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."

Comments

urban legends

[kalpol]

Like that guy who set his RV on cruise control and went in the back to make a sandwich? I smell disaster.

Re:urban legends

[ryanmfw]

It was a good sandwhich too. Too bad the rescue crew pulled me out before I could eat the second half.

This would be great

[scaaven]

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.

Re:This would be great

[Lumpy]

no the #1 cause of traffic Jams are tailgaiting and cutting people off.

Person A is driving a safe distance from the car in front of him, person B is certianly more important that A so he pulls into the space in front of A causing A to slow down. CDE are all only 3-6 feet from A sothey JAM on their breaks because they can not simply slow down but must now PANIC stop in order to not hit the car in front of them.

THAT is the cause of traffic jams, espically the ones where there really is no visible cause.

In otherwords, very poor driving.

Re:This would be great

[kureido]

You don't need autonomous vehicles to combat traffic jams.

Re:This would be great

[OwnedByTwoCats]

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)?

Re:This would be great

[Surur]

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

I don't think I could ever trust it

[eln]

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.

Re:I don't think I could ever trust it

[zx75]

Really? Personally I would trust a computer to deliver me safely to my destination a lot more than I trust someone else to not hurtle their car into me at 120kph.

I think if properly tested, computerized vehicles would make far better driving decisions than a lot of people I know.

Re:I don't think I could ever trust it

[The Blue Meanie]

Red herring. Last time I checked, only one elevator ran on a track at a time. Combined with the fact that the elevator never CHANGES tracks, and that the only safety device needed is one to prevent a fall in a single direction, and the problem faced by an elevator's "computer" is ridiculously simple compared with what a car's driver faces every moment he/she is on the road.

Re:I don't think I could ever trust it

[oostevo]

Have you flown recently?

For much of the flight, a computer is controlling the aircraft with the pilot and copilot only monitoring it.

I'd think if computers were safe enough to work in three dimensions controlling vehicles with a multitude of control surfaces, in two dimensions with only gas, brake, and steering, they'd be at least safer than most drivers on the roads today.

Re:I don't think I could ever trust it

[Cro Magnon]

The difference is that the plane isn't completely surrounded by other planes that are inches away from colliding with it.

Re:I don't think I could ever trust it

[flying_monkies]

I'm guessing you don't fly much, do you? Three guesses what's sheppherding those giant chunks of steel and aluminum through the sky for 95% of the flight.

Re:I don't think I could ever trust it

[purfledspruce]

This is a false comparison. Planes fly in predetermined paths and each one is carefully monitored by humans in air traffic control at all times.

There are hundreds of activities you do to drive your car, it's a complex machine that has thousands of parts that have to work. Its maintenance is up to the user, and not carefully controlled and checked by the FAA.

Autonomy in software is EXTREMELY hard to test. Every combination of action, fault, and surroundings has to have an experiment to show the software works. This software will need to deal with every possible reality that can exist on the US freeways, city and town roads.

This software can't be fully tested in a lab, either, since in a lab you can only test what you can think of. Real life causes problems that nobody ever anticipates. If you can't anticipate it, you certainly can't expect a programmer to plan for that eventuality.

This problem is FAR more complex than people realize and will take time to solve. Even then, if a majority of people don't trust it, it will not come to be--since it will increase the price of vehicles, it will take legislation to make it happen, and that takes at least a majority vote.

Re:I don't think I could ever trust it

[EvilTwinSkippy]

But if it crashes, crashes and kills me I'm likely to get a bit peeved.

And stay peeved for the rest of your life.

Re:I don't think I could ever trust it

[claussenvenable]

Have you *flown an airplane* recently, rather than riding in one?

This impression of the air traffic control system is incredibly oversimplified, and mostly backwards. The actual implementation involves a large number of parallel tracks at various altitude levels while air traffic control, which is run by very trained people in tandem with some very good computers, routes planes on these "roads". In fact, the margin of safety required in three dimensions is HIGHER than in two -- the likelihood of any two objects in random trajectories in 3-space colliding is tiny by comparison to the same situation in 2-space. If you've ever flown from LA to SF, you might notice the parallel sets of contrails where the last few planes have gone just a few hours previous. It's neat to see.

