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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."
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.
Well, there is the small matter of making the robocars, but I guess it's not the job of a "futurist" to do that. Also, he seems to have jumbled a bunch of different enormous breakthroughs (limitless, cheap, clean energy; enormously powerful and reliable AI; efficient solution of enormous traveling salesman problems) into a single obsession. It's not like robocars per se somehow eliminate dependence on oil.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
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."
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.
Yes, I'm a subscriber and a fast reader (but not a "he"). It's nice to be able to RTFA and still be an early commenter sometimes.
Caveat Utilitor
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.
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.
> you get all the freedom to stop and travel where you want to.
> The question isn't why Americans love cars, the question is why Europe doesn't.
Because in Europe the public transport infrastructure is much better, and the cities are denser. You can walk almost anywhere, and it is easy to take a bus or train to go further. It's much more convenient than worrying about parking.
The question isn't why Americans love cars, the question is why Europe doesn't.
Its quite an assumption to think that Europeans don't love their cars. That is not true.
They just don't tend to like to commute in them. European cities are congested places; bicycles are often a faster means of travel within a city.
I would much rather take a 20 minute ride on busses and fast trains rather than an hour commute driving through traffic.
I had lived in Berlin for a while. When you are downtown, you are never further than 200 meters from a subway or fast train stop. The rest of the city was covered by extensive bus routes, even at night. Cars were for longer trips, and most longer trips could be taken by train or bus in any case.
Look at Manhattan. The subway and bus systems completely blanket the city and the subways run all night. You have more freedom if you don't bring a car and have to seek out parking (which may be many blocks from your destination).
You are lying to your students.
The social and practical issues haven't even been looked at, much less solved.
OTOH, I don't really expect any practicality from a professor.
I ahve no doubt it will happen, but we are generations away. My son(now 10) might start to see real world use from these. If people like them, you still ahve another generation, at best, before they gin to approach critical mass. This is do to the fact that people like their freedom when driving, and/or already own cars.
Also, driving is fun.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
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.
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
(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.
You've got to be kidding. Unless you dose up all these travelers with Ambien, many of them are going to sleep very poorly. Even the best luxury cars aren't noise-free and vibration-free enough to provide a decent level of comfort rivaling a standard bed in a quiet room. Coming close is going to require a really massive vehicle, which even with electric drive would require a lot of energy to move around.
(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.
Even this sounds pretty silly. While robocars would certainly make sense in suburban areas, there are lots of high-density cities (esp in Europe) where subways make more sense. Even with automated control, cars simply consume too much space to efficiently move millions of people around quickly, as subways do every day.
Finally, when do you really think these automated vehicles will ever be viable? We still don't have computers that don't crash frequently, or have various other software problems. ATMs with blue screens are a common occurrence. One computer glitch in a robocar could cause many fatalities. Even though human error certainly causes problems, you're not going to get people to accept and trust robocars until computers and software have a better reputation for reliability, and I'm guessing that that won't happen until Microsoft has been out of business for at least a century.
Unless Aubrey de Grey figures out how to stop aging, I don't expect to see anything like this in my lifetime, no matter how technically possible it may be.
that's great, but we've got lots of things that need to be done. what is the cost/benefit ratio of this project? it seems like a huge amount of effort for not much benefit. why not just let the technology proceed at its own pace? you might even get a better result.
Well, there's one major unaddressed concern. Two, really. No, three. Four? Where to begin....
The first is that a lot of people use a car not just as a means of getting somewhere, but as a place to store stuff when they get there. For example, if I take a day trip somewhere (fairly common), I don't necessarily have any place wherever I'm going to store all the stuff I might need. Heaven help me if I'm going to a musical gig with two or three instruments, a clothing change, binders full of music, etc. Most of that stuff stays in the car unless and until I need it. That simply isn't practical with non-personal vehicles. This was mentioned briefly, but dismissed with the suggestion of a portable "locker". I can't think of any situation I've been in where this would be sufficient other than commuting to work.... It certainly wouldn't work on the beach. Let's say I'm going to the beach, followed by going to someone's house. I might want to have a laptop with me at the house but not at the beach. I sure as heck wouldn't want to store it in a portable locker that someone could walk off with while I took a walk on the beach, nor is carrying it with me particularly practical. These problems happen almost constantly, at least in my life.
If you go shopping for groceries at two different stores, it would be a huge waste of time and energy if you had to go home and drop off the grocery shopping, call a robotic cab to pick you up again, and go to the second store, but the prospect of hauling that merchandise into a second store is equally unacceptable. The "DeliverBot" idea is cute, but highly impractical. For one thing, the stores will immediately do what they do best: charge you a fee for the cost of the delivery and packing on top of the cost of your food. This means everybody pays more for everything. Worse, for smaller purchases, that would end up being a significant percentage of your total bill. Even a $5 delivery charge is huge if all you needed was a $4.00 carton of half-and-half.
