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Robocars As the Best Way Geeks Can Save the Planet
Brad Templeton writes "I (whom you may know as EFF Chairman, founder of early
dot-com Clari.Net and rec.humor.funny)
have just released a new series of futurist
essays on the amazing future
of robot cars, coming to us thanks to the DARPA Grand Challenges.
The computer driver is just the beginning — the
essays detail how robocars can
enable the cheap electric car, save millions of lives and trillions
of dollars, and are the most compelling thing
computer geeks can work on to save the planet. Because robocars can refuel, park
and deliver themselves, and not simply be chauffeurs, they end up changing
not just cars but cities, industries, energy, and — by removing
dependence on foreign oil — even wars. I, for one, welcome our new robot overlords."
(More below.)
Templeton continues: "The key realization is that while the safety and timesavings that
come from having computers as chauffeurs is very important and can
save a million lives every year, a number of interesting consequences
come from the ability of robocars to drive themselves while vacant.
This allows them to deliver themselves to us on demand, to park
themselves and to refuel/recharge themselves. On-demand delivery makes
car sharing pleasant and allows the use of "the right vehicle for
the trip" on most trips. Self-refueling means the people using
cars no longer need care about range or how common fueling stations
are, enabling all sorts of novel energy systems with minimal "chicken
and egg" problems. Because passengers don't care about the range
of their taxis, battery weight and cost are no longer issues in
electric cars and scooters."
I'm so excited!
I scoffed a bit when I RTFS, but the essays are really good and make an excellent case. I read them looking for gaping holes to point out, but really didn't find any major unaddressed concerns. I have to say RTFA is highly recommended. Read it, you won't be sorry.
Caveat Utilitor
...that this will usher in a glorious new era of alcoholism.
After all, I think it's the driving problem that really prevents people from drinking to their full potential. I can't count the number of times I've thought "I know, I'll go to a bar and get hammered!" and then, a few seconds later, "ahhh, but I don't know how I'd get home."
Yes, I think 2053 will have a few things in common with 1953 - a glorious time when men were men and martinis were brunch.
"Beware he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he deems himself your master."
Because robocars can refuel, park and deliver themselves, and not simply be chauffeurs
Yes, I believe another name is, the bus.
And relax people, I know buses aren't completely oil-independant, however, our infrastructure isn't even close to what is need to support a billion electric cars.
Hi, I Boris. Hear fix bear, yes?
In any case I think that people would be better employed saving the planet by working to prevent so many car journeys being made in the first place by trying to put an end to Single Use Zoning and fixing the silly way we build our so-called cities. It's not as geek-friendly or glamorous as rolling out a shiny new car that looks like something from an episode of Buck Rogers, but North American culture has too much faith in high-tech solutions to complex problems.
Prevention is always better than cure. Better to go back to building cities so that they can meet their original purpose of putting daily needs within walking distance. Better to fix the leak rather than put a bigger or more sophisticated bucket under it.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
One major issue with RoboCars is that any effective implementation of them will require substantial changes to our current infrastructure. GPS based navigation is helpful - but - RFID markers on roads is much more effective. Cars can locate other cars, as shown in the Grand Challenge, using LIDAR, but this is very, very expensive and sometimes unreliable. (The DARPA 08' cars used 70,000 dollar LIDAR systems, and i'm not too sure how long one would last) To effectively know the location of other cars, all cars would need a transponder, echoing its location and other data (speed, intentions, plans to change lane, etc) I'm not quite sure how long it will be before we can implement these systems. To get autonomous cars cheap, and in a reasonable amount of time, we'd have to start mandating transponders right about now.
Talk about a pipe dream. This guy acts as though no one ever thought of autonomous robots before. Let me give the guy a hint: there's a reason we don't have robot butlers yet that clean the house, cook the food, etc, etc. It's because we don't have a science of Artificial Intelligence yet, and don't have a clue how to do it. (And Roomba isn't even in the same universe).
Given that we don't even have autonomous servants that can slowly do our bidding, this guy wants to strap a computer into multi-thousand pound death machine travelling at 40/50/60 miles an hour (calculate that kinetic energy on that), give it a kick in the rear-end and let it fly? On normal, public roads? Yeah, right.
This guy is so in the dark about how far we are away from this that it's funny. Yeah, just ask the geeks to crank this out in their spare time. And then they can pick up their Nobel Prize in Computer Science that'll be invented just for them.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Long ranges can be handled by having cars sit on trains and with computer based scheduling it would be easier to use them (unless windows handles the scheduling or we need crazy security checks.)
Although people could simply walk from their robocar to the train...
Seriously, you can't move as many people with robocars as a subway does in a downtown area.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
From what I understand (since I don't seem to be of the mindset) part of the reason why Americans drive the cars they do is status symbol/machismo/style. I've heard other countries aren't as obsessed with the auto as an accessory, so much as a necessary evil. Perhaps when developing the idea for the future of electric cars, there might be an initial offering of retrofitting existing cars to the automated capabilities. This should help get the concept on the market, as I'd bet more people would rather update their cars than buy a new one they're not sure of.
This really will be a glorious future. Think about it: no more "...was killed by a drunk driver" commercials! Now, we just need to worry about drunk programmers.
