Slashdot Mirror
GM Says Driverless Cars Will Be Ready By 2018
Gregor Stipicic writes "Cars that drive themselves — even parking at their destination — could be ready for sale within a decade, General Motors Corp. executives say. 'This is not science fiction,' Larry Burns, GM's vice president for research and development, said in a recent interview. GM plans to use an inexpensive computer chip and an antenna to link vehicles equipped with driverless technologies. The first use likely would be on highways; people would have the option to choose a driverless mode while they still would control the vehicle on local streets, Burns said. He said the company plans to test driverless car technology by 2015 and have cars on the road around 2018."
I'm sure the AI will drive much better than some of the people on these roads in Boston LOL
Headless computers seem to work well, why not driverless cars :)
... but will they fly?
Just imagine the crossover deals this will open up.
"Drive to Pathmark"
"Pathmark is overrated. Destination modified to Walmart." *doors lock*
I'm pretty sure the encylopedias that my parents had (published in the late 70s) mentioned driverless cars as something coming in the near future. So forgive me if I'm a bit skeptical on this. I still want my flying car!
X(7): A program for managing terminal windows. See also screen(1).
Too bad others have predicted the world will come to an end in 2012.
Being a code monkey, I am deeply concerned how reliable the on board computer and firmware are for these vehicles.
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
..is REPAIRLESS cars! They make utter crap!
This coming from the same company that can't seem to get fleet-wide fuel economy out of the low 20s.
Work on getting a car that gets decent gas mileage first, THEN make them drive themselves. Baby steps now...
...that someone will have to come up with maps that are accurate? I don't mean ones that have pinpoint accuracy on the locations of roads, but thoroughfares with special conditions. I'd hate to riding in a car in autopilot that decided it could turn the wrong way down a one way street because the map data didn't show it.
I haven't driven a GM car in years. So yeah I can see GM cars becoming driverless within my lifetime.
This seriously needs the whatcouldpossiblygowrong tag!
this has the same problems as a non gasoline/diesel fuel source: lack of infrastructure. Who's going to pay for antennas every quarter mile for our trazillion mile highway network?
Will regular maintenance of these cars still involve replacing water pumps, alternators, sunroof motors, batteries, etc.? Fundamentals first, people.
IANYL, IANAL, TINLA, IANAMD, IANAP,
I, for one,welcome our car driving overlords.
Saint Peter at the pearly gates early in 2018: So, how did you die? New car owner: Well, the new, full-featured, driverless cars were too expensive. So, I bought the cheaper version, turned it on and hopped in the back seat for a short nap. Turns out it was just a cruise control and the nap turned out to be longer than I expected.
I will remain pseudonymous, but I will say that my current area of research (I am a graduate student) is tangentially related to this field, related enough that I've looked into trying to convince GM to give me funding (so far nothing has materialized). Specifically my research looks deals with programming language design (e.g., making less-than-Turing-complete-but-still-useful programming languages structured in useful ways) to aid in static analysis. The aim is at safety-critical code (nuclear power plant code, industrial controller code, automotive software) such that you can say "barring hardware failure, this code is 100% guaranteed to meet hard realtime constraints", etc.
Anyway, at least publicly, GM is probably the most impressive car company in terms of researching these sorts of things. I feel kind of bad for GM. I hear they're selling terribly and are even selling at a loss on many cars, but their research department really is something impressive. Maybe they're a little bit Microsoft-ish in that their research department is heavily insulated from the rest of the company, I don't know. But GM is doing a lot of cool stuff and funding a lot of cool stuff with regards to "correct" software.
If it were some other random company, I would probably roll my eyes and say "oh they'll probably just test it really really heavily and then tell us that it works", but more than most companies, I trust GM to develop cool technology (such as novel static analysis techniques) to get this to work. Their R&D is active in a lot of areas, 99% I'm sure will never amount to anything, but I wouldn't doubt it if they could get the technology together to get auto-driving cars in 10 years.
Disclaimer: as I mentioned before, my efforts to get GM funding are still unsuccessful, and consequently I'm not on GM payroll in any imaginable way. I don't even drive a GM car (or any car). In fact their cars look kind of lame in general, but their R&D department in Cool.
If my car could drive itself, I would buy a big car and live in it. Sleep your way to work, do your homework on the way to school, commute from Vegas to Denver every day. Screw a house- that money is now gas money. If only wireless broadband were faster...
It certainly brings a whole new meaning to "the halting problem"!
Driverless cars sound nice, but I really want a flying car.
If you had super powers, would you use them for good, or for awesome?
.... As I wouldn't want to be in a FORD product running Microsoft Software that could drive itself.
This is my opinion. To make sure you don't steal it, it's covered by the DMCA.
Granted, it was only driverless because it was buyerless, but there is prior art here.
Eloi are stupid, throw morlocks at them!
I mean, back in the "good" old days, it was common for people in the USA to ride around with a beer in the hand. Nowadays, of course, that's been made illegal. But, if cars are driving themselves, then, why not pop a cold one and enjoy the ride?
This is my sig.
Just send them out on the road.
Mixing driven and automated cars will never happen because of liability.
Who is at fault - the guy driving his car or the guy reading his newspaper without his hands on the wheel?
HHhhmmm... actually the guy reading the newspaper can't be because he had no control over the car so it must be the company that created the car.
What company is going to stay in that business?
So, when a driverless car runs a red light, who gets the ticket? The owner? The manufacturer? The software company? Hell, they have automated machines that issue red light tickets now, so will one pile of metal and software issue the ticket to the other? Will the machines develop their own monetary system, will driverless cars figure out hacks to avoid the tickets, and will the robot machines have their own jails and prisons? Capital punishment = execution by power surge or by fatal software virus? This smacks too much of a bad Twilight Zone episode.
"Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket." -- Eric Hoffer
Apparently there'll be a copy of Duke Nukem Forever in the glove box.
A thistle is a fat salad for an ass's mouth...
I'm not an attorney (I'm also not an acronym kinda guy) - But it seems by assuming control of the car GM would also be assuming responsibility for the occupants of the vehicle and any other involved in a collision.
Correct me if I'm wrong.
It seems to me the only way this technology ever winds up on the road is if the owner of the car signs a waver at the car dealership to hold GM harmless and assume all responsibility for driverless mode accidents.
A Beowulf cluster of them.
1984 was not supposed to be an instruction manual.
With the speed with which processing power and sensors become cheaper and more widely available, I think 10 years is definitely attainable. The tech is here, most of the problems are solved, we just have to wait for the price point to come down.
/.ed. ;)
[1] I was going to put our URL here, but the IT dept will kill me if the servers get
Any plan which depends on a fundamental change in human behavior is doomed from the start.
The big deal here is not for individual people, but for long haul trucking as a business. If it can survive the rising oil prices, this will serve to make cross country shipping faster (no mandatory breaks after 8 hours of driving) and cheaper. Theoretically, a truck could drive across the country in just under a day, even at 60 mph. If GM isn't just pulling yet another publicity stunt to distract people from their coming bankruptcy, the next ten years could be very interesting
I'll be 65 (or 66 depending) years old. I hope I don't get the attitude my dad (now 76) has about computers and cell phones, "I lived [n} years without [x] and I don't need one now!"
His father in law said the same thing about indoor plumbing.
Are we there yet?
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
also crash themselves.
Just saying...
The price is always right if someone else is paying.
"Spam will be a thing of the past in two years' time." Bill Gates in 2004.
"Nuclear-powered vacuum cleaners will probably be a reality in 10 years." Alex Lewyt, president of vacuum cleaner company Lewyt Corp., in the New York Times in 1955.
"Read my lips. NO NEW TAXES." George Bush, 1988
And plenty of others...
How about you, GM, concentrate on creating cars that don't suck first? Preferably ones that are profitable enough as to not put you out of business.
:)
Honestly I don't see how GM can predict what they'll do in 2015, when it's looking rather uncertain whether they will make it to 2010 at all - mostly due to a bad product, bad management, bad market prediction and good unions.
I have spoken'eth.
I would love one. I hate driving. I guess it's okay but I'd much rather just sit back and interact with my family instead of having to drive. It also would be really nice to be able to take a quick nap when you need one without having to find somewhere to pull off and stop.
WHY are these bozos spending money on this? Who needs running water? Hey, Let me guess. The Saudis NEED running water when their wives, daughters, and girlfriends want to drink some and there is no male around to get it for them them. Fair enough (for them). But why in the civilized world would anyone need running water? There's no shortage of people who would be happy to have a job filling buckets from a well for you if you don't want to do so yourself. So why are they spending all this money on this nonsense?
Between texting, eating, putting on makeup, smoking, futzing with the radio, surfing the Internet for the nearest Burger Doodle, and so many other things to do in the car, driving is SUCH a distraction.
Even if the technical issues were all resolved (which is not guaranteed by any stretch of the imagination), what about the legal and insurance issues? Until the insurance companies jump on the bandwagon, this will go nowhere.
It's not like ALL the cars on the road will be driverless. Who is responsible for a crash that occurs while you aren't driving and are reading or asleep (why else would you want a driverless car)?
They might have better luck putting driverless "taxis" in crowded downtown areas where traffic moves slowly - that would reduce the damage and injuries associated with accidents at higher speeds.
Never let reality temper imagination
Never let reality temper imagination
I need a driverless car. I want to be able to sleep/study/play video games while on the road. I want the the perfect attention and instant response of a computer keeping me safe. And I don't want to pay someone to do it for me.
Seriously, how can you even ask this question? Have you ever heard of the broken window fallacy?
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
Like all American car companies, GM has earned a reputation for technical incompetence, building cars that are unreliable, unsafe, and behind the curve. Rather than actually fix what's wrong, they think the solution is to change their image. So they keep coming up with fancy projects that are supposed to make us think they're looking to the future. Fuel cell cars, plug-in hybrids (this from a company that can't even do an ordinary hybrid!) and now driverless cars. Does anybody really think these will ever be more than "concepts"?
We already call driverless cars. You can find them in parking lots and in front of buildings everywhere.
I have nothing compelling to say
They're just covering for our illegal Cybertronian immigrants. Stop those Autobot moochers from raising your taxes!
How about cars that dont get shitty gas mileage? Think thats possible before the turn of the century, GM?
good , now start work on riderless cars
by 2018, GM will be a giant empty husk of a parts supplier.
You appear to be heading directly for a vulnerable cyclist. What would you like to do?
1. Run the bastard of the road?
2. Sideswipe him into a bush?
3. Scare the crap out of him?
Call me old fashioned, but I like a dump to be as memorable as it is devastating - Bender
The problem GM faces is that it's pushing tin at a time that people don't want tin.
We don't want chrome.
What we really want are inexpensive reliable plug-in biodiesel hybrids that get more than 100 mpg (60 mpg highway after 50 mile battery range).
