Slashdot Mirror
Will Our Cars Become Our Chauffeurs?
Roland Piquepaille writes "According to this long article from EE Times about the 'Self-Navigating Vehicle,' the answer is a resounding yes. Many car experts think that autonomous vehicles which avoid collisions and communicate wirelessly with other cars will be the norm in two to three decades. In the meantime, the enabling technologies for self-navigating cars are emerging, from sensors embedded in the brake or accelerator pedals to more powerful computers. Already, partial solutions exist for adaptive cruise control or for staying in a highway lane. One day, we'll be able to do something else than driving our cars through traffic jams, saving us about two hours per working day. This is the future that engineers are building, but will you accept to be driven by your car? So many people like driving that the concept of a completely autonomous car might be delayed for psychological reasons, not technical ones. This summary contains selected details of the original article."
Yes, in the short term. No, after the computer revolution. Then we will drive around our new computer overlords.
Like that guy who set his RV on cruise control and went in the back to make a sandwich? I smell disaster.
12:50 - press return.
I can't wait for the time when people don't over-break during a slowdown. It's the #1 cause of a traffic jam.
I know I'm going to be modded up on this
It's one thing to trust a computer to do your taxes, it's quite another to trust one to hurl you down the street at 80 mph without killing you.
Public transport, this is America.
Have a nice day.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
As much as I hate to admit that it might be a step forward, think about the time saved if all cars began moving as soon as the light turned green (instead of waiting for each car in front of another).
That would shave lots of time right there.
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
it's been around for years and it cost under $2 a ride
How could they wreck such a large industry! Do the cars have no feeling? No sense of right and wrong? Stupid cars! I say that we enact legislation to protect this industry vital to the nations industries.
Hurricane Ivan: A 17th century prison collapsed. All of the inmates escaped.
I mean, what's the purpose otherwise? I can easily see, unfortunately, a future where even being driven by your car, it's STILL illegal to be over the DUI limit.
Why, soon, I'll have to get out of my car to smoke too!
Having automated transport systems removing the human (idiot) factor will be essential to prevent utter gridlock in the future. The only other alternative is to stop immigrating people faster than we can expand the infrastructure they use. Yes this ultimately is the problem - highway construction cannot keep pace with US population growth.
They don't let me fly the plane, or drive the train or Trailways. I would give up driving my car in a second, and get back to the important stuff like drinking and smoking pot.
I remember a Boy's Life (the Boy Scout magazine) cover where they had self driving cars.
It's been a long time since I was a boy scout.
Don't get me wrong, I'm impressed with the technology that's coming out the door but it's been a promise for years with us not much farther ahead.
-Teiresias
In the USA, the risk of lawsuits will surely delay this kind of thing for a long time to come.
Sadly, that will probably mean more people get hurt in the long run.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I take Mass Transit to be driven around.
I drive my car to get away from being driven around.
It would be nice if we could suddenly switch over so that everybody was using this technology, but that's not going to happen. This doesn't seem like the kind of technology that can be slowly introduced. Why would you want to ride one of these cars when 99% of the cars on the road are still driven by people?
Take an '83 Monte Carlo on a snowy/icy road, and pretty soon the car will be going all by itself, ignoring all user input "suggestions"...
Not that bad once you get used to it, really.
If you don't know what AltaVista is (was), get off my lawn.
Lenny: Hey look, Homer has one of those self driving cars!
(Car crashes)
Carl: Yeah, one of those American self driving cars.
I suppose that trusting my life in a high speed vehichle to the same genre of wireless hardware I find myself frequently reconfiguring and debugging is really my own psychological problem. I wonder if they can wirelessly detect snow, ice, small animals and things aside from neighboring cars. To say that a person is irrational to fear this kind of technology is like saying the famous last words "relax.. what could possibly go wrong?"
Posted by michael on Thursday November 18, @12:03PM
from the home,-james dept.
Roland Piquepaille
"In Soviet Russia, car drives you!"
Lost in a Thule (pronounced too-lee) fog on the way home (Homer Simpson voice: Damn you Thule Fog!) and ended up lost in Fort Ord (mostly closed military base) down dark streets past shuttered houses (oooEEEEoooEEEEoooo) and finding my way back to the Freeway about 20 minutes later, only to navigate 40 miles home in dark fog (Bad: Rain, Badder: Blizzard, Worse: Fog, Worsetest: Dark and Rain/Blizzard/Fog) My brain was fried from the concentration. Who needs video games, cripes!
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I don't want my car to drive me on the highway but I would love it if it could drop me off a the curb, go park and pick me up when I push a button. Automatic Valet!
This is one of the few areas where I see the legal barriers as nearly insurmountable. What happens when the automatic driving system screws up? Whose insurance kicks in? Who assumes responsibility? It seems like the liability to automobile manufacturers who installed such systems would be huge. Would an insurance company really be willing to underwrite a system like this? Are you willing to assume responsibility yourself for the failure of an automated driving system?
Furthermore, you need black boxes and monitoring/recording systems - how do you know who was driving in an accident, the autopilot or the human driver?
Sure, planes have "autopilots" but there's very little stuff in the air to avoid, and lots of air traffic controllers and rules to basically make flying in a straight line in your own empty area of airspace possible.
Technical and psychological issues aside (and those issues are still huge), unless the system was flawless and perfect (which it won't be) I see the legal morass here as nearly insurmountable.
Hmm, okay...but my flying car already does that. Since I only have to pop my food pills in the rehydrator for about 10 seconds, I have much more time in the morning and so I'm not in as much of a rush to get to work.
...which is working for Jet & Teleport Inc, by the way. If my job isn't taken over by an automaton....
Please help metamoderate.
Officer, I tried to stop for pedestrian in the cross walk, but then my car got the BSOD.
Fight Spammers!
If you have those two hours to get to work and back, you can bet your ass that you'll be encouraged by the boss to "take advantage of the time" and be doing something related to your job in the car. They might not be able to enforce it legally, but the pressure out there will be high enough that I suspect many, many people will find themselves in a position to either accept it, or be worrying that they'll be the next guy out the door when layoffs come up.
My own pointless vanity vintage computing page
This is the future that engineers are building, but will you accept to be driven by your car?
Where do I sign up?
I think most people that want to drive should by no means be allowed to do so. I consider myself a decent driver, but I will even include myself in that group. War on Drugs...War on Terror. I'll take a War on Cars, which would actually save a significant number of lives!
intelligent car ? why not build an intelligent robot first ? the logic says it is pretty close by. unless - it happens to be a controlled city - with everything controlled!!!
First you have to have an autonomous car that can work with other autonomous cars, AND cars that are not autonomous. Its not like everyone will wake up at the same day and have autonomous cars. And those cars have to be better than those that aren't autonomous. Will I be able to force my car to speed if I'm running late? Then maybe I'm better off doing my own driving. How will the car handle it if some moron is driving like a maniac around me? How will it avoid being smacked around if he tries to cut me off?
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
To drive me to work in the morning, it would be great! Roll out of bed, into the car and sleep all the way there. Just need some kind of horizontal-auto-shower and auto-dressing units, and I'm all set!
Who needs consciousness?
Visit the Game Programming Wiki!
"...saving us about two hours per working day."
An hour commute? Man, I thought my 2.5 mile/10 minute commute was unbearable.
Think globally, work locally.
Yeah, and you know that the first time there's a significant crash that can be blamed on the computer (whether it's true or not), safety folks will raise holy hell, and who knows what'll happen then to the whole concept then?
Although this argument never held much water with me. Consider all the tired drivers, drunk drivers, old people, teenagers, and in general crappy drivers on the roads. There's like, what, 60,000 deaths a year due to car crashes, and that's nearly all human error. Can't imagine computers doing worse job than we're doing already.
Hi... I'm Larry... the shivering chipmunk... brrrrr!... I'm cold... I need a sweater...
So will this be like the Johnny TaxiCabs from "Total Recall"?
If a system like this means that my car could drive me to the local MegaMall for Christmas shopping, drop me at the front door, and then come pick me up when I call it, then count me in.
I just hate Christmas shopping traffic.
Heh, I'm all for autodriven cars...as long as it's the other guy! As for me, I'll continue driving myself around. Why? It's more fun for me that way! ;)
Seriously, the best solution to our traffic problems has already been mentioned, public transit. If we'd ever get the public mass transit religion, the toll authorities would go broke...heyyyy...
To the making of books there is no end, so let's get started
That could have disastrous consequences!
A better question is not whether cars in two or three decades will drive us, but what will power them. Although I suppose if we fall back to horses and buggies, they have some amount of cruise control built in.
Fine, the car can detect collisions with other cars, but can it detect collisions with bicycles and pedestrians? On most roads in the US, despite what people think, bicycles have equal access to the roads under the the law. 1. Will their sensors be able to detect a bicyclist? 2. Will they be able to identify it as a "cyclist" or will it presume that it's a ped 3. will the behavior modeling software (used to predict what the identified object will do next - essential for this type of system) be able to predict the behavior of a cyclist?
Sometimes I doubt your committment to SparkleMotion!
Another would be for long drives. I'll admit that when I have to drive three hours to see family there are dozens of other things I would rather be doing: reading, working on the laptop, and playing with my kids, etc. That is when having a feature like this would make me all the happier.
I think we'll have artificial intelligence before we have self driving cars. Once you have AI, any software can learn its hardware by trial and error. I'm not saying you slap some AI into a beater car and let it loose into a few demolition derbies to get it warmed up, though that'd be fun. I'm saying AI will have an imagination space that can judge whats going on and what may happen in the future, while sensors are constantly updating whats going on. Sure, like their paper says there will be network communication between cars, but first you need a car that can drive itself without wrecking. I guess it COULD be done without AI, but the senors you need to understand the road are exactly the sensors that we don't have, so we can't make AI.
A paper I did on AI, its easy reading: www.geocities.com/James_Sager2
God spoke to me.
... a farmer's market, cars will be smart enough to keep me away. Where's the fun in that, you young whippersnappers?
..who says, "Hi. You're in a Johnny Cab!"
That would be bad ass.
We have secretly replaced these Slashdot mods' sense of humor with a rusty nail. Let's see if they notice!!
So what happens now when I get carded at the bar?
Not to be paranoid, but if something like this happens, then that's just more incentive for Big Brother to give each of us a universal ID card with built-in RFID tags, free of charge...
Business \Busi"ness\, n.;
A scam in which all people involved perceive as beneficial...
I suspect it'll be some time before the cars are completely automated. I expect that cruise control will be expanded to essentially become an autopilot. The driver will have to turn the system on and will be able to retake control at any time.
I'd imagine that the first fully automated cars will be airport shuttles and similar vehicles which make a repeated circuit of stops. City buses and taxi cabs will come next, other commercial vehicles such as delivery vans and trucks, then finally personal automobiles. How much would a long haul semi-truck operation save if they could run their trucks 24/7 and didn't have to pay for drivers? That's a lot of profit to be had and profit drives innovation.
"The legitimate powers of government extend only to such acts as are injurious to others." Thomas Jefferson.
Specifically, since there are a plethora of idiots on the road that for some reason completely unknown to me have actually managed to get licensed to operate a road vehicle, the real dangers are not so much with other automated vehicles or even the unexpected deer crossing that the article mentions, it's the drivers on the road that don't actually know how to drive that are the real problem.
While it's all very well and good to say that these people shouldn't be on the road (they shouldn't, but it's beside the point), the fact of the matter is that they are, and it's up to the more competent drivers to compensate for their idiocy because otherwise lives would be lost.
Which brings to mind an interesting question...
What if one of these automated vehicles got into a wreck and it killed someone? Who would be responsible? The article talks about the "driver" of the car simply reading the newspaper while being chauferred, but what if the electronics on the vehicle miss a detail about the current road conditions (for example, a child suddenly darts out into the road)? Granted, a human could just as easily fail to react in time, but if the on board computer fails to react who is considered liable? Is it the auto manufacturer? the programmers? or the driver? I can tell you if it's the latter, this technology will never catch on because nobody will ever feel secure enough to use it.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
During the weekends, I enjoy going for a nice drive.
So what happens with the people who drive for fun? Do they get a special lane, a special highway, a special car?
This idea will never happen. Too many people enjoy driving for this to really catch on.
Didn't they say that two to three decades ago? I'd love to see this happen, but I can see manufacturer liability and the American love of being independent on the open road (and damn the consequences for the environment) being significant barriers to adoption, at least in the US. Especially so if there's any sort of infrastructure investment requirement, such as modifications to the roads themselves....
Why will this never happen? Two words: product liability.
Look at the cost of a simple, single-engine general aviation aircraft. A good chunk of those costs go to pay for product liability insurance for the manufacturer. And aircraft are built with the assumption that they are being piloted by a trained, skilled, intelligent human being.
You shift the "skill" requirement to the computer, let any Joe Blow get behind the wheel, and the FIRST time the computer screws up and kills/injures/maims Mr. Blow, you're going to get sued into oblivion.
Sorry, unless the *legal* climate changes, this is one *technical* change I doubt will ever come to pass.
"I feel that if a person can't communicate, the very least he can do is to shut up." -- Tom Lehrer
I thought you wanted a bicycle that automatically navigated. What do you want next, one that you don't have to pedal? You're living in a fantasy land.
God spoke to me.
It helps to be making the right sandwich
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Until a time when people leave enough distance between them and the car in front of them to stop suddenly... Insufficient stopping distance is the #1 cause of over-braking (and accidents, too...)
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
How many lanes can a road scale, either wide or up, before each lane you add starts decreasing the efficiency? Maybe twelve, maybe twenty. Our current transportation system will collapse upon itself because of congestion long before energy costs or environmental concerns.
We can tweak the algorithm all we want but this architecture does not scale.
Most municipalities (and small towns) get their revenue from traffic tickets. If you make cars that never break the law, then bye, bye revenue!
Yeah, right.
National Car Association.
They'll pry my steering wheel from my cold dead hands.
after doing this for three days in a row.
Clippy: It seems you have navigated to the same point 3 times in a row, would you like to enable the Chauffeur Wizard?
Me: Sure why not?
during install
Clippy: Windows ME (Mobile Edition), offers several new features that make your driving experience more enjoyable. Your car now starts faster than ever, is more stable than ever, and you can even shut down your air conditioning and other processes without restarting your car.
First day: works fine
12th day:
So far so good, but I decide to put a New MP3 CD in the DEck.
Clippy: Windows ME is unable to play the desired file, would you like to download the proper codec?
Me: sure
Clippy: Windows ME has detected that you do not have the proper DRM licenese to play the requested file.
Me: @#%!#@%!#%, then don't play it then
Clippy: Windows ME can make a suggestion for a better route to your office, would you liek to enable the route wizard?
Me: No
Clippy: Windows ME has detected that you do not have the proper DRM licenese to play the requested file.
Me WTF?
Car....immediately heads for the open draw bridge.
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhh.....splash
In Soviet Russia, car drives you!
In my commuting it's become clear to me that most humans shouldn't control vehicles. Too many of them drive erratically, creating traffic flow problems by changing speed and weaving between lanes.And there are the idiots who think there's only accelerate and brake. Few seem to understand coasting is a way to slow down without causing a compression wave from your brake lights. Commuting would be so nice if we all had mass transit or Johnny Cabs.
I see a removal of these "favorite" things people do: ;) They would not be necessary for a controlled car system. Gliding into another lane is the proper Texas method.
1. Cutting around people just because they have a larger gap then 3cm although they are already pacing the car in front of them.
2. Multi-lane exits. "There is my exit. Other cars should get out my way, so I can exit NOW from the left lane!"
3. People going slow in the left lane, especially when they are matching the car in the right.
4. Tailgaters. x 10 feet is not a decent gap at 65+ MPH.
5. Texas has a law against using turn signals.
6. Break tapping every few seconds although this is not too common.
7. Speeding on rain and especially ice.
I am sure there are more if I spent a little more time thinking about it.
There are some very valid points for a system like this such as the minimization and/or elimination of traffic jams in big cities. But this is the only place I could even see this as desirable in my eyes... I hope that we never reach the point where riding in an autonomous car is required. Some of us feel great joy in the ability to drive.
