - - - -
"All hail the glory of the Hypnotoad."
Someone forgot to put up the "warning: NYT (free reg. req. bla bla bla)" thingy. Now I wasted 4 secs on a registration dialog hehehe =).
Not if they run on alcohol based fuel
This is just the first step towards having the machines dominate us all!
This is my sig. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
That was a short article summary.
Happy Trails!
Erick
http://www.busyweather.com/
I can just see it now. People will start hacking into cars' computer systems... you'll start seeing random crashes, or cars doing 360s constantly. Or driving off cliffs. Not to mention that the market for off-road vehicles will either boom or bust if self-driving cars become a standard.
Though I imagine that most of America will hate the cars anyway. How will people possibly deal with their road rage?! (And don't tell me that people won't have road rage if cars are self-driving. Don't you ever get the urge to just ram old ladies off the road just because?)
So now kids will effectively drive themselves to school?! There are lost of uses for this but the emergency reaction times will never be as good as a human.
the technology needs to be made fool proof before it can be set loose on the roads.
How many computers are too many?
It's going to take a lot to convince people that driving by wire safe, let alone drive by computer!
Sure, aeroplanes have been doing it for years - changing public opinion is going to be difficult.
Besides, most men prefer the control they have while driving
It was posted by a completely self-posting bot
I have nothing more to add
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
I would love to have all cars computer controlled and eliminate human drivers completely. People drive dangerous, slow down traffic by being greedy with constant lane changes, don't understand simple driving rules, waste time and energy, falls asleep, get drunk, eat and talk on teh cellphone, continue driving when they are tool old and uncoordinated, start driving too young when they are inexperienced and reckless...
Of course we are so far away from totally computer driven vehicles that I doubt I'll see it in my lifetime. But I can dream.
I like to drive.. I love long cross country trips.. but would give it up if I never had to deal with city traffic or risk my life because somone else (or myself) is being stupid.
I don't care who is driving, I just want the other 500 million cars on the road to NOT try to drive home when I have to.
Hi there
IN SOVIET RUSSIA...
no...nevermind. too easy.
i'm sure the darpa grand challenge entrants could do with some pointers.
Just to read about how close we are to getting morons out from behind the wheel.
shit!
Because the driver would drink it, become poisoned by the denaturants and then the car would continue to drive itself?
Are you still considered to be in the care and control of the vehicle, or are you demoted to just another passenger? Will the worst consequence of driving drunk be to end up in the wrong place?
Mind you, that would be bad enough -- to punch in the wrong coordinates, and wake up in the truly seedy part of town to find dwarves stealing your wheels -- but it's certainly an order of magnitude less severe than killing someone unlucky enough to be sharing the road with you.
Mal-2
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
Haven't they already lived up to their names by being able to power themselves. I believe that why they are called "automobiles."
And BTW, good to see short summaries, forcing people to RTFA.
This is supposed to be slashdot! There's supposed to be some sort of description of the project on the front page.
More importantly, there's supposed to be some sort of biased opinion along with the story. Stuff like:
Come on! Us slashdotters want to be TOLD what to think, not make opinions for ourselves... Bastard...
</sarcasm>
/^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
Screw that, wake me up when they bring out the flying car.
The world is everything that is the case
Egon: Very good Louis. Short, but pointless.
We, of course, are working on fully automatic driving. We have both a visual road-follower and a millimeter radar. That's not enough.
Even line-scanner laser rangefinders are too limited. We need a true 3D device. Such things have been built, but the market is so tiny (and they're so big and clunky) that they're all one-offs. It's clear that the problem can be fixed, but the market isn't there yet to do it.
Regarding the positive aspects of safety though... a lot of accidents that the average "careful drivers" are involved in are due to other people. Unless every single vehicle on the road is auto-controlled, you're most likely not much safer in a driver-less vehicle than one you control yourself.