What we want is not living our lives for ever faster speeds (performance), but instead our nation to invest in high-speed passenger trains like those in Europe and Japan that can get 200 or more mph and generate one-tenth the global warming emissions and pollution that flying does.
We don't need extra devices that shade the sun depending on where it is - we need a car that just works.
That's the problem.
And automated driverless cars aren't the solution for the problem - they're the solution to a problem that doesn't exist, unless you live near LA where the commute is 2-3 hours to get to work or get home.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
http://www.path.berkeley.edu/PATH/Research/demos/
Now where's my driver-less flying car? I mean it, flying cars won't ever get anywhere unless they're "driver-less".
You just got troll'd!
That's a very important point, and I hope more people take note of what you said. The primary barriers to this kind of thing are political, not technological. If I injure or kill someone through my driving, what's the most you could hope to sue me for? Maybe a million dollars. But if the car was self-driving, well hey, that's a company with deep pockets. You could sue me for a lot more!
Now who can handle the insurance policy on that?
Then, of course, inane regulation.
Never mind that these will be safer and less obstructive than 95% of drivers. Never mind that they'll end the problem of drunk driving. Never mind that they will massively increase productivity. Everyone has to get their piece.
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
How many times have heard the story that technology X is only a decade away, then another 10 years later Technology X is ust another decade away?
In my book, if you an't roll something out within 18 months, it's vapor. Talking about something you think is a decade away is just lip service clearly trying to generate some PR and drve up stock a few cents for the day.
...link vehicles equipped with driverless technologies. I can't wait to see how many competing and incompatible standards this industry can come up with..I went to eat some animal crackers and the box said, "Do not eat if seal is broken." I opened the box and sure enough..
and only about a month ago people were concerned about cars with On-star that could have certain systems taken over by remote, now we will have a car that can be fully controlled or "Hacked" I don't know, but the more convenience and supposed security that come with every thing digital seems like a myth. back in the old days thieves needed to tunnel into the vault, or physically mug you and take your cash, now all they have to do is swap cashiers interact machines with one that has a blue tooth device hot wired into it, and steal all your money with out ever leaving the couch.
I can see:
GM touts driverless car with collision avoidance software
drunk person slams into car.
GM gets sued for not avoid the drunk.
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
I'm sure designers have taken this all into account, but I'd still be concerned with control systems for pedestrian avoidance, sensors determining whether the small object in front is a newspaper or a rock to be avoided, and predicting behaviors of bicyclists, etc. Sometimes its better to run over a squirrel than break suddenly and risk being rear-ended or swerve around it.
The Saudis NEED driverless cars when their wives, daughters, and girlfriends want to go to the mall and there is no male around to drive them
Then they'd have to sit in the parking lot because there wouldn't be a male relative to escort them in public.
So why are they spending all this money on this nonsense?
My bet is some GM execs saw "I, Robot".
This interests me but purely from a technological and safety point of view. I work in aviation, most aircraft have some form of "autopilot" even if it just automatic stabilisation.
One of the rotary wing aircraft I work on had an analogue system (around 30 years old) that was capable of applying one third of the control required to correct in the time it took a human pilot to notice a percievable change in attitude.
A growing trend now is to assume that the computer is less likely to make a mistake than a human, ergo let the computer take control. To the point - how is the driver supposed to react in the event of a system failure? If the system can detect a change far quicker then it can take over quickly enough to prevent a problem but a human cannot.
A thistle is a fat salad for an ass's mouth...
Alcoholics will benefit tremendously from this technology.
This is the worst idea since they started letting people drive.
We willna be fooled again!
WHY are these bozos spending money on this? Who needs a driver-less car?
Personally, I can't think of a single reason. I'm certain that all people everywhere will begin paying designated drivers rather than spend that last $20 on 3 more shots of Jager. Besides, these first models won't work perfectly which obviously means they never will. Such pie-in-the-sky endeavors should never even be considered.
This means that they'll abandon driverless cars in 2019. Then Toyota will start making them in 2020 and soon make even more money hand over fist. In 2022, GM while ask congress for a bail-out and claim it is "too expensive" to make a driverless car.
The cake is a pie
Automatic parking is already in commercial market (Toyota Prius, some Lexus model and some others has it).
http://youtube.com/watch?v=vybyj1ETieE The future is now - BMW seems to be 10 years ahead of GM.
GM's problem stems from the fact that they've had since the oil embargos in the 70's to improve their auto's milage. No intelligent person can argue successfully that GM's engines aren't a lot more efficient than they used to be. It's that they've wasted all of these efficiency gains on increasing horsepower to drive heavier cars more quickly.
GM's had 30 years to bring fuel efficiency & milage to the forefront of their goals. I have no sympathy for its demise.
A Pontiac Trans Am ... although seeing the
new KITT (a modified Ford Shelby Mustang) is certainly w00d-inspiring.
I'd file this one under "wait a couple years for a few early adopters to perish before you buy it".
So why are they spending all this money on this nonsense?
It's called progress. Also, don't just look at the first immediate application of this research, you don't know what other research/applications it might spawn. That's why there's always been so much "because we can" research, because you have no clue what doors your research will open.
Picture the Manhattan Project scientists going "Why research atomic bombs when we can do more damage with incendiary carpet bombing?", then think about all the things nuclear research has lead to.
You just got troll'd!
And Where's my flying car?
... Oh yeah, they're about 10 years away.
They told us there'd be flying cars!
Not necessarily. The situation is not new, if today a wheel breaks off from your new car you already get the same possible legal consequences. Any car (or whatever) builder has to bear the risk that whatever they make may breaks because of a construction defect, with possible lethal (and costly) results.
As you probably realize, the cost for that risk is included in the price of the car.
Ernest J.W. ter Kuile
soo.. can these cars be overclocked to 'aggressive driver' mode?
...some days you're the dog, some days you're the hydrant...
wow homers got one of those robot cars!
(crash!)
one of those AMERICAN robot cars...
Website Just Down For Me? Find out
But why in the civilized world would anyone need a driverless car? There's no shortage of people who would be happy to have a job driving for you if you don't drive.
Have you SEEN the drivers on the roads these days? We're definitely too stupid as a race to be driving cars. At a 30 second green light, if it takes 1 second per car to start moving, being 30 cars back means you don't start moving until the light turns red.
Driverless interconnected cars ALL start moving when the light turns green(saving gas, time, and easing congestion due to efficient driving). Some kid jumps out into the street, ALL cars hit the brakes when the first one stops(saving lives, cars, and insurance premiums).
About the only way this could work: have 360 degree cameras and send the video to some poor sod in India who does the driving for you.
In fact that's not just the default, but they don't even offer a driver as optional equipment.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
New from General Motors, The Train
I'd love to see this implemented ASAP. I'd save on insurance big time by only needing one car. Right now, I need one to drive to work in, and my wife needs one to drive the kids around and run errands during the day. I'd love to have the single car drop me off, then drive itself home. When it was time to leave, it could drive itself back to work and pick me up again.
You could even start a car-sharing co-op where 4 or 5 cars are shared by a couple dozen people. When you need one, call it on the phone and tell it to come and get you.
I'll even go so far as to say that within 20 years of these appearing, manual driving on highways and major roads will be outlawed.
i can tell you that while the cars may be "ready" by 2018 (possibly, maybe --- there's some really hairy control theory that needs to be worked out w/ regards to multiple vehicles interacting with each other), there's a whole brave new world of insurance and legal issues that will delay any real adoption for at least another decade after that. the good news is that in the mean time, you're likely to start seeing some very cool vehicle safety technologies start trickling down from the top end of the market (things like automatic cutoff detection, automatic lane tracking, automatic sign recognition, etc.)
Another poster expressed sadness for GM - I agree. They have so many good ideas, and massive resources, but still don't seem to be able to build cars that (enough) people want to buy. Hybrids - the Prius has been out for years. Where's GM's response? Cars that park themselves - Lexus has one now.
Indeed, there isn't. However, I, and anybody else with an ordinary paycheck, can't really afford to take cabs all the time. I can, and do, regularly take mass transit; it takes two to three times as long to get anywhere compared to driving and that's assuming you aren't trying to get somewhere during off hours when the buses run infrequently or not at all.
I can drive. I don't *want* to drive, generally. Tell the car where I'm going and I can get in some reading on the way to and from work.
Chris Mattern
Just as alternate fuels and better gas mileage get rid of the smog in our cities... with automated drivers able to fit more cars on the road then ever before -- will you be able to breathe on the side of the road if your car breaks down?
... a driverless car road standard must be devised and adopted across the U.S. if not the entire globe. This would be some sort of standardized set of devices that would be implanted into the streets and highways that would assist in telling cars and trucks traveling upon it how to behave and interact. The complexities of ground traffic control systems scramble my mind. The complexities of attempting to create a system that doesn't involve a central standard boggles my mind even further... that's not to say that such things aren't workable, just that my mind is easily boggled.
Ultimately, a drive to work could end up being as efficient as riding on a train where you'd drive to the on-ramp with your destination programmed and it merges in and does the rest until you arrive at or near your destination. It would be a very good system with rather predictable results which is always better than unpredictable ones when planning one's daily schedule.
I truly look forward to a driverless car road standard... and yet I fear it at the same time. I hope the department of transportation and various other safety related bodies are involved in this and that legislation is preemptively created to prevent patented technologies from getting in the way of progress on such matters. Can you just imagine the problems patents on road safety could cause?
I can see the protests: Ban GM cars!
GM's going to make it to 2015 and beyond - there will be no short supply of people who wish to have cars that aren't underpowered (but have all the muscle on them) and not overpriced.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
I don't want to be denied the ability to travel to certain areas because the government thinks I have no business being there. Now, you have post an armed guard. In the future, they might just issue a "voluntary" GPS update with the same effect. Presto - your car thinks the road doesn't exist, so you aren't allowed to drive there.
I think it would be nice to sleep on the morning commute, read a book, etc...
But knowing that technologies which were formerly optional have become mandatory (airbags, black boxes in cars, etc...) I'm not at all excited about this. Inevitably, such technologies will be used by the powers that be to exert even greater control over the population.
And sadly, all too many Americans are willing to trade freedom for convenience.
I think I'll pass this one up. I like my freedom, thank you.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
and only 5 years after Microsoft's new OS Singularity - the first OS targeted at computers. not human user.
i wonder who gonna give me a job in 2018... g.. i hope male prostitution dont become automatic until 228, i'm still young!
m-s
> There's no shortage of people who would be happy to have a job driving for you if you don't drive.
