Helicopter Crashes While Filming Autonomous Audi

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Helicopter Crashes While Filming Autonomous Audi

Posted by timothy on Sunday September 19, 2010 @01:20AM from the send-robot-ambulances dept.

telomerewhythere writes "A helicopter commissioned by Audi to film its autonomous Audi TT climbing Pikes Peak crashed early this morning. Four people on board were hurt, the pilot seriously. It's a surreal story — a manned vehicle crashes while the one climbing a mountain driven only by computers and sensors carries on. Here's more on the autonomous Audi, a project undertaken with the help of Stanford University."

218 comments

So the weak point in the system is...... by scosco62 · 2010-09-19 01:23 · Score: 3, Funny

Frighteningly obvious........
1. Re:So the weak point in the system is...... by nikomo · 2010-09-19 01:30 · Score: 1
  
  The fuel lines?
2. Re:So the weak point in the system is...... by DarkKnightRadick · 2010-09-19 01:49 · Score: 1
  
  I thought it was unpredictable winds around a mountain.
  
  --
  "There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death." Proverbs 16:25 (NKJV)
3. Re:So the weak point in the system is...... by nametaken · 2010-09-19 02:02 · Score: 1
  
  Yeah, helicopters. Turns out they're complicated things to keep in the air. :)
  http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=10/09/11/2150229
4. Re:So the weak point in the system is...... by drinkypoo · 2010-09-19 03:08 · Score: 1
  
  Kind of makes me wonder if anyone is working on manned quadrocopters. Seems like they would be simpler to keep up, at a cost in footprint.
  
  --
  "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
5. Re:So the weak point in the system is...... by Anonymous Coward · 2010-09-19 03:21 · Score: 1, Interesting
  
  Actually, they should do away with the people, just use a quadrocopter with a proper HD camera, like the Cineflex V14HD for filming and a few more, plus maybe a lidar or two for the remote "pilot." That would significantly reduce the weight, size and cost of the whole system.
6. Re:So the weak point in the system is...... by Anonymous Coward · 2010-09-19 03:33 · Score: 0
  
  Yea, more moving parts will make it safer... LOL
7. Re:So the weak point in the system is...... by magarity · 2010-09-19 03:38 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  I thought it was unpredictable winds around a mountain
  
  While the problem is related to air, it is not the movement of air but rather the lack of it. Pike's Peak tops out over 14,000 feet and the thin air makes a helicopter's responses much slower than at lower levels. If the pilot is having to track the moving car on the ground then his attention was divided, making the situation even more dangerous, so it's easy to understand how a crash could occur.
8. Re:So the weak point in the system is...... by ceiling9 · 2010-09-19 03:42 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  I think the reason is that on a small scale, it is possible to control a quadcopter or quadrotor by changing the relative speed of the rotors, which is much simpler because there is no cyclic pitch, or swashplate mechanism, but this technique doesn't scale well. On a man-sized quadrotor, it would be difficult to accelerate and decelerate the rotors fast enough to have agile control, and so the use of cyclic pitch becomes the better method to control thrust. If you are using cyclic pitch, then it becomes simpler to have one (or 2) rotors instead of 4. Also, when a rotor tilts, it generates large gyroscopic forces. On a small model, these are small compared to the strength of the rotors, but on a man-sized vehicle, the rotors need to be able to "flap" in order to reduce stress on the blades, which again is simpler if you only have to deal with one rotor.
9. Re:So the weak point in the system is...... by GNUALMAFUERTE · 2010-09-19 05:41 · Score: 1
  
  Oh, the Irony.
  
  --
  WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
10. Re:So the weak point in the system is...... by Sulphur · 2010-09-19 05:55 · Score: 2, Interesting
  
  If one has four rotors, wouldn't he use collective pitch on the individual rotors, rather than cyclic pitch or rpm change?
11. Re:So the weak point in the system is...... by daveime · 2010-09-19 06:27 · Score: 1
  
  Yes, that's why car suspensions are made of a solid piece of steel, as opposed to swingarms, hydraulics, springs, pins etc. etc.
  Solid lumps of stuff are always "safer". *facepalm*
12. Re:So the weak point in the system is...... by drinkypoo · 2010-09-19 07:37 · Score: 1
  
  On the other hand, four rotors each have less flex than one big rotor, and you could eliminate the cyclic but implement pitch alone instead of having to vary the speed of the rotors. It seems like it would STILL be more stable and indeed more agile.
  