Somehow I think fully autonomous cars won't happen very soon unless we upgrade the road system to provide navigation support for these cars. I don't see cars being able to find their way from one place to another given the myriad of road configurations out there unless there are actual beacons and stuff embedded into the road to help them find their way. It wouldn't too hard (ok, it would be, but not impossible) to write software that could pilot a car down an interstate highway with no human intervention. But I somehow think city driving might be a lot bigger challenge, considering that even human drivers usually have to stay very alert in these situations.
The screensavers did a bit on self driving car challange posed by Darpa. From my understanding most used GPS and they still couldn't complete the course. The only real option I think we have today are smart highways...not cars. It's considerably more practicle considering most of our highways are repainted, dug up and repaved every so many years anyway....and for the consumer it would be less costly...what's going to cost you more...a system that knows about it's surroundings by using visual systems and scanners or a system that is told its surroundings by the road it drives on. If anyone isn't familure with what I'm talking about it's those simple magnets they embed into the road to show a car where the lanes are. I'ld much rather trust that than some system that could get blinded by a perfectly placed June Bug into the front grill.
I suspect that many will not like self-driving cars because they will not drive agressively enough. For example, many dislike the automatic speed-matching systems that maintain a "safe" distance to the next car because they leave too much distance to the next car. Tailgaters honk at the automated cars because they wont close the gap and the others cut into the large gap created by these systems. What the system (and safety experts and the car maker's insurance companies) consider "safe" is too tame for most drivers.
While many drivers are comfortable in taking risks, the corporate creators of these systems will be risk averse. That excessive risk averseness will hinder public acceptance.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Not as short as this one. [slashdot.org]
crashes will still be blamed on bad drivers...
since I can't see the article, I have to assume the worse...
This would be really convenient. A bonus would be if they still worked after being lit on fire!
In a perfect world they could park themselves underground in an automatic parking garage. Although this would require a hole in the ground large enough to fit a Humvee into, which might not be possible with today's technology. Maybe we can set one up once we have a working space elevator.
Your car will eventually become an internet device (like everything else). Then, ad-push technology will sense your next collision, and with lightning speed emblazon the logo of Dewey, Cheatham & Howe across the airbag rushing toward your face.
Seeing bad movies only encourages them. Watch responsibly
If you read the story, you have to take a breathalyzer test before you get in, fingerprint yourself, take a urine sample, submit DNA, and answer a Terrorism survey.
//made that up.
If you fail, it drives you to the Ashcroft.
I wonder if it knows where the Piggly Wiggly is!
I do enjoy being in control of my vehicle, but I would just as much appreciate the safety of computer control.
It would be cool if I could control the speed and steering but the computer would not allow me to drive off the road... so I could still have a blast highballing through the hills of ohio on a sunday afternoon, but also be auto-driven back from the bars on friday (or thursday.. or wednesday... or...... tuesday....) night.
Spoon not. Fork, or fork not. There is no spoon.
It's neat to see how these cars are mimicking organisms in terms of accident and damage avoidance. The Mercedes in particular - " if an on-board microprocessor judges a collision to be inevitable, the car puts itself into a defensive crouch." This is just one more technology solution that when added together with others (the article does mention robotics) will cause to be created something extraordinary, something amazing. Right now is a fascinating time to be alive.
This has been a vision for at least 40 years. They had "prototypes" or "models" or what-have-you -- mock-ups, yeah, that's the ticket -- at the NY World's Fair in 1964. IMO there's another 40 years to wait for this. Artificial intelligence has advanced in fits and starts over the decades, but has a long way to go. Safety concerns are real and no insurance company is going to write policies unless and until thay are at least as safe as what's on the roads today. Infrastructure is another hurdle. In the U.S. there's a huge highway spending bill -- $250 Billion U.S. over 5 years -- pending that represents a hige investment in getting current roads up to snuff. How much would it cost to equip the highways for self-driving cars? A trillion $ U.S.? And that's not going to happen until there's a standard to follow. Even adter the technology has been perfected it will take another decade for pilot programs of competing standards to decide a "winner".
