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When an Algorithm Takes the Wheel
Wired has an interesting look at Jaguar's new automated driving dynamics system in their new XK convertible. From the article: "During an extreme test of the XK's handling capabilities, the car only fishtailed back and forth once after I jerked the steering wheel on a wet road around a 90 degree turn while driving at about 60 mph. The car's back wheels swung first left then right before the XK's sensors registered a difference in torque between the rear tires and, transparent to me, righted the fishtailing effect by a combination of de-acceleration, tire rotation and vehicle weight distribution control. More often than not, the sensation of flatness, as if there were a vertical force pinning the car to the road, was also felt then and when taking less extreme curves at high speeds."
This technology is great, but for the love of god, please let me be able to turn it off when I want to! If I want to give the car some extra gas through a corner and kick the back end out, don't interfere with me. Safety is a great goal, but I want to tell the car what to do - I don't want the car telling me what I can do. There are times when traction control gets completely in the way of non-spirited driving, too (like going up a snow-covered driveway).
Toyota/Lexus is horrible about this. They include intrusive control systems and don't give you any easy way to turn it off.
Side sensors on the car's side, for example, gauge if the car is about to roll over, and then activate the roll-over bar, which breaks through the glass of the back windshield.
For front-end collisions, a fiber optic connection from left to right registers impacts. The sensors' algorithms then program the hood and front end to react differently according to what is hit.
For pedestrians, a mesh-like material is activated in less than 50 milliseconds beneath the hood, which serve to cushion the blow upon impact.
These well-nigh amazing safety features leave me asking the same question that I ask myself when I hear GM's OnStar commercials, touting features like calling emergency services on airbag deployment.
How many lives does a feature have to save before it should be required equipment?
Early automobiles were deathtraps, until a fellow by the name of Ralph brought the issue to national prominence in 1965 with Unsafe at Any Speed , a book to which many of us owe our very existence. Since then, we have assumed a right to a safe vehicle. No car company would be allowed to sell a $3000 rattletrap with no seat belts and no air bags and an engine in the passenger seat, even if they required purchasers to sign a safety waiver. I think this can be counted as "progress", though the more Libertarian folks out there might disagree.
But assuming that Da Gooberment has an obligation to obligate safer vehicles, where do you set the bar? If a "mesh-like material" is the difference between injury and Pedestrian Souffle', why not require such a system on all vehicles? Or do I have to cross my fingers and only step out in front of cars built by Jaguar?
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
...ordinary stability control?
But assuming that Da Gooberment has an obligation to obligate safer vehicles, where do you set the bar? If a "mesh-like material" is the difference between injury and Pedestrian Souffle', why not require such a system on all vehicles? Or do I have to cross my fingers and only step out in front of cars built by Jaguar?
When the costs of the increase in safety make it too expensive for the poor to afford even the cheapest "safe" car.
Blessed be he who reads this post, Cursed be he who tells my boss.
Why don't they concentrate their efforts on something more worthwhile - such as making their cars suck less?
Seriously, I've known at least 3 people who bought them (against my advice) who all unloaded their problem-prone cars within a year to some other poor soul. (Just for the sake of not picking strictly on Jaguar, BMWs suck quite a bit sometimes too. I have a friend that I pick up from the BMW dealer's service dept at least once every 2 months or so).
Before any Jaguar fanbois flame on, there's certainly a reason why the resale value of a Jaguar plummets to 21% of its original retail price after only 5 years of ownership.
There are a huge number of yeast infections in this county. Probably because we're downriver from the bread factory.
I can build you a vehicle in which you are completely safe at any legal speed. No problem. A first year engineering student could come up with most of the design. Of course, I'm charging a million bucks each for these safety cars but they would save the lives of 90% of the people who annually die of auto accidents. Aren't the lives of all those people worth the extra $985,000 per car. A side benefit would be reduced wear and tear on the roads because of much reduced traffic volume.
"I think this can be counted as "progress", though the more Libertarian folks out there might disagree."
What most capital-L Libertarians fail to realize is that you can't "vote with your dollar" if you're dead.
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
...but no matter how cool it is, it is still a Ford.
...the car only fishtailed back and forth once after I jerked the steering wheel on a wet road around a 90 degree turn while driving at about 60 mph
You could also just slow down.
I'm kind of sick of seeing commercials with cars driving 60mph through 2 feet of snow as if it were a hot summer day.
(Still don't trust ABS since I hit that deer.)
That's logic turned on its head. So you hit a deer with your ABS-equipped car: does it occur to you that, perhaps, without ABS, you'd have hit the deer a lot faster?
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
How much does it cost to fix when it breaks!
Sorry, I know for some people, its not an issue. But I can't stand gizmos that break and cost $1k + to repair. Why don't we just mandate better driver education. (Like weekend car control bootcamps or something!!! Like the motorcycle safety courses.)