...potentially more "I learned it from watching you!" commercials.
Kurt Vonnegut: "If you can do a half-assed job of anything, you're a one-eyed man in the kingdom of the blind."
I still don't know why North Americans are so against walking/cycling/public transit. But then again, North American lifestyles are deliberately built around NOT walking/cycling/using public transit. Which came first?
In Soviet Russia the new robot overlords welcome you!
The reason cars don't drive themselves is not a problem of technology, but of liability. Now, if there is an accident the driver is blamed. Carmakers are unwilling to take on that liability and themselves be blamed for accidents.
Then aren't we consuming more of the planet anyway?
This isn't all that hard. It's more of a social problem than a technological one. Correcting for erratic and imperfect human drivers is the big problem.
I think it was I-15 in San Diego that had a lane used as test for autonomous cars in the 1990s. It required a regular spacing of markers for the cars to follow and that that all the cars contain transponders. If that was doable on a freeway ~10 years ago, what's proposed here can be done. It may just mean that you're no longer allowed to drive your own car.
Quoted:
The only problem with this statement is that cars don't save, or even help the planet. They just harm it less. *grins*
let me say, that the greatest thing that 'geeks' can do to save the environment, is to ignore moronic BS like this, stop having grand utopian visions, and f@#$ stop buying s@#$ they dont need.
Ok, so it might not be as extreme as all that, but have you seen the inside of a taxi? It's thrashed, and I think the only reason it's not more thrashed is that there's an taxi driver who would beat you up if you did something stupid.
TFAuthor says that people might want to rent their robocars out while they're at work. Like hell I would! The last thing I need is some jackass with a spiked belt ripping a hole in my leather seats.
If robocars become practical, and energy costs rise, it's possible that the author's vision will be inevitable. Still, it's gonna suck to find that some bum puked in my robotaxi right when I'm late for work.
Maybe we can engineer robocops to sit in every robotaxi to prevent the vandals from ruining it for all of us.
And for the hat trick, the domain was named clari.org.
Just kidding, but damn, the irony was right in my face. Someone had to say something.
Why not start by coupling a frontal sonar and the gas-brake control to enforce the safety distance? Easy to do, and could save a lot of lives.
What's in a sig?
...be called "drunk", "on cellphone" or "putting on makeup"?
This sounds like a lot of bollock cheap crap talk to me. So; electric cars are going to save the future because no one needs to use gas to power their cars. Cool. So what device is providing the power to fuel those electric cars? Better yet: what amounts of gas does that gizmo consume ?
What would be better: 2 families, one uses his car as often as possible, other other hardly. One family fills up regulary the other hardly. This scenario vs. a "electric pump" which will always make sure to have enough juice to power at least 2 cars ?
Is this about the environment? Ofcourse not; its about commercial interests. You do the math; if you're not already numbed down to be totally unable to do basic maths without a calculator.
The planet is just where one's corpse is to be stored.
Or make an immeasurable change. Whichever.
Personal public transit is not quite like a bus. Instead of just getting on and showing your bus pass, you'll have to tell the robocar who you are and where you are going. This is a totalitarian government's wet dream. It would be able to track your every move and completely deny you movement if it so chose. Robocars will usher in the new era where transportation, not just long distance travel, is a privilege, to be granted or withheld on a whim.
Cars need roads, parking lots, garages, maintenance, highways, bridges, fuel infrastructure.... the list goes on.
Imagine if you take a city, freeze all urban sprawl construction and zoning, remove redundant highways, parking lots, and take the immense amount of space saved and turn it into parks and localized farming communities. Use sensible zoning so people can walk or bike to most places of interest. Demolish a few highway lanes and put rail down instead. You can still get from city to city via train, you can still get to your local places of commerce, and we can all stop sending money to murderous dictatorships that we tacitly support and sometimes war with.
It's a sensible solution that is incredibly unpopular because of the people who make trillions of dollars supporting a transportation infrastructure that is no longer our best option.
You can't entirely eliminate a road system, but you can make it so no one but delivery trucks need to use them. And I haven't found anyone who says they enjoy sitting in traffic, or growing up with asthma due to poor air quality in otherwise clean cities.
Europeans just don't understand how fucking big the USA is.
It's because many Europeans are rubes with a very narrow world view. Witness how often they show up on /. suggesting what works for them as the perfect solution for the USA...Eurotrash snob-hicks!
There is much less difference between a frenchman and Pole then there is between a New Yorker and an Oklahoman. None share a language, but the frenchman and the Pole mostly share a culture (losing the the Germans without a fight).
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Should we really be saving lives? Wouldn't making things more dangerous really allow our civilization to prosper, returning to a survival of the fittest like era? Saving lives takes away much needed jobs from many industries, and allows the less fit to just keep on breeding. Of course, that is not practical from a humanistic point of view, but if you think purely logical, I think you'll see it makes sense to just let people die!
killing people in stupid useless wars.
morons.
I give a talk on the consequences of Moore's Law to a freshman class every year, and one of my topics is autonomous vehicles. This web site does a great job of summarizing the future of personal transportation. A few other points I discuss with the class:
(1) Mass transit as we think of it will largely vanish within 20 years. Cities will find it far easier to maintain fleets of robocars, and dispatch them right to the doors of residents, rather than maintain traditional subway and bus lines. The "last half-mile" problem of getting from the door of your home to the door of your destination will be solved.
