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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 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.
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.
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.
In California, state law prohibits driverless cars from exceeding 60 MPH.
And you probably thought that was a weird law. California's just ahead of the curve.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
Well, there is no need for traffic lights if all cars are robots. Of-course the humans have to cross, but this can be done with overpasses or tunnels under the streets.
Once cars can really drive themselves, they should be in contact with other cars, road signs and such to maintain the best traffic conditions possible.
There will be no real reason for stop signs, traffic lights, speed limits, yield signs and such, all of this can be avoided once cars are driving themselves.
Of-course this requires an overhaul of the infrastructure and assumes all cars are driverless and communicating with each other, the road signs and such and that there are no others (pedestrians/animals/other obstacles) on the roads.
You can't handle the truth.
If you're truly willing to give things up, then you can have what you want. Figure out a way to get a job where you can work from home. Sell the car. Move somewhere with really cheap housing where you can walk to the grocery store. It sounds like I'm being glib, but I'm dead serious. Do it.
I did it. My wife and I both took 50% pay cuts to find work at home jobs. We sold one car and used it to pay off the other. We fill up our remaining car about once every 2 months or so. We had many expenses before that we no longer have, including about $150 USD/mo in toll roads and about $250 USD/mo in gas, and our car insurance is super cheap now with 1 car fully paid off instead of 2 cars. Plus, we both recovered about 2 hours per day each on commute times, which we now use to enjoy our happier less stressful lives.
Seriously-- if you're honestly willing to make sacrifices to not sit in traffic, then do it. You're in charge of your life, right?
No need to pay attention to the road -- but those who like to drive could still offroad, go to tracks, etc.
I fully support your right to go have fun driving your vehicle if that's what floats your boat. You don't, however, have a fundamental right to use something constructed by lots of my taxpayer dollars (the public road system) as your personal playground and put me in unnecessary risk while on it. In such a future, if you wanted to drive for fun, you could easily go drive somewhere that's for people who want to drive for fun; however, our tax dollars weren't collected to build you a racetrack. Excuse me but I pay a fortune to use the roads and should have the right to spend my normal 30-40 hours a week on the roads I paid for without inexpirienced idiots putting me in danger.
The people who cause most accidents arnt truck drivers, taxis or couriers.
Its the person driving to the shops for their weekly shopping or picking their kids of from school that pull out in front of other vehicles on the highway or stall at the lights. These people often spend less than 20hours a week on the road and dont drive outside of their local area and so are inexpirienced road users.
I have a right to be safe on the road withouut idiots putting me in danger because they cant make rational judgements.
~Dan
An SQL query goes to a bar, walks up to a table and asks, "Mind if I join you?"