Anyway:
The airway system is unbelievably simple relative to the incredible variety of complicated situations on streets. There is only one kind of sky, and it's full of air. Excepting thunderstorms, you can drive a big jet straight through pretty much any part of the sky, and all the references needed to guide it can be computed internally (like pitch/roll/yaw) or from simple external means (like GPS). A vehicle must contend with terrain, markings and the lack thereof, pedestrians, ever-changing road geometries and new construction, and myriad other complications.

Also -- auto-pilot is not a complete solution. Yes, we've gotten good enough at control systems to keep a very complicated plane flying straight and level, and avionics assist in every aspect of commercial airline flight (can't steer a jet without hydraulics anyhow), but dynamic situational analysis is still the province of the mind rather than the computer.

All of this ignores the difference in volume, too. There are thousands of planes in the air most of the time, virtually all of which have fairly well-planned routes and destinations. There are tens of millions of cars, whose destinations often change, and which don't plan their schedules weeks or months in advance.

Computerized driving (esp. in a world where people are still allowed to drive, too) is a MUCH harder problem than air traffic control.

Re:I don't think I could ever trust it

[Waffle Iron]

There are lots of mechanical safeguards on an elevator that keep it from plummeting to the floor should the computer fail (as they often do).

IMO, the solution is to make cars more like elevators. Instead of trying to put them on the current free-form road system. Put them on something more like a model railroad set.

I imagine cars about the size of golf carts that could run at high speeds on the constrained tracks, and at low speeds on regular roads to account for the fact that you can't build tracks to every single building.

This would have many advantages. First is the obvious time savings because the driver doesn't have to pay attention for most of the trip. Much more time is saved by central router pre-planning all traffic, totally eliminating slowdowns. (If there's too much demand for the system to handle, you'd be told to chill out for a while before the trip even starts.)

There would be huge safety gains, because the tracks could be built with no grade-level crossings whatsoever. In the constrained environment, I think that a 10X to 100X improvement in safety (similar to airplanes per mile) would be doable. Precise central scheduling would eliminate most needs for local traffic decision making, and the cars would only need to have local backup systems (based on radars, cameras and/or wireless P2P with other cars) that are designed only to avoid collisions due to errors.

The tracks could have mechanical features to support a "tail hook" kind of feature on the cars. In an emergency, the car could use the tail hook to stop at something like 10G deceleration, so it could come from 60 mph to a dead stop in about 12 feet without harming the (seatbelted) passengers.

Cargo capacity would be infinite by having robot cars that are programmed to follow you like a trailer. You could add any number of these to make your own train. You would summon them at places like a lumber yard, then when you're done, you send them back on their way to the next job.

Energy savings would be huge, because people wouldn't need to drive around with excess cargo capacity at all times. 99% of the time, the golf-cart passenger compartment would be sufficient, so the total mass being driven around would drop by a huge factor. Moreover, they would probably be electric, with small batteries for driving off-track. Centrally-generated electricity would power the cars and charge their batteries while on the tracks.

The tracks themselves could be prefabricated and put together like model railroad tracks, allowing huge flexibility in transportation. They might even be temporarilly set up for special one-time events, and then taken down again. I think that each track might be able to carry the equivalent of two of today's freeway lanes because of central scheduling. The footprint could be very small, like 6 feet wide by 5 feet tall per track, saving massive amounts of real estate. In cities, most tracks would be elevated or buried to reduce congestion.

I don't think the tracks would necessarily have actual rails; the cars might just automatically steer to stay in the center of the track. This would allow for flexibilty in design of track intersections. T and cross intersections could be used in low-traffic segments, and the central scheduling would eliminate the need for stop lights or similar local controls. (There would probably actually be stop lights, but they would cycle instantly on a per-car basis. They would only be actually used for emergency collision detection.)

A system like this seems pretty radical, but it could be initially tested out as a cargo-only system to replace trains and/or trucks in a limited area. Once the kinks are worked out there, it's use and scope could be expanded.

Re:I don't think I could ever trust it

[zx75]

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.

Re:I don't think I could ever trust it

[fair_n_hite_451]

Actually, the real difference is this:

Planes and Trains which are massively computer controlled and require humans for monitor duty only, are monitored by professionals who have been trained for the task, and who don't have to deal with screaming kids in the back seat.

Your average driver? NOT a professional. NOT generally even qualifed to monitor a technical series of systems.