To get really tin-foil-hattish about it, I imagine once self-driving automobile technology is perfected it will be really, really safe. Really safe. To the point where there will be so few accidents that it will result in insurance companies having to lower premiums drastically. To the point where they won't be able to rake in the dough like they do now on auto insurance. My hat is telling me these companies will work behind the scenes to prevent this technology from maturing any time "soon". Once it gets to the point of being usable and practical they will attempt to buy legistlation that outlaws it. In the U.S. anyway. Like I said, I don't expect any of this for another 40 years or so, and by then the techniques of hyper-lobbying (read: legal bribery) will have advanced to the point where today's legislation purchasers (MS, Adobe, RIAA, MPAA, etc.) will look like pikers by comparison.
What pisses me off (sometimes) is all this stuff we were promised as kids. Well, where is it? I don't see any of it.
Obligatory Joke: "That means microprocessors can take control of the most basic driving functions, like steering and braking. "I detect with my "seat scale" that you are overweight and are steering the car to a McDonalds drive-thru. This I cannot allow. Think of your heart."
It's only a matter of time before this technology will be utilized by the porn industry to sense and anticipate their client's wishes. Imagine a love doll that automatically adjusts her pace based on the sound and frequency of your breathing, your body temperatures, your organ's stiffness, and even your pupil dilation. Don't believe me? Think of all the high-tech that dribbled along until the porn industry embraced it and made it a billion dollar industry. VHS, DVDs, cable television, the Internet... What's next?
shortest
article
EVER
The article mentions:
Mercedes S-Class sedans will even start shutting the sunroof and lifting reclined seats if a collision is deemed likely.
Isn't closing the sun-roof a dangerous think to do. If the impact jams the passenger and driver doors, then the sunroof might be the only way of escape.
The only question would be, how often would these cars crash if they had Windows running on them?
I'm probably at the karma cap. Mod up a funny troll instead, it lightens the mood
The lack of NYT registration is probably related to the shortness of the description.
http://github.com/gbook/nidb
yep and a coke head to boot
brought to you by google
linky linky
Runnin' On Empty
Seeing as how that thing was a total flop, I don't see this coming anytime soon.
"Where do you want to go today?"
Not there. I'm tired of my car crashing!
haha. momma gots you hooked to the intarweb i see.
are you a member of the gnaa?
Mod up please.. I know it annoys some people to have these links on every NYT slashdot article, but having the link modded up saves people from lowering their threshhold to find it, and say what you will, it is handy...
"If you think nobody cares if you're alive, try missing a couple of car payments." Earl Wilson
Because if you read the article you would see that the cars are not fully automatic, they just have some automatic safety features, the DARPA challenge is/was for fully automatic cars...
Does it have "Asshole mode" so that if the car is actually a Dodge Ram Truck, it will tailgate your ass with aircraft-landing-light-intensity headlights for several dozen freeway exits?
Does it have "soccer mom mode" so it will go 40 MPH over speed bumps for the 200 feet from the grocery store to the bank? Will it then be sure to park itself in two spaces so Mrs. Suburbia can spend 20 minutes getting her family of eight out of the car again so they can all go into the bank?
Does it have "lawn-mower-with-headlights dad mode" so SUVs will cruise at 75MPH on four-lane city streets and accelerate 0 to 60 in 5.5 seconds from every stoplight?
Does it have "Ms. Too-cool-for-you mode" so it will birddog people around corners and then swerve into the next lane at 65MPH so she can get to the next stoplight 2.3 seconds earlier?
If not, why, people might start driving with their heads out of their asses. Imagine that!
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
Did anyone even read the article? They aren't talking about fully automated driving or putting magnetic spikes on the road. It's simply about some minor safety features that control the car for at most a few seconds. Besides, no normal person wants to be driven; they want to drive. Look at the continued substantial demand for manual transmissions. People drive not merely for transportation but because its enjoyable.
Holy self-driving car Batman! Someone has stolen your idea!
Learn something new.
Equip a car with a camera, wireless internet, and remote control.
Then hire someone in India to drive for you.
When you want to go somewhere, connect to a call center where a pool of drivers are available. Select your destination. The GPS computer calculates the route. Then sit back and let Vijay do the work.
It was Eazy E. You dumb ass.