-=fshalor
Examples include: Proper adjustment of the seat and headrests for best control and protection; proper wearing of the seatbelt; proper use of child-safety seats; keeping signal lights in proper function and using the turning signals; Taking new drivers on a real high-speed driving course where they actually do accident avoidance maneuvers; teaching new drivers how to recognize treacherous road conditions; more emphasis on cooperative driving instead of purely "defensive driving" (which quickly turns into a passive-aggressive "I can be in the left lane because I'm doing the speed limit" game).
Less is more.
Actually, what most Libertarians realize is that you cannot govern based on emotions, and that everything has a value.
For example, the latest just-approved medical treatment is usually very expensive (it may have cost $1bn to develop), while the treatments we had 10 years ago are cheaper, but not as effective. Should every medical plan have to cover the expensive option?
For a more stark example, six healthy British men nearly died while participating in a safety test for a new drug. Do you think it ok for drug companies (and indirectly, us consumers) to pay for people to risk their lives for this? Or is it wrong to ascribe a value to this?
Don't anyone mistake this for what it is: a robot that overrides your control inputs.
I hope slashdot got paid to put this up. Sounds like a car commercial to me...
Slashdot didn't, but I'm sure Wired did.
Except that an experienced driver skilled at threshold braking could still threshold break. He just has to get almost to the point of ABS kick in instead of almost to the point of tire lock-up - which are pretty much the same thing.
I don't think that's necessarily true. I think that automated highways will eventually come to pass, but it won't be overnight. What will probably happen is that it will be a gradual process, driven by the fact that the automobile companies will want to make sure that accidents can't be attributed to their vehicles. You can already see it starting. First, we had cruise control. Then, we had adaptive cruise control. Now, we're seeing adaptive cruise control with the ability to brake, as well as cars which can parallel park themselves. As long as the manufacturers take baby steps, all possible scenarios will eventually be accounted for.
I will, slightly, agree with your contention that computer and human controlled vehicles will not co-exist on the same structure. However, there are already numerous examples of seperated roadways that carry automated vehicles. Las Vegas has just installed an automated busway where the buses have drivers, but in reality, the bus does 99% of the driving with the driver just there "in case" (really just there so the people on board don't freak out over no human driver). You also see more and more HOV lanes going in all over the country. It wouldn't take much to turn the HOV lanes into high-speed automated vehicle lanes.
All of the other points in your article are merely technological difficulties, and not particularly difficult ones to solve. Solving cost effectively right now is the issue, but as technology is improved in testing and the incremental cost comes down it is almost inevitable.
In addition, are you serious that you believe a human being in a car at night is more likely to notice a deer at the side of the road at highway speeds than a computerized hazard identification system? Let alone said human being able to take an appropriate action in sufficient time. Humans work on the order of seconds, while a decent control system will work on the order of milliseconds. This would make a huge difference in a lot of cases.
Add to this the fact that the vast majority of drivers would really prefer to be able to get into their car in the garage, tell it to take them to work, then sit and read the paper, talk on the phone, apply makeup, etc. and have the vehicle deliver them to the front door of their office in a fast, safe manner... then go park itself to wait until they needed it again. The representative audience of
Your contention that "something will go wrong, it will cost significant human life, it will be abandoned" is laughable. The system we have today kills over 45,000 americans per year. To me that's pretty significant loss of life, and not only do I not see people trying to abandon the system, I see idiots all over (in this discussion thread even) defending it in the name of "I should be free to drive like an asshat if I want to."
"Unheard of means only it's undreamed of yet,
Impossible means not yet done." ~~ Julia Ecklar
Are you saying a human can react better than a computer can to these situations? This discussion goes far beyond the simple systems in the new Jaguar, but hypothetically... suppose we do have a fully automated car someday. Then the woman who wants to put on her lipstick while her car drives can do so, and the person who actually wants to pay attention to the road and drive his own car doesn't have to worry about her. As far as unexpected road conditions, that's exactly what this car is designed to handle. It can tell if it's not getting as much traction as normal, even in conditions where you might think the road looks fine. It will then make the proper adjustments (as opposed to saying, I'm already late for work, the roads aren't that bad, I can go full speed!). And if it does hit a deer, the smart collision detection system will take the impact much nicer than a "dumber" car (presumably). We aren't talking about a fully integrated computerized highway system, we're talking about a car with some nifty features to make it handle better.
But by staying a little futher behind her you never would have had a "I fishtailed to keep from getting in an accident" story to tell us.
If you knew her lights were not working why would you be close enough to lessen your chance of stopping if she jams on the breaks for the Pink Elephant in the road. (they ARE there).