On the other hand, think of the benefits. Speeding becomes a thing of the past for most people (yes, someone will "hack the system") but that'll likely be beyond the purvey of most people. School Zones restrictions get obeyed. Highway Construction Zones get obeyed. I think it's a good thing if they can solve the "id10T" problem.

Re:I don't think I could ever trust it

[EsbenMoseHansen]

When flying, if you veer around by 100 feet or so, you are still OK. An airplane has GPS, which can pinpoint the position to within 10 feet, and there are not obstacles. In short, a GPS and a computer will do you just fine (as long as air traffic control does their job properly).

Modern planes do take-offs and landings, too. I don't think missing the runway by 30m is an acceptable error :)

That said it is much more difficult to make autonomous cars, though I still hope and think I'll live to see it. It's not the precision --- computer system are good at precision, and when Galleio goes up we can use that for dm scale precision. It's the road system that we humans have built for humans thatis going to be difficult. Marking the middle of the road with anything ranging from nothing over a single white stripe over complicated marking over a green area and a fence isn't precisely easy for a computer+sensor to navigate by. Then there are road signs, pedestrians and the odd cow.

Still, I'm told that that plane automatics have brought down the accident rate by a factor 100. Even if the real number is 10, that's 50 kills a year in little Denmark, and scaled to the world, it's 50000 people. Thats a lot of people --- enough to warrant forcibly introducing such a system if need be, IMHO.

Amazing technological breakthrough

[gowen]

One day, we'll be able to do something else than driving our cars through traffic jams,

America, may I introduce you to the concept of useable mass, public transport.

Public transport, this is America.

Have a nice day.

Re:Amazing technological breakthrough

[hal2814]

Useable, mass public transport is a pipedream in the rural area where I live. 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.

Re:Amazing technological breakthrough

[Moofie]

If it's so usable, start a company and build it.

Oh wait, you'll do like most other mass transit projects and LOSE YOUR DAMN SHIRT.

There are criteria that must be satisfied before mass transit is practical and cost effective. There are places in America it works, and places it doesn't.

I'm in Portland and I ride the bus to work every day. In Dallas, it simply wouldn't have been practical.

Re:Amazing technological breakthrough

[Zeelan]

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

Re:Amazing technological breakthrough

[gowen]

But most people in such rural areas don't have a 2 hour commute through heavy traffic, so the point is largely moot.

Re:Amazing technological breakthrough

[Vadim Grinshpun]

The parent is not quite as insightful as people apparently think.
Consider the fact that the distances one typically covers in the States are quite a bit greater than almost anywhere in Europe or the UK. Most areas are not that densely populated, and thus do not have many -- or frequently serviced -- transportation options. As a result of this, public transport is not nearly as well-developed or as efficient as the equivalents in other countries. It's not terribly convenient to use public transport to go anywhere unless you can stay within city limits all the time. That happens to be much less feasible in the states than in Europe.

Here're a couple of examples to illustrate my points.

1. I have to commute about 12 miles (~19km) to work every day. Time by bus+subway+bus: 1 hour
Time by car: 20-40 minutes, depending on traffic.
Multiply by 2 (commute back home) -- the difference is between 40 and 80 minutes per day, an hour on average.

2. I have to drive about 220 miles (~350km) to see my parents who live in another city every month.
Time by public transportation:
bus + subway+intercity bus+subway = 10 min + 20 min + 4 hrs + 1 hr = 5.5 hours.
By car, the trip takes 4 hours door-to-door.

Again, multiply by 2 for the way back, and we have about a 3 hour difference. Seeing as I typically go late Friday night or early Sat. morning, and come back on Sunday, 3 additional hours of time that I can spend with my family makes quite a difference. So does not having to be aggravated by crappy buses ;)

I hope this somewhat illustrates my point. And just to make things clear, I'm not talking about some tiny towns in the middle of nowhere--the above trips concern Boston and New York.

Re:Amazing technological breakthrough

[Lust]

OK, I have some tangential issues to vent here...

One current problem is that people want to LIVE in rural areas even if their jobs are URBAN, and this is a selfish position. I live near where I work and feel my quality of life is better without the traffic congestion, and so have traded the bigger home for the ability to walk to a bus stop.

