Researchers Test Drive Bus With Automated Steering

An anonymous reader tips us to news that researchers at University of California, Berkeley, have successfully test driven a 60-foot bus that controlled its own steering. Sensors on the bus detected magnets that had been embedded in a San Leandro road, and it was able to reach stops within one centimeter of its desired position. Acceleration and braking during the test were controlled by a human operator, but the system is capable of handling those as well, and has done so on test courses. "... sensors mounted under the bus measured the magnetic fields created from the roadway magnets, which were placed beneath the pavement surface 1 meter apart along the center of the lane. The information was translated into the bus's lateral and longitudinal position by an on-board computer, which then directed the vehicle to move accordingly. For a vehicle traveling 60 miles per hour, data from 27 meters (88 feet) of roadway can be read and processed in 1 second. Zhang added that the system is robust enough to withstand a wide range of operating conditions, including rain or snow, a significant improvement to other vehicle guidance systems based upon optics."

Comments

If "auto-steering" becomes popular...

[nathan.fulton]

who gets sued in the event of a crash?

trams!

[stranger_to_himself]

The 19th century called....they want their trams back.

Re:trams!

[jonbryce]

Try the Docklands Light Railway then.

They don't have drivers. They have "train captains" who can hit the emergency stop button if necessary, close the doors when everyone is on/off, and the rest of the time walk up and down checking tickets.

I think anything that drives where there is other traffic is going to have to have a driver, so like the grandparent poster, I don't see what the advantage of this is over a tramway.

Sabotage?

[maeka]

But can it survive intentional sabotage?
Placing magnets on the surface of the pavement would not be hard to do.

Re:Sabotage?

[Graff]

what about other sources of mangentic interference (say the motor of an electric vehicle, etc.)?

This is no different than the head of a hard drive traveling over the disk surface. The magnets can be in a coded pattern that is encrypted a certain way that would be robust enough to overcome possible interference, whether accidental or intentional.

Yes, there are always risks of sabotage or an accident but this is no different than the risks of our current roadways. What's to stop someone from spreading caltrops across the road and causing a massive accident? How about the accidental interference of an oil spill or a bridge support giving way?

As with everything, you try to build redundancy and robustness into the system and limit the risks. Just because a system has the possibility of failing doesn't mean the idea is worthless.

Re:Sabotage?

[maeka]

This is no different than the head of a hard drive traveling over the disk surface. The magnets can be in a coded pattern that is encrypted a certain way that would be robust enough to overcome possible interference, whether accidental or intentional.

With a bit-per-meter you simply do not have enough data density to do any sort of robust encryption.

Yes, there are always risks of sabotage or an accident but this is no different than the risks of our current roadways. What's to stop someone from spreading caltrops across the road and causing a massive accident? How about the accidental interference of an oil spill or a bridge support giving way?

1 - caltrops in pavement should not cause a massive accident. For evidence see police use of spike-strips to stop fleeing vehicles. Rarely do vehicles lose control under even the more catastrophic tire failure these hollow spikes cause as opposed to caltrops.
2 - Oil spills and bridge failures are not only more apparent than covert placement of magnets, they are also harder acts of sabotage to achieved w/o being caught.

But enough of the pedantic replies to your specifics, on your general claim that "this is no different than the risks of our current roadways" I will argue this is completely different than the risks of our current roadways.
Current roadway systems rely on human drivers. A human driver can react in a much more flexible manner than any automated drive system. Whereas it appears this system would be easy to fake with the high tech equivalent of false road signs, no (few?) human would drive into a lake because a fake road sign told them to. Again, this is not just about new technologies creating security risks which previously didn't exist, but more so the new assumptions which frequently come with the adoption of said technologies creating newly viable attack vectors.

Re:Sabotage?

[TheLink]

Yeah it does sound unsafe to me.

I've been thinking how about "just don't do that then"?

After all, placing stuff on railway tracks can derail a train and kill people. Doesn't even have to be anything fancy.

Someone could just as easily pour motor oil on a dangerous bend and get people killed.

As a species we really have to start growing up.

If technology continues improving, the amount of power the average individual is able to wield is likely to increase dramatically.