Yeah there is. There's a shortage of about 40,000 people a year in the US:
http://www-fars.nhtsa.dot.gov/Main/index.aspx
I've been thinking about driverless cars recently and what it will *really* take to make them safe enough for roads. There are going to have to be multiple independant and overlapping technologies at work here.. I.E. a precise GPS system which is capable of keeping the car on the road entirely by itself. An infrared camera system which is capable of also steering the car by itself. Maybe some sort of In ground RFID system (like in the reflectors in the center of the road? which a car can use to .. drive itself by keeping track of its distance from the sensors placed in the road (with some sort of error correction, if the occasional one is out of order, or missing.) a visual camera system which and radar/sonar system which can sense objects in front of the vehicle to bring it to a quick stop.. plus be able to steer the car by itself. .. Insert several more unique technologies and THEN you'll have what it takes to make a drive by itself car. There will also have to have some sort of order of priority like the laws of robotics for which systems have the ability to override other steering systems in the event of the numerous conflicts which will arise during the course of driving. I look forward to the evolution of this product, it will be very exciting.
Why would you need to stop ? Back when I was in school I used to take a nap while driving my bicycle there, uphill both ways through a snowstorm and heavy morning traffick. And I liked it !
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Later versions of driverless technology could reduce jams by directing vehicles to space themselves close together, almost as if they were cars in a train, and maximize the use of space on a freeway, he said.
And what happens when a deer jumps into the path of said cars? Instead of a single car accident, we'll have a few dozen crumpled cars and a massive tradgedy.
With engineers this naive, I don't think the driverless car will go anywhere. There are still too many variances in normal driving conditions for a computer to deal with. A computer cannot make good judgments about out-of-the-ordinary events, such as a flooded roadway (would it even know?) or a road construction crew, or even a protest blocking the street. Would the driverless car plow into a group of protesters? Would it run down the officer redirecting traffic around an accident?
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
And it will benefit the would-be victims of drunk driving jerks even more.
Stop Global Warming!
Just say no to irreversible processes!
Set aside the liability issues for a moment and consider a car that could communicate with its neighbors. The cars pass road conditions, speed, and destination information back and forth and then self-assemble into small trains of cars. The advantages aside from the drivers not having to drive are that only the first car has to push aside the air - the rest of the cars move in the hole created by the lead car. That portends a huge savings in fuel efficiency as most of the fuel spent moving a car at speed is spent just moving air out of the way. The cars could mimic geese and every so often swap lead car so the fuel savings are shared equally by all cars or optionally, a car could claim lead spot for the view and pay the efficiency penalty.
The trains would be dynamic and so when a car needed to take an upcoming exit, it would signal the other cars it was peeling off and the remaining cars would move aside and as the car moved out, close ranks to eliminate the gap.
The fuel savings, combined with computer control, would enable much higher speeds for a given traffic volume since you don't have to leave braking distances between cars. A human takes a little under a second to respond to the car in front slowing down whereas a computer can respond in milliseconds. Eliminating the gap increases the number of cars a freeway could handle.
To make it work, the cars would have to undergo periodic checkups. Skip a checkup and your car would automatically disable its ability to join a train so you wouldn't be a hazard to a car drafting your rear bumper by 2 inches. There'd still be accidents but heck, we kill 50,000 people a year with the current setup.
Higher speeds, lower fatality rates, better fuel economy, less highway congestion, better use of commute time - what's not to like?
Don't forget parking. Once the self-driving car has taken you to work in the city center, there's no reason you can't send it home or somewhere else with free parking. When your workday ends, it'll come pick you up; or you can call it with a mobile phone and tell it to come immediately.
Coming to think of it, you could have automated cheap taxis with this technology.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
ba da bum
I can see this will reduce drunk driving, you ask to go to a pub, but the car takes you to an AA meeting instead ;-)
Still, the potential for misuse of this is staggering, and will probably kill the idea,
2. Efficiency. Ever notice how you get slightly better gas mileage on cruise control than you do with your foot? Imagine putting that little bit of efficiency into play every day for every car on the road. That would significantly reduce our dependency on oil by itself. Plus closer adherence to the speed limit saves fuel as well (on current engine technology).
3. Traffic. Per the article posted a few days ago about the mathematical reason for traffic jams, if the cars are autosensing the conditions and not performing erractic maneuvers then traffic will flow much better.
4. Speed. With newer technology cars will be able to go much faster more efficiently. Humans can only react so quickly. (I know the idiots driving 90 around Dallas have horrible reaction times and poor distance judgment.) Computers will allow for faster transit while still keeping a safety margin.
5. Freedom. Young, elderly and handicapped people will no longer have limitations on when and where they can drive. Operating a computer-controlled car will be as easy as talking on a phone. I wouldn't be surprised that computer-controlled cars would lower the driving age to 12 or so (parents' consent). Still in an emergency, anyone could operate it or you contact a service like OnStar for remote operation.
Yeah, no reason for this nonsense at all, I guess. :-)
Apparently you've looked too much at Toyota to pay attention that Buick has a model that does it.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
The child or the parked car. The child or the dog. The dog or going into the ditch. Sideswipe the parked car or bump the moving car next to you.
Sometimes, the situation and physics dictates you must choose one or the other to hit, instead of the preferable 'neither'. There is no other escape route. I wonder how that will be handled.
I want a car that I can drive somewhere, get out, tell it to find a parking place, and then I get completely wasted on spirits. Then a few minutes later I call the car, it drives back to where I left it, picks me up and drives me home.
But no matter how safe these things get, they'll never be allowed on the road without a sober human being backing them up. At least not any time soon.
It isn't just GM that is exposed.
It is everyone who designs, builds, and maintains the infrastructure on which the car depends. The roadside beacon buried by the county snowplow.
The pattern recognition that cannot distinguish between a raccoon and a small child. Does the robot attempt the potentially very risky maneuvers needed to evade this obstacle or not?
The robot can make tactical decisions. It cannot make moral decisions.
My guess is the following will happen: First, the car must be cleared with the government for driverless use under some conditions. If an accident happens anyway, liability will depend on 1) did the driver use it appropriately? If not, he is responsible, otherwise 2) is their any fault in the manufacturing? If so, the manufacturer is responsible, otherwise 3) it might be an accident with no one real responsible part. The law may still put one party (the driver) as having "objective responsibility".
Not really different from the situation today.
Does that mean my car will drive to work and read Slashdot all day while I stay home in bed?
I agree. The advent of automated transportation is an oppostunity for big cities to ban all private vehicles altogether. Cities should purchase a whole fleet of self-driving vehicles, depending on their needs, and park them on the streets. City dwellers and visitors would then be given a wireless, GPS-enabled beeper to summons a vehicle when needed, at which time the nearest free vehicle would drive itself to the customer's location and take them to their destination. Car-pooling could be enforced, if necessary. There are already way too many cars as it is. Most of them are sitting idle at any given time. So, in that sense, self-driving vehicles may not be a good thing for the car manufacturers because it may lead to a drastic reduction in demand if a lot of congested cities adopt this plan.
This is not the first time that GM has pushed the idea of a driverless car. Old-timers will remember the Firebird II, displayed at the 1956 Motorama. I got to sit in it, but they wouldn't let me take it out for a test drive on the streets of San Francisco. For you youngsters, here is a description: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_Firebird#Firebird_II
Is there a model in place to handle the centralized liability that this would create? I mean, right now you pay for car insurance because you control the vehicle. If the contol occurs from a computer made by GE, then if a fatal crash occurs, they might be liable. The technology is mature enough we could have self-driving cars today (heck, we could have had them nearly a decade ago!) but I suspect that liability concerns are a big part of the reason we don't.
Even if self-driving cars are safer than human-driven ones, then it seems to me that it might still be prohibitiv to buy insurance.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
As a motorcycle owner, I'd trust a computer controlled cage much more than a human controlled one.
Humans make a lot of mistakes including the stupid excuses "I didn't see you". With computer controlled stuff, the software will *see* everything down to a given size all the time. It doesn't get distracted or starts the 'stare into oblivions', both of which result in the same scenario.
Cars and SUVs and trucks are the largest obstacle to safety for cyclists, pedestrians and motorcyclists. Remove the recklessness from the former and the latter can only screw themselves by their own mistakes not because the cage driver just doesn't give a fsck about you because in a collision, you lose, not the cage.
Yes, but using your same analogy... a plane is just a little bit bigger than a car. A Boeing 747 has a wingspan of 211 feet. Cars vary but 6 - 7 feet is a reasonable average in America. Now, 10' is about 5% of the width of a 747 but 10" is about 14% of the width of a car. If you use 5% for the car, then 5% of 6 feet would be 3.6". That's good enough to keep you going down the highway. I doubt your average driver can guess the position of their vehicle any better than that.
You are using English. Please learn the difference between loose and lose; they're, there, and their; your and you're.
It ends the problem of drunk driving only if the automated system is 100% in control portal-to-portal and 100% reliable portal-to-portal. The drunk will be making the initial decision to take to the roads.
The drunk will take his featherweight urban commuter car out in weather that a farmer wouldn't chance cold sober in a full-sized FWD pickup with 500 pounds of sand in the back to give him some traction.
It seems to me the only way this technology ever winds up on the road is if the owner of the car signs a waver at the car dealership to hold GM harmless and assume all responsibility for driverless mode accidents.
GM could also lobby the government to make laws specific to these situations. If the government believes that the technology would dramatically reduce the risk of driving, they could well play ball. All sorts of industries have specific laws shielding them from certain kinds of torts.
I have to say that I highly doubt there is any chance of this actually happening. If I could bet my life savings on this not happening I would do it in a heartbeat.
No way - not even close. Vaporware. K Thanks Bye!
I could probably name a dozen reasons without thinking much about it. Here are some:
- You know how most cities have horrible rush hours? A lot of that is caused by human reactions. In heavy traffic conditions, a fender bender or even a particularly aggressive driver that starts cutting between lanes and making people hit their brakes can cause substantial disruption in traffic flow. People around start breaking, so the people behind them start braking, and this moves backwards in traffic like a wave. But there is no obstruction, and no real reason for that to occur. If everyone had automatically driven cars, this problem would be greatly lessened.
- Increased safety. Computers have bugs, and cars have mechanical failures, and there are probably some conditions (read: snow) where driverless cars would have a difficult time. But computers have much faster reaction times than people, can organize into ad hoc networks so that different cars can communicate and organize themselves, they don't get tired, they don't get drunk, they don't try to put on makeup or read the newspaper or talk on the phone as they drive. They don't have blind spots, and they could know that there is construction ahead, traffic is bad, and maybe you should take another route.
- Because of computers' far increased reaction time over a human's, computers could be more "aggressive" than humans safely can. They could go faster and they could use less clearance between cars. This also helps with the rush hour thing.
- Because of several of the previous reasons, they also hold promise to improve gas efficiency. If they can smooth out your ride, avoiding as much acceleration as a human would do, that decreases fuel use.