However, I am tired of the heavy traffic around my neighborhood as commuters race down our side streets trying to get to their suburban homes faster. They don't realize that their rural lifestyle rides on the backs of urban residents. And I doubt that automated vehicles will enforce traffic regulations any more than existing vehicles have speed governors.

Besides, if traffic improves as this post suggests, you'll simply find more people willing to live farther from where they work and congestion will increase: it's a self-regulating mechanism and urban sprawl will continue.

Re:Amazing technological breakthrough

[EvilTwinSkippy]

So, um, isn't the point of living in the middle of nowhere that it is relatively inaccessable.

If you want services, more to a populated area that has them. And don't bitch about your taxes.

Re:Amazing technological breakthrough

[fastfinge]

So...who's delivering the traffic jams to you?

Re:Amazing technological breakthrough

[svnt]

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.

Re:Amazing technological breakthrough

[Pee-Wee]

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/

Re:Amazing technological breakthrough

[An Onerous Coward]

Let's set aside the question of whether it makes sense for people to live twelve miles from their primary occupation. Not everyone finds the idea as silly as I do, and I respect that.

The problem with your post is, you're comparing the convenience of a car to that of the current mass transit system, not the sort of mass transit system we could have if, say, one person in ten could give up their cars altogether and put that money into a serious system. For the purposes of this discussion, a "serious system" is one in which the buses run more often than every half hour, and don't stop running altogether after 7PM. In short, one not at all like the one in Salt Lake City.

I'm not imagining shiny new things like, say, an intercity monorail to replace the bus you take to Boston. I think the current systems, but faster, cleaner, and more efficient, would be more than adequate for the needs of most urban dwellers.

Regarding your trip to your parents' house, I think you make it sound worse than it is. Say you're spending 8 hours in the car rather than 11 hours on mass transit. But if you assume that half that time can be spent in productive ways that a car doesn't allow (reading, etc) then suddenly mass transit is competitive again. It could also be argued that you're ignoring the time and effort spent actually earning money to pay for, insure, maintain, gas up, wash, park, and store the car.

Finally, in a fit of anti-American, self-loathing pique, I would point out that we as a society would be spending a heck of a lot less on transportation if our suburbanized ancestors had stayed and dealt with urban problems instead of fleeing like rats off a sinking ship.

Benefit Number One

[swordboy]

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.

Re:Benefit Number One

[markov_chain]

The time savings wouldn't come from quicker starts as much as from the reduced distances between cars. Currently, as cars take off, they introduce "bubbles" into the flow, reducing the rate of cars per traffic light cycle. With automated range control, the distances between cars would be much smaller, leading to a higher traffic density and thus better throughput.

All this is moot, since it would just spur more suburban development until the congestion rises back to some equilibrium level of annoyance. Build it and they will come.

it's called the bus

[johnpaul191]

it's been around for years and it cost under $2 a ride

Re:it's called the bus

[drinkypoo]

And it limits your cargo-carrying capacity, ignores your schedule, subjects you to a bunch of wack jobs who can't afford any other kind of transportation, who may or may not be carrying a bunch of communicable diseases. Don't sit in the very front or the very back; the elderly sit in front and the mentally handicapped sit all over. Lots of those people have hepatitis and shit like that, because they are not equipped for the real world and they spend a lot of time going in and out of mental health organizations which are generally filled with very clean individuals. I say all this as a Santa Cruz native who used to work at County Health there, first as a MIS employee and later as a security guard.

Paranoid? Sure. But there's just a shitload of reasons why public transportation in most American cities is a joke. Santa Cruz's bus system is pretty good, there are a couple of buses that run until midnight and one (that goes to the university) that runs all night, and few buses run less often than once per hour, with the most popular lines running once per 15 minutes or per half hour. The sad truth is that buses are not cost-effective in most places and trains are useless without buses, so basically any non-major city will have a useless public transportation system, if any.

Re:it's called the bus

[NeuralAbyss]

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.

Re:it's called the bus

[avdp]

Lots of those people have hepatitis and shit like that

You'll be allright as long as you don't have sex with them on the bus, or exchange blood samples.

No seriously, you are paranoid. Anytime you get out of your house you're going to be exposed to all kinds of people and germs. Unless you're an hermit or live in a bubble, it can't be avoided. I don't know Santa Cruz (or even where it is) but there are billions of people in the world that take public transportation daily (granted, few of those in the US) and somehow, they survive the experience...