  --
  "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
13. Re:So the weak point in the system is...... by Anonymous Coward · 2010-09-19 11:30 · Score: 0
  
  Changing the pich on the blade involves moving parts, one of the reasons a helcopter hub is soooo expensive, but a gyrocoper isn't. Most of the quadracopers use brushless electric motors making it easy to accurately control their speed, and with onboard gyros and a stabilisation control program doing most of the thinking, they become very steady vertical takeoff flying platforms. I dont think it will be long before we see these as manned platforms, the power to weight just has to be good enough - see Martin Jetpacks for example, though they are still using a 200HP gas engine to drive their fans, and use small fins in the downdraught to stablilise the thing in flight.
14. Re:So the weak point in the system is...... by Anonymous Coward · 2010-09-20 01:25 · Score: 0
  
  Problem is that footprint is very important - it is why many helicopters have folding-rotor variants. (Especially naval helos.)
  Also, big footprint makes SAR missions like the one impossible - http://www.navy.mil/search/display.asp?story_id=55440 (There's a video on CNN somewhere but it's hard to find, CNN has one of those annoying "automatically moves on to next story" setups that makes sharing videos/finding them later hard.)
15. Re:So the weak point in the system is...... by Anonymous Coward · 2010-09-20 02:06 · Score: 0
  
  I don't get the angle? How is comparing the complexity of a machine like a helicopter, which is several orders of magnitude more complex than any autonomous car, surreal?
  Here's the answer - its not.
  Hell, if it was a turbine helicopter, and it probably was, the turbine is several orders of magnitude more complex than the autonomous car.
Surreal? by Karganeth · 2010-09-19 01:30 · Score: 4, Insightful

Since when is a helicopter crash surreal?
1. Re:Surreal? by Anonymous Coward · 2010-09-19 01:39 · Score: 0
  
  Since when is a helicopter crash surreal?
  When it happens in the matrix
2. Re:Surreal? by Anonymous Coward · 2010-09-19 01:40 · Score: 0
  
  Since when is a helicopter crash surreal?
  
  It's more ironic than surreal, but the part that makes it either is spelled out in the words immediately following the dash (where you apparently stopped reading).
3. Re:Surreal? by gEvil+(beta) · 2010-09-19 01:43 · Score: 2, Funny
  
  Since when is a helicopter crash surreal?
  
  The helicopter crash itself isn't surreal -- the story is ("It's a surreal story...").
  
  --
  This guy's the limit!
4. Re:Surreal? by sakdoctor · 2010-09-19 01:45 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  Ceci n'est pas un helicoptere
5. Re:Surreal? by Anonymous Coward · 2010-09-19 02:41 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  Correction: Un hélicoptère
6. Re:Surreal? by CrashandDie · 2010-09-19 02:42 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  Except it isn't. Having the riot police interview an elephant based on what the spoon told them with regards to the crash of a helicopter that decided to kill itself during a full moon afternoon because its turbo-girlfriend was dry humping a humvee; now that would be surreal.
  This is just a story about a helicopter crash with a few coincidences. Absolutely nothing surreal.
7. Re:Surreal? by Schemat1c · 2010-09-19 03:18 · Score: 1
  
  Since when is a helicopter crash surreal?
  You told me it was surreal!
  ...It was a pun.
  A PUN?!?
  No, no...not a pun...What's that thing that spells the same backwards as forwards?
  A palindrome...?
  Yeah, that's it!
  
  --
  
  "Nobody knows the age of the human race, but everybody agrees that it is old enough to know better." - Unknown
8. Re:Surreal? by Provocateur · 2010-09-19 03:19 · Score: 1
  
  Hey now, it'surreal the pilot was seriously injured.
  