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
From the article:
On Wednesday, Nissan's Infiniti division said that it would embed a camera on the rearview mirror of its 2005 FX sport utility vehicle. It is part of a system that warns drivers if they drift from their lane, the first such system in the United States. In Japan, Honda sells a similar system that actually steers the car back into a lane if a driver does not heed a warning.
Great. So, what do you do if you want to make a lane change? In most places, using the turn signal is out of the question since it's an obvious sign of weakness on the part of the operator.
Oh, no! Car is driving!
I think cars should eventually have no steering wheel, period. can you imagine how much more productive and relaxing it would be to just sit in your own private vehicle that drives you to work?
What I see being reasonable and possible in the future is to have cars that drive automatically and are wirelessy hooked up to a RoadNet (tm) that is managed by a central system (ie a mobile traffic controller). This would regulate traffic (ie individual cars) like p2p networks regulate chunks of data to their locations, using the cars most efficiently on the road.
All you do is step in to your car (with no steering wheel) and with voice recognition tell it where you want to go. And when you arrive to work or other familiar location, the car would park in available spots, amongst a list of favorite locations.
You sit inside, take a nap, read, listen to music, talk on the cell phone, watch tv, whack off, whatever... i definitely would take advantage of taking a nap.
no more aggressive driving, cutting people off, etc. plus I think the commute would go faster, because things like merging lanes, making turns and all that stuff would be managed by the network efficiently. This way all differences in driving styles are eliminated and every car is driven to their destination in a cooperative and efficient fashion.
this is the only way a society that values individual mobility over public transport will ever work.
"Where do you want to go today?"
What?
Does it run Linux? (or: Does Linux drive it? All of a sudden I get unbidden images of penguins behind the wheel.)
Here's a better link. Ads suck.
You have selected suicide. Thank you for choosing Volvo.
3-5 km/h for 30 minutes, all the time in the same lane.
A car that could keep a speed as constant as possible, instead of advancing in fits and jerks, would help all traffic more fluidly.
With the sensors they have, this should be easy enough. And if they can't do that, I don't think we should trust those companies to program cars to move without your intervention when you're going 100km/h.
Information: "I want to be anthropomorphized"
I've been interested in this topic for a while. You may wish to check out some articles on the subject in my blog.
For example, I talk about how oil companies should fund automatic car development because it would make people tolerate longer drives and commutes.
I also talk about how self-parking might be the big early application. Not the already existing parallel parking, but the ability to do automatic valet parking in special parking lots.
Alas, I finally realize that the government will try to ban drive-by wire cars because they are a great terrorist's tool if they become common.
Has it been over a year since you last donated to the Electronic Frontier Foundation
Sweet, next thing you know we'll have this. Bring it on.
"You are only young once, but you can be immature forever." -www.animemusicvideos.org
Following the story of a few hours ago, I picture a minivan full of little soccer-playing robots being transported to the pitch for practice by their autonomous self-driving minivan mother.
What? Please stop looking at me like that.
The cure for cancer is coming: Reovirus
This is completely true. Another major advantage of autonomous cars is that they could simply follow more closely, letting more cars occupy the road at once, travelling at higher speeds, getting to where they're going more quickly and reducing much of the energy waste and pollution that's often associated with low speed stop-start driving.
With a road that's designed for it, as well as cars that are designed to communuicate with the road and the other cars on it, traffic congestion could be reduced hugely. As long as they have reliable data, computers are capable of reacting several orders of magnitude faster than humans are.
It might be substantially more difficult to implement a system like this for city driving, mostly due to uncontrollable parameters like pedestrians. But it doesn't seem that unreasonable to implement it on high speed roads. The main barriers are upgrading the roads to support the cars, and making the cars capable of driving on the roads. Perhaps, to do this, you might allocate a lane or two at a time for a while, as the infrastructure changes.