Re:it's called the bus

[pipingguy]

I say all this as a Santa Cruz native who used to work at County Health there, first as a MIS employee and later as a security guard.

Were you downsized or what?

You had me with this part, "And it limits your cargo-carrying capacity, ignores your schedule..." and then it all went psycho after that.

You're right about service in smaller areas being bad/nonexistent though.

Cheers!

Think of the chauffeurs...

[ryanmfw]

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.

Not just nice, ESSENTIAL

[Ars-Fartsica]

Drive around any large city these days, its total chaos. Jams used to be the exclusive domain of California, now they are in any city of a half million or more.

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.

Re:Not just nice, ESSENTIAL

[hal2814]

I don't buy into this doom and gloom scenario of utter gridlock. I've heard it before many times. When traffic gets too heavy to get to work in a reasonable (according to your employer so it's a bit more than you probably consider reasonable) amount of time, your business will probably move out of the city and to a less populated area. This is happening in droves in Atlanta where businesses are moving to Norcross/Duluth, Marietta, and Alpharetta.

And we won't even have to shoot illegal immigrants as they try to cross the border.

No problems not driving

[scotay]

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.

No time soon, methinks.

[Black Parrot]

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.

Pfft some of us are already doing it...

[Tibor the Hun]

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.

Parking lots

[samspock]

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!

What about the legalities?

[Fnkmaster]

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.

Saving 2 hours? I don't think so.

[TellarHK]

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.

Re:Saving 2 hours? I don't think so.

[JohnPM]

Not exactly a new situation though, is it?

Here in Europe a huge proportion of people commute on the train, often for more than 2 hours a day.
Usually a resonable arrangement is made with your employer. Many people really enjoy the quite time to get work done balanced with meetings in the middle of the day.

Auto-commute!

[theluckyleper]

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?

Re:But how deep?

[Slarty]

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.

Benefit Number Two

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Drivers Licenses?

[MoeMoe]

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...

Switchable

[B'Trey]

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.

Re:Switchable

[B'Trey]

Probably the same reason you buy a car with an air bag today.

Re:Switchable

[The AntiDJ]

I don't think that Taxi cabs or busses would switch over even once most cars are driving in this way. You have the problem of needing hail a taxi, or for a taxi driver to figure out how to find a fare. Furthermore, taxi drivers in cities frequently don't get addresses or even proper names. A new york cabbie may hear "take me to that famous toy store" and can probably figure out that the fare wants to go to FAO Schwarts on 5th Ave. An automated system would have problems with this. As far as busses, they would probably want to keep drivers for safety and security reasons. Also without supervision, it'd probably be relatively easy to circumvent paying a fare. There's not much to stop someone from hopping on the bus throug the back door besides social control.

Re:Switchable

[rekt]

I'd imagine that the first fully automated cars will be airport shuttles and similar vehicles which make a repeated circuit of stops.

let's be realistic here and look at real-life automated transport. Here in New York, they've recently made the AirTrain a completely automated train that goes to the airport (JFK) from the nearest subway station.

anyone who has used the AirTrain will tell you that the system is a huge step backwards from the human-driven buses which used the local roads. The AirTrain has no drivers to ask questions of, is poorly documented, and occasionally stops in between stations with no information to any of the passengers about what's going on.

also, when it reaches a station, it leaves the doors open for either much longer than it needs to (when no one is waiting on the platform to come in, or on the train to go out), or it closes them too quickly (yes, closing doors on people's luggage or their arms!). Human conductors of the subway are much more efficient with these sort of things.

it was even delayed for several months when it killed a person during a test run!

Now stop and consider the constraints on the system that the AirTrain deals with: no other traffic at all, no pedestrians/animals on the tracks, no intersections to speak of, and an extremely simple, well-maintained route. And it still sucks. An autonomous car would need to deal with a much more unconstrained system (potholes, construction, children, broken traffic lights, aggressive drivers...). We should all be hoping that these sort of vehicles aren't unleashed on our public streets soon.

Re:Switchable

[Mojojojo Monkey Inc.]

Taking a Sunday afternoon drive on an open country road to the local apple orchard in the fall is fun.

Speeding along a winding ocean lane at sunset in a convertible with the top down in the summer is fun.

Taking a midnight drive to Makeout Point is fun, as long as you have a companion.