  --
  WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
9. Re:Surreal? by Canazza · 2010-09-19 04:42 · Score: 1
  
  funnilly enough it's almost ironic
  
  --
  It pays to be obvious, especially if you have a reputation for being subtle.
10. Re:Surreal? by Anonymous Coward · 2010-09-19 05:34 · Score: 0
  
  The basic assumption is that the car is the one that is likely to crash. It's untested, and therefore it's likely that it will just crash. The helicopter, on the other hand... Helicopter crashes might be common, BUT not as common as likely. Otherwise people wouldn't be using them, and they would be banned.
  So, yeah, having a helicopter in this case crash like that is unlikely, unexpected and quite ironic. I think that situations like this are uncommon enough to be considered surreal if they happen to you. ;)
11. Re:Surreal? by Anonymous Coward · 2010-09-19 05:58 · Score: 0
  
  "No, no...not a pun...What's that thing that spells the same backwards as forwards?
  A palindrome...?
  Yeah, that's it!"
  Emordnilap? That's not the same.
12. Re:Surreal? by daveime · 2010-09-19 06:31 · Score: 1
  
  Meanwhile, good AC comments get zero.
  You got -1, surely meaning yours was a bad AC comment. How ironic.
13. Re:Surreal? by MobileTatsu-NJG · 2010-09-19 06:49 · Score: 1
  
  Since when is a helicopter crash surreal?
  When it's placed in a context where the one expected to succeed fails and the one expected to fail succeeds?
  The summary was very short, why didn't you read it?
  
  --
  
  "I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
14. Re:Surreal? by Alan+R+Light · 2010-09-19 11:19 · Score: 1
  
  Since a real helicopter flight hired for a flight scene in a movie became a real crash that happened to be filmed and was worked into the movie as a scene of a crash caused by tomatoes.
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRDJ9oyjcMc
  Is that surreal enough for you?
  This latest crash is also pretty surreal - at least for those of us who grew up in an era when cars didn't drive themselves.
15. Re:Surreal? by Hognoxious · 2010-09-22 09:24 · Score: 1
  
  You're both correct: it isn't either - at least not now.
  
  --
  Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Too soon by CarpetShark · 2010-09-19 01:32 · Score: 2, Funny

Damnit, I told Audi not to fit Kitt's microlock device before the car was tested against the Three Laws.
1. Re:Too soon by numbski · 2010-09-19 01:38 · Score: 1
  
  So this thing will not only drive as stupidly as every other luxury car I see on the road (cutting people off wantanly in traffic, apparently busted turn signals, staying in lanes that end until the very last moment to cut in front of traffic, etc), but now it will also have Super Pursuit Mode? Who's genius idea was this, anyway?
  
  --
  Karma: Chameleon (mostly due to the fact that you come and go).
2. Re:Too soon by neumayr · 2010-09-19 02:03 · Score: 1
  
  staying in lanes that end until the very last moment to cut in front of traffic?
  That may seem like a pretty antisocial thing to do, but if everyone were doing it it would make traffic much more orderly. Where I live, it's actually required by law...
  
  --
  Truth arises more readily from error than from confusion. -Francis Bacon
3. Re:Too soon by Low+Ranked+Craig · 2010-09-19 02:06 · Score: 0, Flamebait
  
  Can't afford one either, huh?
  
  --
  I still cannot find the droids I am looking for...
4. Re:Too soon by mpeskett · 2010-09-19 02:41 · Score: 1
  
  Where I live, it's actually required by law...
  Where is that? It's a sensible policy... the most efficient way of using two lanes is to use both lanes equally, and merge alternately at the point where one lane ends, rather than mostly all queueing up in one lane and having people merge sporadically all up and down the length of it.
  But of course if some people are already queuing, it does seem a tad unfair to blast past them in the other lane, then have to force your way in at the end of it. It only really works if everyone's using both lanes.
5. Re:Too soon by Anonymous Coward · 2010-09-19 02:47 · Score: 0
  
  That depends on the amount of traffic. As long as the part with the reduced number of lanes is not a bottleneck, it is more efficient to merge early, because then you can do it at speed. Merging at the last moment usually requires slowing down significantly and that creates a choke point: reduced number of lanes and slow moving vehicles. Conclusion: Merge late in a traffic jam, merge early if there is no traffic jam.
6. Re:Too soon by Anonymous Coward · 2010-09-19 02:57 · Score: 0
  
  Where do you live? Montana?
  
