GM Claims Advanced Cruise Control By 2008

pavelvp writes "Economist is reporting that General Motors is working on the prototype of the self-driving car. From the article, "The car uses updated technology combined with several existing innovations and, according to the manufacturer, could be in production by 2008. But, while the technology takes some of the boring bits out of driving, it falls far short of an automatic taxi service and, anyway, various legal, technical and social barriers to its introduction remain.""

Comments

Good idea

[Catamaran]

I look forward to the day when we relinquish all control of our cars once we enter the freeway. Scientific papers have found that traffic throughput could be increased up to 918.49% while reducing fatalities by a factor of 17.5!

Re:Good idea

[ZeroGee]

relinquish all control of our cars once we enter the freeway

Although your numbers are probably a joke, the actual theory merits discussion. Still, it won't happen for quite a while. People enjoy driving far too much. Movies like I, Robot and others involving "manual overrides" are actually fairly close to the truth. You think all the owners who buy sports cars, whether it's a base-model ford mustang or a top-end ferrari, are going to be satisfied "turning over all control" of their car and just reading the newspaper or watching a movie on the way to work? The only way this highway works is if every single car participates, otherwise the stupid human will be bumping into the super-fast computer-driven cars all day. Good luck getting buy-in from 100% of drivers. Not during my lifetime.

Re:Good idea

[william_w_bush]

or computer only lanes/sections ala car-pooling?
they can have a much higher density, along with less braking idiocy, or the "look at that crash" which stops traffic for miles. the govt can make that an incentive to have auto-cars.

Re:Good idea

[ZeroGee]

It would not be unreasonable to make it legally required to use such a system on some highways. You don't like it, take the side streets.

Nice thought experiment. In reality? Good luck getting your congressmen and senators to vote for this. First the auto-lobby will scream bloody-murder because it would require extra systems in every car, which raises their costs. They sure as heck aren't going to eat into their own profits, so that means the price increases are passed along to the consumers, who want to know why their honda accords now cost $35,000 for a feature they don't want anyhow.

This doesn't even take into consideration the ACLU who will claim this is a movement to make cars inaccessible to poor people, as well as the far right who doesn't want no stinkin' computer driving when they can do it perfectly well themselves.

In summary, you have a system that is popular with about 18% of the population. Yep, I bet that one races through the legislature.

Re:Good idea

[ZeroGee]

Today's teens are starting to seriously think hybrids, electrics and hydrogen-powered cars are cool.

Today's teens also think aston martins, ferraris, and lotus elises are cool as well. Granted, hybrids have taken on a "hip" status, but they haven't replaced sports cars. Many teenagers still think that '69 Charger is pretty darn cool too.

If you haven't noticed, auto manufacturers are in the midst of a huge horsepower war that hasn't been seen in decades. 400 bhp is now becoming standard on upper-end luxury vehicles, with the 500hp threshold being crossed by vehicles still south of 100k. It also so happens that this is being done with engines that aren't just "bigger" as in the mid-20th century, but rather with exciting new efficient technology.

Cars have been status symbols since they were invented a hundred years ago, and that hasn't changed at all. High gas prices don't matter. I live in California and pay $2.99/gallon these days. If I was paying $2.00/gallon, I'd save $600 a year. Whoopee. My sports car gets 23 mpg, and a "fuel-efficient" non-hybrid gets 35 mpg. Is my car worth the price delta? You bet it is.

Re:Good idea

[soft_guy]

I don't know. I could see this happening. At first, maybe someone creates one experimental road with this technology. If GM and Ford could use it as differentiation, they might have the clout to get some assistance from congress. GM and Ford really need to do something serious to shake things up very soon.

If it worked, the fact that it would work would be a compelling reason. Think about cities like Seattle, Houston, etc. where the freeways are very crowded and the costs of new freeways are too high to be practical.

The ACLU is not some all powerful "spoiler" out to hold back innovation.

Plus, if your argument would hold, then people wouldn't have catalytic converters, airbags, or seatbelts. These are all features which make cars cost a lot of money and most people don't want.

Re:Good idea

[moreati]

Without quoted statistics this reply is of course conjecture, as is yours.

I believe very few people enjoy the act of day to day driving, sports cars are a minute proportion of road traffic. What I and many others enjoy is the comfort and convenience of using a private car to travel. Auto-drive cars can increase these benefits by the following:
  - Removing requirement for continuous, dedicated, concious control. Instead, read slashdot or watch I Robot as you travel to work.
  - Removing necessity for private vehicle ownership, instead rent use of a class of vehicle - no need to find parking, drive straight to your destination, get out and the car will route/drive itself to a holding area or pickup.
  - Safer my faith in computer control is greater then my faith in millions of bored, distracted humans. Provided the system is built up over time, slowly, a few features integrated to a trusted (proven) platform at each revision, as cars today are develop.
  - Faster, with many vehicles coordinating with one another, it should be possible to increase thoughput and aggregate speed. As you say these will be mitigated by human and other uncooperative (incompatible) drivers. But it shouldn't be all or nothing.