Drive a Lil' more carefully
Success is not the result of spontaneous combustion, you must set yourself on fire.
From the sounds of the review, it seems that this kicks in only when the car is pushed beyond certain limits, and that it performs certain actions faster than a human driver might be able to because the sensors and feedback mechanism are inherently faster through the computer than they are through the human behind the wheel. Humans can outperform the computer only when they correctly anticipate all of the road conditions.
Correctly applied, this can allow the human to push the car further than would otherwise be safe because you have fine grain closed-loop compensation that is superior to pure open-loop anticipation. The driver can offload a few unknowns onto the car's compensating systems and really dig into it. For one thing, I don't think I've seen a car with human inputs for controlling the torque available on each of the four wheels. In contrast, several of these high-end systems can do tricks like partially applying individual brakes to force the differential to divert torque to non-slipping wheels. Last thing I want is four brake pedals.
This has some implications. First, for a performance car, this should be relatively easily disabled, or at least severely restrained for cases where the driver wants to perform some "trick driving" actions inconsistent with "going down the road fast and staying on the road." e.g. intentional donuts, spinouts and burnouts. Second, when active, the system better not fail when the driver is relying on it to take up certain slack since a driver accustomed to the computer compensation has mentally offloaded some of the burden to the vehicle.
I don't think this is about putting kid gloves and nerf on the car.
--JoeProgram Intellivision!
http://www.abs-education.org/faqs/faqindex.htm
In what circumstances might conventional brakes have an advantage over ABS?
There are some conditions where stopping distance may be shorter without ABS. For example, in cases where the road is covered with loose gravel or freshly fallen snow, the locked wheels of a non-ABS car build up a wedge of gravel or snow, which can contribute to a shortening of the braking distance.
There is a reson why insurance companies don't give out ABS discounts any longer in places where it snows regularly.
They no longer give discounts because ABS is so common. Insurance companies base their evaluation of different models based on the claims history for the car (depreciation, likelyhood of collision/theft and average cost to repair). A Ferrari will be expensive to insure with or without ABS.
They don't work well because conditions are variable from one second to the next,
Which is why ABS systems continuously monitor the wheel grip and adjust accordingly to maximize braking force at that point in time. Mercedes cars do this over 40 times/sec. Most ABS systems do this at least 5-10 times/sec.
and the algorithms that are programmed into the controllers can't measure intent.
Intent? It's pretty simple. I press on the brake = I want to reduce speed. I stomp on the brake = I want to reduce speed as rapidly as possible. It's not rocket science.
In fact, among people that I know that HAVE ABS on their vehicles, the first thing they do is pull the fuse to disable it in winter.
You've got a lot of dumb friends. Send them back to driving school.
I wish I had done the same. My vehicle was involved in one moderate crash over a thirteen year span (I bought it new) and two minor ones due to the fact that the ABS controller was not programed with an optimal solution for downhill on ice, i.e. acceleration despite intervention by the controller.
There is no optimal solution for braking while going downhill on ice, with or without ABS. Ice is very slippery. Once you exceed the maximum traction between ice & rubber, the car will slide. There is almost no grip between ice & rubber, which is why you shouldn't drive in those conditions (or use snow tires/chains/studs and drive very very slowly).
As a result not only was my stopping distance increased, but I was unable to actively steer the vehicle into the curb to gain additional traction from the median snow and from the collision with the curb.
If you were unable to steer, it's because the steering wheels had no grip. Not having ABS wouldn't change that. In fact, with locked wheels, you would lose steering control faster than with ABS.
Don't give me the "but the systems have improved since you first bought yours". No, they haven't. Try this on a northern winter day when conditions are icy - go out for a test drive in a new vehicle with ABS. Go to the nearest mall/shopping center, whatever. Get the car going, try to stop, measure the stopping distance. Now find the ABS fuse and remove it. Repeat test. Result: ABS makes car stop straighter, but increases stopping distance.
Complete bullshit. When I took the BMW driver training course, they had cars with a button to do exactly that. ABS stopped faster in all reduced traction conditions. I saw it with my own eyes, and did it myself. ABS reduces stopping distance in slippery conditions, period.
In addition, ABS makes car stop dead-straight, (no you can't steer with ABS in near-zero-traction conditions - total myth - try it),
The reason you can't steer with ABS in near-zero-traction conditions is because there is near-zero-traction. You would have the same problem without ABS. ABS is not the holy grail, neither is 4-wheel drive. You need to drive appropriately for the road conditions.
so any chance you have of using a skid to maneuver yourself out of the way is completely out the window.
Finally we agree on something: ABS does reduce skidding while braking. How are you able to control which wheel on your non-ABS car to lock up to induce a skid? I would be mighty impressed to watch you do that (using the handbrake to lock the rear wheels doesn't count)