You can do something about it, if you care to. The biggest causes of stop and go traffic jams on freways are onramps and offramps, and the "gotta win" mindset that doesn't let people merge into traffic flow or change over to exit flow. Start leaving a few car lengths of space ahead of you when you drive on freeways. By doing this, you're giving people room to merge in and out, and you're also giving the wave time to break up before you reach it. I've gotten into the habit of doing this, and wouldn't you know it that if I leave enough space ahead of me, traffic jams just seem to break up right as I approach. Most times, I don't even have to brake as I come up to them.
Yes, people will move into the gap you're leaving. That's the whole point. Most people in traffic jams don't try to change lanes, so they won't know or care that you have a few car lengths of space ahead of you. For the people that do care, they're free to move into that space (when they do, just open up another car length of space). You don't even have to go slow to do this. A few miles per hour slower than the average speed will easily open up a nice gap you can carry to the next traffic jam. As the traffic clears, you can speed up. If you do find that you misjudged your leading distance and end up having to slow or even stop, just pause a moment before starting again. That will open up a space in front of you.
None of this would be necessary if people actually had adequate driver training, but sadly that's not the case in the States. Driving is consider a "right" rather than a privilege, and driver training suffers because of that (Joe Sixpack or Jane Soccermom will throw fits if they fail a driving test and have to give up their license).
If a fully automatic car was developed, I think that could spell the end of individual car ownership.
.
I know we all love our cars, but we build way too many of them. Most of them sit parked 90% of the time. A fully automatic car could come to us when we need it. With just a fraction of the cars we have now, a car could reach anyone in under a few minutes. You would just push a button and get a fully fueled and serviced SUV or compact as needed
It's been a long time coming. Check out the Firebird III here - http://www.conklinsystems.com/firebird/ - it was one of a series of G.M. turbine-powered cars and it had self-drive in 1959.
If cars ever are built with emotions, I'll name my first car Sally.
Homer: "Oooh! This car has cruise control! Home, Please!"
If full automation is the goal then will off-road driving be covered by all the automation in the future? Farmers (as an example) drive around their fields where there is no predetermined path, so if a car was programmed to look for roads and the usual types of objects then they for one would be out of luck.
We, of course, are working on fully automatic driving. We have both a visual road-follower and a millimeter radar.
Funny, you've been trashing Carnegie Mellon in the Grand Challenge threads, but they did visual road following back in 1995. They even drove across the country this way. MMW radar is nothing special, it's been a factory option on trucks for some time now. I'm not saying autonomous driving is easy, I'm just suggesting that you not toot your own horn so loudly for something other people have been doing for a long time.
I don't get it. Seriously, what's wrong with registering? I don't expect the NYT to come to my house and mug me or anything, and the amount of spam e-mail/phone calls I get is enough not to warrant keeping a potential threat from NYT out. It's convenient to be able to use a real link instead of a partner one.
Hm...what if Slashdot arranges to be an NYT partner?
...to develop Windows GT for the new market of car-driving OS's? What if, after monopolizing this market, they leverage their monopoly into "destination software" and bundle it with the OS? Then your car will drive itself to the stores of selected MS partners (whether you like it or not,) while the resurrected Microsoft Bob is beamed full-screen onto your 65k-color widescreen windshield HUD to present you with a few selected ads of products that you'll find there. And if, God forbid, you should mistakenly enter directions to the Apple Store or your local LUG, some incompatibility bug may manifest itself and boom... BWOD.
Nothing is wrong with registering, but I know that I don't do it because I don't want it to become commonplace. What if every news site on the internet started requiring free registration to view their content? What if other sites started requring registration. What if I had to register at yahoo just to check ticket times or at weather.com just to check if it was going to rain tonight? If the NYT got really positive feedback about its registration system, then other sites might follow suit.
No Karma bonus, offtopic.
anything that takes the driver out of the equation. automated driving, while useful in some really limited environments (e.g. exploration), is a pretty dumb idea on everyday streets.
if it is a dumb system, we'll end up having something like public transport - then why buy a car?
if it is a smart system, decisions are bound to be fuzzy, and they'll never match human performance until computers pass the Turing test.
either way it's not going to work - on top of that, it takes the fun out of driving.
this idea *might* catch on *after* we've exhausted all fossil fuel. before that, not a chance.