- It is driving for you. I hate flying, buses are even worse, and the train system in the US sucks ass. But even if it takes more time and costs more, it's often less of a hassle to fly somewhere or take the train. Why? You can do something. I just got back from winter break. I spent 3 hours in the car going to the airport, an hour and a half in the Pittsburgh airport, an hour and a half in the plane, almost two hours in Chicago Midway, then 4 hours on a bus to my final destination. That's 12 hours. (Alternately I could have flew destination to destination, which would probably have shaved that down to about 5 hours. But it would have also increased transportation cost from about $100 to about $250, one-way.) Coincidentally, a car trip would also have taken about 12 hours plus stops. My trip was pretty tiring, but 12 hours driving is brutal, especially when you hit Chicago 9 hours into it. You have to pay absolute attention to what you are doing for 12 hours, but at the same time, it's mindnumbingly boring after a while. On a plane or train, you can read, use your laptop, whatever. Hey, you could do that with a driverless car too!
There are all sorts of problems with this vision, which may or may not be a pipe dream. But it's definitely a worthwhile goal to try to achieve.
Not all cities are urban towers, many of us have hobbies (like boating) and need to haul things from our homes to the lake or wherever....will all the auto-cars be set up to do this too?
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
How would the cars know where to go? Data from the roads.
Who owns the roads? The state and federal governments.
Even if the states own them, how are state departments of transportation funded? Largely by federal grants.
Now, who has a detailed record of everywhere you have gone in your spiffy new self-driving automobile?
The hidden bonus of driverless cars is the fact that GM must have vastly improved batteries or some kind of mobile generator that either doesn't rely on the engine or has some more efficient way of getting power from it. The electronics on the car aren't going to run off of the cigarette lighter.
This means we're that much closer to all electric vehicles. ^_^
My theory: Perhaps GM has wised up and detached the power plant (engine) from the drive train. Meaning the engine just generates electricity and the drive train is entirely electric. Generators are far more efficient than automobile engines in terms of fuel to energy. Some 80% of energy in modern ICE system flows right out the tail pipe as waste heat; generators get more bang for their buck assuming they electricity they generate has some place to go.
- I voted for Nintendo and against Bush
If these had an ANN with enough accuracy concerning state changes, it could self-monitor conditions and refuse to continue if it breaches a certain set of conditions, or force a return via routes known to be better cleared (get off the back roads during whiteouts man, the image processors cant handle polar bears in snowstorms!).
Course ANN's are probabilistic at best, so i guess that wouldnt be likely to get 5 nines let alone 100%.
Ice Cream has no bones.
If the car would record other cars around it and upload illegal driving to the police so they can mail out a ticket, then everyone would be forced to either buy one of the self-driving car or risk a ticket every time they make the tiniest of mistakes. Maybe I should be in marketing :P
I'd assume the tech works under ideal driving conditions, but what about the unforseen stuff that comes up in day to day driving? Can the car detect an icy patch on the upcoming corner? Will it swerve violently to avoid an empty cardboard box blowing across the highway? Will it still work around radar jammers? Technically illegal, but I'm willing to bet there's still a fair number of them out there. How stable is the processing unit?
Personally, I'll believe it when I see it, and even then I think I'll be holding on to my steering wheel for the forseeable future.
Murphey's fighting Occam, and we're in the stands.
Personally, I love off-roading on a two-stroke, but I hate driving. The independence part of driving is the ability to go where you want, when you want. I don't see that being inhibited. I suppose one could even get into the driverless vehicle and set it to random for the destination.
The fun of driving I can't speak to; I'm unqualified. But the independence would not be limited except that it will be easy to be traced by authorities, though I'm certain untracability will be lost regardless within the next decade or so. Hmmm... think I'll get that two-stroke running again. Open road? Hah! Who needs roads?
It ends the problem of drunk driving only if the automated system is 100% in control portal-to-portal and 100% reliable portal-to-portal. The drunk will be making the initial decision to take to the roads.
Yes, which is why the problem is greatly curtailed -- drunk merely has to be able to say, "God damn I'm wasted. Car, take me home." I'm willing to bet that most drunk people who get in a car will gladly take this option in preference to risking a DUI.
You are correct, of course, that part of the problem is simply not giving a damn how your driving affects others. To the extent that that is the problem, I agree that technology and laws are largely ineffective. For example, when someone tries to use a cell phone while making a difficult driving maneuver, the problem is not that he overestimates his skill, or that he deems the potential punishment small enough. It's that he's just not putting in the effort to be a safe driver, and no law or technology will change that.
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
With both GM and Toyota working on this (among others), I expect the timeline sequence will go in this order.
1 - Driverless Option: Mostly used on freeways for long trips and commuting. Debug phase. Ability to draft for long distances provide great fuel mileage.
2 - Driverless preferred: All but a few streets and parking garages support driverless mode. Becomes a required feature on all cars.
3 - Driverless pervasive: No need to drive at all. Self guiding/self parking picks you up at the door like a cab. Complaints about human driven cars begin.
4 - Mobile Living Room launched: No ability to be human driven, except in service mode. Human driven cars become disruptive to flow/comfort/safety. Drinks spilled == congressman called.
5 - Human driven cars banned.
6 - software vs. hardware: Lawyers argue who is at fault in the mysterious crashes of GM/Microsoft cars, which killed millions in the AM commute.
Place nail here >+
I use to work for company called Autonomoussolutions. http://www.autonomoussolutions.com/ a company that specialized in automating vehicles. Most were for industrial businesses and some government agencies as well. cool technologies are used, a combination of GPS and obstacle detection sensors placed on the vehicles to maneuver around.
In Soviet Russia, CAR drives YOU! Wait a sec...
I know, guilty until proven innocent, but as unfortunate as it is, that's pretty much the only way I can see this adoption taking place and at the same time surviving all the lawyers.
Dr. Red Whittaker and his team Tartan Racing at an obscure little college known as Carnegie-Mellon University equipped a GM Chevy Tahoe with computers to drive itself and navigate through city streets in an obscure little contest called the DARPA Urban Challenge. The Chevy Tahoe won the two million dollar prize.
Strangely, Tom Krisher (the author of the article), along with contributor Ken Thomas, neglected to mention this fact. The article indirectly refers to the contest as " six teams completing a 60-mile Pentagon-sponsored race of driverless cars in November", and Krisher only quotes "rival" (and one time colleague) Dr. Sebastian Thrun.
It took two paid guys to write this article? They should be fired.
Sheesh...
Surely, the best way to do it is to get you to the highway, at which point you join a lane (similar to the US carpool lane) that has a weak AM transmitter down the middle. Your car has a couple of sensors on the bottom, to make sure it stays in the middle, and just accelerates to it's highest economy setting.
Better yet, it could slip behind another cars slipstream and take the energy savings for granted. Half-second gaps between cars, with sensors in front and narrowbeam transmitters on the back to alert for stationary vehicles up ahead. Modulate that AM transmitter, and you've got yourself traffic information to plot a better route, and could be encrypted to prevent mis-use.
Why hasn't this been done? And if it has (even if a different system than AMRF) why hasn't it been implemented for economy long-distance driving?
Remember that one of the things that this technology would do is put a lot of drivers out of work. Some could be employed to do things that the vehicles cannot do themselves. That is, until truly intelligent humanoid-type robots become a reality. Massive unemployment due to AI automation is a huge problem that governments will have to tackle sooner or later. Current economic systems (both communism and capitalism) are inadequate because they are all based on human labor. I foresee a very bumpy road ahead. But that's a different issue.
- Driverless cars will be much safer drivers, cutting the number of fatalities
- Driverless cars will drive efficiently, saving energy and lowering greenhouse
- Driverless cars will make much cheaper cabs, saving people having to own a car
- Driverless cars will be able to drive you home if you're drunk/tired/bored/want to read a book
In fact I can't think of a single compelling reason why this shouldn't become a dominant form of transport very rapidly once it's up and running. My grandmother used to have to chop wood if she wanted a hot shower, sure it kept her fit, but would anyone give up their instant hot water heater now days?Car fatalities as a percentage has been decreasing at a huge rate since the early 80's. Recall that 79 onward was the time of the compact car, something everyone said would decrease safety. Fatalities, as a percentage, has all but held steady since the mid 90's. It seems that this is caused at least in part by the sports truck category, the fact that the design is dangerous, and the physics indefensible.
If GM can get away with putting a such death machines on the road, they have little to worry about with the computer driven car. On a whole the driver will be more competent than the driver who buys a truck because they are scared to drive and want something that is user error tolerant, at least from the point of view of the driver of the vehicle.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
I wish I had mod points. Your post surely deserves an "interesting" mod. ESPECIALLY your second paragraph.
With a little modification and "webification" you could have the perfect carpool setup, even between strangers. The vehicle need never be empty or hauling a sole passenger. Payment accepted on the website at the time of trip schedule. Some routing magic similiar to what logists (freight) companies already do and POOF, small scale mass transit that would work almost anywhere!
Driverless cars by 2018. Like there aren't enough of those out there.
Slightly better fuel efficiency by 2020, only 30 years after it was first proposed.
Government actually requiring that cars not be totally dependant upon gasoline, which would be practical? Crystal ball can't see that far ahead.
Laughter is the Spackle of the Soul.
Come on, what's holding them back? There are already warehouse trucks that drive automatically, avoiding obsticles, making cars do it is only a public awareness campaign away. With Galileo completed in 2013, I'd say thats a perfect year for this too. Maybe not in city streets, but on highways, why not? The technology is already there, we've see articles for years showing how it would work, and we already have cars with parts of these systems.
Just make the system, prove in some spectacular way how safe it is, and then sell it. I can't wait to see the movies where cars are pushed to their absolute limit to avoid a whole series of accidents, all of it happening too fast for a human to register.
Obviously, most countries will initially make sure this is illegal, but there will always be some small country that goes the other way just to be different, and the first manufacturer of these cars for that country will get some major publicity.
One thing i don't trust about computer controlled vehicles is construction. There are a few others but since my company does a lot of design and construction management of highways in the chicago area I can see many problems. There is also the case of the unexpected. There are just too many cases to deal with to have a fully autonomous car without extremely limited circumstances in which it will be used.
Here is a list of things i see that a computer will most likely not be able to figure out in the near future (all or most seem to be problems for people as well):
1) A lot of time the previous lines aren't completely and totally removed or made invisible when traffic shifts to older/newer stages of construction.
2) There is a truck 2 vehicles in front of you. It is coming to a turn out into the construction zone. The car in front of you doesn't slow down and just moves to the right and the truck is nearly stopped in front of you. Unless you track ALL vehicles near you, you have big problems. A lot of people have this problem as well.
3) A tree cutting crew is on a two lane road, blocking most of one lane. The computer controlled car just sits there waiting for the obstruction to clear. (not really a computer problem per se, but a scope issue) How many contingencies must the software take into account?
4) ??
5) Vehicular Manslaughter!