  If you stop and think for one second, you will realize the obvious. When the continuing lanes are at capacity, and some jackoff cuts in at the very end, the people in the continuing lanes have to put on their brakes which slows everything down. You get a cascading effect which slows ALL traffic down. It's really nice when some driver wants to be all "friendly" and slows down everyone behind him and lets everyone in the jackoff lane. This is what creates congestion in urban areas. I suggest that you go visit one. And by the way, one should obviously NOT merge at the last moment lest he create a safety hazard where he may have to run off into the shoulder where there may be a broken-down vehicle or debris.
  
  When the roads are nowhere near capacity, things are different. This is coming from a guy who consistently drives 25+ over in Atlanta when it's not a rush hour.
7. Re:Too soon by hedwards · 2010-09-19 02:58 · Score: 1
  
  The problem tends to be the lack of agreement amongst drivers and the tendency of drivers to not let in drivers that they perceive as cheating.
8. Re:Too soon by ralfmuschall · 2010-09-19 03:34 · Score: 1
  
  As others already wrote, there is an efficient way to use all lanes and merge directly before the obstacle. But this is not the question - the antisocial personality of those people enables them to afford such luxury cars in the first place. Here in .de, seeing cars of certain brands (those with "builtin right-of-way") automatically means "CAUTION!". Googling for "Wiehltalbruecke" helps.
9. Re:Too soon by Anonymous Coward · 2010-09-19 03:37 · Score: 0
  
  You don't know how accurate your are. There was even a study that showed that it was even highly probable that where there was no traffic going home, and you happned to be the guy 'playing nice' that started the chain reaction, by the time you arrive home and watch TV, the traffic report will show the location where you were earlier, now all jammed up. When you mentioned cascading effect, it rang a bell, and they showed the brakelights lighting up; they used the same words to describe it.
10. Re:Too soon by neumayr · 2010-09-19 04:04 · Score: 1
  
  Okay, a tragic accident caused by some douchbag on drugs in someone else's expensive car.
  Not really indicative of luxury car owner's general behavior, though it's easy to think that way. After all, those expensive cars are made to be conspicuous, it's one of the main reasons the sell ("look at me, I can afford this car!1!"). So, when someone driving this car acts like an asshole, it's more likely people notice and remember it than when someone in his 20 year old Volvo acts up on the Autobahn.
  According to my experience, there is no correlation between the car someone drives and their behavior in traffic.
  
  --
  Truth arises more readily from error than from confusion. -Francis Bacon
11. Re:Too soon by neumayr · 2010-09-19 04:19 · Score: 1
  
  One driver being nice has that effect only when people don't use all lanes.
  When everyone changes the lane as soon as they find out their lane seizes to exist later on, and only a few people go along the other lane, there is no ordered traffic distribution.
  The way it's supposed to work (but doesn't, as it isn't obviously a good idea and people drive by their gut feeling rather by some formal education), is that everyone uses all lanes and take turns at the shoulder: http://data.motor-talk.de/data/galleries/611436/219413/202823618-w250.gif
  
  --
  Truth arises more readily from error than from confusion. -Francis Bacon
12. Re:Too soon by Anonymous Coward · 2010-09-19 05:13 · Score: 0
  
  staying in lanes that end until the very last moment to cut in front of traffic
  http://ops.fhwa.dot.gov/publications/fhwahop09037/principles.htm
13. Re:Too soon by demonlapin · 2010-09-19 05:24 · Score: 1
  
  You'll use the road more efficiently if you keep all lanes open until the end, then alternate merge.
  