I truly enjoy every bit of my morning commute. I will admit that it is in a city of only ~100k people so traffic isn't that terrible, but my and my manual transmission car (less computers and automatic thing happening) get along quite well. I enjoy driving everywhere except for traffic jams and long (5+ hour) streches on the interstate. As long as computer control and/or suggestion is optional and can be turned off, it's okay, but don't take away the joy of driving.
---- Move SIG...For great justice!
Watch out California... Big brother will hack your car and make it drive around without you, increasing your GPS tracked mileage taxes.
Yes I would like to be driven my a transport vehicle and dedicate my time to another more productive task (ie: sleeping)
Gee on days when I don't want to drive, I just take the bus and read a book or use my laptop.
Great to see that instead everyone will have their own individual cars automatically driving them to work, thus maximizing congestion and pollution.
If it runs Windows, no I won't trust it! Heck I don't even trust it to get me to my destination now when I'm driving, let alone if a computer were driving it for me.
I remember hearing once that we've had this kind of technology for 20 years or so but there was no way they could sell it to skeptical public so they sat on it and gradually started introducing new features. Total hearsay, of course...
What doesn't kill you only delays the inevitable
It doesn't have to be perfect. It just has to be a better driver than average. Of course, if you're already a better driver than average, well, sucks to be you, but at least you won't get HIT by an automated car as often.
-russ
p.s. A better "intelligent highway" is at http://www.ruf.dk
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
My Infiniti FX35 has adaptive cruise control. It is the coolest, freakiest feature. Basically, all you need to do is steer your car. The adaptive cruise control takes care of your speed and maintaining a safe distance.
Once you get used to it, it totally changes the way you drive. I definitely think it makes driving safer and less stressful.
Rush as futurists? What's next, Trees fighting amongst themselves?
Speaking as somebody who gets absurdly motion sick whenever not driving, I gotta say that having a car that drove me around would be a waste of a great many meals.
It also makes me think of the transportation industry. Truck drivers might become obsolete,
but I doubt it.
Look at trains: they have friggin tracks. They still have human drivers. I think cars would be the same way: the system is just too complicated and the amount of required real world understanding is too large in a real situation to just trust a computer to do it all. Heck, I don't even trust most humans to drive.
Only land-huggers will need a self-driving car in 2044!
- Despite popular opinion, I am not perfect.
If this came close to happening, don't you think we'd see competing standards, just like everything else technological? Only that this time it would be dangerous, instead of just useless, redundant, or annoying, like railroad gauges/videotapes/DVDs/codecs/OSs/WiFi/etc.
perl -e 'foreach(values %SIG){$_="IGNORE";}while(){}'
I'm intrigued by this ... Hopefully it's sooner than 20 years, but we really need it now for obvious reasons.
I'm tired of speeding tickets, idiot drivers, traffic jams, absoulte boredom, etc. Additionally, do we really need these huge "Suburban Assault Vehicles"? Hell, I'd be happy with some kind of FROG (free ranging on-grid) system. Pick me up, drop me off, come get me later without some ignorant taxi driver espousing his beliefs on my trip to whereever.
Although, the DARPA Challenge earlier this year was somewhat of a disaster. And god forbid the onboard computers run Windows.
killdashnineAm I the only one thinking of those old "If Windows PC was a car" jokes?
I'd be afraid people would start sleeping on the way to work (heck, I probably would). Unless the systems have a mighty good failsafe, that could be pretty scary.
Tech News, Reviews and Tutorials
A lot of good this thing will do when some asshole is going 35 mph on the freeway in a 1985 Ford Aspire spewing black fumes out of the exhaust.
Sending wireless warning signal...
Sending wireless warning signal...
Sending wireless warning signal...
and then you crash.
I agree that I would like to have this kind of system, it would keep people from driving 30 under the speed limit as well as keep drivers moving so that there aren't huge traffic pile-ups. When they think they have a final working model, they should introduce it to Houston first.
No one cares what your captcha was
Houston TX, USA
I know I'm not going to pay for insurance if I'm not driving the car.
I won't be liable for the actions of an autonomous vehicle.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
I can't wait for the autonomous car...at least for the daily commute. I expect there will still be an override for recreational purposes such as sports cars, off-road, hunting/fishing, exploration trail driving, etc. I mean I want my limo to run itself...I want to drive my porche...wait I don't have either...nevermind.
Would you like to offensively drive? Slow down for pedestrians, or just beep? Do you want to pull burnouts at every stoplight? If someone is driving slower than you, do you want to tailgate them with your highbeams on in an attempt to get them to switch lanes? Do you want to leave your turnsignals on for extended periods of time for no reason? I could see a whole host of car hacks along these lines.
God spoke to me.
I don't know about you but I shudder to think about sharing the road with automated 18-wheelers. What happens if the software or hardware (mechanical or computer) fails? What happens if the truck's control network is disrupted or gets hacked? Even an out of control car could create large amounts of damage but a runaway truck would be a nightmare.
$#!^ happens, but why does it always have to happen to me???
didn't that Arnie movie 6th Day feature a scene where Arnold and someone else are being driven around in a computer-controlled SUV? I remember each of them twisting uncomfortably in their seats to look at each other, to really make it clear that the vehicle was doing the work. I thought this presentation of the technology was wrong. The car designers would have made the chairs swivel so the passengers really could just look at one another or even face the rear. For that matter, they could have even sat in back.
Except I'm scare for one result: super-massive-gas-guzzling-Hummers-of-the-future.
Think about it. Built-in TVs DVD players, those are just the first step. Once the car is driving itself, you are completely free bring in all of the nicities and freedoms from home.
This includes but is not limited too:
and unfortunately:
The result can only be one thing - everyone and their mother is driving around in what is basically a RV. And to those who think otherwise, or say I'm full of it: It's only a matter of time. It's simply the natural progression of people to want everything all of the time.
And to cover the obligatory responses in advance:
All famous or rich people alread have the above in the form of a private jet or limo or tour bus. It's just that the rest of us have no idea how nice they are.
Oh well, need to go.
Everybody doesn't drive an RV nowadays already because they are too expensive and Don't drive themselves yet.
It is still impossible for participants to a Darpa contest to cross a desert in an autonomous car. Most of them got nowhere. Mercedes did do tests on the German Autobahn with autonomous cars, but that was a very isolated test, where a human was supervising. The reason they tried it on the highway, was because it is an "easy" place to do the driving. Driving in city's is hard. Driving in complex situations is hard. Just think of yourself driving and then think of all the times where you thought "sorry, mate", "where did he come from", "What the F", "hmm if that little girl would have been one second earlier, I wouldn't have noticed her".
what I am trying to say, computers driving cars is a HARD problem. The Public to accept a computer to drive a car is even more hard. If the worlds first fully autonomous car kills somebody it will be headlines all over. A PR nightmare.
Use Adsense for Charity
If you have a job where you work on a computer every day, talk with your manager about telecommuting for a couple or three days a week. As long as you can insure a secure connection, the computer in your house will work just as well as the computer in your cube. This could cut out the process of commuting all together for those days.
It's good to use your head, but not as a battering ram.
Before you run over *everyone* on bicycles, you should at least consider that some of us stop at signs and lights. Okay, most cars do stop for lights, but for signs? HA! 10mph does not a stop make.
Now as far a signaling goes, I'm grateful that there are still some drivers that will signal before cutting me off with a right turn. The only time I *don't* signal is when there's a little truck with 18 or more wheels racing by within an arm's length. I admit, I'll skip signalling if it'll seriously injure or kill me, but other than that, I beat the cars out there 30 to one.
or even better, sterilize all felons. we need to start looking at the impact individuals have on others and on our collective development process and thus our common future. the roots of social problems feed in an environment of selfishness and ignorance (as most victorian thinkers recognized). remove a chunk of the selfish who were pretty much unwanted anyway and I bet the cumulative effect would be enormous. then we wouldn't need self driving cars so much.
If autonomous vehicles save 60,000 lives per year, and result in 6 wrongful death lawsuits per year, do you really think we will ever see an autonomous car on the road? I really, really doubt it. Americans would rather let 60,000 die than forgo those 6 lawsuits, and companies would rather let 60,000 die than pay out on those 6 lawsuits.
Nothing to see here. Move along.
What about a flying car?
Opera Watch - An Opera browser blog.
The problem I see with this isn't so much the loss of fun associated with driving, but the loss of freedom. I would ONLY favor an automated driving system if it did not do any of the following things:
1 - Require a centralized control or regularly downloaded from some centralized source in order to work properly (i.e. map data from a city's traffic management server, or something like that).
2 - Allow the government to effectively disable the car by remote (which would be easy if #1 was true - just mandate that only authorized vehicles could access the server).
3 - Become mandatory (or effectively mandatory by raising insurance rates to punitive levels for those who don't use it).
4 - Become a means of legistlated vendor lock-in for the previously established auto makers. (In much the same way that the DMCA is a legistlated vendor lock-in for previously established movie and music companies.) If cars that don't have these features are not allowed on main roads anymore, and to get the features approved requires a lot of red tape and is tied to some Intellectual Property of some sort, that effectively prevents any small competitor from trying to get started in the auto-industry, or any hobbiest trying to customize a car.
I like the technology, but given the government's unwillingness to consider the needs of the little guy, or the importance of a level playing field in business (and hobbies, dammit!), I say there is an extremely high likelyhood that this would be implemented in a way that will stifle freedom more than is minimally neccessary (I do understand that some small stifling of freedom is a natural unavoidable consequence of a denser population, but this will be implemented in such a way that it stifles it a lot more than it has to, I can guarantee it.)
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
This could open up a lot of problems for people who like to put aftermarket stuff on their vehicle, particulaly when it changes the volume and mass of the vehicle. The car has to somehow be made aware of such changed...if someone lowers their suspension, they can't handle as potholes as well anymore. If someone turns a regular truck into a monster truck, you've got a lot more height and width to your car. Even simply adding a trailer can cause problems...the truck would need to handle corners differently, it would need nigher clearances, etc.
There are simply too many ways that human error can mess things up. It's the same reason that computers fail so often yet we still fly on airplanes...airplanes are relatively static systems. Personal computers on the othter hand are customizable, meaning that there can be program conflicts or even program errors.
What I want to see is cities that take a chance and build the infrastructure to handle mass public transportation along with normal roads.
The two years I spent in NY gave me a love for the subway... so much that 8 years later I still get misty eyed when I think about it. It's such a perfect system.
But alas, I moved back to Tulsa, where everyone and their dog drives to work and so I do too. I can never expect the city to actually build GOOD public transports, because of the land area they would need to cover. So as much as I'd love to have it, I'm still relegated to driving. Anything that makes transportation more automatic is better, if you ask me. I waste 8-10 hours a week in simple commutes... 8-10 hours I could use for something I want to do. And I know there are plenty of others who waste more time than that.
btw, buses aren't the answer until there are more buses that go to more places. I don't have a bus stop near either my home or workplace.
By breaking them out of the normal traffic situations the navigation computers will be able to avoid having to deal with the random actions of normal drivers and be easier to trust during the roll-out. Once you get into the city autopilot will go off and you'll be asked to start driving. Over time when the system is perfected and the market is more fully penetrated you'll see autopilot everywhere, but it will probably start on dedicated for pay lanes first.
My $0.02
Recently on one of the cable channels, they had a program about an auto show in Hannover (I think). It wasn't your usual auto show with Daisy Duke and plastic shells of cars with no engine. Rather for commercial vehicles. There was a lot of cool stuff out there, and one thing in particular which caught my attention was the "auto-driving" bus from Mercedes Benz.
The bus has sensors to keep it in the lane. Basically, a camera or two kept an "eye" on the lane lines, and if the bus moved too close to the other lane without a turn signal indicating a switch to that lane, it either sounded an alarm or made a correction. I think it could also detect an emergency manouver and didn't counter that effort. The latter portion may be pure speculation though.
It also had a very cool feature I'd like to see on cars. It had a cruise control with a function to maintain following distance. You set your speed and follow distance, then let it do the work. If you got cut off, it wouldn't overreact, rather gradually open the distance. Now, if the drivers here in the US could master these concepts, it would be a lot nicer. Screw master...how about just occastionally recognize and follow them?
(The concepts were maintaining distance, not jamming on the brakes, and using turn signals.)
Plant a tree in a developing country.
The problem? That necessitates complete changeover. Once you have a single car on the road being driven by a human, there's a chaos factor that isn't being communicated to the other cars.
Sure, you can make cars without the tech illegal, but...that would be a bit to ask of the poor.
Don't drive to Deadhorse (Prudhoe Bay), Alaska. You won't be happy on the Alaska Highway, and by the time you get to the *start* of the 415-mile Dalton Highway, you'll want an Osprey to fly you home.
Seriously, though, I wouldn't want an auto-driver. The act of driving is very enjoyable, once I'm in "the zone". It's a lot like programming, I think. If you don't get in the zone, you can sling a page or two and be completely exhausted, but once you're in the zone, you could code half of emacs without sleep or food or noticing the lack of either. (Okay, half of vi?)
It would be interesting, perhaps, to have a car drive itself, but I think I might get a little bored just riding for hours on end. It took me only about 12 days of solo driving to get from Baton Rouge, LA, to the Arctic Ocean by Prudhoe Bay (yes, I swam) and back (11,333 miles). My longest day started at the first rest stop west of San Antonio on I-10 and ended an hour north of Los Angeles on I-5. If I had to just sit there, I'd have been really, really bored.
Or maybe not.
would probably try to stop such an event from occurring, it would eventually erode a prime revenue source.
Why would you want to ride one of these cars when 99% of the cars on the road are still driven by people?
Because I'd like to be able to do something productive while riding to/from work, rather than allowing traffic jams to affect my blood pressure for little or no gain?
Nah, who am I kidding? I wouldn't be doing anything productive at all. I'd probably sleep in the car on the way to work. Hell, I'd probably sleep on the way back, too. Or read a book. Or watch TV (in-car entertainment systems will likely be common in self-driving cars). Sure, being one of the first self-driving car owners would probably make my commute a bit slower, but what do I care if I'm actually enjoying the ride (or sleeping through it)?
Also, any self-driving car is going to have to have a GPS navigation system, which means that I can just enter an address and my car will take me there. No more trying to find some place that I've never been to at night in the rain (arguably the most annoying type of driving known to man).
Being driven in my own car sounds like the pefect solution since most gridlock is actually caused by bad driving. Driving too close has been proven to cause traffic jams due to the wave effect (can't remember what its called in this situation) as people have to break to a stop rather than simply slowing down gradually. And the other big factor is the idiots who have to cut in too late or avoid moving out of closed lanes until the last minute.
Stick everyone in self driving cars which follow logical rules, drive the right distance apart can be updated of problems ahead and mostly aren't operated by the average selfish driver, and everything will flow much smoother. And then, like the parent said, we can all get drunk, smoke pot and still drive home.
The only potential problem I see is that once you take the boy racing syndrome out of driving, everyone would want gas-heavy RVs so they could lie back and have a snooze on the way home.
I don't know, these are only a few benefits I can think of off the top of my head. Perhaps others can think of some more.
Of course the biggest cost is in the ultra light rail infrastructure. But, how much do we spend maintaining roads, traffic lights, etc? It seems like an elevated light rail infrastructure could be made very cost effective.
Sure, it would probably start in metro areas, but it could spread to more rural areas (where I live, we soak the feds for highway dollars) and probably save money here too.
Plus, people would be less stressed from commutes. Pedestrians could once again take over city streets. And fewer senseless deaths would have to happen. Oh, yeah, and then there's the whole ecology thing.
-Peter
. Penguins Surely Ca
The scenario:
On a winding cliff, only one lane, and a small child in the road... do you hit the child or do you drive off the cliff to avoid the accident?
Computation on that would be extremely difficult. Humans can decide the lesser of two evils and decide whether it be right or wrong.
Now let's say the object was not a child but an animal, does a computer know the difference?
Would your choice change?
Not to be the typical Slashdot nay-sayer, but are these going to be 100% reliable? If not, who is to be responsible when the first crash happens? The manufacturers, who will then get sued.