I basically agree with you; the problem of transporting you and your boat to the lake is very different from the problem of transporting you, without your boat, to work. And even that varies a lot depending on what kind of area you live in.
The main problem that shared-vehicle individual transportation systems solve is parking congestion, not traffic congestion. If everyone's getting in their own vehicles there are no fewer cars on the road. So if you use your own car to tow your boat to the lake, and park it on your property (or some other paid-for spot) there's nothing really gained by forcing you into a system like this.
If you work in a dense urban core there might be something gained by banning you from leaving your car parked in that dense urban core all day. However, I'm not sure that kind of ban is even necessary in many dense cities; in downtown Chicago where I work, at least, parking spots are scarce and thus expensive, which pushes many daily commuters onto trains and buses. Rush hour traffic is still very heavy in the loop and on the major freeways, but automated personal transit systems wouldn't fix that unless they were fundamentally more space-efficient than current cars.
as someone who is working on AI professionally i tell you: no, it won't
The MAFIAA is a bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes
what would happen if a non-nuclear electromagnetic pulse went off by a busy highway with 60mph+ driverless cars going haywire/rebooting? yikes!
Well, as a cyclist and a car driver I'd say the most unsafe road users are motorcycle drivers, what other road users overtake at 70 mph on a narrow road, and accelerate at unsafe speed out of corners, if bikers didn't cut between lanes of traffic, and go round corners on the wrong side of the road constantly, maybe they wouldn't be in more accidents than any other road users. And if it really is the fault of car drivers, constantly hitting bikers, how come cyclists don't have the same appalling accident rate that motorbikes do?
What if Tetris was invented by Nazis?
*puts on tinfoil hat*
Every problem has a solution? What about the problem of people inevitably hacking into this car to car network and causing all kinds of mayhem and destruction? We can't even get the simplest pieces of electronic equipment secure from hacking so I don't see it happening with a car. For that matter, what about when the owner tries to tinker with his own car, causing all kinds of mayhem and destruction? And finally, what about the problem of the government or various agencies getting their very own back door into this system, so that when an individual ends up "wanted for questioning" as soon as he gets into a car, it takes control and delivers him to the nearest gestapo station? What about how really simple it would be, once you have this infrastructure in place, for all these automated cars to record or report its whereabouts to some random authority? Add these hypotheticals to the scenario you described where it would be illegal to take back manual control and you have all kinds of icky situations coming up.
Three days from now?? Thats tomorrow!! ~Peter Griffin
Of those who hate Detroit(as well as GM), have you driven/owned any of the GM models for longer than a lease period?
While there are defects, they do provide performance and fuel efficiency (without being an entire line of small-body cars). 19/27 is fine enough if you think of said size and performance, and they are indeed improving on that as well.
Thanks to such bashing of GM, their cars are quite affordable. For those who want their performance built-in and not bolted on, GM will continue to exist (and as a force not to be messed with). They fill a huge void that no Asian or European manufacturer will.
The hate just is irrational, and they'd be able to do better if they had 1)Taft-Hartley banished from the books and 2)professional unionbusting become a punishable offense by any means.
I have no shame for driving and buying one of the nation's finest craftsmanship- with GM fully involved in it. Stated examples are made by companies that understand the US(opposed to those who just rehash a design from their own far-removed country). Just keep those environmentalists and oil speculators off the car.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Driverless cars is unimportant to me compared to improved gas mileage.
Improved gas mileage directly benefits me and people I know. Driverless cars? Give me a break.
All things considered, if the tech works as well as GM is hoping for, then accidents would be
far, FAR fewer than what we see today. Owning a self-drive capable car might even LOWER your
insurance payments as you're taking the human out of the equation. Think about what causes most
accidents. Hardware failure ? Um. . no.
Usually it's stupidity on the drivers part. Driving too fast, ( or too slow in the wrong lane )
didn't see the vehicle next to them, drunk, racing, rubbernecking, on the phone, whatever.
Remove the driver from the equation and 99% of the traffic fatalities will probably go away.
Once the tech arrives, it would probably take 5-10 years to get the changeover completed. Once
that happens, most of the accidents and the reasons behind them would vanish. Talk all you wish on
your phone. Eat your breakfast and rubberneck till you are blue in the face. The computer won't run
the light, blow the stopsign or try to race the idiot next to you. Freeway traffic will likely be
self-drive ONLY.
Hell, they may even RAISE the speed limits. The ones we have now have to factor in the idiot
equation. Remove the human problem and higher speeds navigated via computer will be just as safe
( if not safer ) than the lower ones driven by their flesh and blood counterparts.
the lower ones.
With my drive testing the limits of my sanity on a daily basis ( ~80 miles roundtrip to the office
through the worst traffic Houston has to offer ) I'll be first in line if / when this tech becomes
available.
More likely, insurance companies will eventually start offering lower premiums if your computer driver has records showing that you very rarely take the wheel.
Maybe at first it will be a big legal issue, but once they are actually better...
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Toyota is not without the evident desire to be redundant for the sake of multiple brands. Sticking to the Toyota umbrella, you have at least Scion, Toyota, and Lexus. Scions clone Toyota low end, and Lexus clones high end (and a bit more, but the overlap is significant). Then you consider things at scale, and you have things like the bizarre Toyota Matrix/Pontiac Vibe thing going on, where you essentially have the exact same car with different exterior styling, but differently branded. That's ignoring the set of *other* Scion/Toyota hatchback/compact wagon things.
I don't understand why so many car companies persist and even expand to soooo many different brands, rather than focusing on one name and one coherent lineup. Then again, it is America where consumers tend to develop stupid brand loyalty despite all meaning behind the brand evaporating, as well as pretentious people who will buy a Lexus but would be loathe to own a mere Toyota.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
There are so many things wrong with this idea.
/.ers will see this and join in picking apart that horrible, horrible idea.
People own cars and do with them as they please.
You can have public cars like you can have public busses and to a lesser extent bikes.
But you can NOT ban all private vehicles.
That's simply retarded.
People need trucks, vans, and other types of vehicles that they own and control.
I would never use a public car because I don't trust any government contract with my life.
I also don't want to climb into a car that was probably used for all sorts of debauchery by all sorts of shady characters.
Maybe I want to go out of the city, or out of state.
What about people coming into the city? Do they hit a freeway exit and have to park their cars for the duration of their stay and use public vehicles?
There are so many things wrong with this idea. I almost didn't post because I didn't know where to begin.
I hope other
will never be as exciting.
For neither predator or prey
I guarantee the number one application in cities will be telling your car to circle so you don't have to find parking. Traffic will get way worse, then this will be outlawed.
They'll just be passengers in the car and can claim they didn't know it was stolen. Alternatively you can get in, direct the car to drive itself to some nice quiet alley and get straight back out. Who me officer?
Squirrel!
I think there is only one conclusion to that analogy to airplanes. The technology will maybe make cars driver less, but the car will still have a human operator at the control sit.
No, no no no and NO! It should had been: I for one welcome our new Autorobot Overlords! Damnit!
:wq!
Will they only use GPS for guidance to destinations? Will anyone consider wartime robustness of the national transportation system?
There are only 24 GPS satellites sitting up there, and in any future war with an advanced adversary, they are likely targets (provided their debris do not deny the adversary access to their own space resources), and they are pretty much defenseless.
As an example of a technology demonstration (not as naming a potential military adversary) China recently shot down an old weather satellite (granted it was orbiting at 834 kilometers and GPS satellites orbit at 20200 kilometers) with a single ASAT missile. With further development it might be possible to produce 24 missiles that destroy the GPS constellation. Should we ignore it and say it'll never happen? Try and roll out a patchwork ad-hoc solution when it does happen?
One day maybe the cars won't have steering wheels, even the fact that people aren't used to driving them manually might be a safety disadvantage if they lose their automatic guidance systems. Maybe it will change the economics of the system when they lose guidance, will long-haul trucking ever not have human supervisors riding in the trucks?
How about some diversity in guidance systems, like a terrestrial positioning system using UWB beacons and multilateration, as well as GPS, at least in major populated areas or long-haul trucking routes. You'll have to take out enough of these individually by air-strikes or other means to harm the system.
Driverless cars are just the prototype. What GM is really developing is buyerless cars to save it from bankruptcy. Plan B? Carless cars.
--
make install -not war
isn't the real story that gm expects to somehow be around as a company in 2018 ?
And they'll fly. C'mon. These are the same people who 40 years ago were promising electric cars any day now. Anyway, my town will still hand out DUI's even if the car is driving itself.
They would have to pass additional legislation limiting the ability of people to sue in cases of accidents caused by driverless vehicles (which the lawyer lobbyists will fight hard against tooth and nail just as they do with any other tort reform) to cases where the driverless system was either flawed or not maintained properly resulting in negligence liability for either the owner, the manufacturer, or possibly both.
I've been riding these already. They use a system called "trains".
Insert protest against how irresponsible towards the environment and energy resources it is to have a whole combustion engine per commuter here.
I just don't buy the idea that there's already software clever enough to drive cars safely, you just need a lot of CPU. Real hazard perception is only within the capability of living beings in my opinion. Here is a contrived example and then I will give a more real world example.
1.) The car encounters an unfamiliar route. To get from A to B there are two bridges. One is made of steel and concrete and is safe and the other is made from paper and glue. Both are the same shape, which does it choose?
2.) The car is travelling down an urban street with parked cars lining either side of the street. A small child's bouncy ball crosses the street. A human driver might notice there was a child running after the ball from a short distance behind the parked cars lining the street and instinctively slow down. At what point does the computer driven car reduce speed?
Can you honestly tell me you have got hazard perception nailed?
There are already precedents for this - airplanes have been flown by autopilot for a long time.
like maybe getting the tires changed. just enter the destination and let it go, couple hours later it comes back with new tires.
now that would rock
...cars drive you! Oh, wait.
GM is probably correct in it's prediction, but the technology surely won't have been developed by GM... Some GM manager probably saw this (Driverless BMW 330i on racetrack - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vybyj1ETieE) and decided to make a superfluous announcement for some free press coverage.
Honestly, I would expect to see self driving semi-trucks before anything else. Shipping companies have an incentive to cut out their drivers in favor of time maximizing, gas mileage aware, AI workhorses.
If you want to do that, why not take the train? ICE high speed trains in Germany can move you around between all big cities with a speed of 200-300 km/h. Honestly, they will bring you there faster than any car could, and considering the time you need to get to/from an airport, checking in, etc., they are a better alternative than an airplane for in-Germany transport.
I won't see driverless cars managing that in any next decade, and also not giving you the comfort of a train-ride (the immense mass of the train and its suspension helps in smoothing the ride). Furthermore they come equipped with power outlets, and are currenlty getting fitted with wi-fi.
Or maybe you live in a country that didn't invest in a high-quality train network.
molmod.com - computing tips from a molecular modeling
They already have plenty of driverless cars stacking up at dealers today...
