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 =).
Could be good for safety
by
erick99
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· 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
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· 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
thedillybar
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· 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
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· 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
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
fucksl4shd0t
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· 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.
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?)
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?
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.
What does this mean?
by
ttldkns
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· 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?
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
Re:What does this mean?
by
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?
by
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?
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
Re:What does this mean?
by
Mal-2
·
· 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?
by
Pantheraleo2k3
·
· 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
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
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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
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
by
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
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.
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?
by
Mnemia
·
· 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".
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?
Can they drive themselves through Iraq?
by
MillionthMonkey
·
· 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: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.
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.
Cars too safety conscious?
by
wornst
·
· 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."
Closing the sunroof?
by
SmackCrackandPot
·
· 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?
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.
Re:Screensavers?
by
pontifier
·
· 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.
-- -John Fenley
non reg link
by
2MuchC0ffeeMan
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Re:so why weren't one of these in the darpa challe
by
foidulus
·
· 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.
Re:It wasn't my fault, officer. It was my car.
by
mog007
·
· Score: 2, Funny
Holy self-driving car Batman! Someone has stolen your idea!
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"
More reduction of traffic congestion
by
jesterzog
·
· 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.
Solve traffic jam waves yourself
by
Osty
·
· 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).
Car Ownership
by
emacs_abuser
·
· 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.
Self-driving cars date back to the 50's
by
cstec
·
· 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.
Re:It wasn't my fault, officer. It was my car.
by
Geoffreyerffoeg
·
· 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?
Re:It wasn't my fault, officer. It was my car.
by
Naffer
·
· 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.
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!!!
Pretty lightweight article
by
serutan
·
· 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.
Slashdot Mirror
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 =).
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
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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."
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.
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.
-John Fenley
brought to you by google
linky linky
Runnin' On Empty
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.
Holy self-driving car Batman! Someone has stolen your idea!
Learn something new.
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"
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.
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?
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.
Don't you wish your girlfriend was a geek like me?
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!!!
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!