Auto-drive cars won't appear overnight - enabling features will accrue over years - Sat Nav, cruise control, rangefinding sensors, lane drift alarms, drive by wire, braking assistance, ubiquitous wireless communication etc.

Thats my optimistic view, anyway.

Regards

Alex

Re:Good idea

[dgatwood]

Nah. Traction control can detect slipping and indicate to the computer that the water stability specs for that vehicle need to be adjusted downwards. It moves itself over a lane to the right and slows down a little bit. Eventually, when it detects too much slippage, it will refuse to drive in inclement weather until you replace the tires. Upon replacing tires, the tire store resets the computer to the new tires' specs.

No use.

[thermal_noise]

It's 2008. Give me my f*ing flying car instead.

Re:No use.

[agraupe]

If you had any idea of the complexity of flying anything, you'd take that comment back. I'm in the final stages of getting a private pilot license, and let me tell you, it's a lot harder than it looks (not to mention 1-2 hours of trip planning before any flight away from the airport a meaningful distance). I've just been doing my cross-country flights, and there are about 5 times per flight where I have no clue where I am (GPS notwithstanding, because you have to be able to find your way around in the event of an electrical failure). I know you merely meant this comment to be a witty, quick-way-to-+5-Funny one-liner, but the thought of the average person expecting to get into their flying car and be able to drive it without killing anyone scares me enough that I had to comment anyway.

but..

[Enteebee]

Will this car also drive itself to Alaska, drill for oil, refine the crude into gasoline, and then fill up?

Otherwise, I'm holding out for a Mr. Fusion.

In Soviet Russia...

[X1011]

Car drives you!

A hundred years...

[HermanAB]

since we last had self driving cars. Friggen amazing that it took this long to re-invent the horse.

Re:A hundred years...

[mesmartyoudumb]

That's funny, My friend was telling me that his grandpa refused to buy a car because it didn't know the way home if he got drunk and passed out like his good ole horse.

Well here's your problem right here

[SuperKendall]

From the article:

For example, self-steering cars are currently illegal in most European countries. Carmakers want the law changed to allow them, but they are also keen not to be held legally responsible for any accidents which result. Drafting legislation which would make it attractive for carmakers to introduce the technology, but still allow some recourse for those hurt if something goes wrong, could prove tricky.

I see, they want to build self-steering cars but take no responsibility for what they have built going wrong.

I think alerting systems are a great idea - if you think I'm shifting lanes or following too close or not noticing a braking driver in front of me, by all means help me out.

But don't take away control based on incomplete sensor input. The distance that it is safe to follow another car depends on conditions. What if you reach a sharp bend and that other car can corner a lot better than you? What if you stop paying attention to the road ahead because the car is following another, and that other car fails to notice traffic stopping too quickly ahead? That car hitting anything else probably means you're going to hit it.

The consider the whole business of automatically following lanes as the GM car does. Has no-one out there seen roads after construction is through that have remains of old lines? What happens when a car starts AUTOMATICALLY correcting your steering to follow the old lines instead of the new?

To give auto makers a free Get-Out-Of-Jail card because they have the hubris to think they can build something that really drives better than a human is madness. Let them try but they must pay for failure so they are properly diligent as to issues that may arise.

Overall

[Council]

Very good idea, as far as the actual driving goes -- that is, I would use it.

Problem: It will crash when presented with some situations. You can watch for those situations, but since you don't normally /have/ to watch the road anymore, attention will drift for longer and longer, and you won't see something, and it will crash.

The few problems will be directly blamed on the car makers. They will not be able to keep this cruise control on the market.

I've often wished that my car would automatically stay between the lines. The roads are already tilted so that you can drive (with good alignment) quite a ways without touching the wheel. But if I had that option, it's only a matter of time before I fell asleep on a long freeway, and then the computer makes a mistake, and I crash.

The technology is not new. I saw a video on it quite a while ago. But you can't introduce it because some people will die as a viscerally direct result, even if it saves other lives in the process.

They mentioned that it would probably first be introduced as a "you're going off the road" warning system, and verrrry slowly work its way in from there. That's the only feasible option I see.

I really don't feel alarmist about this at all. They're gonna need to be very, very careful in introducing this, because when cars crash -- as they inevitably will at least once -- due to unexpected circumstances that arise quickly -- they will look very bad.