> I feel kind of bad for GM.
> I hear they're selling
> terribly and are even
> selling at a loss on many
> cars, but their research
> department really is
> something impressive.
I don't care how impressive their research department is; the company as a whole has spent the last 20 years driving the arms race for bigger and heavier gas guzzlers, when any idiot should have learned the lesson from OPEC in the 1970s that the days of cheap gas were numbered and we'd better be preparing for the inevitable. But instead GM just kept on digging themselves and the entire USA into an oil-dependence hole that it will take us another 20 years to dig ourselves out of. They made money hand over fist doing it, too, and used a lot of that money to further corrupt our political system. They are guilty of crimes against the environment, crimes against national security, crimes against peace, and crimes against democracy. Feel sorry for them my ass.
I'm not saying the blame is all GM's -- Ford is also guilty, and every other carmaker to a lesser extent. Consumers are guilty too. There's enough blame to go around.
As a car driver, I agree. A black-clad motorcyclist on a small black-and-chrome vehicle on black pavement under a cloudy sky is hard to see. It's even worse in the rain or at night. I'd much prefer having a computer-controlled radar system keeping an eye on you to having to do it myself.
"They redundantly repeated themselves over and over again incessantly without end ad infinitum" -- ibid.
Sure, more than a few things went wrong with those vehicles. It is the nature of mechanical things to occasionally require repair. Eventually wear items will catch up with you if nothing else. Things likes batteries, brakes, bearings, lamps, etc.
Are you asking if I had major mechanical trouble with any of those vehicles? The answer to that would be an unqualified no.
Sorry, but I didn't have any exploding transmissions or engine failures. No seized up pistons or wheels that fell off.
You should also know that the SUV / Trucks that I own do some work. They are not typical suburban vehicles that get driven to the office every day and parked in the garage at night. Mine haul trailers and go off the pavement and quite often they do that at the same time.
My heavy vehicles have never had an easy a life as your Corolla's and comparing the two is silly. My Chevy / GM / Pontiac cars never had any major problems either.
Oh, and I hate to break it to you but your Prizm was GM also. Quoth the WikiPedia article "All Prizms were built at NUMMI (New United Motor Manufacturing, Inc), a joint venture plant between Toyota and General Motors in Fremont, California that builds General Motors cars with Toyota."
On the other hand, plug-in electrics (which are what we need) will have to wait until 2030. Thanks for your insightful R&D allocations, GM.
That is all.
I don't see the original comment you replied to, but this was an interesting read none the less.
In Soviet Russia, car drives you! Surely someone before me has posted this...
2 things Mr GM president,
1) I enjoy driving and controlling my own car.
2) Will cars even exist in 2018, considering the ideas/100% FACTS regarding "peak oil" that are floating about on the interwebs now-a-days?
But by all means, don't listen to me as I'm just a customer!
Not far ahead enough to set the speed limits much higher (or get rid of them) though. In fact, by trying to be ahead of the curve, they sort of set themselves back.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
TFA mentions things such as how to deal with road obstacles and other problems of real-world driving, with one of the solutions being to alert the driver. Great. The car will drive itself, but someone still has to sit behind the wheel and be alert enough to deal with situations. Heck, you probably couldn't even take your hands off the wheel or feet away from the pedals, because by the time you react and get them back where they need to be, it will be too late.
Self-driving car technology will be ready for prime time only when it's sufficiently advanced that I can get in the back seat, tell the car where to go, and take a nap while it gets me there. And yes, that takes into account needing to be so relaxed and confident in the entire process that I actually *can* fall asleep in the back of a car that's driving itself.
If that happens in my lifetime, I expect it to be about the time when I'm too old to safely drive myself, which will be a good ways past 2018.
...expect them from Toyota in five.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Consider that these vehicles could potentially be totally driverless.
Consider that alcohol consumption would no longer be a factor in determining the likelihood of an accident.
Consider that alcohol consumption increases ones survival odds by orders of magnitude in the event of an accident.
How long before the law requires all APV's to be equipped with breathalysers so that the vehicle will refuse to transport passengers unless they are all intoxicated .
This article is about GM. The majority of GM's customers do not live in Germany. Also, most drivers are concerned about getting from the front doors of their houses in the suburbs to the parking lots at their offices in their daily commute. Trains can't do that.
Your snide remark at the end is pretty funny, though. At least you have one thing about your lift to be proud of.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
When can the car refuse to obey its driver? When can the driver force the car to surrender control? It is one thing to plot a plausible route home, it is another thing to adapt to changing conditions.
The failure of a beacon. The splash of mud and snow and salt that blinds a sensor. The lone autonomous vehicle in the open desert can simply wait it out.. You can't strand 15,000 commuters on an upstate expressway in mid-winter.
After all, you cannot increase gas mileage in 3 years, but hold on to your hats we will have driverless cars in 3 years!!!!
When the asshole who's trying to simultaneously drive, drink coffee, and load up the playlist on his new iPod, swerves into your lane... would you rather rely on:
- Your own over-worked brain, which is physically incapable of response times better than about 100 milliseconds;
- Your conditioned reflexes, which are physically incapable of response times better than about a 5 milliseconds, and are -- at best -- simplistic and only suited to routine driving conditions;
- An AI that is not only capable of response times of less than 100 microseconds, but is also capable of using bad-ass algorithms to independently control the braking, power, and steering of each wheel to manoeuver the vehicle in ways that no Human ever could, while simultaneously snapping a picture that can be used later on during the lawsuit, and autodialing 911 in case the aforementioned jackass with the coffee and iPod crashes into non-AI-equipped vehicle owned by someone who didn't spent their automotive budget as wisely as you did.
I know which of those three I'd rather have controlling my vehicle.I can pack my virtual dog into it and send them to the bark park together.
The complaints I have heard this winter;
Shelters offer ridiculously inadequate protection against the weather.
The poor can't afford survival gear from L.L. Bean - which is what you need here when conditions turn brutal. I gave up the hike to the suburban bus stop when my body began to rebel against the discomfort and danger.
No one, it seems, stays twenty-something forever.
Snowplows bury sidewalks and shelters. You are forced out into traffic with cars that can barely manage the roads themselves.
Its called ghost riding.
Have gnu, will travel.
I rather have all those improvements in public transport... I like to keep driving my car once month or once a week on special occasions like going to the beach or camping.
Learn something new every day.
Have you been touched by his noodly appendage?
Lets be real. The problem with automated transportation is we insist on owning our own car. If only we moved to this kind of thing. It would be a taxi service on steroids. Leave non fully automated vehicles to emergency services (would require some interconnect obviously) and hobbyists (regulated to their own "skateboard parks"). Yes, there would be call for them outside of cities and some situations, such as transportation of merchandise etc.
Semi-automatic amateur armchair Australian philosopher; conjecture ready at any moment...
Also here trains don't stop at your doorstep, but a decent bus and tramway system helps out. I guess that in the US, a fast train system could have worked in the relatively dense areas in California and in the northeast. But it's probably too expensive to retrofit these areas. The rest is too far away from anything else to get a useful fast train network.
As for my snide: Apart from the excellent (but expensive) train system, there is also a nice collection of Autobahns to be proud of! Partly without speed limit! I very much like to drive around my car, and I am even more amazed of how comfortable a train ride is in one of these ICEs.
But you know what, I actually get your point. I'm from Holland originally, and that is one of the places where some sort of automated transport should be obligatory as soon as possible. The population density is immense, as soon as the working day starts the complete highway gets clogged. Trains don't bring much relief, they're pretty full as well, and the last years the government had the brilliant idea to build suburbs "American style", away from any kind of public transport, and combine this with office parks next to the highway, but away from train stations.
If the resulting stress of all these commuters could be converted into energy, the country probably wouldn't need any power station anymore ;)
molmod.com - computing tips from a molecular modeling
But the way its going i do not think we will have roads to drive around, it will be under water anyways...may be driverless boat is a better idea?
These cars will not be safe, nor feasible. A car controlled by a computer, even at sub-60mph speeds, will be too unreliable and dangerous to put on the road. The software a driverless car will use to navigate, the sensors which trigger that software, and the hardware it all runs on, could never take the place of a person. Add to this icy driving conditions, rain, white-outs, and many other conditions which require decisions software can't make. Will your car stop when it sees something headed toward the road from the forest -- e.g. a deer? And don't forget what happens when jerks without the system figure out how to do things which cause your car's software to trip out.
Will not happen.
Why is this modded troll? As a regular cyclist, it's all true stuff.
A lot has been mentioned about how smart cars will interact with other humans on foot and in cars but how will they react to each other? We have all seen the state of current software where one company includes "features" that are not compatible with other programs *cough* Microsoft *cough* how should this be addressed with cars as it is now people lives at stake if a new "feature" doesn't work with another car? Also do you think personalities will ever be introduced and promoted either with true AI or simple tweaks to how fast it stops or starts etc etc. Could the sports car you get show off its speed and handling or a truck rev the engine at stops signs?
Isn't it too soon to announce this? Wouldn't another car company release their "driverless-car" model before GM?
More autonomous driving seems to me to be simply an extension of cruise control. You could claim that the cruise control in your car caused you to crash into something, but I assume it would not hold up in court. I assume the autodrive will be easily disengaged, and the driver is still expected to maintain control of the vehicle at all times.
It also depends on the person driving the motorcycle. I've seen more than a few who drive the way you say, but I've seen a lot who drive well, too.
There are the same jackasses driving cars. I see them moving between lanes, getting behind or in front of me to weave through traffic with less than two feet between bumpers... They're just assholes, regardless of vehicle. I think, though, it tends to be because the type of car (and motorcycle) draws them to it. Something with some power (or illusion of it) to allow them to drive like complete and total fuckheads.
Nick Hogan wasn't driving a motorcycle, afterall.
I'd love to see the Gantt chart for this project. "OK guys, we have a new deadline -- it's 2018. Yeah, he said within a decade, so that gives us exactly 10 years from now, and it's 2008, so that means we have to be ready to ship in 2018. Ready? Ok, Bob, you get the automatic steering system. Sal, you are on the traffic failsafes. Tim and Al are going to being responsible for lobbying congress to get our highways revamped.. that is, until Tim retires in 2012. Oh right, and don't forget I'm planning to retire in 2016, so Fred, you'll be promoted then and responsible for training your replacement so we'll just squeeze that in.. heeeeere...."
Don't forget to put in some padding, just in case.
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
Hope they make them bratty-kid-with-a-laser-pointer-proof.
As I see it, the ideal system of transport would be:
- Cars are powered through wireless electricity transfer installed under/on roads, thus eliminating the need for any fuel storage in the car itself (no batteries, fuel cells, liquid fuel etc). I am not sure that this technology is advanced enough to allow this yet, but it would solve the problem of what cars would use for fuel after fossil fuels run out.