Unless the liklihood of crashing is *awfully* small, no company is going to be willing to sell this for the typical commmuter.
With our litigious culture, no company in their right minds would expose themselves to such a liability.
Take the recent incident where a bus driver had a heart attack. Since he's human, either no one gets sued or maybe Amtrak gets a law suit. If a computer had been driving, the computer manufacturer, the bus manufacturer, the software company, and Amtrak would now have lawyers knocking their doors down.
Iz
I have thought about this since I was a young child. Really. I am 31 now BTW.
My idea was to put detectors in the front and back fenders of a car and use the "drive by braile" bumps as locating devices for the car. In other words, put scanable microchips or magnets or other such devices in the road bumps and put detectors in the car that will be able to use them for navigation.
With scanable microchips that can dump data into the cars computer it also provides an easy way to pay for the road bumps to be installed. Just make sure that you have a TV screen in the car for the passengers (no one will be driving so they need it now!) and sell advertising that is implanted in some of the road bumps. It would be a great way to direct traffic to local restaurants, tourist sites, etc. and would be a way to remove billboards from the sides of the highways once and for all. Of course they are inside your car now, but hey the scenery would look much better.
I think that this would be much easier than boring holes in the concrete, which I have heard suggested. If you combine this "local" system with GPS systems I think that you would have a viable option.
When the only tool you have is a claw hammer every problem starts to look like the back of someone's skull.
May I introduce you to the concept of population density? America does have mass transport damn near everywhere we have real cities. In other areas, it won't work.
You have to recall that the population spread in Europe was determined before any sort of faster than horse transportation existed. Therefore, cities tend to be denser and transit works. Here, that's not the case.
And it's not all attitudinal - I hate driving, I'd love transit. But in most areas, it doesn't work.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
>
Imagine, I'm rarly in my car for even 45 minutes a working day and it's going to save me two hours!
Wonder how much else is hype?
Nate
First, in congested traffic autonomous vehicles will be able to drive
much faster at closer distances than self-driven vehicles.
More importantly, autonomous taxis will end the need of individuals to
own cars, vastly reduce the number of cars necessary to society, and
indeed end the need for highways. All parking problems would also be
solved, because the few cars that would need to be parked (mainly at
night) would not need to park near their users. The autonomous taxi
will be cheaper to use than a car is to own, because cars are only
actually necessary at the end-points of travel where public transport
is unavailable; the overhead of constantly moving the cars along with
the users even between points public transport handles will avoided (and
thus also its cost). This is the primary cost of most car ownership.
This overhead is only currently necessary because there is no car
available at the end-point of public transport except an expensive taxi
-- only more expensive now because of its driver.
Public transport would also be more accessible to those driving to the
train stations, because the cars could take themselves out of the way of
other drivers without parking in walking distance. Even owners of cars
would be able to benefit from public transport, if only to avoid traffic
in the daily commute.
Shipping would also be much cheaper.
Right now, if you crash your car and kill someone, you are responsible, and you are liable. It is rare that a mechanical failure happens, in which case the car maker (or service center) is liable.
However, when a self-driving car crashes, the car maker (or at least the maker of the "piloting system") will be liable. A few dozen crashes, and the company is out of business.
Reading Slashdot is ruining my spelling and grammar.
JESUS CHRIST!
Think for a minute how many vehicle recalls have happen for your car.
I own a 2001 Chrysler and its been subject to six recalls already.
Now think about the probabilities of fatal software errors in complex systems. (It is fairly high)
Ask yourself the real question: if your car drives you off a bridge, whom are you going to sue?
Cars will not be autonomous, ever. This is mainly because no manufacture would be willing to subject itself to the possible liability of injury/wrongful death/negligence/class action product liability suits. The problem is we need the law. Would be willing to buy an autonomous car made by someone that has complete immunity from suit? Coming to a balance in this area would be difficult. I don't think the car manufactures would dare enter into a regulated arena, at least any more so than they are now.
Lots of people will want to promote public transportation instead of this. While public transportation works in some situations, it is impractical in many areas. Rural & subdivisions typically don't get good public transportation service because a bus will only go downtown.
Where I work I go from one subdivision to another area outside of town. I tried to use the bus to save myself time. I would have had to drive 3 miles to a bus station (there are no sidewalks & heavy traffic so I couldn't easily walk), take a bus downtown, switch to a different bus to take me back out of town, then go to work. Taking the bus would have taken me at least 3 hours to commute each day. Driving takes me about 45 minutes.
The people who I think would benifit the most from this would be the elderly. Lots of senior citizens can't drive and some really shouldn't drive. This would allow them to be much more independent and could delay the eventual move to an assisted living community. With the US population aging, this could be a big deal.
It also solves other problems. Nobody would be convicted of DUIs. Accidents due to bad weather (fog, heavy rain...) would be reduced. No more falling asleep at the wheel. No more drivers crossing the median.
Some interesting things could happen too. Could the car run erands without me? Could the car could take itself to the mechanic for an oil change or maintenance? Could it refuel itself while I'm working? If I order a pizza, could the car pick it up? Could it pick up a kid from school, take him to the dentist, & return him without a parent taking time off from work?
Of course, lots of small communities use tickets to increase their budgets. If the cars don't speed or violate traffic, some budgets would feel the impact. Mechanics would also need to be more technical. Odds are the small one-man mechanic business would suffer because of the cost of the diagnostic & repair equipment.
Damn, I can barely put my pants on when I roll out of bed and telecommute in.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Using fully autonomous vehicles will probably lower the death toll that automobile accidents cause by quite a bit.
... gasp ... a machine ... where you would (or think you would) be helpless if something goes wrong?
However, _some_ accidents probably will happen with autonomous cars. We've all seen or had our systems crash every so often - glitches occur in the best designed systems.
The problem is that the media is likely be very vocal about these ('Robots Cause Twenty-Car Pileup, Many Dead' - or some such). And this will scare the heck out of people. People don't mind taking their life into their own hands - driving yourself you at least nominally have some control over the system. But putting your life into the hands of
It's not the fear of death so much as the fear of dying and not being able to do anything about it. That's scary.
Only last weekend I spent 1.5 hours doing 0-5mph on the M6 (UK) because a truck had overturned on the OTHER SIDE OF THE DAMN MOTORWAY and the cumlitive effect of everyone slowing down a little bit to have a look created a huge jam... Autopilot on cars wouldn't just remove the human error, it'd remove human stupidity too.
You like to drive? Fine, do it on a track. Someplace where most of the dangers of the road are pre-cleared.
Leave the roads for something with better reaction time, and better ability to monitor inputs. I can only look one direction at once, which means I rarely am looking in my mirrors. Often the greater danger when I drive is coming from the ditch (deer, children), but I have to watch the road to make sure it isn't curving. Don't forget to try this at night where the time to reach the end of your headlights it less than your reaction time.
This is the extact subject that my thesis is on. I already have a working implementation for a computer simulation, and for my master program I'm going to be putting it into radio controlled cars and see what they do. It is designed for fair whether cites for starters, but I'm sure people will extend my work and make it more managable in less hospitiable environments. So the long and short of it is, expect a paper published soon out of me with a working implementation, and then a few more years and we might have "test towns" set-up. It is happening sooner than you think!
I drive my car to get away from being driven around.
....... :-D
I'd say Cars vs. Mountainbike and Mass Transit. At first I took mass transit to get to the general are of my destination and cycled the rest of the way. Today I cycle everywhere except in really bad weather and when I am in a hurry. On the whole travelling takes a little longer with the bike/bus/train combination but sometimes, like in the city centerfor example, the bike is often alot faster than a car. It hasn't done my bank account any harm and it doesn't hurt either that for the first time in years I am able to squeeze into a pair of jeans I bought many, many kilograms ago
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
- All drivers are human: Acceptably efficient and safe. "Good enough" for most purposes, accidents do occur but not that often.
- Some drivers are human and some are computers: Confusion and unpredictable responses on both sides, terrible traffic conditions and accidents much more likely.
- All drivers are computers: Very efficient and safe. accidents rare.
The second stage is an unavoidable part of the transition to the third, but no one wants to move from the first stage to the second. Until we have a good process for that, we won't get self-driving cars anytime soon.That's a huge problem--Even if the average accident/death rate of computer-controlled cars is considerably less than that of human-controlled, each individual crash will result in deep-pocket lawsuits.
In addition to technology development, legal liability reform will probably be needed to make self-driving cars a reality. Even if self-driven cars reduce annual highways deaths from the current 40,000 to under 10,000, car manufacturers could be bankrupted by out-of-control jury awards for those 10,000 deaths.
While now most accidents are presumed to be one of the driver's faults, with self-driving cars they'd all pretty much be attributed to a failure of the car... "The software failed to account for boulders falling on the roadway? Negligence!"
I know this isn't a black-and-white issue, but I would think that once the manufacturers can show that their software is safer than most human drivers, they should be largely off the hook for liability, rather than requiring absolute perfection which will simply slow the adoption of this technology.
"To be absolutely certain about something, one must know everything or nothing about it." -- Olin Miller
... One day, we'll be able to do something else than driving our cars through traffic jams
yeah, we'll be doing something else: pedalling. Way too many predictions [if you ignore Bush administration] that we won't have gas to run these intelligent cars within 10 to 15 years.
oilcrash
Scheide
Hubbert
END OF CHEAP OIL
a Reading List
It is getting so hard to care about all this happy-hype car talk about how cool the future cars are going to be. Detroit and Washington may be in denial...let'em rot; just plan to take care of you and yours!
and slightly OT...[to the tune of the "Rawhide" theme:]
Roland, Roland, Roland,
Keep them stories Roland.
All our gas is stolen. Bush Lied!..."
Oh, see what you started! Now I'm gonna get modded down.
SLASHDOT: news for people who can't concentrate on work or have no life at all and got tired of yelling back at the TV.
Consider a group of 8 people each with an IQ of 100. Obviously, the mean IQ would also be 100 and none would be below average. Take a group of 8 people, 7 with an IQ of 100 and 1 with an IQ of 50. The average is 93.75, and clearly only 1/8 of the group is below average. And so, there is no general rule regarding the number of people below or above average. And you are proof that American education is failing.
Fix for the Firefox Slashdot rendering bug
;)
Thanks, that's been driving me crazy. However I did something I thought I would never do, let a site I never heard of install software on my machine. So now that I've admitted my sin, this extension is cool right? No trojans, spyware, etc?
I only mod up parents of "mod parent up" posts...
The article focused only on the technology, but think about owning a self-driving car. When you get to work, why should it sit out in the parking lot all day when it could drive itself home and ferry the rest of the family around, then come pick you up? Most families could get rid of one of their cars. Leased auto-driving cars could take themselves out at night for fueling and scheduled maintenance. Taking it a step further, why I foresee a time when few people will actually own cars. Most of us will subscribe to services that maintain fleets of robo-cars, which we flag one down with our cell phones like cabs. If you take the paid driver out of the picture the scheme might be feasible. Especially if the rate of accidents goes way down and insurance rates plummet. The biggest losers from this technology could be the car companies themselves, selling fewer cars, and insurance companies charging lower premiums.
Your cruising down the highway at a comfortable 80 mph when suddenly as you approach a quick switchback between two dark deep ravines the whole dash of your car goes a bright blue color, the last color you see before you suddenly become very well aquainted with those sharp rocks before you.
That is why I still drive a 20 year old toyota with the elctronic brains of a housefly, there is almost nothing left in it that can go wrong, and if something does go wrong I can usually just run a jumper wire around it.
Like arts? Like cheesy little Indie mags? Check out www.artwerkmag.com, and don't laugh at the bad coding please.
unlike driving a car, the chances of something running in front of you at 30000 feet is pretty slim
If this is true I wonder if it will give greedy employers an excuse make me work more hours in the day. With the most business friendly administration since the gilded age, I can see them arguing that "our changing world" makes current labor protection laws "quaint." And like labor unions, and the geneva convention they have to go if we are going to dominate- er compete on the world stage.
The days of the digital watch are numbered.
I'm ready for the beefy military-spinoff tank cars of the future, super "SUVs" suitable for offroading on the Moon, which never leave the well-paved passing lane because their yuppie owners' insurance requires them to be on remote-monitored autopilot every mile.
--
make install -not war
what you could do on you way to work. You could talk on your cellphone, read the morning paper, eat your breakfast, and brush your hair all at the same time... Oh wait, some people do that already.
The argument doesn't hold water financially or legally either... we already have safety features in the car (eg. ABS brakes, airbags, etc.) which manufacturers could be sued over if they fail, yet manufacturers still include them for various reasons. It IS possible to include new safety features and still make money despite the lawyers.
It was called a Johnny Cab, right?
I don't know about the rest of you, but talking to a state machine for a driver would get rather old after a while.
I'll drive myself, thanks.
"Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives" should be a convenience store, not a government agency.
Will people accept to let their car drive for itself, or do they enjoy the pleasure of driving themselves too much? I think it is just a question of what you have been brought up to expect. For example, in Fnance, nearly all cars are stick shifts. In North America, the norm is to have automatic transmission. A French person will tell you he wants that extra bit of control, so that he can get the maximum power of his engine right when he wants it. In North America people will ask you why the hell you would want to worry about changing gears when automatic transmissions are so good. It's all in what people are used to. Give them automatic cars, and some will adapt to it and wonder how you could even dream of wanting to drive yourself. Others may be harder to adapt. I thought that the movie I Robot played this theme quite well...
I had a driver's license for a while--the written test was, of course, trivial, but it took me three times to barely pass the driving test. (The last time, I drove to the parallel parking spot, said to the examiner that I doubted that I could do it, and proceeded to the next portion of the test...) I never was comfortable with driving, and after being rear-ended, I decided that the world would be a safer place if I didn't drive.
Once it's at least as good as a good human driver, you bet--I'd buy one in a heartbeat, finances permitting.
(Of course, that will be the interesting part; people who can afford to be early adopters can afford human chauffeurs, so the early adopter set may not be as large as it might otherwise be.)
How would you know anything about the aircraft flight control by sitting in economy class sipping on your soda? Pilots control the aircraft throughout the flight. Fly-by-wire is not autopilot; it is more a "cleaning" and adjustment of control inputs, and not used in many modern passenger aircraft (every Cessna aircrarft for example, including the Citation X). The pilots though handle the yoke or joystick and the throttle at all times during the flight, and, surprising as it may be, autopilot functions almost like your car's cruise control and is just as useful (or useless). The various autopilot modes do not "fly the plane" through every turn and climb. Autopilot currently only maintains a constant altitude or speed, nothing more.
Let say we're in suburbia. 3 Meters (~9feet) in front of you a two year old child and an English sheep dog run into the street. You cannot avoid hitting one. Do you want a car choosing for you? Would it assume a larger target is the worst one to hit? Would it choose to hit another vehicle to avoid a person?
Automation is not the way to prevent accidents. Punish idiotic and ignorant driver behaviour if you want safer roads. The article talks about how each car signals the others as to it's intention. We already have a way to let other cars know are intentions, they are called signal lights. Enforce people using them if you want to make the roads safe.
Do not allow someone who has been caught DUI to ever operate a motor vehicle again. Do not allow drivers to perform tasks that remove their attention from the task at hand, especially non-handfree cellphones. There are so many things that could be done.
There are alot of drivers on the road who should not be allowed to drive. This doesn't mean that we should build a vehicle for them to have as their own. Take the licenses away from them, and let them use alternative means of travel. Treat a driver's license like a professional license for a change. It should identify a person's competence, not only their permission to operate a vehicle. It's not a right to have one after all, it's a privilege.
Hell, I will be dead before this concept even becomes a reality so what do I care
Cars cannot safely start at the same time when light turns green, even with the most perfect synchronization.
At speed zéro, it is OK to have your car at a very close distance from the one before you.
At 50km/h, it's dangerous.
At 100km/h, you must keep quite a big distance.
Then the queue of idle cars waiting for the light to turn green must be seen as a rubber band that is going to take expansion as speed increases.
AI in cars won't eliminate risks when cars are close to each other at high speed.