Making the 45-minute morning commute on the 8-lane, due-east freeway into the city for the 500th time is NOT fun, but I don't really have much of an option if I want to keep doing the job I like that pays my bills. What fun is a "journey" that I've already made 499 times before that involves little more than putting on the cruise control, keeping the steering wheel straight, and hoping I don't get stuck in a traffic jam?

See a difference? That is what an auto-driving car would fix -- I'd be free to use that time to catch up on the news, read a book, browse slashdot wirelessly, do some work, take a nap, shave, actually LOOK at the scenery around me instead of staring 30 feet in front of me, whatever.

I'd ENJOY the journey, instead of dread it!

The goal is to have cars that can drive themselves when you want them to, and turn over the controls when you want them to. I can't imagine car makers would plan for a future where personal transportation vehicles with manual controls will disappear. Despite being 2 miles from a major highway right now, I can drive for 5 minutes and be on any number of dirt roads, which may well never be paved. No one's taking away your steering wheel.

The Right Sandwich?

[ackthpt]

Like that guy who set his RV on cruise control and went in the back to make a sandwich? I smell disaster.

It helps to be making the right sandwich

...hail mary full of grace, with cheese and lightly buttered...

It will never happen

[Safety Cap]

Most municipalities (and small towns) get their revenue from traffic tickets. If you make cars that never break the law, then bye, bye revenue!

Humans shouldn't control vehicles

[kherr]

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.

Re:Humans shouldn't control vehicles

[EvilTwinSkippy]

Classic Sig:

I want to die like my granddad, peacefully in my sleep. Not screaming and carrying on like the people in the car he was driving.

Re:But how deep are their pockets?

[Wolfger]

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.

Loss of freedom

[DunbarTheInept]

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.)

You'll see it as HOV/Toll lanes first ...

[worktheweb]

I bet you'll see automated vehicles get access to their own lanes, sort of like HOV lanes are set up now for ride-sharing traffic. In the Washington DC area they are discussing having HOV-like lanes that you pay to have access to them instead of requiring ride-sharing. You get reduced traffic ... for a price. Automated driving will be a similar convenience and there will be people willing to pay for it, at least initially.

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

Why is the parent flamebait? Mods on pot?

[JonnyCalcutta]

I'm not sure why this is flamebait? It makes perfect sense to me.

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.

Not in the U.S.

[Izmunuti]

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

Liability - Not you, the Manufacture

[Nosajjason]

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.

I would love this

[FJ]

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.

Fear

[drakyri]

Using fully autonomous vehicles will probably lower the death toll that automobile accidents cause by quite a bit.

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 ... gasp ... a machine ... where you would (or think you would) be helpless if something goes wrong?

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.

eliminate human stupidity

[d4n]

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.

The core problem

[Have Blue]

This is the core problem, and the reason it will probably not happen for a very long time:

• 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.

This will spell the end of car ownership

[serutan]

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.

Deer in mid-air

[Nerf97A4]

unlike driving a car, the chances of something running in front of you at 30000 feet is pretty slim

Re:But how deep?

[interiot]

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.

All a question of habit

[TheMadReaper]

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...

When the light turns green

[dom1234]

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.

Re:But how deep?

[Random_Goblin]

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

I trust it more than I trust you.

[TiggertheMad]

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.

isn't that a "train"?

[h00manist]

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.

We used to have that!!

[dentar]

They were called "trains."

Defeats the Purpose of the Automobile

[K-Man]

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!

It's not that I don't trust my car...

[Thuktun]

...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.

they are already on their way...

[pylonz]

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.

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 /. for a hack around it.

Oops, nevermind...

[Thud457]

That's called a train.

Not First in the USA

[Roger_Wilco]

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.

Re:Share the road with automated 18-wheelers?

[F34nor]

You people act like humans aren't the faultiest damn wetware on the road. For the love of god I'd take a bad comuter for driving over the average human any day of the week. Also if every car is smart and one dies the WHOLE line can slam on the breaks at the same time all the way back to the largest opening in traffic.

I love it when similar problem manifest in an sun-regularr "I" control system's sensors on humans. Sleeping and drinking at the wheel, talking on cell phones, badly misjudging the relative speed of convergin objects, administering punishment to 1/2 clones. Arrrrh! I freaks the shit out of me every time I look at a car. 2000 lbs POORLY guided bombs.