Alternatively, magnetic levitation could be used, like in maglev trains, but installed everywhere roads are.
- No-one owns their own car. To go somewhere you could press a button to make one come to your current location. If this would happen, buses and other transport would no longer be needed, as cars could go everywhere and are in effect "public transport", but for fewer people at once, getting those few people to their destination quicker than say a bus.
- They are all centrally controlled (to optimise efficiency), communicating through the wireless interface on the road, which removes the need for a separate computer in each car, reducing cost considerably.
This would eliminate traffic jams, and the need for lights, stop signs etc. as the central server knows where all cars are wanting to go, and plots the most efficient route there for every car, without collisions. This would enable cars to travel at much faster speeds also, without worrying about collisions. It may need a rather powerful computer for a large city, but it can be done.
In effect, all transport would be centrally controlled - the most efficient situation. If only some cars are computer-controlled, this wouldn't work, or would be far less efficient as extra sensors would have to be installed on every car to compensate for human drivers.
The problems with this scenario are its huge initial cost, and the fact that it would only really be feasible in cities, and not to mention if there was a power failure of the central control system. (This would actually still be safe, as all cars could be set to shut down if they lose contact to the control. And if only one car lost contact, it would stop, and the server could be set to remember the position of the car when it lost contact, making other cars avoid it and a repair/tow vehicle come to collect it.)
The problems that this system eliminates, however, are far greater than the ones it creates. To list a few:
- No need for traffic lights, stop signs, etc
- Far less accidents -- no human error
- Much higher efficiency, cars go faster and get people to places faster
- Things like if lots of people are going in the same direction, and few in the other direction on a multi-lane road, lanes could switch directions. (Say in a four-lane road, instead of two lanes going one way and two the other, it could be 3-1 if lots of people were say coming back from work at once.
- No traffic jams would occur, as the causes would no longer apply (it is basically if one car suddenly brakes, causing each car behind it to brake a little later and harder, until cars must come to a complete stop.) With a centrally-controlled system, there would be less incidences of needing to suddenly brake, but even if there was a need to, all cars on a road would brake at once, and speed up at the same time, eliminating any jam that may occur.
- Would almost never be late, as the time to a certain destination would be more consistent, eg. no sudden traffic jams, accidents blocking the road etc.
- Cars would be cheaper to run and make, once the initial system of wireless electricity/magnetic levitation and communication in the roads is built -- more mileage (being electric) and less wear and tear.
- Increased productivity -- you could work while in your car, as you don't need to drive.
- Cars could be made more comfortable and aerodynamic as you wouldn't have to use the traditional structure based on the driver needing to steer and see the road. (You could make a car more li
the Bad guys can: :) ... man, one too many situations to think of. imagine the central server hosted on a Windows Server 2018 and it has been compromised by WIN128/ Blaster-2018 virus, and all the auto-driven security cars directed outside of the city. and all the post and courier vans directed to dump all those 5000 mails into your lawn. that'd be spam for real!!!! :) just rolling the dice for some permutation and combinations! was sure fun though! there sure would be immobilizer and other technology. just supposing ....
* claim they dint hijack the car, or carry out kidnapping just by sending a car to the right place and right person at the right time, with only the bot/ AI/ firmware hacked or manipulated
* if the hacker is anonymous, it just takes the human element out of the crime, great situation! yu can get a guy into the car, lock the doors up and direct him to a secluded cliff, and drive him off it! fantastic, just waht gangster have been waiting for!
* arrange for a hacked car, the robbers rob the bank dump the loot in one car and drive in some other
+1 Insightful
New mod option wanted: -1 DrunkenRambling
So, in 2018, the "Blue Screen of Death" will get totally new meaning ;)
Yeah, typical moderator abuse ... must've been a biker moderator who took offense.
Honda, Suzuki, BMW, Harley-Davidson and Wilson Sporting Goods announced that carless drivers are available today. Yes, you too can be a carless driver, simply by owning a motorcycle or a set of golf clubs. Vespa has yet to make an announcement, but one is expected shortly.
Take that GM, you gas-guzzling Hummer-making bastards.
One thing GM forgot to mention, is that by 2018 the price of a gallon of gasoline will be 1 million dollars US, or ten million Muslim souls, whichever is more expensive in your area.
GM Killed EV1. GM, you bastards!
'Predictions of this failed before, therefore current and future predictions will fail too': This reasoning error you're exhibiting is known as 'false induction'. It's incorrect because each prediction is entirely independent, exists in a completely different context, and has no bearing on any other prediction. This should be obvious, of course. For centuries people predicted human flight, and for centuries it failed. Thus people also predicted the Wright brothers would fail. Similar story for many technologies and trends.
So apparently you have trouble seeing taillights/headlamps?
"We need to get over this notion, that, for Apple to win... Microsoft must lose." - Steve Jobs, 1997
Well science fiction, unless impossible (most things can be explained in SF, to a degree), is "not science fiction" if you see what I mean.
Teleportation and Warp drives are "not science fiction" either.
Like others have said, the algorithms are already quite robust, but problems are the price of sensors and also legal issues.
But also quality management and systems engineering will be a problem with "intelligent" vehicles:
- Cars continue evolving AFTER the production line
- Even worse: all cars will evolve in a seperate ways
So obviously normal Six Sigma works based on normal statistical distribution go out of the window.
And who will analyze the problems? workshop mechanics (controlling algoritms??)? GM workers following every car remotely (huge costs, data overload and privacy concerns, anyone?)?? How can one in the concept phase design for characteristics which will be emergent?
And many more such issues. Long way to go then before it can really be used in mass-produced cars designed by regular project teams.
I just saw in Top Gear (Season 10 ep 8, sorry no link. Google for it) a prototype from BMW that drives itself through the circuit they always use at optimum speeds. It has apparently learned the circuit from the first lap that they drove manually.
Imagine how open source algorithms might revolutionize car tuning.
Interesting idea. It could also save on parking. Why have so many parking spaces when a car doesn't spend all day parked outside the office? One of the problems though is that many people regard a car as a private thing.
See my journal, I write things there
In 2005, more than 40000 people were killed and over 1.2 million were injuried in the European Union.
Governments should unite and force driverless cars as soon as possible. Automated driving has numerous advantages over manual one:
Of course driverless transportation requires a level of support that is not present in most countries. Even the traffic lights are not setup properly in most countries (if they exist, at all). Most roads are full of bumps and holes, so in case or repairing the road, the electronic maps should be instantly updated. Most signs are misplaced; they would have to be replaced with electronic ones anyway, so as that they can transmit signals about their purpose. Buildings' addresses should be carefully mapped as well, if one wants to visit some place, but some cities don't even have an address system (Tokyo, for example).
The most difficult aspect for driverless cars is that ALL roads have to be mapped; if not so, then a new race of drivers will be born: those who have a license, but they drive only once a year, when they go in a place that is not mapped for the car navigator. And we all know that if you don't drive, you gradually forget how to do it, which means more possibilities for accidents than before. And if roads are not mapped in 100% detail, more possibilities for accidents as well.
Still, with all these issues, I am optimistic. I don't think that I will be alive when driverless cars would be a reality, but it's inevitable, in the end...
My God...when did people get so risk adverse that they're willing to give up so much for some perceived 'safety'. I dunno...I LOVE to ride motorcycles. Yes, they're risky, cars don't see you, etc, but, I'd not give it up for the world. I'd hate to have that option taken away from me.
We all die....but, while I'm alive, I want to do things that make me feel good to be alive, and that often necessitates an amount of risk.
I guess I'm just not that worried about it....
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Wait, doesn't GM already have a whole bunch of driverless cars with Toyota pushing into the lead for sales this year? :P
the car will still use gasoline.
It is not true. They are not going to make it. It is obviously a lie, because you wouldn't test 7 years from now and then in only 3 years to have a working prototype on the streets. The real setting would be to have a working prototype by 2010 and then 8 years later to have it fully debugged on the street.
This guy from GM is just trying to lure investors from competing companies. By announcing that they will have it working in 10 years, they are just trying to postpone this technology. Suits are afraid from technology because it can make their current technology obsolete. Imagine having 10 billion invested in cars nobody wants.
This guy is just trying to make investor waste their time listening to him. Either he has a working prototype or he doesn't.
Of course this is great news for scientist who are building the cars that can drive themselves, because now they sell it for 10% of those 10 billion. Can you imagine getting 1 billion only for a few years of research?
Besides it will never happen until congress gives an exemption for the auto industry for accidents caused by faulty AIs.
Right now the auto industry isn't responsible if you drive your car on icy or wet roads, but if the AI gets in a wreck you can be sure there will be a law suit.
"Only one thing, is impossible for god: to find any sense in any copyright law on the planet." Mark Twain
At least in Britain, most motorcycle accidents are caused by a car, not by the motorcyclist.
Filtering is often a safe activity for a motorcycle to carry out (they are vastly more maueverable than a car), and what may be an unsafe speed in a car (generally, a speed at which you cannot stop in the road you can see to be clear) may not be so on a motorcycle. I don't have a motorcycle myself, but on a friend's Super Blackbird, while I found the acceleration to be pretty spectacular, it was nowhere near as spectacular as the braking. The deceleration was several times better than what my ABS-equipped car could ever hope to achieve on the same road surface; the stopping power was simply phenomenal.
As a regular cyclist, I've never felt even vaguely put in danger by a motorcyclist. Ever. Even during the Isle of Man TT (this is when 40,000 bikers show up where I live for a period of 2 weeks) However, I've been hit by two car drivers (one on a straight piece of road just ploughed into the back of my bicycle at 50 mph, and one who didn't look to see if the road ahead was clear and just pulled right out in front of me) and car drivers regularly overtake me dangerously (so fast and close their bow wave almost knocks me off).
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
I wonder if GM has considered the likelihood that the Dept of Homeland "Security" will have a problem with this.
Unfortunately, the news mostly just covers results of the crotch-rocket idiots - such as one in Maryland where the cyclists were doing 100MPH+ on a stretch with lights where regular traffic only moved somewhere between 35 MPH and 55 MPH, light changed (red for the cyclists), and vehicles pulled out and turned left. The cyclists were going fast enough that there was no time for reactions, and the vehicles turning had no warning of them. Needless to say, they plowed right into the back of the vehicles...their bikes didn't survive, and I'm not sure the cyclists did either. I'm sure there are similar stories in Britain too.
Most cyclists are quite cautious and well behaved, and know enough to do better than play by the rules - but also to look out for their own safety since other drivers typically don't.
That said, I've almost hit one a long time back while merging. Didn't see him in the mirrors at all - must have been in my blind spot, but I think he was trailing another car closer than he should have too. Needless to say, I heard his horn and we both reacted well enough to ensure his safety.