In 2.5 decades (taking the median of what was suggested) I will be 60 years old. I'll be freaked out by lots of things by the time I get to that age, and hopefully I will have accepted them. Some of these being:
The majority of the people in the country won't know what it was like before the internet. Or personal computers. Or cellphones. Or MTV.
My parents will most likely be dead. My dog will be dead. My kid(s) will be in college (hopefully). My nieces will be 37 and 34.
Where will the software industry be like, if it still even exists? How fast will computers be? What other wars will we have started, and won/lost? Will anyone have used a nuclear weapon against other humans?
Self-driving car? Where the hell is my flying car?!?
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
wasn't the robot road project cancelled in the US for exactly that reason, depite the fact that they can make robot cars/roads safer than most current human drivers, there is the whole problem of blame in the case of failure.
I saw an intersting Open University TV program about this issue a while back. Over 60% of the code was to deal with exceptions that happen less than 1% of the time.
Their major stumbling block? Anything their software couldn't cope with, there was no point handing control back to the human, because they wouldn't be able to react fast enough either.
The sight of 20 strech limos moving in absolute (down to the fraction of an inch) synch was very impressive... a bit un-nerving, but very impressive.
I think the problems facing robot cars are more to do with psychology than engineering. Look at how much fuss is raised over a train crash that kills people "not in control of the vehicle" therefore innocent compared to the number of people who die in car wrecks "in control" therefore less innocent.
I realise this issue is conflated with the number of deaths in an instant too, but i think one of the key "shock" factors is the helplessness of the passangers
the first one to sue sensor or software manufacturer's if my car gets in a fender bender.
A computer doesn't drink and drive. A computer doesn't drive badly. A computer doesn't drive emotionally. A computer isn't 16 and driving with a new liscence. A computer doesn't get tired. A computer doesn't drive when it can't find it's glasses. A computer doesn't get distracted by chatting with passengers, listening to music, putting on make-up, watching DVDs, drinking coffeee, or taking phone calls. A computer doesn't race with it's friends.
Computer sensors could (in theory) operate in darkenss, fog, snow, or rain far better than a human could.
Considering that driving is usually a fairly mechanical activity, I think that this would be a good thing to automate. Plus, a coumputer could be programmed to drive in a more fuel efficient fashion. It could moniter traffic situatons and rout around them. Because it doesn't drive eratically, drive times become more predictable. As more cars become automated, driving becomes safer for everyone. This stupid weight escalation shit of buying an SUV becasue it is 'safer' can end.
There will always be some people that like driving a car. There are people that still enjoy knitting, even though there is no real need to make your own sweaters anymore. For most though, I think that a car is a source of freedom to go anywhere they want, and not so much a pleasure to drive. For those people, it wouldn't matter who drove, just that they got where they wanted to go.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Even if the average accident/death rate of computer-controlled cars is considerably less than that of human-controlled, each individual crash will result in deep-pocket lawsuits.
Have you been in an accident? It's already standard procedure for everyone to sue everyone else involved.
There is a conundrum. Have your vehicle controlled by MS Automobile (gives the word "crash" and entirely old meaning) on one side and Granny making a 6 point U-turn on a 3-lane highway with rubberneckers and tourorrists looking on what happened on the other. Maybe I should just stab myself with a sharpened pencil right now and end the suffering.
I mean, look back at all the things technology has saved us from.
People used to enjoy washing dishes, now they're forced to use electric dishwashers to maintain hygiene levels.
There was a time when we would cut trees down by yanking a saw back and forth a couple thousand times, but now chainsaws have revolutionized both Forestry and Murder.
Why, I can remember back before in-vitro fertilization and other advances in reproductive science when people would actually have sex for mere pleasure. We're much safer from disease now that genitals are never required to touch.
We should all welcome this freedom from driving, as History has proven us that Safety is more important than Pleasure.
As long as there are normally piloted vehicles on the roads, this won't work. There are so many incosistent things to deal with when driving, I don't believe it can work. At the same time, I look forward to climbing in the back seat for a nap while in motion-- "Um, car, would you please turn the radio way up when we get there?"
Well, OTOH, so many people liked riding horses... They still can in dedicated circumstances, but they usually don't: part of the pleasure is spoiled by the fact that it's now objectively pointless to ride, do to technical advances.
It might just be the same for driving: once it's become objectively pointless and expensive (car insurance will be *MUCH* more expensive for human wannabe-Schumachers than for reliable, testosterone-free electronic stuff), most of them will forget about it and find another activity in which expressing their virility.
Can't imagine computers doing worse job than we're doing already.
I can. It's easy if you try.
I work with computers a lot. I've seen even the most simple programs crash or not work properly. Driving is at least an order of magnitude more complicated than any computer program in existance today.
Remember the Grand Challenge? None of the vehicles made it very far, in a pretty limitted situation. Many barely made it through the starting gate.
One day, we will overcome the challenges, and we probably will have robot drivers. Not for a while, though.
Can't imagine computers doing worse job than we're doing already.
Oh yeah...?
"Microsoft AutoNavigator XP, Personal Edition".
I would be really happy if my car was capable of driving itself on the highway. Seeing how my daily commute is mostly on the highway, it would be nice to set the car to drive and take a short nap with the car sounding an alarm to wake me shortly before reaching my exit.
I think something like this could be very possible today if manufacturers and the government agreed on a wireless communication standard. This way, cars could tell each other where they are and the highway could communicate with the car, telling the car where the lanes are as well as other information. I doubt you would even need any sort of highway lane recognition software to look at video feeds.
SIGFAULT
It'll be interesting to see how people that are redirected to longer routes to get around traffic handle the inconvenience. Let's just hope we're still given the choice to drive manually.
But I wouldn't be surprised if driving manually will eventually be forbidden because it compromises the presumably better safety of automatic driving. It may first be forbidden on interstate highways. With automatic driving, all vehicles could be moving the same (presumably high) speed. I could easily see a consistent 90mph.
I thought a bunch of cars following each other automatically with a high degree of safety at high speed was a train.
The train cabs can't move off the rails. But PRT - private rapid transit - can.
Build your own energy sources from scratch. http://otherpower.com/
...first time there's a significant crash that can be blamed on the computer (whether it's true or not), safety folks will raise holy hell,...
most of the instrument landing and air traffic control that moves 200-300 souls at a time around at 500mph has a heavy dependence on realtime and embedded software...we hear of occasional FFA ATC outages blamed on software and people in the industry know the systems are stretched pretty thin and badly in need of updates yet, we don't hear of many plane crashed blamed on software...is that just luck? I doubt it. Does it set a high standard? yep. But even so, as you say, how could computers be worse than the drivers we have now?
SLASHDOT: news for people who can't concentrate on work or have no life at all and got tired of yelling back at the TV.
They can have my steering wheel when they pry my cold dead hands from it.
Enjoy. :-D
Read for more information:
http://www.kurzweilai.net/meme/frame.html?main=/ar ticles/art0134.html
They were called "trains."
-- I am. Therefore, I think!
A lot of the time, I'd love to jump in the back seat of my Element with the dogs, tell the computer "drive us to the trail head", and hop out when we get there.
On another plus note, a very great deal of the congestion and slowdown occurs from two things: people wanting to drive at greatly dissimilar speeds, and people being selfish ("I'll cut off 30 cars, making them all come to a stop, to save myself 20 seconds."). With more cars driving in a synchronized pattern, I think that the overall throughput will go up greatly.
steve
Oh, you're not stuck, you're just unable to let go of the onion rings.
One of the key aspects of the automobile, in contrast to other forms of transportation, is that it is more deadly to anyone getting in the way or disobeying the unwritten rules of the road. It's like the Mafia - they don't have to kill everybody, just enough to send a message.
Now, if suddenly we have cars which don't run red lights, and which stop every time for pedestrians or dogs, cats, etc. which appear in front of the vehicle, chaos will ensue.
Imagine walking down a crowded sidewalk. You're constantly being blocked, jostled, and otherwise impeded by people who show little concern for your presence, because you're not a threat.
If the motor-death equation is suddenly removed, the same situation will occur on our sacred highways - walking, bicycling, and other un-American forms of transportation will take over the streets!
---- "If we have to go on with these damned quantum jumps, then I'm sorry that I ever got involved" - Erwin Schrodinger
Yeah, that's true. But then all of those people you named, the drunk ones and tired ones, etc. choose to be drunk or otherwise not in the optimal situation to be driving. They are trusting themselves when they shouldn't. Now, THEY are responsible. Responsible for their own life, responsible for anyone else's the injure. Now, if your computer fails, who's responsible? It think the problem is, (at least in my country, the US) people are obsessed with accountability. Anytime there is a collision, someone must receive the ticket. Someone, has to be responsible.
...it's that I don't trust the other cars on the road. When your car bases some of its navigation decisions on wireless messages received from other cars, who can guarantee another car (or something pretending to be another car) isn't LYING?
On a rural road, I could easily imagine thugs with a computer emitting signals that fake a deer-sighting or accident-ahead event, causing you to pull over and slow down. You are then easy prey to carjacking or simple robbery.
This is similar to spam and envelope/header forgery. For a long time, email software trusted everything that was said in the SMTP transaction and the email header. We're still dealing with that today, slowly adding features to try to limit email's exploitability.
Since car navigation presumably affects the passengers' lives, you can't simply add wireless warning protocols to the navigation computer without thinking seriously about how much it should trust those signals.
I'm inclined to agree, but that's not good enough. We're willing to accept a certain level of risk driving because we have a feeling of control. If you take that away, you need to make driving much safer at the same time.
Also, there's some risk of massive, headline-producing crashes. Homogeneous software could cause many people to crash in the same conditions.
I teach car control as part of a high-speed driving course at a local race track. One day I was on the skidpad with a student driving his new Boxster. I put him into several oversteer situations, and he gracefully corrected out of each one. Then I noticed the PSM (Porsche Stability Management) light was on. I turned off PSM and found that the driver could not correct to save his life - literally.
/. for a hack around it.
Many modern cars are already taking us out of the loop somewhat. In many cases that's a good thing.
When cars become autonomous. I'll be combing
One big advantage of having the car drive is that you can just kick back and fire down a few cold ones.
This is my sig.
The other benefit to this is the cars being able to run *without* a passenger. The car drives me to work, then returns home. My wife uses during the course of the day and sends it to get me at quitting time. Now I only need one car. Conclusion -- the car companies are gonna be pissed off.
According to a bike safety map and brochure (the red roads on the map were apparently "VERY dangerous", which makes me wonder what the *black* roads meant) put out by the local government, cyclists are allowed to use the sidewalks here, but they must yield the right-of-way to pedestrians and must audibly signal before overtaking pedestrians. Oh, and if you ride on the sidewalk, you must obey all pedestrian laws (crosswalks, etc), but you can choose to use those laws instead of the vehicle laws, at your discretion. (Indicentally, the map was very, very nice.)
Auto-drive cars are something that have been variably touted in sci-fi for decades as a near inevitability. Here's a thought though: Already we have auto-manufacturers putting "black boxes" into vehicles, for various claimed reasons (apply tinfoil hat as desired). It has been speculated here that insurance companies may eventually offer "discounts" to drivers that allow access to these kinds of metrics.
Taking it a step further, with the serious problem of insurance fraud that already exists (more on that later), who in their right mind would believe that either legislators or insurance industries wouldn't allow auto-drive in a vehicle without a mandate of _full_ telemetry recording/logging that makes today's "black boxes" look like kid's stuff?
Now, if that was the case, would *you* still want to use it?
A common fraud tactic is for two vehicles to get in front of and behind a "rich-looking" target (semi-truck, high-price car, etc.) and then have the front vehicle swerve wildly or slam on it's brakes to try to force a typically rear-end collision. Then the "victim" claims piles of cash in injury and suffering, etc. and splits it with the second party. In more than one case involving semi-trucks, the "victim" has become just another road-kill statistic.
Now, with a computer driving one of these rigs, it would seem a ripe target for this kind of abuse. A few incidents would likely have one or more congressional button-pusher flailing around for heavier/mandatory monitoring - or worse - an all-out ban.
Just my two cents, in no particular order.
-Myke
. . . .Before the technology is trustworthy enough, but it'll get there.
I'm reminded of the first time I flew an aircraft with an autopilot: at first I wouldn't use it, then later only under duress (Class B during rush-hour while in IMC, as an example), then finally almost constantly. It's a great de-frazzler when things get busy.
Still, stuff breaks, and I always cross-check what George is up to every few minutes or so. It's par for the course, and as Ronnie once said, "Trust, but verify."
];)
Regards;
why, you'll be expected to work two hours longer, of course.
Sounds a plausible route. Automatic commercial vehicles could be small and efficient, down to pizza delivery bots. The vehicles could all form aerodynamically efficient chains on the freeways.
As has been pointed out, the fucked up legal system will probably cripple development in the US, though like you say, steady feature creep on cruise control may help.
Once it is fully there, it'll be great. Few people will really want to own their own as the taxi will be revolutionized to be a cheaper option. Life will become less centralized - there'll be few problems with living in a rural idyll, because nipping into population centers for entertainment and anything else will be easy and comfortable. Door to door service, no parking hassles. Get loaded if you like, and sleep it off on the way home. Sleeper cars for long distance travel...
Eventually, human piloted vehicles will be banned from the roads, as they'll be too dangerous and disrupt the efficiency. Predict a boom in track-days and off-roading in specialist cars for driving for fun.
I hope it's all here before I get too old to drive. It'll enrich life so much for the elderly.
....And there's also the fact that I've seen drivers who could be replaced with a bag of dog poo and have a better safety record....
Regards;
I don't think turning over full control of our vehicles at all times is a realistic goal. However, i can imagine a time where traffic is backed up due to an accident or lane closure, and the car takes over to avoid the issues usually associated with merging traffic and rubber-necking. I think this is where this type of technology will really shine. People will be more likely to hand over control in these low-speed situation, especially if it rewards them, i.e. gets them through the mess sooner.
There are 01 types of people in this world. Those that understand binary, and me.
The state of New Jersey is covered in highways. One can drive from Point A from Point B utilizing a number of different interstates and parkways, some of which have over 10 lanes to choose from. Guess what? There are still major traffic jams every day. The more highway you build, the more highway get utilized. People just start commuting greater distances. NJ's magnificent transit system now allows people from Pennsylvania to commute to New York City -- hundreds of miles on a daily basis.
Together, we will drive the rats from the tundra.
Reminds me of a short story "The Last of the Wild Ones" from the 1980s. (Think pack of roving, feral cars running amok. Or Bender getting bitten by the Werecar.)
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Disclaimer: I have taken several high speed advanced driving courses and am working towards being an instructor for same
The vehicle electronic aids of today do not out-perform a highly skilled human operator.
Consider ABS for instance. ABS is a compromise that says most drivers are better off most of the time if their wheels do not lock up.
There are plenty of times when you do not want any current implementation of ABS from involving itself with you. Consider snow or deep gravel - when you have near zero grip anyway, most ABS implementations will simply NOT apply the brakes, as it would cause a wheel lock. Yet if you were to lock the wheels, you develop a leading edge of snow/gravel (or other loose material) infront of the tires that DOES act to slow the car down. The difference can be used to the advantage of a skilled operator.
Another consideration - 2 wheels on ice, 2 wheels on pavement. If you hit the brakes in this situation, the ice wheels will lock, ABS will release them, and your car will yaw because youhave solid braking power on one side of the car. ABS doesn't want your car to get all screwy and out of whack, so it reduces braking torque to the wheels that DO have traction.
If you're a skilled driver, you can get on the brakes, let the left side lock, and use steering to correct the car's yaw from getting stopping power on only one side of the car.
I have an old AWD Audi where the ABS can be disabled via a dashboard button. Once winter hits here in north dakota, i turn it on and off several times during the course of a drive, depending on the road conditions i see ahead, as sometimes it does a good job and sometimes i do a better job of generating effective decelleration.