(2) The authors discuss "sleeper cars", but they don't really consider all the ramifications. A huge chunk of overnight business travel (everything within a few hundred miles) will be taken over by robocars. People will go to bed in the sleeper car, open the door the next day, and find themselves at their destination. Consequently, hotels and motels will offer short-term rooms (for one or two hours) so that people can shower and dress on the road. A significant portion of the U.S. population will literally become nomadic, sleeping in robotic RVs every night, and waking up to a new destination every morning.
(3) Once robocars are widely accepted, human drivers will be forced off the roads very quickly. How? By 100% enforcement of all traffic laws with high-tech imaging (also thanks to Moore's Law). A human will be unable to conform to the ultra-rigid driving laws that robocars will handle with ease.
As I say to my students: "You are the last generation that will need to learn to drive. To your children, it will be an option. To your grandchildren, knowing how to drive a car will be as quaint a concept as knowing how to saddle and ride a horse."
Brad still can't tell the difference between doable and practical.
How are they insured? how do you get people to convert? How do you protect them fomr vandelism? Theft?
then this little number:
" Because passengers don't care about the range of their taxis, "
um, I don't know about good ol' Brad, but I sure as hell care about the range of a vehicle I'm getting into. Will it take me to a meet 30 miles away safely and timely?
Can I take one across the state?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
You can not conserve yourself into prosperity.
Robotic cars would be nice, but don't expect to see them anytime soon. Give it 20 years minimum.
'...robotic beings rule the world;
The humans are dead...'
I just can't wait until I'm able to read a book or play the harmonica or the guitar while (in Soviet Russia,) the car drives me. I currently play the harmonica while driving, and sometimes, if I'm really into it, I'll steer with my knee (two hands on the harp--better sound, and vibrato, etc.). Don't tell nobody. I just hope I don't ever get a photo radar picture while playing the harp with two hands.
The problem really is that US cities and suburbs were designed ONLY for cars, and not for pedestrians. To buy stuff there aren't local stores (except maybe in big cities like NY) where you can buy misc stuff for your house. No, you have to get in the car, drive for N minutes to the nearest Walmart, park, get your stuff, rinse, repeat.
Right now I just googled for "pedestrian unfriendly" and got to this blog:
http://nishantkashyap.blogspot.com/2007/07/pedestrian-and-poor-unfriendly-us.html
The first thing that strikes you about any US suburb is the landscaping - beautifully manicured patches of green all along the road and absolutely no sign of dust - perfect settings to take a stroll or if your office is close enough may be take a walk to the office. But lo and behold, where do you walk? There are absolutely no footpaths, no pedestrian crossings and as if that was not enough you have absolutely no public transport as well- a total anti-thesis of a city like NYC and that is true for all such places in US - a lesson for those who get mesmerized by cities likes NYC and Chicago and start cursing our poor cities. Any day I am happy taking a cycle-rick in hot and dusty Lucknow or Amritsar than risking my life walking on the side of the picturesque road here where traffic may be moving at 100 kmps minimum. Everyone here keeps a car and absolutely no one walks - there are some crossing which have a no pedestrian sign - something which I saw for the very first time in my life.
With absolutely no provisions for pedestrians or public transport - I wonder what do the poor do here. Everyone is forced to buy a car - no wonder US is the biggest contributor to greenhouse emissions and also leveraged 3 time over because you absolutely have to buy and maintain a car. Moreover, due to lack of basic exercise like walking US is also facing obesity crisis and has been forced to spend a good amount of funds on health care and low cal diets.
Then I googled for "car free cities" and got to this website:
http://www.carfree.com/cft/i003_qz.html
After reading that, you'll begin to understand what really is wrong with car pollution in the U.S.
I, for one, welcome our new robot overlords.
That's so ironic, coming from the EFF.
\x72\x6D\x20\x2D\x72\x66
The real problem is long distance trips. Unless you have charging stations every 50 miles and can transfer 10-20KWH to the car in a few minutes at each of those stations, you still can't effectively make a long distance trip in an electric car, whether it's you driving or a robot.
Some people with electric cars who have spent upwards of $15,000 on lithium batteries (not practical for most people) can go a hundred miles or more before refueling. The best batteries (A123) are so expensive as to be almost impractical, but they can charge fast enough so your refuel time is probably limited by your cables or by how much current your charging station can provide.
Electric cars aren't out of practical reach, even without robotic drivers. Check out EVAlbum.com -- there are hundreds of electric commuter cars out there. It's just that they can't go long distances without recharging, and charging takes a few hours at least. I don't see how robotic drivers help with either of those problems.
Now, if you can get the power usage down, then long distance trips in electric vehicles become practical. Even with a human driver.
include $sig;
1;
I've always thought the problem would be the countless un-automated cats, dogs, deer, cattle, armadillo, old ladies, etc that could jump out in traffic. - Do the DARPA cars have any way to compensate for this?
...some days you're the dog, some days you're the hydrant...
lose that fat ass by using a bike or walking.
stop being such a bunch of bitches by trying to find the easy way out of the situation.