Even if you could get around that problem, you still have the issue of it arriving, finding out that it isn't what you ordered, and having to send it back, plus the extra latency of having to go out, shop, then wait for somebody to pack it somewhere and deliver it to you. That might work for large purchases, but it reduces spec buying to absolutely zero, so stores will fight it with every fiber of their being and will en masse refuse to participate in such a program in any useful way, so the result would be that such services would have to be run by third parties who would have to charge money for the service. Because people generally aren't willing to spend even a couple of bucks for delivery, such a service would almost inevitably die just like countless grocery delivery services before it.
The notion that people adapt to not having cars is about like saying that people adapt to not having feet. Yeah, sure, but that doesn't mean I'm interested in having surgery to remove mine unless it would save my life. It would be possible to adapt, but every instance of that adaptation involves having to either build lots of additional facilities and pay extra money to use them (e.g. public lockers at the beach) or go a significant extra distance (driving back to your hotel/home/office) for no good reason. The former is expensive. The latter increases driving, which in part negates the environmental improvement these were designed to solve.
The second is that people tend to want to personalize their automobiles for comfort, particularly on long vacations. Whether it's a vibrating seat or a DVD player for the kids or whatever. Either all of those sorts of comforts have to be built in or you'll have to have a way of specifying that you require those, at which point you've greatly increased the complexity of fleet management.
Third, an eight hour road trip will, in fact, still require stopping to fill up at least once, and if the suggestion is changing automobiles, I suspect the author hasn't eve
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Not much benefit? Saving a million lives a year, globally? Saving 50 billion hours of human time every year in the USA? Cutting U.S. transportation energy needs in half? Reducing dependence on foreign oil and halting middle east imports with the wars that causes?
Just what is your idea of a project with a lot of benefit?
Has it been over a year since you last donated to the Electronic Frontier Foundation
You will find many of your issues addressed in the article. In fact, I have a large section on the question of how people like to store stuff in their cars, as I am one of those people. At the same time, in cities like NYC, where nobody owns cars, people seem to have managed to get past this "insurmountable" problem.
Suggest you read the article for more on your concerns. If you wish to shop personally, by the way, you would load the deliverbot, not the store. Deliverbots should cost around 5 cents/mile, I predict, for small one suitable for typical cargo.
People who want to own cars will still own cars, but they can own different cars, and hire specialized cars for specialized trips.
The sleeper car does not need to refuel, if it's going slow. My example is a trip to Lake Tahoe that's 4 hours at 75mph but 7 hours at 40mph. Cars actually get *better* MPG at slower speeds, so it would have to refuel *less* often.
As for renting durable goods. It costs more because there is a large overhead in renting today. Picture a world where delivery is quick and cheap, and thus the durable goods are also rented a far larger percentage of their time. This is a side-issue, but I think the potential here is very large for much cheaper rental, always beating the cost of owning something you use 2 hours/month.
I am adding a section to the deliverbot concept about a room for the deliverbot. That's where the bed arrives, and stays if you like. I'm also wondering if we don't see better in-house robotic tech for moving furniture but I don't want to depend on it. Guest beds are worth paying extra for (to cover disinfect, inspection and work of moving in a house) because the real cost of a permanent guest bed is not the cost of the bed -- it's the space in the house an infrequent guest room takes.
But I agree the deliverbot/renting speculation is a sideline to the real message of the article, so tell me what else you don't think is credible there.
Has it been over a year since you last donated to the Electronic Frontier Foundation
So you're saying that in 50 years (two generations), autonomous vehicles won't be possible? You are seriously underestimating what will be accomplished in that time frame. I think we'll start seeing prototypes on the road within 20 years at the outside. About 10% of the U.S. auto fleet is replaced every year, so yes, add 30 more years and practically every car on the road will be autonomous. Everything else will be clunkers and antiques.
And please note, no one will be taking away your freedom to drive when you want, where you want. The only difference is that you won't need to be behind the wheel.
Here we get to the crux of your argument. You enjoy driving, and can't imagine anyone taking away something that represents maturity and independence to you. You're still thinking like a teenager. Clearly you're not sitting in rush hour traffic an hour every day. Driving is pure drudgery 95% of the time for most people. I think the overwhelming majority of drivers will embrace robocars. They may occasionally choose to take manual control for a spin in the open country, but most of the time they'll be perfectly content to let the computer handle the grunt work.
you're making a huge assumption about how many lives you'll save. fact is, they will kill people. they only question is, "what kill rate are we willing to accept?"
and this also relates back to my prior comment, we have other things that need to be done, other problems we should solve. right now, AIDS is the number one killer of black women. maybe we should devote more resources to that. or cancer. even the obesity and diabetes epidemic seems like a bigger problem to me at the moment. it's not that i think robocars are necessarily a bad idea, i'm just not convinced they're worth the expense.
It seems several of your concerns revolve around what you perceive as lack of privately owned cars, but that is not actually a premise of the essays. He specifies that some people will still maintain personal vehicles, though for many doing so will no longer make economic sense. Similarly, your complaint of refueling on longer trips assumes there will be no more fuel-powered vehicles, but that assumption is not made in the essays either. If you read the whole thing (including the "stories" section), I think you'll find he's made a compelling case.
