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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."
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.
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!
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.
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...
You do know that one of the first applications for computer driven equipment will be mass transit? First it will be all the trains and busses that will be run by computer. If one were to look into the future.... As the technology inproves people will be given wifi flagers with built in GPS systems... the transit system will be built around small four person automated transports that will go around picking up and dropping off people. Basicly driving you from a pickup on the street in front of your home to where you work. Hell, with some built in AI you could even program in your destination and the system could pick up other people going to where you work from the same area and drop you all off at once. Now that is a mass transit system that I could really use very very well. Zeelan
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.
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
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.
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.
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...
You don't need autonomous vehicles to combat traffic jams.
I don't get what the problem with public transport over in the US seems to be. I live in Melbourne, Australia, and we have a wonderful public transport system. Trains, buses and trams.. the timetables match up pretty much all of the time. The only issue I have with it is that buses don't run late enough, but for typical commuting to and from work, it's fine.
Depending on the day, I'll walk, then catch a bus/train to work, or just drive to the station, then catch a train in. Public transport infrastructure seems to be fairly heavily used here as opposed to my experience of the US (Southern Calif).
I will add a couple of notes though.. Melbourne has a population of around 4 million, within a radius of roughly 40-50km; 1700 tram stops, around 20 train lines, and about 250 train stations. It seems to be a fairly well developed public transport infrastructure.
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
Or Diebold?
Just because bad examples of software exist, doesn't mean that all software is going to be bad. There is already quite complex integrated software not to mention new navigation software in modern cars, and with the regulation imposed on the automobile industry and the fact that the industry has come to realize that "SAFETY SELLS!" there would likely be a great deal of energy spent on making sure the system is 'perfect' before it goes to market.
I remember my Real-time programming professor at university making mention of a Russian space capsule (possibly Soyuz, but I'm not 100% sure on that) as an example of excellent graceful fail programming. The capsule was in the process of decelerating for reentry when something screwed up. The module was getting erroneous data that was telling it that 'up' was the opposite direction that it thought it was. The program got confused, and firing the rockets would probably drove them straight into the ground. So what happened was that if the data being received was outside the expected bounds, it defaulted to a failure backup plan to return the cosmonauts to earth alive. As a testament to Russian engineering of the day, the programmers knew that inside the capsule the astronauts could survive ballistic reentry. So the program defaulted to its backup of 'fall like a rock'. An example of smart programming because had it attempted to continue despite contradictory data by firing its rockets, it most likely would have killed everyone on board.
This is not a sig.
Believe it or not, in Japan and European countries where mass transit is the norm, there are still rural areas. If you were planning to commute across a major metropolitan area, you would first drive (or ride your bike) to a mass transit station outside of that area, park your car, and ride to your destination.
It isn't an all-or-nothing system.
I wonder whether the increasing price of gasoline will change people's behavior enough to drastically change the single-occupant vehicle. Will people still buy a house (or take a job) where they have to commute an hour to get there, buring a couple gallons of gas in the process. Would $2/gallon gas curb this appetite? $3/gallon? $4/gallon? $10/gallon?
Are Single-Occupant-Vehicle commutes less common (or simply shorter) where gas is much more expensive (i.e. the whole world outside of the USA and Oil producing countries)?
public mass transit != rail
There are definately better options out there. The best one I have seen is Personal Rapid Transit (PRT).
http://skywebexpress.com/
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.
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"
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.
Oh how I wish I had mod points!
If I am driving the speed limit, you should NOT be trying to pass me, whichever lane I am in.
And no, flashing your lights are not going to make me get out of your way. In fact its going to make me slow down. What are you going to do, smash your expensive BMW on my bumper?
If everyone drove the speed limit (whatever it happens to be) there would be less traffic jams caused by self-important pricks who want to get their home or office 30 seconds before everyone else.
Surur
Information is the location of things. Computation is moving things around.
Ahhh.. Americans.... So ignnorant of the rest of the world.
You do know of course the British have been paying $6/ gallon for a while now.
Its not changing driving habits that much at all.
And even SUV's are starting to catch on here.
Cars are just too valuable (in all their intangible ways regarding personal mobility) for many people to give up (once they are hooked that is)
Surur
Information is the location of things. Computation is moving things around.
Would cars know how well they're being taken care of, and what their actual stopping distance is?
They wouldn't have to know. Your tires go bald over time. It is really easy for learning algorithms to adjust to a gradual change -- the car thinks, "hey, last time in these conditions I stopped in 25 feet, but this time it took me 26. Let's increase the safety distance by an extra foot just to be safe." Then as your tires become even more bald, "hey, last time it took me 26 feet to stop. Let's increase the safety distance by another foot." Similarly, once you get new tires: "hey, last time it took me 100 feet to stop. This time it took me 25. We can probably start following other cars a little closer now"
And presumably they would know the road conditions, either by detecting the conditions themselves, or getting the information from nearby cars ("5 of my 7 neighbors are saying there's ice on the road"), or from roadside wireless information stations (similar to those "tune your radio to 1610 for winter traffic information" signs you see)
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.