This is discussed in the article. There is nothing that requires there be a "traffic control" or that you tell it where you are going, but there will be people who want to build such a system, and we must create the technology with care to discourage such architectures.
Has it been over a year since you last donated to the Electronic Frontier Foundation
save millions of lives
Given that too many humans is already the biggest threat to the planet, I may have spotted a teeny, tiny flaw here.
Sure, we can get more efficient. Maybe even 50% more efficient. But a population that doubles every twenty to thirty years means you've got to manage that 50% efficiency savings every 20-30 years, not just once, if you want to keep up with the sheer damage our out of control population growth is doing.
I know a better way computer geeks can save the world. How about nanobots that kill off all the niggers once and for all?
We need to overcome the irrational fear of computer-controlled cars implicit in such jokes, or we'll never be ready for what promises to be the most important breakthrough in transportation in its history.
Yes, desktop computers running Windows can get viruses. They are good at it. But that's why Windows isn't used for mission-critical applications, and why planes don't crash into lakes every week and your bank doesn't forget how much money is in your account every now and then.
A properly-designed, computer-controlled car will be outfitted with hardened and redundant systems with a proper hierarchy of graceful degradation in emergency situations. It will be safer than entrusting driving to distractable, emotional humans.
Your mind is clear / The things that you fear / Will fade with how much you / Believe what you hear
We can reduce problems with better design of new developments, and we should, but this can at most dent the problem. Only something which changes transportation for everybody -- urban, suburbs, rural, old, new -- can really affect our energy usage. Robocars are one way this could happen. They aren't the only one, but they're the best one I can see, and the best project for geeks.
Has it been over a year since you last donated to the Electronic Frontier Foundation
Fuck that, I'm getting something with a stick.
Give me a diesel powered car any day, instead of gasoline engines. It's so much better on so many counts... a little bigger/bulkier though. But way more power and fuel efficiency, simpler engine, burns cleaner (turbocharge it, or it burns really dirty and isn't as efficient)...
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For years I have been imagining this:
7:30 AM I grab my bag and walk out of the house where my Robo-taxi awaits. In this case it is a scheduled pickup and the taxi already knows where it needs to go.
8:15 The Robo-taxi pulls up in front of the office entrance. I just grab my bag and get out. Behind me the taxi slides away to it's next job or some underground garage.
9:00 I am asked to meet a client on the other side of town. I need to be there at 9:30. Outside I walk down the road to the nearest pick-up station. I could have called a cab at work but the public pick-ups tend to be faster. At the pickup I enter the adress of my destination and sit back and wait.
9:01 The automatic door of the underground garage opens as the Robo-Taxi rolls out. After 300 meters it turns left and pulls up at the taxi stand.
9:02 After I get into the taxi the vehicle pulls away smoothly while I spend my time going though some papers. The traffic is busy but since they all run at a precise governed pace there is no delay at all.
9:23 I arrive at the taxi stand near my destination. It is cheaper this way and I still have some time left to walk the 300 meters to the client. As usual the taxi quietly glides away.
9:25 The robo-taxi enters another underground garage and docks into the allocated recharge stand where the batteries are topped up so it's ready for another job.
11:35 A Robo-taxi leaves the underground garage in a residential area close to the central business district. It has not job to do but for load balance purposes it is commanded to boost capacity at station 4 in the CBD ready to handle the increased demand during lunch.
12:10 The client just signed the lease deal. He will be the proud owner of a new personal taxi. Personal taxi's are becoming more popular as they are guaranteed to be available during high demand since they only handle traffic demands of the owner. Added benefit is that you can leave your stuff in the vehicle and the simple fact that you know the cleanliness of your own vehicle. Not a bad option if you care to pay for the parking fees.
Marshall Brain has taken a much wider view of how robots will affect the future. By the time Templeton's Robo-cars come about, transportation will only be facet of a very major impact on the human race.
Yes, there is a section on this in the article. A variety of ways are spelled out of this problem. The most likely may be that while the technology is pioneered in the USA, it is deployed first in a place like Singapore, China, Japan or India that also has high tech but not the same legal problems.
After there is success in those places, Americans, afraid of falling behind the rest of the world in robotics and transportation, will find a way through the legal concerns.
Has it been over a year since you last donated to the Electronic Frontier Foundation
If driving to insanely inconvenient jobs & sacrificing our next 50 years of paychecks to build a replacement network of electric car mobility is what it takes to keep our jobs from going to India, what's the point of death sentences?
Check it out now before USENET is shut down completely!
Wasn't the Segway scooter already supposed to be "changing not just cars but cities, industries, energy, and - by removing dependence on foreign oil -- even wars."
Well, maybe Dean Kamen can get involved in this one too, and maybe this time it really can be a product that will change the world.
Ok, so the Segway was way over hyped, but I certainly can't knock him for his recent work on the brain controlled robotic prostheses. That really will change the world for anyone who needs one of those.
Bust the media cartels (RIAA, MPAA, BPI, etc.), let Beckerman retire, THEN kill the lawyers. ;)
For some reason, I feel like an Afghan warlord.
"We are Microsoft. You shall be assimilated. Competition is futile."
As one with experience in the field, I cannot take seriously any author who would utter the term "robocar" when referring to Automatic Guided Vehicle Systems, or "AGVS".