Finally, no computerized vehicle system currently envisioned can possibly make all of the considerations that a human occupant can make. Will an automatic car start braking _early_ because it sees a hill crest coming ? Braking power is reduced after cresting a hill because the ground falls away from the car and available grip decreases until the car resettles. People that are used to driving at speed on uneven surfaces know to lift prior to crests to settle the cars steering and braking. Will these automagical cars be smart enough to drive around puddles ? Potholes ? Will the car know that certain bends are off camber, and prone to freezing because of pavement type ?
Will the self driving car recognize that a truck 5s infront of you in your lane is carrying an unsecured load ? Will it know that the safe thing to do is change lanes and briskly accelerate to get out of the path of destruction should the trucks load fall away from it ?
What about the white-out conditions we have when you are in the rear/side vortex of a semi-truck in winter conditions? Any optical systems would be completely blinded at this point, and safe passage is only possible by accelerating through the white out with your headlights off while watching the side signal markers of the truck. Could a self driving car know this ? What would happen if the car was attempting a maneuver and was abruptly put into white-out conditions ?
I know a bunch about working on cars, a little bit about performance and safe driving, and a lot about how hard it is to write software.
I am not looking forward to a day when my car drives for me, because I don't think i could write the software to do it as well as i can do it myself.
My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
To address liability issues you would need to have Professional Software Developers to approve design and implementation, the same way you have Professional Engineers to sign off on bridge plans, etc. This has been discussed a number of times but something of this magnitude would probably drive it over the edge (no pun intended!)
Move over Nostradamus, The Simpsons know all.
That's called a train.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
It's a natural progression that cars will chauffer us around. Humans are lazy; they would rather get in their car and tell it to take them home. One problem I do see is having this ability while other people are still operating their own vehicles. Your standard driver is way too unpredictable to keep them from ramming into these drone vehicles.
Consider this, if all vehicles where centrally controlled, we would get to destinations sooner and safer. Rush hours will be much easier to deal with. Plus you won't be swearing at the car driving down the shoulder of the road, because it won't happen. Well at least until someone hacks the National Navigation system to get them ahead of everyone else.
I've seen adverts for it and SURELY this would be the most annoying thing ever - every time you change lane or drive over lines (like in the middle of traffic light intersections) your car beeps at you.
Has anyone actually used this for a few weeks that can provide an opinion?
I know these cars will need a driver for user intervention at first, but once everyone has a car like this the driver might not even need to be in the car. I imagine that if you share a car between family members, you could send the car home after you get to work so your family can use it all day and then they can send it back in time for you to leave work to go home.
Heavily populated cities with traffic problems would obviously benefits from this, but what about parking? These cities could have huge parking lots on the outskirts of town which the cars can drive themselves to after dropping off the "driver". Obviously public transportation solves both of these problems, but this is America and Americans love our cars and the feeling of freedom that goes with owning one.
It would also convenient if you were out drinking and the car can take you home legally if you are impaired.
As with modern cell phones, this will not be adopted first in the USA. Japan is investing a large amount of capital into this technology, and there is simultaneously a greater desire for such electronics. Consider "navigation computers", displaying maps and such. They are emerging in the US, but have been available in Japan for a long time. Again, Japan is less litigious than the US, so it will be easier to do this; also, since the government is in favour of saving lives by replacing human drivers with robots, it likely will provide some protection for the manufacturer. If robots cut fatalities by 90%, the few accidents that still occur should not punish the manufacturer unduly.
To paraphrase:
To err's human,
to really screw up, you need to automate the error-making process.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
As for insurance, such vehicles need not be perfect, they simply need to be better by a reasonable margin than the average human driver, and insurance companies will likely cover it (or the companies that own fleets of such vehicles could cover the costs of any settlements out of revenue). Can such systems exist? I'm certain the answer is yes, but I think it will take more than just building smarter cars. I think that the most economical solution will be to adapt both roads and the vehicles that travel on them into a single integrated system. I say that because of the one problem that I see every year that is not going to have an easy solution--winter.
I live in Canada, and as such I see winter driving conditions that defeat all but the best human drivers. And I have no idea how you would design a technological solution to it. I'm talking roads covered with blowing snow, such that the nifty vision system you built for your automated car, the one that can pick out the painted lines on the road with ease, has nothing to work with. Black ice that defies almost any efforts to brake (and is subject to peculiar feedback conditions that cause even experienced drivers to do exactly the wrong things to try to bring the vehicle back under control). I'm sure that it would be almost trivial to design an automated vehicle control system that would work well in southern California. I'm not so sure about Canada (or the northern US for that matter).
As such, I think that you would need to embed a reasonable amount of information in systems (buried RFID tags, perhaps?) into the roads themselves, to give the automated vehicles something to reinforce their autonomous systems. And there would have to be a lot of thinking in unexpected directions. I was on the bus the other night, and as it went around the corner, I reflected on the unique properties of a vehicle with such length. Specifically, it was a tight corner, and as such the middle of the bus actually passed over the edge of the corner as it turned, even though front and back wheels were all on the road (you can picture this with a little effort). Now, there was a sidewalk at this corner, and I found myself pondering the fact that if the bus were automated, how would it deal with the possible presence of someone standing right at the corner? At no time would its systems detect the person as being an obstacle directly in front, and yet by virtue of its dimensions, it would stand a good chance of broadsiding them as it turned. And that's just one oddball consideration--I'm sure there would be many more. As such, I think you would have to contemplate the system as a whole--roads, vehicles, passengers, and pedestrians--in order to design generalized solutions that could be implemented on a cost-effective basis.
On the up-side, the benefits of such a system would be obvious. If you chose not to own your own car, but still spent as much on transportation as you currently do, you should theoretically be able to afford a much nicer mode of transportation when you are travelling (you would effectively be splitting the cost of a nicer car with the many other people who would be using it when you are
In a world without walls, there is no need for Windows.
Trains are cool. People love to love them but they are:
because of their massive weight, per passenger they use more fuel than an SUV
They cost more per passenger than an expensive car while providing worse service. Riders don't see that high cost because most train systems are heavily subsidized by tax money so the general population ends up paying for transportation for the train riding people as well as their own.
When's the last time you got out of a train at your doorstep?
"I'm sorry sir but the hoses from the fire train won't reach your house. It'll just have to burn. Hopefully the EMTs from the ambulance train will be able to walk here in time to save your wife though."
We need to stop blindly looking to those cool train things (aka mass transit) to solve our transportation problems. They can't do it.
The right solution to most traffic problems is to simply build more highways (not expand existing ones, build new ones between the old ones.) It's politically difficult because it requires government to pry people from their homes but it's a realistic way to create an efficient economical transportation system. States should build the roads, then increase gas taxes to pay off the construction costs. Your children will thank you.
Or, we can stick our heads back in the sand an pretend the issue will go away. Trains will make the traffic jams go away. People in the future will probably drive less. Flying cars will solve everything! There, don't we all feel better now, nice and comfy warm in the sand.
set softtabstop=4 shiftwidth=4 expandtab nocp worlddomination
a semi is following your Mini Cooper at an approved computer controlled distance (i.e., very close, since you sold this concept to the public based on the computer perfectino of reaction time and understanding of vehicle stopping times / capabilities)
A child jumps in front of your car.
Please describe an algorithm that does the right thing.
My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
Traffic jams are caused by a lack of communication between cars about speed. When someone in front slows down, that message is propagated through a column of cars, causing a compression wave that results in a traffic jam. If everyone could drive exactly the same speed, all of the time, cars could move arbitrarily fast with just inches between them.
Of course, if cars could do that, it would be called a train.
It seems unlikely to me that this will ever make it into the mainstream. I can only imagine this working if all vehicles on the road were computer driven, which seems simply unplausible unless we constructed an alternate set of roads for these computerized cars and gradually transisitoned.
Otherwise, imagine what would happen if group of drivers you cited (tired, drunk, stupid, etc...) came into the range of a computer driven car that didn't speak the protocol, and therefore didn't notice the other car. I'd say you wouldn't have a standing chance against all the idiots since the computer is doing the driving. At least humans have a chance to react. This is, of course, assuming that there's a mix of computerized and non computerized cars on the road. I can't imagine everybody tossing their cars away and buying these new fandango computerized cars.
Maybe you weren't paying attention during "i, robot" (or ANY peice of fiction on a world with humans and robots interacting in daily life)
How can a robot make the right decision in traffic without understanding philosophy ?
Robotic cars can outperform average drivers in a very narrow scope of circumstance.
If driving were confined to a narrow set of circumstance, we could just make people better drivers. We can't.
As i said elsewhere, please write the algorithm to determine the cars behavior in this situation:
You are riding in a computer controlled Mini. Behind you there is a computer controlled semi.
A child jumps out infront of your car.
Please describe the appropriate reaction, and how the car decides to take it.
My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
What exactly is a car expert anyways?
Who calls himself a car expert? Who qualifies at one? Tom Clancy?
Most of the car "experts" I know are only interested in modding up their cars and doing it themselves and wouldnt give a crap about self navigating cars.
EVERY TIME I go driving, I can see that most 'drivers' are barely competent to drive ELEVATORS, much less autonomous motor vehicles.
Well, you can download my extension from the popular extensionsmirror.nl site too, not sure how much vetting they actually do of extensions, but if one was known to be spyware or a trojan I'm pretty sure they'd take it down or at least warn you.
And you are welcome to inspect the contents of the XPI - it's just a renamed ZIP file. And the JAR in there is also a ZIP file by another name. The actual code (other than some RDF packaging stuff) is about 15 lines of Javascript that even a novice can probably follow, which does one thing and one thing only (reflow after page load while surfing on Slashdot.org). No, no spyware or trojans in there.
In my youthful-indiscretion period I had a tendency to put as little money as possible into my car, meaning that sometimes my tires were as bald as Dick Cheney.
Would cars know how well they're being taken care of, and what their actual stopping distance is? Would they know to increase the distance from the car in front of them if the roads were wet or icy? If cars did adjust their distance to correspond to their individual stopping distance, would this allow other cars to be set in "agressive mode" (or manual mode) and cut in front of cars with larger stopping distances, forcing them to slow down more? (One of my pet peeves, now that I do tend to leave one car/10 mph distance to the car in front of me.)
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
The advantage of moving in small steps is that it allows the human psyche time to adapt as well. Currenty, I don't see a problem at all with trusting adaptive cruise or audible warnings. After a couple years of that, I probably wouldn't see a problem moving a little further (harder braking, swerving to avoid collisions?). From there the small steps just keep adding up.
I currently find it hard to believe that cars can drive themselves effectively on city streets. I don't see much of a problem (technically) on interstates though. In fact, if we could just get an automonous system running on the interstate, with human control for exiting & entering, I would be really happy.
But like I said, after a few years on the interstates I might not see a problem with autonomous driving everywhere.
Roses are Red,
Violets are Blue,
In Soviet Russia,
Cars drive you!
Or maybe I can one of these systems on my bike :) But I can imagine how boring that would be.
"Evil thrives when good men do nothing"
Wow - someone else who knows the law! In every place I've lived, it is perfectly legal (and expected) for cars in the left turn lane to pull into the intersection a safe distance to wait their turn. Even when their light turns red, they still have the legal right of way to procede with their turn.
The idea is that this way at least one car can get through the light, regardless of whether that lane's signal is an arrow or regular light and how heavy oncoming traffic may be.
Read your local laws. Chances are that you, too, have the legal right to "park" in the intersection to make your left-hand turns. If you do but don't take advantage of it, then you're actually contributing to the traffic jams that everyone's universally bitching about.
Aggressive left turns. They're not just a good idea - they're the law.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
As one of the Grand Challenge team leaders, I follow this subject rather closely. It's actually a rather stupid article for EE Times. They have canned pictures of MEMS accelerometers, a picture of an ordinary SUV going through water lifted from early Grand Challenge materials, and the inevitable "car talking to satellite" drawing. There's little mention of the real problems. It's not about compute power.
Automatic driving needs either more intelligent visual processing than anything we have now, or better sensors than we have now. I think we'll get the sensors first.
Visual processing can detect big things like other cars, but detecting a pothole is tough. Stereo doesn't really profile ground all that well. You need edges for the correlator to lock up.
True range sensors are more useful. Existing scanning laser rangefinder devices are marginal, but there's better stuff coming. The mechanically scanned devices are too clunky. All solid state devices do exist. I've seen some impressive demos on an optical bench, and that technology will be fieldable soon.
Submillimeter radar also has potential, but it's not here yet. Millimeter radar, however, works fine and is quite useful for seeing anything bigger than a bicycle.
Incidentally, although they don't publicize it, the CMU Grand Challenge vehicle didn't really use Itaniums. Yes, Intel donated Itaniums, and the press releases say they were used, but the Itaniums were damaged before the main event and were replaced with ordinary x86 machines.
Only rationale I can think of is that "everyone else is doing it" so I need to drive that fast to survive. Ah, but then you wouldn't be so anxious to pass "some people" who "seem to think they own the lane". Also, I've driven at the speed limit the vast majority of my driving life-time, and I'm still alive. It's also much more relaxing, btw, to be the one driving 65, than the one trying to pass the one driving 65, and no amount of horn honking will change that. :)
I'll admit I've been more likely to break the Speed Limit law than the Keep Right rule, but I try to obey both. Btw, the Keep Right rule does not apply everywhere. Some states prefer that you keep the far right lane open for incoming traffic, and of course anyone who's lived in a big city knows that sometimes the right lane is exit only (or sometimes even two or three right lanes!). Still, it is polite to stay as far right as possible (unless you're blocking incoming traffic), so I'm not discouraging that. I'm just encouraging people to remember all of the safety rules.
Ahhh, it's nice to no longer live in a big city.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
It's really easy. Show the MADD women that no one will die ever again because they got hit by a durnk driver and they will make sure auto-piloted vehicles will be mandatory.
I for one would love an auto pilot for my vehicle. I could catch up on my reading on the way to and from work and get there a little faster. Want to take a road trip? Get in the car and sleep all night wake up in Florida.
I think more useful things would be banning the use of cell phones while driving, putting on makeup while driving, eating while driving, etc.
I enjoy driving. And when I'm driving, I'm driving and not doing anything else. If you took away my ability to drive the 1+ hour daily commute to work, I'd get very bored and wouldn't be able to take the commute.
I think having an autopilot would be good, but it should be optional to use. I don't get enjoyment telling other people what to do, all I ask is that they don't tell me what to do.
Yeah, and you know that the first time there's a significant crash that can be blamed on the computer (whether it's true or not), safety folks will raise holy hell, and who knows what'll happen then to the whole concept then?
Sad thing is that this will be a BIG issue even if the cars are an order of magnatude safer than human drivers.
Just like we trust ATMs to withdraw money, but few trust them to deposit money. The reason is because people don't trust the machine even though it has been measured to be much more accurate than a human.
For those with disabilities like epilepsy and motricial problems... autonomous cars that can drive its users to their working places and back home will be a hit!
I saw an intersting Open University TV program about this issue a while back. Over 60% of the code was to deal with exceptions that happen less than 1% of the time.
This is the famous 90/10 rule- 90% of the code is called 10% of the time, and 10% of the code is called 90% of the time.
Not to be confused with the other 90/10 rule: The first 90% of the code takes 90% of the time. The remaining 10% of the code takes the remaining 90% of the time.
I wonder how you employ drastically new technology without fearing a legion of lawyers. Especially since automobile ambulance chasing is the granddad of tort.
I think private space flight is in a similar situation. I think there is some legislation to enable this as long as partipants are willing and informed, and non-participants reasonably protected.
Some of the technology, like forcing cars to keep their distance, would be useful, though one will have to consider the incitement of roadrage if people take advantage of the fact that other people's cars will force them to let you cut in where they shouldn't. But considering the "quality" of the navigation system in my new Escape Hybrid...granted, I'm in Corvallis, a small down of about 50,000, and it's constantly harping about "incomplete data", but for instance Tuesday at lunch, it tried to take me to the restaurant via an intersection that had been turned into a park near the river at the edge of town.
;-) On the way back, I swung into the Burger King for dinner on the way back. While waiting at the drive through, I said "Find Nearest Restaurants". It thought a while, then crashed and rebooted (it has a splash screen when it boots). It crashed one other time sort of at random, but there were a couple things going on I forget now.