So the alternatives are grow up, or lose freedoms (not good), or experience "some random idiot thinks it's funny to kill everybody" (also not good).

The odds are we're doomed, but who knows we might get lucky.

Re:Sabotage?

[CastrTroy]

Why would it simply supplement a driver? If you still have to pay some guy $60,000 a year to sit in the bus, you might as well save the money on the magnetic navigation, and just have the guy drive the bus. Using a system like this only makes sense (and cents) if you can actually remove the driver from the bus. Since you'll always need somebody on the bus (for the foreseeable future), to ensure fares are paid, and to answer the questions of riders on which route to take, and about why the guy on the back of the bus has his pet pig on the bus, and to tell the able bodied people to get out of the priority seating on the bus so the guy with the wheelchair can get on the bus, you aren't going to get much advantage from a system like this.

Re:Sabotage?

[Carrot007]

>no (few?) human would drive into a lake because a fake road sign told them to.

Cue links to stories detailing the idiocy of people using sat nav...

Robobus vs. stupid drivers

[rah1420]

I would've liked to have been on a Robobus back in July. An idiot driver in an SUV cut our bus off, and the driver firewalled the brake to avoid hitting him. My 3 year old daughter planted her face in the fiberglass seat ahead of us, I was in a side-facing seat and almost went through the windshield and my wife got thrown into a stairwell.

My guess is that Robobus would've kept going right into the SUV. Would've served him right.

(No, he didn't stop and we didn't get the plate number. He took off into the night.)

Hey SUV driver; if you cut a bus off at 100th St. in Ocean City, MD on August 2nd, you're a bastard.

Seen it, driven it, didnt bother with the t-shirt

[TheLuggage]

wow, i'm almost impressed except we have those already for a while. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phileas_(public_transport) They were supposed to be driverless, but dutch laws reuires a driver to be behind the wheel of a vehicle... Don't know where they got that idea ;-)

1995 Called... San Diego Anyone?

[TheNetAvenger]

1995 Called... San Diego Anyone?

The Carpool lanes in San Diego I15 had magnets put in them over 10 years ago and fully autonomous GM cars navigated the roads effortlessly.

This was almost 15 freaking yeats ago...

Anyone so NOT impressed by this?

Re:1995 Called... San Diego Anyone?

[pvera]

Yup, and as early as 2002 Siemens was demonstrating a bus in Arlington, Virginia that uses the same principle. It was basically a track-less tram with a driver override. The vehicle (which btw, was amazing) drove by itself and auto-detected its stops, red lights, hazards, but it had a driver. If the driver touched the controls it would override the automatic operationg.

Re:traffic

[SEWilco]

Ahem... any bus without any driver, and only the intelligence of a brick on the accelerator, is able to travel through traffic. It's generally better if it goes around the traffic.

Re:Robustness?

[JustinOpinion]

It's interesting that new technology is always held to a higher standard than established technology.

We trust trains even though someone could put some rubble on the tracks. We trust human drivers even though someone could shine a laser pointer into their eyes. We trust bikes even though someone could string up a tripwire. We trust buffet restaurants even though someone could put crushed glass into the food.

Newsflash: if someone wants to sabotage a piece of infrastructure, they'll find a way! Obviously autonomous driving vehicles need to be able to continue functioning despite normal interference (weather, traffic accidents, etc.), and even some forms of sabotage. But ultimately it will be possible for someone to mess with the system. Just as it is with everything else.

Tossing a bag of magnetic marbles in front of robo-busses is no different than dropping bricks on cars from an overpass: the main deterrent is that most people are not sadistic assholes trying to kill other people.

Dunno. Who gets sued today when...

[jeffb (2.718)]

...a car with anti-lock brakes still rear-ends someone?

"Cars that drive themselves" won't arrive as a new option in model year 20XX. They'll encroach bit by bit, following in the footsteps of automatic spark advance, electric starters, power steering, power brakes, automatic transmission, cruise control, electronic fuel injection, anti-lock brakes, traction control, collision avoidance, self-parking...

When you finally do get a car that can "drive itself", you'll probably be too busy talking on your cell phone and using your extended navigation/information center to notice.