Thanks for playing, Brad. Have a nice day.
Warning: This signature may offend some viewers.
It's a problem that will be solved gradually, before the lawyers can really catch a hold of it. It's not like cars tomorrow till be driving themselves. At first, it will come in the form of a better cruise control that will move with the road and maintain speed. It will still be up to the driver to keep control so they will be held liable. Then at some point it will be mandated that cars have some form of RFID chip to broadcast their location to cars nearby, so now there will be a cruise control that might change lanes and slow down when cars are near. If the technology develops so that it is safer to drive with the computer at the wheel then with the driver there, then it's going to become mandatory, just so long as there isn't a rash of fatal car crashes that show that computerized cars are dangerous.
Don't trust a bull's horn, a doberman's tooth, a runaway horse or me.
I think this sounds great, but I don't want a robocar that has wheels, I want one that has legs! Whaaa Hooo!!! I'm going to take mine to the beach. I just dare you to kick sand in my face!
While he does make this conclusion about U.S. data, he is fair and continues his search to other parts of the world like Europe and Asia. From this page:
No one is taking your cars away just like no one took your horses away, yet you don't see horses on the road any more.
"A week in the lab saves an hour in the library"
does this mean the end of old farts in the inside lane doing 45-50mph on motorways (70mph) and causing all the traffic to back into 2 lanes, increasing the risk of accidents?
heck i even pass em in their new mercedes bmw or jaguar in my RV (motorhome)
> Don't trust anyone over 30" sounds like a good plan after all. It worked for hippies in their youth, and now the same rule should apply as they (you) are put into nursing homes.
You seem to have missed the point concerning hippies vs the old fogies: the young hippies wanted a new, progressive world, whereas the old fogies were regressives who wanted to preserve the establishment and their status quo.
In contrast, this old fogie professor of TFA is being progressive here, whereas you are the regressive visionless young fart who wants to hold onto the old world he knows.
The roles seems to have reversed. Evidently the good professor is still a forward-looking hippie, whereas you're just a dumb Luddite.
Mankind had plenty of fierce wars well before oil was anything more than a nasty ooze that messed up good farm land.
War is all about over crowding and mal distribution of wealth. It will be with us for a while.
Robo cars have great potential for us but limiting war is not part of the deal. As a matter of fact robo cars and robo weapons will make war far easier for the wealthier nations. No wounded troops to upset our side pacifies the public.
Nerd #1: Hello? Are there any girls in this room at all?
Nerd #2: Yeah, bring on the hot chicks 'cause I'm a hot stud.
Nerd #3: Yeah! So are we!
[Leela pushes her way to the centre of the crowd.]
Leela: I'm a woman, if that's what you mean. [The nerds gasp.] I don't like to play games, so I'll just say I'm a cyclops, I'm a spaceship captain, I'm the only one of my species and I'm interested in meeting a man.
Nerd #4: A woman! I'm scared.
I don't think he does a good job because he doesn't cite good workable examples of the technology in use. He just says "they've done that in DARPA" or some other high tech example. But things like DARPA are bleeding edge or pushing our technology to the limit. Those projects may not be feasible in actual mass production use. You can't simply say mass production will reduce the costs because if that was the solution to everything we would just 'mass produce' everything.
Now on to the battery problem which he glosses over. From the site:
People worry about the battery problem in electric cars. You need lots of batteries to get any kind of decent range, and at the end of your range you must spend hours recharging.
...
An electric robocar need not have this problem. All you care is whether it has the range for the trip you're doing now. In fact, having more range just adds needless weight. When it drops you off, it can go somewhere to charge itself. Perhaps it even goes to a special station where other robots exchange the battery cartridge with a fresh one, charged at night when power was cheap. Or perhaps to a super high-current charging station. You don't care, as you aren't waiting.
Ok, there's a bunch of contradictions here. If we reduce the range on the vehicle to just the necessary range for the trip plus the range to get to the charging station, then we have a car that is charging itself during daytime when rates are high. If we only charge the car at night then we are basically using the car once rather than multiple times which would be no better than a standard driver car of today. If we get even smarter and say we just need to replace the batteries then we still have battery overhead of basically one battery per a trip per a day! Also since the car will only have just enough range, we will keep driving to the nearest station with an empty vehicle (waste of energy) just to refill. Even if you dismissed all those things, found the optimal weight to battery ratio, the optimal charging station distribution station arrangement, optimal timing of charging batteries, optimal battery distribution management system, and the optimal vehicle, now you're still stuck footing the bill for what effectively amounts to a complete infrastructure change and implementation (battery production, vehicle production, charging station building and management, and finally distribution of all of those things).
So no, I don't think he did a good job. Try again.
What about the car enthusiasts? To me - and to many other geeks, judging by what's in the typical engineering corporate parking lot - driving is fun. I doubt that the Robocar will have 300 horsepower feeding the rear wheels. The article even points out that the suspension on such a car can intentionally be made extra-mushy. I, for one, would refuse to work on such a project.
Some people want the ability to power slide a car around a freeway on-ramp at 90 MPH - and pay handily for a car that will do so. The drivers of such cars are, overall, far better drivers and cause far fewer accidents than your average parent in a minivan talking on a cell phone. But - such entertaining activities will be banned by our new robotic overlords.