Oh, and also your concern about store hopping -- just reserve the car until the trip is concluded, nothing I read would stop you doing that. Same for gigs, beach outings, etc.
The only really big legitimate objections I can see many people having are that
(1) the scenario he envisions would probably result in privately owned vehicles dedicated only to their owners' convenience becoming quite a bit more expensive than they are now (though I would actually call that a good thing, as IMO it should be more expensive to be wasteful), and
(2) individual privacy could be affected. But then really, personal privacy is quickly becoming a thing of the past anyway, and may well be unavoidable. But that's a whole other can of worms...
Caveat Utilitor
I share your concerns, but I would argue that those are all good reasons to become more politically active, not to hold us back from achieving better use of technology. The kind of government we have allowed to develop is the problem here, after all. And they are already abusing our current technology. Does that mean we should all become Amish?
Caveat Utilitor
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.
How exactly does this solve our dependence on coal power plants?
Stuff.
The notion that people adapt to not having cars is about like saying that people adapt to not having feet.
Lots of people in large cities don't have cars. They cope far better than you think, and miss it less than you would expect.
The second is that people tend to want to personalize their automobiles for comfort...
Really? Have you been on a bus, train, subway, ferry, cruise ship, taxi cab, or airplane? Have you rented a car before?
If people don't own it, they don't tend to personalize them. People personalize their cars because they own them, not because they have an innate need to personalize the things they travel in. The kids can bring a portable DVD player.
While I'm pointing out flaws in the articles, I'd like to point out a flaw in the suggestion of renting infrequently used durable goods: it generally costs more... a lot more. We did the math for a power washer and concluded that buying a low-end power washer would pay for itself in three or four years worth of rentals even if I only used it once a year. Why? Simple.
You apparently have a lot more space than I do, and space is part of the equation. If I bought a pressure washer, a tile saw, a large ladder, car ramps, and a other large durable goods that I have only occasional need for I would have have to rent an additional storage locker, and that would almost immediately nullify the economics of owning them.
Indeed, a car itself is subject to this space cost. In a large city, a parking spot adds significantly enough to the cost of maining a vehicle that it can push the economics in favor of renting a vehicle when you actually need one.
I know people paying $2500/year for a parking spot. Plus $2500/year for insurance. Plus maintenance. $6000+ per year will cover a lot more rentals, couriers, and delivery trucks than you might think. Sure public transit has a cost too, but that's less than they would be paying for gas... and that was at last years prices.
Yes, a great deal less, and almost all private money. That's because we already replace all the cars with amazing rapidity. The average car is owned 5 years I think.
I can't predict how much money it will take for the research (all earned back in sales though) but look at what's been done for paltry $1M and $2M prizes.
The effective cost of this is so close to zero you can't see it on the scale of national budgets. Negative really, considering the $230 billion dollar annual cost of accidents in the USA according to the NTSB.
Has it been over a year since you last donated to the Electronic Frontier Foundation
Five years. Say, $10,000 each. There are about 250,000,000 cars in the USA, so replace 50,000,000 per year. That's $500 billion per year.
Not counting infrastructure, development cost, replacement cost of the whiz-bang robocars, etc.
Assuming we can build them for $10,000 and still meet all those legal requirements. Or were you assuming these things weren't going to be required to meet Federal Safety Requirements?
Thing is, we're already paying for all those things. New cars, research, infrastructure, replacement costs etc; those costs all apply to our current system too.
TFA is talking about reducing those costs through increased efficiency (and less accidents), not eliminating them altogether.
And assuming that people will buy them, if you make them available. That's a pretty big assumption.
The more costs like petrol go up, the more attractive a safe, ultralight electric gets. There's millions of people who commute daily or who take taxis daily who would already appreciate a lower-cost alternative.
the average five year old car is just going to be traded
I don't think he claimed all cars would be replaced in 5 years, or indeed ever. That was simply an indicator of how often the average car is upgraded.
Oh, and how had you planned on handling the first class-action lawsuit against the makers of these cars after the first 250 car pileup?
Same way 250 car pileups are handled now - insurance.
Liability fears are certainly a short-term obstacle, and insurance premiums will reflect that, but I don't think anyone doubts that robo-cars can and eventually will be significantly safer than the average fallible/inattentive/elderly/drunk human driver - and insurance premiums will reflect that too.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
No, you mean you don't see computers that don't crash frequently, because people prefer cutting-edge to stable, for the machines they actually have to deal with. How the hell do you think air travel works without thousands of fatalities a day?
# cat
Damn, my RAM is full of llamas.
It's all happened before. Faulty brakes, exploding fuel tanks, engines unexpectedly bursting into flames - car manufacturers have always had to deal with the consequences of design flaws, and so have drivers. The only solution is lots of careful testing. The consumer pays for it all in the end, of course.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?