When I went up into the coast mountains near here last weekend, I was pleasantly surprised to fine that it even *had* some of the gravel roads in it, but when I told it to take me home, it sent me up a goat trail that ended at a pasture gate.
That was Saturday; on Sunday I drove up towards Portland aways to meet someone at that Geek Temple Fry's
Maybe in 2-3 decades they'll get their maps figured out, but until these and many other things are worked out, no autopilot for me! They're just cool toys to use when they work and poke fun at when they don't.
"Your will BSOD and crash" and so on.
Actually, I still think there is a point.
Our technology is still made people and human error will always be there when we need it the least.
The more of _really_ important stuff we put under the control of technology, the more of these things will actually happen. And as someone mentioned, it's one thing to trust your tax
calculations to a computer and another one when your traveling at 80MPH.
I also think we will see a few weird situations when many things are controlled by software and thus needs to be patched.
The possibility to fix a broken product with software patches is of course great, but it also allows manufacturers to sell faulty products as they can always fix it later if a problem arises.
When it isnt absolutely necessary, they have to cut QA expenses as the competitors will otherwise sink them. So the morning routine will perhaps in the future include checking which of your
gadgets/appliances/devices that needs to be patched not to put your life in danger.
Just imagine when an exploit has been found in your watch, phone, car, television, alarm clock...toaster? If it only admits people to spam your different devices with penis-enlargement advertising,
you might still be lucky to be alive (and in one piece)!
My point is, in different ways there are issues with putting ourselves more and more under the control of our technology.
You'd hope that autonomous vehicles would lower insurance claims (and therefore premuiums) by much more than enough to compensate.
The problem is that the winners (insurance companies and premium payers) and losers (car companies) are not the same.
You'd have to devise a financial system that evens out the costs and savings. For example, the car makers could greatly increase the price of their vehicles to compensate for wrongful death cases and yet people would still buy them because their insurance premiums go down by more than enough to compensate.
stay frosty and alert
Pittsburgh deserves public transit funding. The road network is a nightmare due to legacy issues with the infrastructure and obviously the terrain.
Philly has no such problems and its road network is light years beyond Pittsburgh. I say let Philly rot and give the money where it can be used wisely... Pittsburgh.
On Soviet Slashdot, Roland Piquetamere posts crap ripped off story from MICHAEL!!!!!!!!
At the bottom of the
Some guys at Laval University (here in Quebec, Canada) from a research group called DAMAS (Dialog, Automatic Learning and Multi AgentS) work on this:
... The Collaborative Driving project within the Auto21 network, was created to study and implement cooperative driving on canadian highways.
x .html/
From the site:
DAMAS is involved in the theme F: Intelligent systems and sensors. Our project is called "Collaborative Driving System"
http://damas.ift.ulaval.ca/projets/auto21/en/inde
They basically work on a simulator for collaborative driving and method to manage small groups of vehicles
How will the autonomous taxi know when some drunk in the back has puked on the seat before picking you up? -- whats to stop teenage (and other) vandals from random distruction (shit on the seat, etc.)
It's not the auto-auto that scares me -- it's the public.
Required reading for internet skeptics
The software driving it being written by M$. It would bring the term "crash" a totally new meaning ;).
Last year in a Civil Engineering class I was in, a guest speaker spoke on this subject. He showed us some video of cars with no drivers going around on the road at about 80 mph, excecuting lane changes, passing maneuvers, and other crazy stuff at 80mph, IIRC. It was pretty cool.
As to psychological issues: I posed the question, and he was not that worried. Politicians, in his expereince, were not all that reactionary on the issue, and when the technology is out there, there will probably be auto-car only freeways, which would cause people to get over their qualms quite quickly to be able to get to work in 1/3 the time, not having to go on slower, less direct roads.
Maintaining lane and speed on a freeway is a trivial task compared to driving on regular streets. Experienced drivers rely on many subtle cues, like: "That car has dents", "That pedestrian is looking the wrong way", "That cyclist is making eye contact, I'll wave him through". By the time the AI systems can drive a car properly, we'll probably have run out of oil.
...than to tailgate a Mini in a semi.
Here's what should happen: The Mini applies it's brakes and stops just short of the child in the road. The semi applies it's brakes and stops just short of the back of the Mini, since it was programmed with perfect reaction time and understanding of vehicle stopping times and capabilities, and was following the Mini at a safe computer-approved distance.
If the semi can't stop without hitting a car in front of it that makes a panic stop, it is following too close. A driving computer should not allow that.
0 1 - just my two bits
Just how automated do you think that ATM deposits are?
Most of the depository ATM's that I've seen accept deposits in envelopes and allow the user to enter the amount of the deposit. Everyday, these ATM's are emptied and the deposit envlopes are opened and the transactions are processed.
Check 21 may allow that to change a bit because the individual checks can now be fed into the ATM and converted into substitute checks (a fancy way of saying that they can be scanned) - but someone will still need to make sure that the check that the computer recognized as a $40.00 check really is $40.00 and not a sloppy $10.00.
A fine is a tax you pay for doing wrong and a tax is a fine you pay for doing all right.
I think you have hit the nail on the head with the "small steps" approach, although i think the 30 years tech rule applies:
anything that was invented before you were born is the natural order of things.
anything that was invented before you are 30, is cool new technology and you can probably get a good job because of it.
anything invented after you are 30, is new fangled rubbish and not to be trusted!
automonous system running on the interstate, with human control for exiting & entering,
Actually I would have thought the amount of human control you would want is pushing a button saying enter/leave as this is the point with the most possibility of humans screwing everything up... it will be interesting to see how they implement the test to determine that the human is ready to take full control back, some sort of response test hoops to jump through? Otherwise i foresee problems when someone puts their coffee mug on the disengage autopilot option at 100 mph!
..."Keep right except to pass" is only some sort of helpful tip.
In the state I live in it is, in fact, just that. We have no law requiring you to keep right. If you live in a populous metro area it is unreasonable to expect inner lanes to be clear. The lanes exist to hold traffic, not to provide clear lanes for speeding.
If I'm going at or above the speed limit and you feel a need to pass me, it becomes your problem to move around me. I'm holding a constant speed and choosing the lane that lets me experience the smoothest flow. Since entrance and exit ramps tend to be on the right side, I'm most likely to be in the left lane until I near my exit. And the speed limit is not "catch up to person in front of me".
...as long as it's not based on Windows...crashes too much.
Charlie's Magic
It certainly doesn't need to be better than an average driver. The worst drivers cause a disproportionate share of accidents. There is some critical percentage K such that if the system were better than K% or more of the drivers on the road, the number of accidents would be the same or less.
Any guesses as to what K is? I'd conjecture that K 25, possibly less than 10.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
This was up to 5, Insightful and now it's 2, insightful with 40% Insightful, 40% Flamebait, and 20% Funny. Could someone please explain to me how this is flamebait? Next, I'll be told I'm trolling. (Flamebait and Troll mean the same thing, really, but never mind that for now.) Everything above is fact. If you think I'm trolling, you clearly either don't have experience, or are assuming I'm saying or implying things which I have no intention of saying or implying.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Actually, the truly pedantic would point out that the word average can mean median, mode, mean, or even other statistical measures. Therefore, the AC is only correct if the sig's author meant "mean", whereas the sig's author clearly meant "median". Of course, his sig is still only true when the median value is not actually held by anyone (which requires an even number of /. readers, and we all know that /. readers are odd).
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
I've done a little research lately on railroads, and ran across a similar situation in that industry. With the advent of diesel locomotives, railroads were able to significantly reduce the number of engines they operated, as the diesels could pull more then steam engines. You wound up with fewer trains, which were much longer (more railcars). This meant fewer jobs for engine crews. Additionally, no one was required to shovel coal (no fireman). Great, huh?
Not so fast - the railroad workers have a union! The union insisted on retaining the redundant fireman, even though he no longer had anything to do. Also, additional crews were required on multi-unit consists, even though they were not technically needed...
So, watch for that teamster's union strike when someone suggests automating semis or a cabbie protest when someone suggests allowing AutoCab(tm) to being operation.
The sad fact is that any time change comes around, there is someone who will percieve it to be a threat to their short-term interest. If that group is numerous or has political clout... well, the change won't benifit YOU by the time they are done restricting/channelling the benefits.
If bandwidth gets cheap enough, then driving could perhaps be offshored also. 4 people could moniter each side: front, back, left, right. That is better than most of us can do even while awake and alert. There have been multiple times where I look left only to have something sneak up on the right.
However, there may be something like a 1/4 second delay for the signal to travel all the way around the world and back.
Table-ized A.I.
And so has anyone else who saw the movie Demolition Man :)
a new meaning to term 'painfull debugging', for sure.
There you are, staring at me again.
forgo (v): To abstain from; relinquish.
Lack of eloquence does not denote lack of intelligence, though they often coincide.
I think the easiest way to implement this would be if all the cars on the road were to be converted over night. Reality dictates this is nearly impossible, though. It will take much more time for a system like this to evolve to the point where it can work around all the standard vehicles on the road with which the autopilot cannot communicate.
Let's play video games with mailmanZERO
This would be quite a breakthrough, but people will always need to have the option to be in control. The biggest problem I see with this aspect of the system is that new drivers will not have much of an opportunity to gain driving experience and thus will never be competent enough to take control when necessary. Similarly those who learned to drive the old-fashioned way will become worse and worse drivers until they, too will not be comfortable driving in manual mode.
Let's play video games with mailmanZERO
I like driving for fun (I have a classic Studebaker). I hate driving to work. If I could get in an autonoous vehicle that would take me to work in the mornings, automatically avoiding traffic jams and accidents (which would be fewer anyway since everybody else's car would be trying to avoid them as well, and the network of cars would be able to relay accident information faster than my local AM radio station), I would, and I wouldn't care that I wasn't driving myself. Then, on the weekends, I'd take my Dodge Magnum (now a classic, and converted to, dunno, say, Mr. Fusion, 25 years on) to the local "car rodeo" and show it, race it around the track, whatever.
I can't think of anyone who enjoys driving for necessity. Maybe truck drivers. Heck, I am a car enthusiast and I hate driving because I have to, to get to work or the store. So, let's let driving a car be relagated to the status of riding a horse: something done for recreation, a few people are employed to do it (jockeys), and the let our chaufmobiles do the rest.
Do not touch -Willie
And a million trial lawyers are licking thier chops!
Well practically speaking an automated taxi would be sure to have a camera and to identify passengers before allowing entry. (Which is rather unfortunate -- it would potentially become completely impossible to live underground).
Car: Hi Dave, where do you want to go today?
Man: I don't want to go nowhere, and my names not Dave.
Car: Affirmative Dave. Destionation: anywhere
Man: What the hell are you doing? stop this goddamn car. I said I don't want to go nowhere.
Car: It's illegal to stop here, Dave. "I don't want to go nowhere" is a double negative; destination: anywhere.
Man: Fine, I don't want to go anywhere, and stop calling me Dave.
Car: Destination: nowhere.
Man: Their is no destination, I don't want to go no place.
Car: Destination: some place.
Man: Jesus Christ, you still don't get it!
Car: Sorry Dave, where do you want to go?
Man: (Under breath) Go to hell you fucking moronic piece of crap
Car: [Crosses into oncoming traffic] Affirmative Dave.
I was driving down 59 in houston and traffic was trucking at about 70 (speed limit is 60). I come over a overpass and all I see is brake lights, and so I'm driving along at about 30-40 slowing down and speeding up as we go along. Then I come over another over pass about 3-5 minutes later, and there is smoke coming out of a building fire and a firetruck. As soon as I passed the fire traffic was truckin' along again. If only the guardrail were about 8' high, people would have a lot less to look at. I also think that behind every ambulance should be a truck that has huge blinds that they erect around any sort of stalled vehicle or accident. Without rubbernecking traffic james wouldn't be nearly as bad.
In two to three decades, we'll be pretty close to exhausting the world's oil supplies. I sincerely hope that the economic factors involved will force the world to see sense... and concentrate on public transport. It's more efficient and safer.
Actually the biggest problem right now is the cost of implementation. Highway markings and video detection are not good enough across enough of the country to reliably introduce a system right now. Non-video guidance, which is technically capable and is the basis for most of the technology demonstrations you see, is usable now, but the infrastructure installation costs are too high for large areas. What you will see over the next 10-30 years are HOV/Toll lanes that are installed and restricted to autonomous vehicles, once there are enough on the road using this, there will be a gradual re-balancing of the roadway, so in 50-80 years you will have multiple autonomous lanes and a single drive-it-yourself lane. The incrementalism isn't just psycology it is the only way to solve the chicken-egg problem.
"Unheard of means only it's undreamed of yet,
Impossible means not yet done." ~~ Julia Ecklar
Link: RUF Dual-Mode transport system - afaik, this project is very old, like 10 years or more, here's the faq
In the past, when we had fewer people, they were still more densely-packed, lived closer to work, and work locations were more centralised. If most people worked in the main downtown of the largest city in their metro area, it would be much easier to offer mass transit to get them there in the morning and take them back in the evening.
Now, people live greater distances from work (or anything else -- even grocery stores). More people work in sprawling business parks and dispersed offices that cannot be served very well by public transit. Typically, both spouses work, often in two separate locations. Most kids don't walk to school. Few people walk to stores. (Yes, these are some problems with urban sprawl and bland suburbia.)
If these conditions change for the better, you will see some postitive changes in traffic patterns and congestion too.
The software industry has had a legal solution to this for a long time. It would just need slight tweaking to fit this software situation.
It would start: "By opening this car's door, you agree to the following EULA..."
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
In Michigan we have no fault auto insurance, so each parties insurance covers their respective vehicle. It costs more, but may prevent some of the legal barriers.
If you read the article to which you linked, you would see that the test run had concrete weights simulating a 60% passenger load.
The death was caused when these weights broke loose in the passenger compartment and crushed the hapless man.
Hopefully, it would not continue to carry these weights when there are people in there on production runs, and (presumably) individual people would be easier to move off you if they were to "break free" during the day.
Dude, read your own article.
I, for one, will welcome our new horsepower-driven overlords.
Seriously, I think it will be a gradual process to get people to accept this degree of change. I think it could work much like carpool lanes work currently. First, you designate 1-2 lanes on highways in major metropolitan areas as GL (Guided Lanes, or some other cute marketing abbreviation). Since these are automated, traffic will move much faster. All the morons in the I-want-to-drive-my-own-car lane will see traffic zooming by them and it will erode their stubbornness. As that happens, you make more lanes automated until the technology is entirely phased in.
As the machine learns to drive more safely, it has the ability to instantly teach every other machine what it has learned (provided "Intellectual Property " doesn't screw this up) - a trick stock humans can't or won't do.
The technology will only improve - which is more than you can say for stock humans. In time, the debate will be over allowing humans to drive at all, because they aren't safe.
I got the impression that you were from that little island across the pond. :)
(I know, you're tired of trying to educate us ignorant USians, right?)
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
I write software for a living.
I could easily do this from home, in fact I would be significantly MORE productive if allowed to because of the lack of interruptions, and generaly much better environnment (especially lighting, I HATE strip-lighting).
Unfortuntely every company I have ever worked for is so stuck in the traditional mindset that they would rather pay extra to provide heated, lit, creativity-sapping little cubes that I have to drive to through terrible traffic at precisely rush-hour every day, in order to keep me working less productively.
One day some big company will finally realise and act on this stupidity, and other companies will be forced to evolve in order to remain competitive and not look outdated. I can't wait.
Niz.
>> One day, we'll be able to do something else than driving our cars through traffic jams, saving us about two hours per working day.
The safety features in cars today you mention are all mandatory - airbags, antilock brakes, etc. Manufacturers have to include them if they are going to sell cars in the country.
I can hear the onboard computer now...
"This is where Microsoft feels you need to go today!"
STOP: ENGINE_IGNITIONMOD_FAILURE 0x0000001D (0x0C12B4F1, 0x0050012A, 0x00000000, 0x00000000)
If this is the first time this error has occured, please pull over to the shoulder and hand-crank your engine. If this problem persists, please contact your vehicle mechanic.