When that cow comes through the windscreen at you it may be the last thing you see.
How exactly does this solve our dependence on coal power plants?
Stuff.
In my personal ( i personally believe,blah blah blah)opinion this is not going to work in another fifty years at least . (well i didn't RTFA ). there are certain limits for automation, control, and actual usage, for one, people want to drive,and general public is not that familiar with robots yet.
Please... I'm always annoyed with slashkwak stories about hi-tech cars that totally miss the cheap, elegant solution of biking / walking / public transportation. Want to save the planet? Get out and bike to work.
(Side effects include: getting a tan, losing weight, stronger heart, lower blood pressure, enjoying fresh air, less stress, better sleep, sexy legs, meeting healthy people, "stickin' it to tha' man", and having something to talk about other than computers. Please consult your doctor if erections last longer than 10 hours.)
Just go ahead and take away our freedom to drive for ourselves. While we're at it why not replace everyone and everything with robots? We will save teh planet!!1!
I am in full support of this vision. However (and unfortunately), I think the practical answer will resemble robotic trains more than robotic cars operating on the current network of roads. Plus, the main benefits of an improved transportation system will involve restructuring the way cities and communities are built when they are not sliced apart and divided by acres of roadways.
First of all, while there has been some limited success in building autonomous cars, but we can't even get autonomous airplanes accepted into our air transportation system even though planes have practically been able to fly themselves for decades. Hell, most cities can't even get people to accept conductor-less subway trains, and have to hire college students or bums to sit in the front cabin.
The robotic vehicle would have to be completely isolated and separated from unpredictable human traffic and other sources of interference, if only for liability issues.
The best first step in widespread use of robotic cars might just be on the interstate highway system, where they could construct a special lane designed only for robotic vehicles. So you could drive your car/truck onto an interstate, auto-merge into the robotic lane, set the autopilot for your destination exit, and take a nap or otherwise entertain yourself until an alarm wakes you up to exit.
For incursions into urban areas, you'd want something similar to the Personal Rapid Transit (PRT) systems everyone was investigating in the 70's. Take a look at the CabinTaxi system at: http://faculty.washington.edu/jbs/itrans/cabintaxi%20photos.htm . There are modern PRT systems finally being planned for deployment recently in Heathrow and Dubai... however, they seem to be limited to airport shuttles and aren't really large enough to meet the promise of a large distributed network with many stations.
Speaking of Dubai, the biggest obstacle will be financial, of course. The road and highway system is expensive, but a lot of the infrastructure is paid for by the user in purchase and maintenance of their own personal vehicles. While the city as a whole would find the entire system cheaper if the government would purchase and maintain a smaller number of shared vehicles, good luck convincing them to finance both the network and the vehicles if they can just build the network and have the users pay for their own vehicles. Of course, car sharing companies such as Flexcar / Zipcar offer something of a shared vehicle, they only have limited potential unless they'd allow one-way rentals... where you can pick up a Zipcar at one "station" and drop it off at another "station", where someone else could make use of it. You'd need some way of getting the cars back to empty stations, but that would realize benefits in terms of reducing the area of pavement needed for parking if everyone had their own personal vehicle.
However, I don't think advanced transportation is the magic bullet that will solve all of our problems... I think much greater benefits will be realized by redesigning cities to be denser, more human friendly, and carfree (check out http://carfree.com/ ), so people simply don't need to travel so far from a nice home to a nice place to work.
So yes, I'm an Arcology nut (check out my MSSE thesis on my homepage). I think the Dantzig / Saaty "Compact Cities" book from 1971 had the most comprehensive plan for constructing a city that I have seen in my research (you'll have to look it up in a good library, it's fairly rare).
In any case, I agree that this kind of development should be a national priority, since there is a *lot* of room for improvement. But since improving the place you live and how you get around are kinda mundane, "infrastructure" issues, I figure we'll see little to no advances in the Western world until China develops the technology and discipline and manages to dust us with their production efficiency, and maybe eventually a high standard of living (said only half-jokingly).
Surprised that no one mentioned that such a system was basically featured in the film Minority Report. One of the interesting bits was that some of them would convert to a conventional car at the edge of the city and you could drive it out to the country like a regular car.
I lost my wife in a car accident that could have been avoided by a defensive car.
this is my sig, there are many like it, but this one is mine.
No, I would say the best way geeks can save the planet is to engineer a way to clean up the entire environment, as well as engineering a new energy infrastructure that needs less clean-up maintenance. Everything else is secondary to that.
Music speeds up when you yawn, but does not change pitch.
You're describing Demo 97. That had serious industrial and government backing, it worked, and it went nowhere.
It was essentially a trackway scheme. Cars followed markers (permanent magnets) in the pavement, could measure the distance to cooperating cars ahead and behind, and had some minimal radar-based obstacle detection. It required automatic-only dedicated lanes.
Having run a DARPA Grand Challenge team, I've been through most of this line of reasoning. I'm rather less optimistic.
First, Templeton writes "The cost of accidents is arguably the single largest component of the per-mile cost of driving a vehicle", but doesn't provide justification for that statement. Total US gasoline consumption costs about $600 billion per year. The American Automobile Association says that US auto accidents cost about $164 billion per year.