It's not necessarily a matter of other drivers intending to not see them - it's just more difficult due to their size ratio compared to other vehicles, and their maneuverability as cyclists tend to move quickly between positions at time. I do my bets to keep track, and hate it when I loose track, of them - but it happens. (Of course, it drives me nuts when I lose track of any vehicle around me, regardless of size. Doesn't happen much though, and almost always is because behind me turned and I didn't expect it.)
Enough ranting...your point is valid in the U.S. too, but public perception is now skewed about it.
Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away. - Elvis Presley (source: imdb.com)
Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away. - Elvis Presley (source: imdb.com)
Several years ago I read about GM's Hy-wire concept, and thought it was amazingly cool. They predicted back then that this car would probably be driving on the streets before 2010... It is still just a concept car (with several actual working models though), but I think we'll have to wait a bit longer before this car can be bought by you and me - unfortunately. Cars driving themselves on the streets in the year 2019? Hmmm maybe but I think it's more likely in 2029.
It really hasn't caught on much outside of big cities.
Forget dealing with traffic. I'm far more concerned about how data corruption in the navigational system. A couple of examples:
:)
First, what will GM use for their original data load? How will they reconcile the inevitable bad data on the first load? How will they keep the system up to date as new roads are created and old ones close?
Second, I live in Minnesota, where we joke the four seasons are winter, winter, winter, and road repair. How on earth will GM's system be able to deal with detours? Unexpected lane closures while a local municipality fills potholes? Collapsed bridges on interstate highways?
Tell me how they'll deal with all that before you start worrying about how they'll dodge the minivan being piloted by a soccer mom with a cell phone glued to her ear.
Ok, so honestly - who on here didn't see this coming? We've only had the DARPA autonomous vehicle challenge won the last two years - both off-road conditions (first year), and urban conditions (this year). It's just a matter of reducing the size and costs of the computer systems driving the vehicles, and maturing the technology even more. First company to do so will likely be handsomely rewarded.
I had even said in the last couple weeks that I didn't expect to have to teach my kids (if my wife & I have any) to drive as the autonomous vehicular technology is maturing fast enough that I fully expect there to be driverless vehicles available to the average citizen by then - so that would be within the next 16 years assuming my wife gave birth today. (No, she's not pregnant yet.)
Needless to say, I find GM's timeline very achievable and directly in line with the maturity rate of the autonomous vehicle industry. Hopefully the other supporting industries (GPS, road maps, etc.) will mature equally as well, which shouldn't be a problem.
Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away. - Elvis Presley (source: imdb.com)
It was an exact replica of the corolla with GEO nameplates. It was Toyota's quality assurance that made that car possible. The same thing is true today with the pontiac vibe which is a replica of the Toyota Matrix. Now GM trucks may be the only arena where GM has any quality. Still my friends S-10 broke down within 10k miles. The cable holding the spare also snapped and the tire fell off. He got rid of the junker soon after.
Think about it for a second.
If you don't need a driver. Why do you need to own a car? You just call one from the local driverless cab company, which is dirt cheap because there's no driver to pay. Each car will be able to service tens to hundreds of people per day. Which translates to selling 1/10th to 1/100th of the numbers of vehicles. Which means the end of car parks and most car producers.
Deleted
Now I can take my naps during commuter traffic.
When my Dad was a lad, he used to play football (soccer) in the street. Now, even if you can find a street (in the UK) where the traffic is light enough to allow that, it will be filled with parked cars anyway.
Much as I disagree with large government, roads are made for transportation and not entertainment. In fact, if roads were private, that would be even more clear.
Rich
I've always said we need driverless cars before we can have flying cars. Unless you want us to trust the responsibilities of flying to the kind of people you see driving today, we need the cars to be able to fly themselves. And then you need to get that technology (which, incidentally, needs to be VTOL, and not these stupid planes with foldable wings that some companies think pass as flying cars, when they're really just driving planes) to be reliable and affordable before the need for flying cars disappears. I think even 2030 would be a little late. By then, if Internet technology is keeping up, the average person won't really need to go anywhere.
Also, we'll obviously need to get away from fossil fuels, because even if there are any in 2030, they'll be ridiculously expensive for flight. By far the best option here is perpetual motion machines. Despite the downside of probably not actually existing, they're far more reasonable than flying in an electric car, especially since the power plants that power those electric cars now will be out of fossil fuels in 2030. Safe nuclear energy would come in second, but it would be way too controversial.
And, of course, as others have mentioned, there's more than enough legal issues to keep any of this from ever happening.
A lot of congestion is down to flow control issues. The end of my own commute randomly is completely clear or tacks on five minutes if someone has got in the right lane and isn't turning right at the lights, causing the traffic to back up to the interstate exit, causing slow merging, causing traffic to back up to the *other* interstate exit, causing slow merging there. Eliminate the flow issues and you greatle alleviate congestion.
Rich
Before you respond with "but you can't..." consider what I already do (this, from an overweight guy approaching 50 years old). I do all my planned grocery shopping on my bike. I pick up and drop off the child who is not embarrassed to be seen with me, on my bike. I ride in Boston winters now, including on ice ("customized" with snow tires and 5 watts of alternator-driven LEDs, using an utterly unoriginal circuit of my own design). Growing up, I rode my bike in Florida summers. I've gone riding in rain and snowstorms; the main impediment is fear of how badly some people in cars drive under those conditions. When the Loma Prieta quake (1989) took out all the traffic signals, those of us who had bike-commuted that day rode home unimpeded. Bikes excel at short trips, especially to places with rotten parking (Cambridge, grocery store the day before a snowstorm).
There are also choices for the less able. Tricycles (either upright or recumbent) do away with the need for good balance. Electric assists help you if you are weak, or have difficult hills on your daily route.
Bikes, for me, lose most badly on three points: I can't lock up my stuff up, they're too slow for "long" trips (> 15 miles, for me), and I don't feel safe in Very Bad Traffic (downtown Boston -- strictly speaking, this is not the fault of the bike, but the fault of careless people in cars, but human carelessness is a given).
And, to return somewhat to the point of the article, I would not necessarily expect this technology to make loads of money for GM. Once the car is automated, as several other posters have pointed out, why not have the robot run your errands for you? And, why should it be your dedicated robot? Why not a robot delivery service? And following that, the cheapest robots, from the POV of production, maintenance, energy, and liability risk, are the lighter ones -- robot tricycles, most likely. That's not GM's business, and it's not necessarily a large business, either; no need for all the bells and whistles that get added to your typical car. They'll built them in China, using mostly bicycle parts and technology, with an itty-bitty brain to drive them, and they'll be dirt cheap, compared to cars.
10 years from now the dollar will be so weak nobody will be able to afford these cars, so they'll be driverless and passengerless!
rooooar
While the concept of a driver-less car is really cool its not really practical at this point in time. You would think that Detroit would be focusing on much bigger issues like how the foreign car makers are KILLING them in market share. Last I heard Toyota overtook Ford for the top spot (I could be wrong on that one). They should be focusing on bigger issues like increased fuel mileage and building better quality and more reliable cars. In my opinion we make crappy cars. Every American owned car I've owned has been in the repair shop about once every 6 months with huge repair bills to boot. What we need is 100 mpg on cars and not the pathetic 35 mpg that was just passed in the last Congressional Energy bill. American cars need to be engineered to last longer, be cheaper to repair, and be astronomically more fuel efficient. You can have all the driverless cars in the world, if they break down every 5 minutes no one will buy them. We need efficiency and innovation; we shouldn't be forced to choose one or the other.
How can the car anticipate black ice, and other weather effects on the road. I am all for this, I could go out and drink, but pass out in the car while it drives me home. Long road trips could be done without stopping at motels & hotels. You could make phone calls and eat & change get ready for your big date.. etc etc etc
VW demonstrated a test vehicle (based on Stanford's DARPA Challenge winner) two years ago.
GM == old_and_busted.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Remember that challenge to drive a vehicle over a desert-ish area a few years back (http://www.darpa.mil/grandchallenge/)? I bet they use GPS to figure out roughly where to go but it still uses cameras and computing power to keep you in the lines and away from other objects.
but if their liability is limited, then GM has a reduced incentive to build a safe car. As part of their fiduciary duty to their shareholders, they should cut corners. There has to be some cost feedback for safety defects. The usual sources of such feedback are lawsuit, regulation, or market. Because market penalties are disorganized and far in the future, I think they tend to be discounted.
With all this talk about AI cars, some very tough issues are ignored / glossed over ...
1. Car breakdowns - what happens if a car in an automated car fleet gets a flat, stalls, runs of gas, etc?
2. How will an auto-driven car recognize / react to a construction zone; flagger standing in the middle of the road manually directing traffic, etc?
3. How will an AI fleet handle deer and other various animals, including pedestrians, that unexpectedly appear on the road?
Ron
I want to be able to drink beer while on the road.
Fixed that for you.
This is what entropy is for.
One of them is called an "umbrella"; it costs about 0.5% of what it costs just to buy a truly shitty car, and it costs nothing in maintenance. Granted, it usually needs to be replaced every six months, but it's still a bargain. Its efficacy is vastly enhanced by the use of another mystical piece of technology called the "jacket".
When the temperature hits 115F, there's the "t-shirt"; the use of any of a wide variety of hat-technologies can provide shelter from the sun. Humans, at least those who aren't morbidly obese or suffering from hyperthermia, are quite capable of regulating their own body temperature during a leisurely half-hour walk under all but the most Saharan conditions. Millions of people go to beaches and tropical resorts every year to experience precisely such conditions, so don't go making out as if it's an intolerable strain to be forced to endure them.
You can come up with any number of reasons to drive. But are they worth $6000 a year? That is, incidentally, the average cost of owning, operating, and maintaining a fairly typical family car in British Columbia (where I live). To someone earning $25,000 a year, that $6000 is a VERY deep and painful slice out of their disposable income. So there are plenty of good reasons not to drive as well.Neal Stephenson's Quicksilver got me home today on the most hobo-ridden bus line in all of Vancouver (a city known for it's rather abundant population of junkies and homeless schizophrenics).
Give it a serious try. I guarantee that the method can work for you -- or your money back. Operators are standing by.
I suppose that if you were silly enough to try to carry a bunch of grocery bags any real distance, it would be an extraordinarily unpleasant experience. But you'll notice very few students carry their 40 pounds worth of textbooks and notebooks around using plastic bags. And you'll notice that very few infantries equip their soldiers with plastic bags to carry their gear. Both groups tend to use backpacks -- a much more efficient, comfortable way to transport goods.
Apparently the owner's driveway opens up directly onto a major street with a 50mph limit, rather than the 25-30mph typical of residential areas. The property values must be stellar!
There's a word for that... but it's not a very a nice one.Yes. A single mud-splattered under-spec taillight blends in quite nicely against the much brighter lights of the car ahead of it.
"They redundantly repeated themselves over and over again incessantly without end ad infinitum" -- ibid.