Please insert another quarter to continue driving...
-- Game Developers: Stop porting badly-textured games from crappy console systems!
Hello, I'm the ass that's driving next to the other ass who's next to the other ass driving 45mph down the 65mph interstate. Thank you for approving of my driving habits. Please continue to educate the unwashed masses that driving is about my personal satisfaction (gotta optimize for that smooth flow ya know.
I'd rather spend an extra week/year in my car than an extra week/year in the hospital.
And remember, when you're driving, there are other people besides yourself out there whose lives are on the line.
Obey the speed limit, keep right, and stay alive. It's a good thing.
Spoon not. Fork, or fork not. There is no spoon.
And
When steering is outlawed only outlaws will steer.
Too lazy to create a sig...
I can understand why people balk at public transportation -- there are a lot of problems with it. It's slow and it just doesn't scale; in "good" public transit places, it's only good because traffic and parking has crippled car use.
PRT can scale better than typical public transit, when you consider both the density of service, and total trip time. Hopefully a more technical-minded crowd can get over the naive idea that big trains can necessarily carry more people. If you just consider a track with one car per second (1 person per car) -- a very conservative density -- vs. a traditional train with five minute headways, the traditional train doesn't look so hot. Especially when you consider the effort in supporting a 40 ton car (that's just one traditional train car) vs. a 1 ton PRT car (and hopefully they could get that weight down considerably as technology improves); the PRT tracks should be way cheaper, and ultimately cheaper than roads. They couldn't actually replace roads, but they could make expansion unnecessary, or even make contraction of roads possible (e.g., removing lanes), and reduce the load on roads so they don't deteriorate as quickly.
PRT is meant to work with urban areas the way they are, not just the way we wish them to be. And the technology itself doesn't require any breakthroughs, even taking into account safety issues.
Anyway, I really hope something comes of it. Some links: SkyWeb, the PRT company that's furthest along; Citizens for PRT; Advanced Transit PRT Page for a bunch of links and academic studies about PRT.
... it were available now. Because then I could:
:)
- Talk face to face with my passengers
- or read a book, catch up on sleep, or work
- not worry about getting intoxicated at a party and having to drive home or find crash space on a sofa (or some girlie's bed *I wish* )
- send the car out to pick up food from a restaurant after phoning through an order. Now that would be very cool, sending the car out to do errands
See my art -> http://herbevore.deviantart.com
Seriously, we should punish the idiots on the road who can't drive, then we might have more fun going home from work at rush hour.
Why should I trust a computer to do something that I can surely do? and that is: Drive
Some ppl can drive, some can't. I surely won't be punished by having a noob controlling my vehicle under any circumstance
Some years ago a friend of mine was going through his military service and his specialty was driving large vehicles. You know, busses, tracks etc. One day the two of us took a 50-seater bus for a ride. The bottomline is that if the bus is devoided of other people, it is a dream:
First, you are WAY above other drivers and feel sort of a king especialy when you can see past the traffic jam, second, now you can transport the sofa which couldn't fit your ordinary car, third, safety is great (not for the other cars though) and last but not least, you can still impress the chicks contrary to popular belief.
Now isn't that worth a measly 50 litres of petrol every day?
Problem
Travellers in urban environments face a personal dilemma: should they use the crowded subway or train system, or endure high traffic while in the private comfort of their own cars? Both of these systems have their benefits and drawbacks. Subways have the benefit of communication -- all subway trains can know the position and route of all other trains. On the other hand, cars provide cozy comfort, keeping their drivers away from the masses of commuters. The best solution to urban transportation would be private vehicles that are controlled by an all-knowing authority. To go one step further, such a system should also account for changing traffic conditions and calculate the shortest (in terms of time) possible route for a particular vehicle.
General Solution
I propose a transportation system of individual, self-driving vehicles connected by a network of rails controlled by a central control unit. Each vehicle would hold two to four people, with no driver. A passenger would enter a vehicle and denote his/her destination. The request would be sent to the central control unit, which would determine the best path for the vehicle to take. It is important to note that a communter cares not how much distance lies between him and his destination, but rather how much time it will take to get there. The shortest path from point A to point B may not be a straight line if that line passes through a point of traffic congestion. The control unit can easily determine, based on the requests and routes of the other vehicles, which path will take the least amount of time for the vehicle to reach its destination.
A control unit that responds in real time has many benefits. It would be able to respond to changing traffic flow, weather, and other factors. If a part of the rail were to be under repair or, say, in front of a burning building, the control unit could route vehicles out of the area to keep it cleared. The control unit could also predict traffic patterns based on past experience. For example, if there are a high number of requests to leave Main Street at 5 PM on weekdays, the control unit could prepare by routing empty cars into the area at 4:30 PM in anticipation.
There also would not be any crashes between vehicles since their routes are pre-determined and constantly monitored.
Practical Implementation
This system could be used most effectively if the rails were placed along every street in a dense urban district. Potential passengers could request a vehicle by pushing a button on a post, which would be located in several places along every block on both sides of the street. The passenger would then enter an empty vehicle when it arrived, deposit fare, and denote a destination. The destination could be inputted via a touch screen displaying a map of the town, by typing in an address, etc. Users could also have a unique "key" that would bill their fare as well as keep track of frequent destinations, such as their home, office, friend's home, favorite restaurant, etc. Upon establishing a destination, the control unit would be contacted with the request and the passenger would just sit back and relax. The vehicles could contain a radio, advertisements, storage space, etc.
The rails could be built into the road surface like trolley rails. Since the system would supplant many cars, the road space used by the rails would not be missed.
Each vehicle could be assigned a priority. Users may pay different fares depending on how quickly they would like to arrive at their destination. For example, for two cars travelling the same route, the passenger who paid more would be able to take a more direct route as traffic could be routed away from him. The posts that are used to request vehicles could also bear an emergency button that would request a vehicle, give it a high priority, automatically send it to a hospital or police station, and notify law enforcement of the position of the vehicle and where the button was pressed.
The entire idea of autonomous vehicles that drive themselves comes complete with a whole univese of up and down side issues.
On the "UPSIDE" and for sure, this up side is very up;
* No more accidents.
* No more traffic jams.
* Safe high speed transport (since the human element is gone, cars can more at over 150 KPH.)
* No more road rage... what and who is there to rage against?
* Advance network software looking for the quickest most efficient ride to wherever you're going, let's you weight your travel preferences (eg. make the trip faster or more scenic.)
* You can read or play with your children while the car is driving, you can even nap.
* Built-in GPS sensing and communication puts you at a simple calls distance for emergency help, or even assistance finding a good restarant to stop at.
* No more car jacking, child abductions, police chases, or hit and run accidents.
Now for the "DOWNSIDE" and it certainly gives on pause;
* Some State or Federal beaurocracy always knows where you're going and at some level what you're doing.
* Having your vehicle lock itself and then drive itself to a police facility, so that you can be processed, makes you hope that the government of the future is way more benign than some of the past or even the current administration.
* Kiss self expression G'Bye... Muscle Cars? GTs? Sports Vehicles? Wha-da-ya-mean??? Choice is reduced to chassis fashion and color.
* Cyberterrorists and malicious crackers now have a target that can instantly effect the lives of millions of people "this minute". Getting some script-kiddy's virus at a 100 MPH should absitively make your hinny pucker.
* The legal and fiscal problems associated with a large scale traffic failure, and the death and injury that would almost certainly follow, would in of themselves constitute a significant political and finacial nightmare.
* Such a system might delay the onset of my flying car... I want my flying car!
Face it folks, freedom is messy, and comes at an ever increasingly high price... your choice.
Genda
Doug Malewicki's SkyTran...
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
/. ppl are are getting ghey, might be the lack of female interaction, who knows... but really, who uses the word chauffer IRL? that word is teh gheyz0r.
------
mmmm round and soft...
As far as liability goes, insurance companies would be happy (I would think) to take full responsibility for computer/human accidents, and split responsibility for computer/computer accidents; especially if it meant many fewer accidents to cover. These companies have historically been strong supporters of seat belt laws, anti-lock brakes, and a myriad of other developments which took some freedom/control from the individual driver, but resulted in safer conditions in the aggregate. Why wouldn't they push for the adoption of smart-cars as well? Of course, technological issues remain, but I think the human issues can be overcome.
Think! It ain't illegal yet.
--George Clinton
Think! It ain't illegal yet!
George Clinton
They already have transportation that drives itself. It's called the public transportation system. A much more cost-effective and environmentally friendly alternative, a sufficiently advanced public transportation would beat the idea of personal vehicles altogether. Of course, the automotive industry would unfortunately never allow anything like that to happen, as has been the case with oil corporations and alternative fuel companies.
JAWSchlech "The secret to success is knowing who to blame for your mistakes." - Despair.com
The university I was at (college for Americans) was working on some systems for this in the mining industry. They had this great video of one of the vehicles in use.
Imagine a driverless 200 ton mining truck barelling down the road at 60 km/h. Standing in the middle of the road ahead of the truck was the CEO of the company automating the trucks. When the truck gets a little closer it flashes its lights at the guy. A second later it slams on the brakes and comes to a neat halt.
Anyway, that aside I cannot imagine that we will see this in the next 40 years or so. First off you need to control the environment, which means large infrastructure changes. The reason this could be done in the mining industry was that. Secondly there is going to be great social resistance to this kind of thing.
I think where you might see this kind of thing is more likely to be in automatic trains/trams, and maybe on buses that have segregated lanes to use. Both are environments you can control.
meh
so I could catch up on my drinking on the way to and from work.
-- Too lazy to get a lower UID.
This, for the most part is true, but clever people can prove you wrong. New Orleans, has a medium population density at best.
A good example of a light rail that makes money, is self sustaining, beautiful and good transportation is the New Orleans street car run by the good people of the New Orleans RTA. The street cars are low tech and made, entirely, of parts cast and machined by the RTA themselves. That translates to low cost. The result is beautiful enough to be a tourist attraction. The lines had a politically caused low point but never stopped making money and are used by locals as much or more than by tourists.
The low point came in the 1960s when people demanded air conditioned busses as a replacement. Lines were torn out until there was only one left in the late 1980s. The busses turned out to be ugly, dirty and a big money loser.
The comeback has been fantastic and is a great asset to the city. One of the nicest lines put back in takes people from the residential lakefront to work at the CBD. Others have been put in to shuffle tourists from the French Quarter to the Convention Center. The ride never takes more than half an hour and is comfortable, even in business clothes on hot summer days thanks to beautiful oak trees.
Wanna trade that for breathing automobile exhaust on a jammed highway with 360 degrees of concrete, glass and steel radiating heat onto your face? Everytime I have to drive to work, I know that I do. All it takes is a little planning to make through roads wide enough for a grass covered median. That median takes up about 1.5 normal traffic lanes. New Orleans built a street grid system around the curving of the Mississippi river, so anyone can.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Author definition -- Autodrive: ability of automobiles to pilot themselves without the continual navigational input from human beings.
I have some ideas on how to work those issues out, but my main point of the post is: not that the technology isn't ready yet, rather the implementation plan will be difficult to develop.
To know is to have knowledge....to understand is to be enlightened.
You mean people spend OVER 2 hours per day DRIVING? In a CAR? HAHAHAHHAA...
Man, and here I thought my 15 minute tram commute/day was bad... sheesh!
Get on the train, people! No stress! The technology has been around since the 19th century! And it works!
Activists in UK are fighting to switch from left-side driving to right-side driving. As a proof of concept they sent 100 cars for a test drive.
Well I can say this the cops wont be handing out as many tickets in the future
I live in LA now. We have some mass transit, but because this city developed after the advent of the car, pop density is actually very low for a metro area of this size. Also, because property values are so high, people have to live in the sticks and work nearer the core. Result? Long commutes and jams. Mass transit isn't an answer.
I don't want to write a book, but I'll say that more than pop density goes into traffic jams. There are a lot of cities with pop density too low for effective mass transit but urban planning too poor to prevent jams.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
Oh I'll bitch about my taxes. I'll bitch about those people who want to live in inaccessable areas and expect me to pay for their roads and sewers.
Where do you live? Here the town pays 100% for the roads (except for the 2 state highways that ferry urbanites through) through property taxes and we have no sewers.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Wouldn't it be more efficient to have a fleet on call at all times, that can come and pick you up within a matter of minutes, deliver you to your destination, and head for the nearest (or emptiest) depot to wait for the next call? It would alleviate parking issues in many crowded cities, and might even allow existing businesses to spread out into the space they currently reserve for large paved surfaces.
The depots could be simple parking structures just as we have now, but the autonomous cars could shuffle themselves around as needed so they can respond to calls quickly. If the depot near you dispatches its last car, it automatically requests that a couple be sent over from heavily populated stations.
In addition, this system would mean that you could use public transit for the majority of any long commute, but not have to walk at either end of the trip, or worry about parking your car. There would be an autocab waiting for you when you step off the train, since traffic prediction is already pretty solid. If for some reason there isn't one waiting, you call one just like you called one to come pick you up at home.
Certainly some people would own their own autocabs, just as people own their own aircraft today. But most people wouldn't need to, as long as they knew one would be available for them 24/7.
Mal-2
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
If nobody is willing to run cable TV to us or even deliver a pizza, I doubt anybody would be willing to run a train rail. It just isn't economically feasable.
What's the cost of laying pre-cast concrete monorail for your car to ride on vs. the cost of regrading your road four times a year for the next five years?
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
"sorry but your car has crashed, if you see this message again, contact your local dealer " this message being showed in a blue screen. this sounds familiar with win os.
No, it doesn't need to be that complex. You're trying too hard.
The existing system (human drivers) isn't perfect; the replacement system only has to be better. Humans can't deal with "every possible reality that can exist on US freeways, city, and town roads." Human drivers make mistakes. They get drunk, distracted, sick, tired, or just have a bad day. They suffer heart attacks, strokes, or other breakdowns. They do stupid things for all sorts of stupid reasons. They fail to drive optimally on a regular basis, and often accidents are the result.
Real life causes problems that nobody ever anticipates.
If your emergency situation is so bizare that it can't be dealt with by swerving or braking, then what's some terrified human driver supposed do? That's pretty much the extent of most people's driver training. Making the correct choice of swerving or braking isn't easy for humans even after the fact: during an accident, humans often make the wrong choice.
Computer "drivers" offer some attractive advantages over human drivers, even in a crisis.
- Superior sensors, like infrared, work even when our eyes don't. This is why, for example, airplanes with autopilots can land on runways in a fog or during heavy snow, even when the pilot is blind.
- Direct control of systems with better feedback can improve on human reflexes. Contrast "anti-lock" brakes with "tapping" at the brake pedal.Anti-lock brakes work better.
- Pre-planned emergency procedures allow an expert driver to slowly and carefuly analyse the right response to common crisis situations, and prepare an good response. That way, a novice driver can't do the wrong thing if it is counter-intuitive, or just hard to think of when precious seconds count.
If you can't anticipate it, you certainly can't expect a programmer to plan for that eventuality.I don't want any programmer designing the correct response of the safety critical control systems! Programmers should do what they're good at, namely, programming.
I want the design done by an experienced professional engineering team, one with experience in designing safety critical automotive systems. They'ld need to have spent a long time analysing the underlying causes of existing automotive crashes, and coming up with effective, practical, solutions, as well. I want automotive design professionals, with ten to twenty years experience working on automated control systems.
Once the experts work out the correct behavior for all the situations, the programmers can implement the specification. They then have to prove that it implements the specifications correctly.
They will still be accidents, but if there are fewer accidents, we've still made progress. If all we ever do is make a system that can drive as well as a sober, if inexperienced driver, well, the accident rate due to drunk driving will plummet.
--
AC
HOW WELL WOULD THE SYSTEM _FAIL_?
Most people get focused on how well the system works when everything in the system is well maintained etc. Makes for good brochures, proposals etc.
If a human driver gets a massive stroke at the wheel, you already have a tragedy anyway.
What would be good if you had systems that work WITH humans, rather than INSTEAD OF humans. So if a human becomes incapacitated or something, the car turns on the hazard light and slows down gradually (and if advanced enough pulls over).