Not that my comment counts, but it's pretty sad when comments are longer than the article posting. Maybe michael was busy when he accepted this submission. Interesting article though.
you need to open your tag before you can close it
... the greatest benefit to society would come from automating driving for the worst drivers, but they'd be the least likely to consent to it.
But at least now we can point to something and say "But look how SAFE it is," and watch the faces fall on the twits that have been using that line to justify driving a renamed truck with single digit gas milage.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
Seems like you were lit inside
I feel like fog beside the shine
Figure fades away
Someone takes my place
Meshing with the pictures on the pages
There's no-one driving There's no-one driving There's no-one driving There's no-one
The family's back from long ago
The voices burnt, the voices gold
Vapour trails go by
Voices on the lines
Nothing to come back to can't we fade?
Someone's gone liquid in the sheets
A sudden smell of burning leaves
The old streets overgrown
Somewhere else to go
It's just another switchback can't we fade?
There's no-one driving There's no-one driving There's no-one driving There's no-one
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
Woah man... That's too much information. If you want, leave me your email address and I can foreward you some of my spam. I think you need it more than me.
In Soviet Russia, YOU drive cars!
When did Slashdot degrade to one-liners? I expect some kind of summary so I can post my uninformed opinion without actually reading the article!!!
Oh no, somebody call the waaambulance!
Here's a non-account link to the article. Robo-Cars Make Cruise Control So Last Century.
/. editors had the balls to post those in the main article links. Is there any reason why they do not?
I sure wish
Now all we need is a car that will fill itself up with gass, tune itself and take the kids to school and automattically pay for drvethrough food, and not give a tip!!!!!
Ohh my spleen
I was expecting some new information, but this article seems to have been written by someone who just became aware of the idea of self driving cars, and assumes the reader likewise knows nothing about it.
My prediction is within 10 years manufacturers will get beyond the toe-in-the-water stage and fully robotic cars will be approved for highway use. At some point someone will realize that a robotic car need not sit in the parking lot at work. It can drive home and chauffeur the rest of the family around, then return when it's quitting time. The saving on double car payments will far outweigh the cost of the additional trips.
The next step will be to ask why the car has to sit in the garage when it's not in use. Leasing companies will offer the use of their entire fleet of cars. Cars will become robot taxis, summoned by cell phone.
The next step after that will be to ban human-driven vehicles from the highways. When that's done, robotic cars will be able to travel at high speeds with less distance between them. Traffic jams will disappear. The annual highway death toll of 50,000 in America (consistent since the 1960's and half because of drunks) will plummet. I'm looking forward to all of this.
Some people don't think any of this will happen because people won't want to give up control of their cars. Driving a car is fun. Sure it, but so is riding a horse, and people gave that up when something better came along. Robotic cars are something better.
Blah, where is all the fun then? You can't speed a self driven car!
This reminds me of the recently conducted DARPA Race.
Here is the summary:
The race, sponsored by the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), had offered a prize of $1 million for any vehicle that could complete the course.
Thirteen robot vehicles set out on a 140-mile race. Nine traveled less than two miles. The remaining two managed about 7 miles....more than 130 miles short of target!!
My town is in a part of its state known as the Hill Country, and there are lots of relatively steep slopes that are pretty much too steep to build on. So there is a fair amount of undeveloped land, even in suburban areas that are heavily populated.
As a result, we have boat loads of deer running around everywhere. They cross the streets at night, and sometimes they just stand in the parking lot of my apartment complex. If there is to be an automated car that drives itself, it will have to handle all manner of special situations, and this is one. I want to know, specifically, what logic such a system has to avoid running into deer.
And once that problem is solved, I'll want to know how it deals with driving up a slight incline across an iced-over bridge. Does it have logic to tell it to pay special attention to pickup trucks, since they are the ones that are most likely to lose traction and slide randomly toward you? Because that is what an intelligent human will do.