Trains are rarely economically feasible

[egarland]

Actually, trains aren't economically feasible most places they exist. Modern traffic patterns show a railroad line being capable of caring about as many people as half a highway lane at many times the cost. One study showed it would be cheaper for the city to lease a Lexus for every person who road the rails than to keep dumping money into supporting it's subway system. It's only in the most densely populated places (New York, Tokyo, London, Paris) where trains make economic sense.

Trains are cool. People love to love them but they are:

• environmentally horrible
  because of their massive weight, per passenger they use more fuel than an SUV
  
  
• economically unsound
  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.
  
  
• they waste riders time
  When's the last time you got out of a train at your doorstep?
  
  
• it's impossible for them to be a complete transportation solution
  "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.

Actually

[bmajik]

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.

Will the cars be self-aware?

[benhocking]

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.)

Re:Will the cars be self-aware?

[furchin]

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)

Re:But how deep?

[caswelmo]

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.

how about my motorcycle?

[TheLibero]

I just hit the top gear trying to have some fun, in the same time there are 1000 other factors that make my worried about getting my skin painted with tar. Would that navigation system save my @ss from other "driven" cars?

Or maybe I can one of these systems on my bike :) But I can imagine how boring that would be.

Roland the Plogger again. Lousy article, too.

[Animats]

Wasn't that article referenced on Slashdot previously?

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.

MADD is the answer

[cat_jesus]

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.

Re:Share the road with automated 18-wheelers?

[bobcat7677]

I agree that humans are error prone...Statistically human piloted cars are the most lethal weapons in existance right now killing over 40,000 people and injuring millions each year in the US alone. My arguement is that poorly implimented automation can be even more dangerous and I'm not sure I want to trust a car company to come up with a good implimentation based on their past performance. Statistical Reference: http://www.nhtsa.dot.gov/nhtsa/announce/press/pres sdisplay.cfm?year=2002&filename=pr55-02.html

Re:Why does "Keep Right to Pass"...

[Surur]

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

Cheap bandwidth

[Tablizer]

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.

Re:But how deep?

[CreatureComfort]

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.

Dumbass...

[Glove d'OJ]

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.

car vs hospital

[chocolatetrumpet]

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.

PRT

[Ian Bicking]

PRT (Personal Rapid Transit) offers many of the advantages of a car (direct, no-stop transport that isn't shared), but automated. It's basically a very small (up to 3 person) train on a small elevated track.

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.

Re:Why does "Keep Right to Pass"...

[neitzsche]

Hang on. So you telling me all this talk about "Speed Kills" is just propaganda?! And that they decided to irritate everyone with foolish speed limits instead of legislating improved fuel consumption targets?

I'm not sure I agree with the sentiment that '"Speed Kills" is just propaganda?!' but I do think it is terribly incorrect.

The difference in speed is what kills.

There is a route to get to that end.

[aug24]

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.

Re:Why does "Keep Right to Pass"...

[terevos]

Yeah - the whole "Speed Kills" thing is just propaganda. Speeding doesn't cause accidents, bad driving causes accidents. Just look at Germany. The autobahn has no speed limit and they have less accidents per capita than America does.

I think you've got that wrong there. The 'keep right except to pass' would still be valid if no one went above the speed limit. Because there's always going to be someone going slower than you, even if the maximum is 65. It's not to accommodate speeding, but to accommodate the flow of traffic regardless of speed.

The whole reason for the 'keep right except to pass' is to prevent traffic jams. If there is someone in the right lane going slow and the guy in the left lane is not passing him - guess what? There's going to be a traffic jam.

And let me explain my comment about tailgating a little for all those offended. I was using a bit of hyperbole. I don't actually tailgate very much. My strategy is to let the guy know that I desire to pass him. If he does not respond, I use other methods. I'm generally very patient even if there is a clear path in the middle lane to pass him. I think it's dangerous to pass on the right. Only as a last resort will I pass on the right. I find that most people are accommodating as long as they are alerted to the fact that you want to pass them. Only once in awhile do I find that the guy's a jerk and feels like he owns the lane.

I also feel like I'm doing a service for all the other people in the left lane that are behind me. I get people to move out of the way so traffic can be uninterrupted by a slow person in the left lane.