Second, while we can do automatic driving in a situation where all the players are reasonably well-behaved vehicles, we're a long way from being able to do it safely in a populated area. Today's robot vehicle technologies have minimal "situational awareness". That's one of the hardest problems in AI. Right now, sensing systems are up to recognizing "obstacle" and "moving car-like thing". Pedestrian and bicyclist behavior prediction is a ways off.
The whole section on robot vehicles with incredible evasive ability is bogus. Vehicles are limited by inertia and maneuvering room. Cutting the reaction time from 500ms to 50ms would help some. Half of all collisions would be prevented if braking started 500ms sooner, according to a Mercedes study. Chain collisions are an artifact of human reaction time; with minimal inter-vehicle coordination, all the cars in a lane could come to a fast stop without colliding. But evasive action requires room.
Most of the estimates of huge savings come not from automatic driving but from electric cars. Especially little lightweight electric cars. You can get little electric cars now; I'm in Silicon Valley and I see them now and then. But they're about as common as Segways.
Zipcar indicates that the car sharing concept can work. With automatic driving, the car could be delivered to you, so it could be used in less-dense areas than central cities. But it's really for people who only need a car occasionally. Zipcar is $10/hour.
I'm a police officer in the US. I make my salary by pulling over traffic offenders for minor infractions such as speeding over the limit by 5 mph. This kind of technology will make my city's bloated police budget more efficient. First it was automated revenue...I mean ticket machines. That still guarenteed my job. Now this? This will cause cops all over the US to get laid off. As a police officer I will have to resort to my old job, selling marijuna to teenagers I'll end up narking anyways.
Trying to install linux on my microwave, but keep getting a kernel panic...
To the police?
Hey Brad, What happened to RHF? No new jokes for a couple of weeks now!
We need answers now... peak oil is here. So I propose Skytran as the answer. Imagine a 'hovering' car (actually gliding on maglev rails) that took you and a friend from one station to the next with full internet and comms access, no traffic jams, no timetable because one was always there when you needed it... AND the whole system was 19 times cheaper than installing light rail? AND it did not eat up the sidewalk but only required a standard service pole system?
http://www.unimodal.com/
Or see this video
http://www.unimodal.com/PlaySkytran.html
They can always buy the software from SCO then. Nobody would dare to sue them !
May contain traces of nut.
Made from the freshest electrons.
I confess I haven't read TFA (yet), but at the beginning of air flight, I believe congress passed a limitation of liability related to air flight fatalities. It did this to encourage investment and limit the burgeoning field's investor's downside. Something like this still exists today. You would need a strong Washington lobby from a powerful software shop (Google, MS) or car manufacturer, or whoever, to get this done, but it's doable.
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Less War: A move to electric cars would vastly decrease the need to import oil from unfriendly nations.
Trade promotes peace. What do you think the societies in the middle east will do once we turn off the tap of constantly flowing wealth into their region of the world? This wealth is the only thing that contains their religious fanaticism. When we turn that tap off, we need to prepare for a major war -- a very nasty war, in fact.
Not that I'm saying I disagree with what I believe to be your central belief. My mind has been swimming with all kinds of ideas on robocars since I've read _Rainbow's (sic? I guess) End_. I think autonomous cars are coming for many reasons and that we will be off foreign oil in the next few decades (as we should be). But cutting off a society's only means of supporting itself (no, they do not produce much else; Saudi's don't even work in their own service industries) does not breed peace. It breeds hatred and resentment.
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Reminds me of the robot cars in _Demolition Man_ and _Minority Report_ (there are probably other films, those are just the first two I thought of).
What I don't get at all is how he can still be advocating "biofuels" seeing that they're actually death fuels. People are starving right now because of biofuels.
We should get rid of incandescent fuel for vehicles altogether and go electric. Fuel wouldn't be unsafe to transport anymore. So why not have small rolling recharge stations that go wherever you need them? If you're in a hurry they can swap your batteries instead of recharging them.
You know there are companies that specialise in taking on these sort of risks, they're called insurance companies. If the car manufacturers can convince the insurance companies that these things are less of a risk than the average human driver, then the insurance companies will sell cheaper policies for robocars than human driven cars.
I like what Brad wrote. Here is something on licensing and car software I wrote several years ago:
http://groups.google.com/group/virgle/msg/de1a99ede7e0e615
== what have funding policies in automotive intelligence wrought? ===
Consider again the self-driving cars mentioned earlier which now cruise
some streets in small numbers. The software "intelligence" doing the
driving was primarily developed by public money given to universities,
which generally own the copyrights and patents as the contractors.
Obviously there are related scientific publications, but in practice
these fail to do justice to the complexity of such systems. The truest
physical representation of the knowledge learned by such work is the
codebase plus email discussions of it (plus what developers carry in
their heads).
We are about to see the emergence of companies licensing that publicly
funded software and selling modified versions of such software as
proprietary products. There will eventually be hundreds or thousands of
paid automotive software engineers working on such software no matter
how it is funded, because there will be great value in having such
self-driving vehicles given the result of America's horrendous urban
planning policies leaving the car as generally the most efficient means
of transport in the suburb. The question is, will the results of the
work be open for inspection and contribution by the public? Essentially,
will those engineers and their employers be "owners" of the software, or
will they instead be "stewards" of a larger free and open community
development process?