I'd not get into any vehicle that has the componentry to receive a broadcast that has potential to control the velocity and/or direction of the vehicle - and only posibly if it's "turned off". There's too much of a likelyhood that someone will learn how to hijack or corrupt the signal and cause havock. And then there's also a chance that if it is turned off, that someone might find a way to turn it back on remotely. Considering that this is a car, and not an easily-updateable computing device (people most certainly wouldn't bring their car into the shop to "upgrade the firmware", because they see no need and certainly wouldn't want to put down a couple hundred for a "needless" upgrade) I suspect such a thing would result in quite a lot of chaos.
Additionally, I see a couple other problems with "automated" vehicles.
- People now "have" to pay attention while they're driving. If they're feeling confident in the vehicle's ability to drive itself, they're fairly likely to space out - or at least the average person is. Surely this will lead in many accidents in and of itself: a car swirves into your lane while you're not paying attention, and your car swirves off the road, right into the 4 year old girl riding her bike.
- Roads aren't currently designed to accomidate for these things - what about roads that are in poor repair, with their white and/or yellow lines faded, poorly applied, and/or with an older line conflicting with the new line? A human should be able to relatively easily tell, "well, this line isn't as faded as the other line, so it must be the correct one," but will a computer be able to do as well a job? What about snowy road conditions?
- What about precipitation and/or low-cropped bushes or trees? What about objects in the road which the radar/whatever isn't able to detect which would cause a hell of a lot of trouble (such as a child's metal tricycle) at a relatively 'fast' speed (15MPH even)?
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
I don't get it. Seriously, what's wrong with registering?
Simply put it's a pain in the arse.
"But it's just one site", you say, "you don't HAVE to read their articles.. if you don't like it, go elsewhere"
Fair enough. But if other sites see that NYT is successful with their registration system, they may well copy. Imagine if you had to register for *every single website* you wanted to use?
Personally, I detest these systems, and I'm perfectly happy to forego an article than help the trend. The worst offenders are some of the download sites - especially for game demos/patches, that kind of thing, where it goes a little like:
Click here to download.. *click*
Please wait while we show you this advert...
Please select your nearest mirror *click*
Redirecting you to that host
Please sign up for our premium download service, or register for a free download
*click register for free download*
Please enter your email, and-...
*gives up and walks away in disgust*
Curiosity was framed. Ignorance killed the cat.
for cars is a little far off as I see it. So a good stop-gap solution for safer driving. Why not GPS enforced speeds limits? Yes there would be problems (ala security) but surely it's easier than Johnny Cab.
I know you are psychotic, but please make an effort.
in the realm of private transport: What's the deal with having to park a car? It just sits there doing nothing, wasting space...
LAUGH NOW
Thanks, you've been wonderful...
APPLAUSE NOW
I know you are psychotic, but please make an effort.
Of course we are so far away from totally computer driven vehicles that I doubt I'll see it in my lifetime. But I can dream
I not only dream, I hope. I have just been through seeing my parents have to give up driving because of failing senses, and seen how drastically it cut down their personal freedom. Unless you live in a pretty urban area, a lot of the bits that make life interesting (as opposed to the routine ofe everyday) need cars.
I hope that, by the time I reach their age, there will be a totally computer controlled car. Not necessarily fast or long range, not with the capabilities of my current car. But one which will take mes, at perhaps 20 mph, to points of my choosing within a 10 mile radius. At the time of my choosing. Without my having to wait in the rain for it to arrive. With easy storage for my shopping. That I can leave my personal posessions in while visit several shops. So that I can listen to radio or music of my choice. So that I am not opressed by other peoples children, smelly drunks, obstreperous teenagers. That doesn't detour, stopping frequently, round every housine estate in the area. (I live 10 mins drive from town; the bus takes 40-60 mins to do the journey, and is 10 mins walk from the house).
I don't want speed, sex appeal, performance. I want transport optimised to my personal (nay, selfish) needs.
Consciousness is an illusion caused by an excess of self consciousness.
check out the last ad with the guy sleeping behind the wheel
http://www.bmw.ca/microsites/aprilfools/
Onyer. (No that isn't a scrubber on Buffy, it's an Australian compliment, short for "good on you").