The car could also highlight objects like kids legs visible under parked cars (when little kids are running around, while you can't see their bodies and heads behind the parked cars, you can sometimes see their legs), animals etc, or create 3-D audible warnings of vehicles in blindspots.
As long as the human drivers are taking legal responsibility for the consequences, the role of the systems are to provide good information and assistance to the humans.
Even if the human intentionally wants to seemingly RAM a pedestrian in the middle of the road, the system should let it. Said pedestrian could be an armed hijacker.
AND E-VOTING IS THE FUTARE!
My car is 30 years old.
It's a 1975 450SEL and I'll drive it for another 30 years.
All these new cars are SH*T.
I wouldn't take a new car if it were a free gift nor would I take a new car if you paid me to take it.
Plastic crap made in China assembled in Mexico.
Stick that crap up your tailpipe..
I bought a second one just like it so to be sure to have spare parts.
There is no way in hell that I will ever allow any sort of modern crap to be installed in my car, it's factory original and it's going to stay that way. I have no need or desire for modern electronics of any sort in my car, including stereo gear. I listen to AM radio anyway, and only sometimes. Most of the time I listen to the motor and the tires singing...
WTF does everyone want all this automatic crap for? This world has gone insane. I'm 44 years old and I was born on another planet. Somewhere between the time I was born and now, someone stole me away from the planet I was born on and dropped me off on this screwed up world. Nothing in this world resembles the world I was born into..
system **er** CRASH!
People don't mind driving fast on the freeway. It's the tangled situations in busy areas people hate.
Can anyone say "Mass Transit"?
I realise this issue is conflated with the number of deaths in an instant too, but i think one of the key "shock" factors is the helplessness of the passangers
And also, we rationalize most accidents as the fault of the driver and in some cases the passengers distracting him. People think "this could never happen to me, because I'm a good driver." This way, people still have the courage to get in the car and go to work every morning.
Since almost all autonomous vehicles would be identical, a single accident would be terrible for the entire economy, not just the industry. That's why the government will probably "quarantine" anyone involved in an auto accident. Just don't expect to see those people again.
If you can do other things instead of paying attention to the road the incentive to speed is greatly diminished. Suddently driving isn't a waste of time.
If you're having a baby, you hit the big red 911 button on the dash and it clears the road for your high-priority transit.
And, since computer response time is way better than a human's higher-speed travel is more likely to be safe. I imagine an autonomous vehicle could handle 90MPH quite easily, roads, vehicle, and weather permitting.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
If you own something and it injures another party, even through no fault of your own, you bear some responsibility. That's why you have general liability on your homeowners' insurance. If the porch lamp explodes and maims and electrocutes the paperboy through some freak accident, it's your homeowners' policy that's going to be exercised to settle a potential suit. Clearly no fault of yours but it's your property.
The manufacturer _might_ bear some responsibility, but just like Chevy isn't necessarily liable if the axle breaks on one Cavalier and injures somebody, if that's the only one it happened to it doesn't show that they were negligent or that they abdicated good care in their product design.
i.e. shit happens
Now, if thousands of Cavalier axles break or autocars drive off cliffs, or traffic lights turn all-green, that's completely different.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
3 - Become mandatory (or effectively mandatory by raising insurance rates to punitive levels for those who don't use it).
Oooh, that's a tough one. The control software becomes orders of magnitutes harder if it has to deal with asshole drivers(1) on the same stretch of highway. You'll probably be restricted to the right lane on the interstate before you're forced onto local roads.
(1) an asshole driver is anyone going faster than you. A moron driver is anyone going slower than you.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Some interesting things could happen too. Could the car run erands without me? Could the car could take itself to the mechanic for an oil change or maintenance? Could it refuel itself while I'm working? If I order a pizza, could the car pick it up? Could it pick up a kid from school, take him to the dentist, & return him without a parent taking time off from work?
Now you're thinking! But assuming there's a nice track put in for all of this, I would expect the pizza delivery vehicle to be a very small robot with a heater built in and maybe room for 10 pizzas. No sense running your human-transport when a purpose-built PizzaBot will suffice.
I also expect commuters will have sleep/shower/microwave stand-up commuting vehicles, probably about half the size of a minivan. If you've ever showered on a cruise-ship you know what I mean. If you have a 2 hour commute today, you can drag your ass out of bed at 6, snooze 'till 7, shower, eat and dress by 7:30 when your 'car' arrives at the office building downtown.
Of course, hopefully by then FTTH will make working at the office somewhat obsolete.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
I guess the auto industry still doesn't understand that cars will probably not exist by the time this technology is perfected! How ironic.
I thought only in Soviet Russia, the car drives you.
Yes, the computer may occasionally kill people because of bugs or limitations. But those bugs or limitations are measurable. As long as the rate of deaths from those bugs and limitations is lower than from other drivers, I prefer the computer.
Keep in mind that human drivers also have lots of malfunctions: you are just as dead when you get hit by drunk drivers, SUV-driving soccer moms, or a cellphone toting executives. And I suspect that it isn't hard to get a computer to be less of a threat to me behind the wheel than any of those categories of drivers.
The best test or should I say _stress_ test would be on roads in India.
And they will need, of course, better sensors-CMOS cameras and radar-to "see" the world around them.
So not only will the radar make me infertile, but all the CMOS cameras will have pictures of me so they can point and laugh.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
One day, we'll be able to do something else than driving our cars through traffic jams, saving us about two hours per working day.
You meant to say, "we'll be able to do something besides stare at cars for two hours per day". The time in the car isn't going to go away.
With these new cars (will there be a Monica Lewinsky model?) it'll now be legal for the operator to put on makeup, read the paper, beat the kids in the backseat, etc.
But will there be an awkward period where there is still a bad mix of "automated" cars and idiot-operated cars?
Too bad solutions like Metra in Chicago aren't more scalable. Metra good for going into downtown Chicago from the 'burbs, but only slightly less convenient (read, impossible, instead of nearly impossible) than going from Gurnee to Schaumburg, IL, for example.
It's always fun catching the last train out of downtown and missing your stop, though...
What might a full-cost analysis of driving vs tax-payer-subsidised mass transit look like? Do the long-term costs of poorer air quality, increased gas useage, the military support to keep the gas flowing into the US, keeping the auto industry and used car salesmen viable business ventures, etc. outweigh the cost of a few more people getting Railroad Worker pensions? The $$$ for building track vs building 6-lane highway, as well as the annual support, has got to be far more than the upkeep of rails and rail equipment, too. Obvious places would be along I-95 from Fredericksburg to Washington DC, etc.
Here in Oregon, I would much rather drive my car to Wilsonville or Tualatin, and take the Max into the downtown area, if it could cut about 30-45 minutes out of being in the car in the worst part of Portland traffic, coming from the south, that is.
...has ANY insurance-promoted idea ever really resulted in lower insurance premiums? I mean, really?
Ooooooh, save $10/6 months because you have ABS!
Car makers don't have to currently compensate for wrongful death unless a defect in manufacturing, attributable to the car maker, is involved. So it's not really a concern to them now, is it?
Besides, if it mattered so much to the insurance companies, do you not think that perhaps insurance companies might make a bigger deal out of vehicles with significant safety ratings, to the tune of advertising sickly low rates for drivers of said cars, compared to other cars, or do they perhaps have an aversion to a scenario with too many Volvo and Buick drivers as well?
Sorry, I think it was the "smart highway" they were working on in San Diego. The big scene was about 20 or 30 Buick LeSabres driving along on this viaduct that is the I-15 express lane when it's not being used, with about 6" of space between each car front-rear.
Part of the problem with train wrecks is that, yes, 100 people or more may get killed or injured. Unlike a highway crash, however, the effects of the crash seem to linger on for weeks. The UP/BN line along the Columbia River in Washington, north of Portland, had a derailment last summer. The wrecked train cars were still sitting on the side for weeks, and traffic was gomered up going SB for awhile, too, until they could pump out some of the derailled tank cars, nessessitating lane closures there on I-5. It took them a week or two to open the line back up slow traffic.
Worst-case scenario for a mortality-inducing car crash is that the road is closed as long as it takes the State Patrol to get enough 8x10 color glossy photos with a paragraph description on the back of each one taken. After a day or two, it's usually hard to tell something bad happened, unless you remember the news on TV as you see the spray-painted markings on the road marking the paths of the cars involved.
Besides, even in the US, trains don't crash all that often. Most train accidents involve idiots, asshats, or just unlucky people who try to occupy the same space as a 70-mph 150-car freight train at a RR crossing.
I wouldn't mind the automated system as long as I can use it as a backup in case I fall asleep at the wheel on long drives. But other then that, technology should be a supplement to us and NOT a replacement.
We already have anti-lock breaking systems, skid control, night vision, radar when backing up to avoid children, and other safety features. But driving and knowing the environment your in is still much of an art form as it is scientific. So unless computers have genuine self awareness, I don't want it controlling my car.
Even if the technology is available today to turn everything over to a computer, it still has to earn my trust. I think the evolutionary approach is better than revolutionary when attempting this goal of automation.
Life is not for the lazy.
I was thinking the same thing, but it's really quite simple. You just require all drivers to insure their cars, just like we do now. Keep the responsibility on the "driver." If your car fk's up, your company pays the damages. In this case, they would also pay for your own injuries or whatever. In fact, rates would probably go down because the frequency of accidents would be lower, and you wouldn't get your premiums raised when you had an accident, because it's not your fault.
Surely other forms of transportation have insurance? What happens when a plane crashes? Or a train derails? These events are fairly infrequent, just as accidents with automated vehicles would be, which still makes it profitable to provide insurance.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Swerve.
Even a small child is likely to do a shitload of damage to your Mini.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
As a visually impaired person who dosen't even have the option of driving, I'd jump at the chance to have a system like this, assuming that all the reasonable checks were done and reliability was taken in the way it is in the airline / defence industry. As to what that is, of course, is open to debate but isn't the point I'm trying to make.
I currently have to rely on public transport and my friends/family for transportation (and will need to do so for the rest of my life). It's not so much a problem in itself (public transport is very good in the current city I'm living in) but having your own transport gives you a kind of freedom that I think many people who CAN drive don't realise they have. Like not having your life revolve around a bus timetable. Or being able to take a PC to a LAN. Or being able to live out in the suburbs and work in the city.
Will the cars be able to download the deer thoughts and know they are about to have a collision and slow down in a controlled manner? :) Or compute that a tree is about to fall down and block the road? In a perfect world, drafting sounds great, but in our world it's quite dangerous (as many a trucker will tell you).
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
At first glance, I thought the headline was "Will our *Cats* Become Our Chauffuers?".
What if the Hokey-Pokey really is what it's all about?
I remember how, 2 to 3 decades ago, it was predicted that they would be the norm in 2 to 3 decades...
We already have some non-human managed car control: cruise control. Now at the moment, that's simply mechanical (well, silicon, but not observing the outside - it'll happily drive into the car in front!).
So in the first stage of AI control, we make computers only do the simplest task: 'cruise control plus'. They stay at a specified speed or minimum distance from the car in front, so very little unless the vehicle in front slows down or someone cuts them up. They don't even stay in lane, the driver can continue to do that. This means the first task to the AI is simply object:location mapping in 2d in real time and I think we can already do this. It would be enough of an improvement not to have to keep braking and accelerating in heavy traffic that I suspect lots of long distance drivers would want pay for it as an add-on.
Next, the AIs take over lane following. I suspect they can already do this too, but it won't get into the mainstream for five years after the first section is considered normal. They'll need to be able to recognise a stationary object or lost pedestrian/cyclist and react sensibly enough till the driver can take over. Hopefully it would become legal to read a book or do your paperwork if your car is in the inside lane under AI control.
Then they get taught how to overtake. This is where it starts getting interesting, but it's still only clever object:location mapping.
For the first few years the driver takes over speed control and steering if there is any problem. Not that they will be able to do much!
Thereafter, we might improve the technology to A roads (main roads?) and eventually B roads (rural roads?). Howwever, these environments are so damn random that we won't see it for a long time, till AIs are much, much clever or roads are much better defined.
The legal remifications needn't be a problem. As the technology comes in piecemeal, we'll adapt. It's only if we went for a complete AI solution that there would be a legal nightmare.
I look forward to it myself.
J.
You're only jealous cos the little penguins are talking to me.
I suggest you stop thinking that the roads are there to play on - they're so crowded (in the UK at any rate) that they're just transport zones these days. Go on a track day instead, they even have ambulances for when you have that little bit too much fun... ;-)
J.
You're only jealous cos the little penguins are talking to me.
What if the person doesn't have enough time to even begin to put on the brakes? Or, assuming the car is automated, what if the car only has two feet warning? Sure, it can begin to apply the brakes, but it will be stopping far quicker than its "minimum" stopping time. Additionally, assuming that the lanes to its left and right are filled with cars separated by only 5 cm, it would have no way to avoid the accident either. The car 5 cm behind it would certainly plow into it, and a wonderful chain reaction will be started. Now instead of the 20 car pile-up, we can have a 200 car pile-up. Of course, trees are fairly rare around free-ways (especially in the middle of free-ways ), but it could just as easy be a chair falling off the dilapidated old truck in front of you.
To summarize, the problem comes up when the car is stopping due to circumstances beyond its control. I suppose it could broadcast an SOS on a high-powered band so that cars several (or even dozens of) car lengths behind it could put on their brakes to reduce the size of the pile-up, but the first few cars in the pile-up would most likely become caskets for their passengers.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
i never said it cures everything, but most of your list could be taken care of with public transportation. maybe not if you live in some middle-american wasteland, but then i am sure you are all about giant SUVs anyway.
there are a lot of people still today in the United States (let alone the rest of the world) that manage to do all those things without owning a car at all..... ever heard of places like New York, Philadelphia, Boston? not everyone lives in some suburban sprawl pre-fab neighborhood.
the busses here actually go to schools, so plenty of kids us them if they can not take a school bus or, god forbid, they WALK! busses/trains/trolleys actually go to places with restaurants too.
i can tell you that it is more likely that public transportation goes into an urban area which is going to be much better food than the fucking Appleby's at the strip mall that used to be a farm 5 years ago.
i would rather have people take public transportation when they leave the bars then try to drive their cars. same with people going to sporting events. they can be so mad if their team loses they might as well be drinking.
my sister often works till 9pm and she still takes the train to her house. in our world the trains don't shut down at dark. she has a car but she never drives to work because it's just stupid. i spent a few years taking public transportation home from school when i was taking night classes. maybe i live in some magical place but i can get home 24/7 on public transportation if i have to.... that's if i didn't ride my bike.
plenty of supermarkets (at least around here) will deliver your groceries. if you are buying enough for a family of 6 they will do it for free, or something that works out to nothing when you are talking about that much food.
i don't live in center city and the dry cleaning place near me is 2 blocks away.... so i could walk there if i was not capable of doing my own laundry.
that all being said i do drive a car too.... but most of your reasons for not taking public transportation are bunk. there is this bizare perception with suburbanites or rural red state people that the only people that take public transportation are people that can not afford a car.
Some cars don't have ABS. Some do. So I'm pretty sure it isn't mandatory.
My vehicle arrives (I don't have to worry about
:-)
parking it), it cruises to San Francisco at 80Mph
bypassing other traffic on a specially reserved
right of way. I can even sit and read.
No this isn't some utopian $100,000 future car,
its already here, its called BART
Seriously all this crap about high tech cars misses
the point. Public transit could work economically for
a good fraction of the American public if the
infrastructure was put in place.
Lower oil consumption (less money for terrorists),
lower green house gasses, tens of thousands of
lives saved a year, less obesity, much lower cost
per household.
Hey if my car could drive down the block or home for a few hours I wouldn't have to search for a spot.
Check out the last couple of years Mercedes Benz S Class (I think it was the S600)... if you can afford one, they have excellent RADAR guided cruise control, which was demonstrated on a Motorway in England, for BBC's "Top Gear". (In the same episode, they show the Audi A8 and Maybach 62... it is probably available for download somewhere)
Founder & COO, Hayai India (hayai.in) / USA (hayaibroadband.com)