Open source software is typically eventually of much higher quality
http://www.fsf.org/software/reliability.html
and reliability because more eyes look over the code for problems and
more voices contribute to adding innovative solutions. About 35,000
Americans are killed every year in driving fatalities, and hundreds of
thousands more are seriously injured. Should the software that keeps
people safe on roads, and which has already been created primarily with
public funds, not also be kept under continuous public scrutiny?
Without concerted action, such software will likely be kept proprietary
because that will be more profitable sooner to the people who get in
early, and will fit into conventional expectations of business as usual.
It will likely end up being available for inspection and testing at best
to a few government employees under non-disclosure agreements. We are
talking about an entire publicly funded infrastructure about to
disappear from the public radar screen. There is something deeply wrong
here.
And while it is true many planes like the 757 can fly themselves already
for most of their journey, and their software is probably mostly
proprietary, the software involved in driving is potentially far more
complex as it requires visual recognition of cues in a more complex
environment full of many more unpredictable agents operating on much
faster timescales. Also, automotive intelligence will touch all of our
lives on a daily basis, where as aircraft intelligence can be generally
avoided in daily life.
Decisions on how this public intellectual property related to automotive
intelligence will be handled will affect the health and safety of every
American and later everyone in any developed country. Either way, the
automotive software engineers and their employers will do well
financially (for example, one might still buy a Volvo because their
software engineers are better and they do more thorough testing of
configurations). But which way will the public be better off:
* totally dependent on proprietary intelligences under the hoods of
their cars which they have no way of understanding, or instead
* wit
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Yes, I'm one of those that view my vehicle as mostly transportation from spot A to B. No, I don't think they'll be FORCING you into one. On the other hand, given that you mentioned motorcycle riding - you do realize that a robocar is more likely to spot and avoid you than a random cell-phone talking makup applying soccer mom in a SUV, right?
If it wasn't for the pain of trying to arrange a trip on the bus and the extra time involved, I'd rather just read a book on the way to the mall or work or wherever.
I don't read AC A human right
"You're right, our time is much better spent on pedantic jackassery."
He has a point though. I'm sick of people trying to "save the world". Furthermore, I'm sick of them trying to coax me into their movement. I can't recall the author, and I'm paraphrasing here, but I once read a quote that said something like "Beware those that are crusading to save the world; it's almost always a pretext to rule it".
These people want to tell us what to drive, where to live, how to live, what to wear, and what to eat. These are the same busybodies that are trying to regulate everything from the amount of fat in your foods to the mix of ethanol at your gas stations. Tyrants don't always conquer you with armored divisions. Sometimes they use activist groups and government bureaucrats and just regulate you into submission.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
He references the NHTSA's study, The Economic Impact of Motor Vehicle Crashes for the cost being $230 Billion.
"...accidents cause more than death and injury. They also clog roads, damage vehicles and require extensive emergency response systems. The NHTSA has attempted to quantify the total cost of accidents, and while the numbers are subject to debate. In The Economic Impact of Motor Vehicle Crashes, they cite $230 billion per year, or about 2.3% of the GDP. Other estimates range as high as 4% of the GDP.
"...calculations have also been done to work this figure out as a cost per mile driven, as we do for depreciation and fuel. Estimates I have seen range from 10 cents/mile (using above $230B number) to as high as 30 cents. Numbers for motorcycles go as high as 50 cents/mile. For those who accept higher numbers like 20 cents, this is more expensive than the gasoline (which is 17 cents/mile in a 25mpg car) and in most cases more than the depreciation, which is to say more than the cost of the car itself."
The article you give says the NHTSA thinks the number might be higher than $230B today. And even the AAA analysis has the total cost of accidents at $1050 per person--no small change--and the cost of traffic congestion at $430.
I spend about $.16 per mile for gasoline, so the cost of accidents is higher than gasoline or depreciation for me.
The planet does not need saving. Most non born-agains accept that it has been around for billions of years and regardless of our activities, will be around for billions more. The present characteristics hospitable to current lifeforms ( including humankind ) need to be maintained. Lack of focus and comprehension of the issues are not encouraging for the future. Population size and its outstripping of the planet's resources is just as important a factor as climate control. At the moment, it seems that the necessary reduction may only be achieved by apocalyptical conditions. Consider the great anguish caused by the Chinese one child policy. As for resources, why is there no talk of the tocomac.
leather seats come from cows, cows cause global warming. you're not part of the solution at all, you stupid cunt bitch.
You're right, we should make leather from AC's like you instead.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
I jaywalk constantly to and from work and quite frequently have to walk through stopped traffic. Can I really trust a robocar to not run me over?? Most of the time you make eye contact with the driver and they will let you through the small space between them and the car stopped in front.
This idea seems better to me:
http://blog.cleveland.com/business/2008/07/monomobile_inventors_promote_a.html
It uses a monorail system to power electric cars at 100 mph.
Some very cool driverless tech advances close to production here: http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/transportation/4272589.html
http://www.multivax.com/last_question.html
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