This works very well, and to be honest I have not seen a downside. The rule is leave a two second gap, and watch the brake lights of the vehicles far ahead. I can drive for 40 miles on the freeway on cruise control without touching the brake sometimes, even in heavy traffic.
The downside is that you have to be religous about the gap, and that means accepting that various idiots will slide into it occasionally.
Nothing is wrong with registering. The article is simply not valuable enough for me to register for it.
In the time it takes me to register, wait for the confirmation email, and delete the expected spam from every news site I actually register to -- I could browse the index of a thousand similar articles that don't require registration at Google News.
You're assuming these towns called Sydney, Canberra (wherever the fuck that is) Melbourne and Rockhampton are in Australia.
Why so?
The reason for the gap is slow human reaction time.
If a machine is driving the car, it doesn't need this gap.
You may have seen shows on TV about this, where cars tailgate each other, forming "road trains".
This can be done safely if a machine is driving the car, because it has a much faster reaction time.
Those who sacrifice security to condemn liberty deserve to repeat history or something. - Benjamin Santayana
I did a paid project like this last year. It was to design the interior of a vehicle like this about 20 years out. While some people today may not really be ready for it, a 20% latino population in the U.S. and the attitude of GEN Y might react differently.
Since speed isn't an issue, we focused on sterio systems, changable interiors, and other things that people looking through windows could see to know how nice a vehicle the owner had, without using speed or engine sounds.
Neil is that you? Yeah yeah, it's me... Neil...
The thought that automatic-pilot cars would encourage people to make longer commutes at first seems logical, but then...
Every driver seems to underestimate the amount of time they spend driving. Because they are so focused on the task of driving, they lose track of the amount of time invested. Something is always "a five minute drive" but when actually measured, it takes fifteen or twenty.
The point: I think that, if people were forced to sit without concentrating on the minute actions of the driving, they'd realize how long the trips really were. The average meathead would get very bored and would not be willing to travel nearly as far.
Movies and TV and beers may be enough to distract them, though. And, perhaps the greatest long-range benefit, instead of listening to dumbasses like Rush Limbaugh, people would be watching television stations. Perhaps the death of right-wing talk radio could be a beneficial by-product. Mind-numbing TV programs actually look good in comparison! Wow!
Volvo automobiles have always lived up to their name. ;)
I registered at NYT once. It took me a few minutes, but it saves me the time thenceforth of looking for an equivalent free article.
I get no spam from them.
Uh...you register at Slashdot.
.sig of an identity...and anyway if your posts are worth reading they'll be moderated up.
I know that Slashdot allows anonymous viewing and posting, but there's no real need to register unless you want the journal and eventual karma bonus. Not enough people view at 1 instead of 0 to warrant not being an AC with a manual
So why is Slashdot registration OK, but NYT not? Is it because Slashdot requires less info from you? Seriously, what do you think NYT's going to do with the info?
Because it's pretty easy for the NY times to block all requests with HTTP_REFER = slashdot.org
This is Slashdot... you sure it wasn't ECE?
THE NERD IS THE COMPUTER.
I regitered on NYT a long time a go but have since
re installed my OS a few times and lost my password and userid for NYT. I don't read NYT enough to worry about keeping up with it.
This is Slashdot... you sure it wasn't ECE?
Positive. It was EAZY E!
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Actually, I don't go even go looking for the article. The news item truly has to be something awesome for me to hunt it down. The slashdot comments are almost always more insightful than the article itself anyway. That's what makes me coming back to Slashdot, the comments.
Try this. If you have *two* interleaved radar generation points -- one on either side of the car, you should be able to come up with a meaningful 3D radar image because you are moving at a known speed. Metaphorically, imagine you are riding a bicycle and alternately blinking your eyes. Your brain automatically integrates the two 2D images it sees into a 3D image. Do the same thing with computers in a car. Remember, you only *really* have to pay attention to the objects that are seen to be moving -- subtract everything that appears 'stationary' (except, obviously, those things directly in your path).
DNA is a Turing machine. You, however, being dynamic and emergent, are not.