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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."
No, the big question is whether General Motors will even exist in 2018.
I haven't driven a GM car in years. So yeah I can see GM cars becoming driverless within my lifetime.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
Ultimately, with a perfect system, it would:
* Make truckers obsolete
* Allow dropoff/pickup of children without you being present
* Allow pickup of groceries or other goods without you being present
* Make it so you don't need parking near your destination (vehicle can leave, park elsewhere, and return later)
* Greatly increase throughput (autoconvoying, reduction of drag, traffic-aware route scheduling, reduction of human error)
* More green space for a given amount of throughput (same)
* Greatly increase speeds (same)
* Greatly decrease fuel or energy consumed at a given speed (same), helping the environment.
* Decrease costs to consumers (as above) and thus opens up wider travel opportunities/deurbanization.
* Facilitate better integration of the vehicle and the road (example: bridges that know how much capacity they can support and vehicles that know how much they weigh so that they can be built lighter (and thus cheaper) while still being safe by never routing too much weight to be crossing a given bridge at once)
* No speeding tickets
* No drunk drivers
* No need to pay attention to the road -- but those who like to drive could still offroad, go to tracks, etc.
* Greater response time of vehicle and built-in system-aware hardware eases transition to new technologies, such as inductrac maglev roads, powered roads to recharge electric vehicles, or whatnot.
** Above technologies further increase speed, decrease energy consumption, boost economy, and decrease cost to consumers
* Greatly boost the economy (all of the above)
Next to my desk we have an Ire Extinguisher. Our boss is really assertive, so we like the idea of having it.
In Soviet Russia, YOU drive CAR?
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?
Why, is she vegetarian?