  Perhaps more importantly, you'll always get there quicker if you run up to the end and then merge. You'll feel like an asshole if you do it, but you'll feel like a chump if you don't.
14. Re:Too soon by demonlapin · 2010-09-19 05:37 · Score: 1
  
  Too true.
15. Re:Too soon by cusco · 2010-09-19 11:26 · Score: 1
  
  Do you not drive much? I spend a ridiculous amount of time on the road for my job (only part of the job I don't like), and there is a definite correlation between vehicle type and driver stupidity. Escalades, Navigators and Hummers are absolutely the worst, followed by Peugeots and (for some reason) late model Mustangs. In a town full of mostly polite drivers (Seattle) it's a waste of time to signal before a lane change in front of any Hummer, as they'll cut you off in a heartbeat. Interestingly enough, the big monster truck drivers don't seem to be much worse than anyone else.
  
  --
  "Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
16. Re:Too soon by Capena · 2010-09-19 11:41 · Score: 1
  
  I think GP was only thinking of faster traffic speeds... for stop-and-go traffic alternating makes sense, but if traffic is going a bit faster it seems dangerous to wait until the last minute to merge (and of course the continuing lane slowing down becomes an issue).
17. Re:Too soon by endymion.nz · 2010-09-19 11:53 · Score: 1
  
  Yeah, some drivers are very territorial with their carriageway space... I agree that both lanes should fill to the end, but drives in both lanes need to match speeds so they can merge like a zip without braking and disrupting the flow. When this actually happens, it's brilliant. Usually it is hamstrung by dickheads in SUVs blocking the view of smaller cars, or by dickheads not having the situational awareness to realise that there is a merge coming up, or by dickheads who are just dickheads.
  
  --
  mediocrity rules, man
18. Re:Too soon by endymion.nz · 2010-09-19 11:56 · Score: 1
  
  I have in the past crashed into people on purpose for failing to yield or use their indicators properly. I suggest you buy a car you don't care a whole lot about, insure it, and try it. It's very, very satisfying.
  
  --
  mediocrity rules, man
19. Re:Too soon by Anonymous Coward · 2010-09-20 03:01 · Score: 0
  
  You must have a really exciting life if you enjoy spending your recreational time driving a shitty car, arguing on the side of the road, getting your car towed, getting a cab ride home, giving statements to insurance companies, dealing with body shops, and risking life and limb of yourself and other drivers on the road (including innocent cars that just happen to be behind/beside you when you intentionally wreck your vehicle (illegal?)).
20. Re:Too soon by numbski · 2010-09-27 02:42 · Score: 1
  
  Nah, that's why I pairwise someone, stay in that lane until the end, but prevent traffic from rushing to the front of the line. Forces them to merge in.
  
  --
  Karma: Chameleon (mostly due to the fact that you come and go).
21. Re:Too soon by numbski · 2010-09-27 02:47 · Score: 1
  
  Yeah, I'm not talking about "zippering". I'm talking about gunning it. Better known to football players as an "indian run".
  
  --
  Karma: Chameleon (mostly due to the fact that you come and go).
Before jumping to conclusions.... by Chicken04GTO · 2010-09-19 01:32 · Score: 5, Insightful

Before jumping to conclusions....yeah I know this is the internet...
Flying @ 14,000' elevation aint easy for a helicopter, and it gets *windy* up there at the top of Pikes Peak. Until the NTSB completes the investigation, any comments about what happened and whose fault it is would be pointless.
1. Re:Before jumping to conclusions.... by CarpetShark · 2010-09-19 01:38 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  Flying @ 14,000' elevation aint easy for a helicopter
  Irrelevant. The helicopter was given a pep-talk before take-off. Neither the confidence nor this determination of the helicopter were factors in the crash, and its endurance was second to none, as it has a lusty wife.
2. Re:Before jumping to conclusions.... by DarkKnightRadick · 2010-09-19 01:51 · Score: 1
  
  what?!
  
  --
  "There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death." Proverbs 16:25 (NKJV)
3. Re:Before jumping to conclusions.... by AnonymousClown · 2010-09-19 01:55 · Score: 1
  
  He hasn't sobered up from last night yet - or he's drunk off his ass in Hawaii or Australia or he's having a pitcher of Bloody Marys for breakfast.
  
  --
  RIP America
  July 4, 1776 - September 11, 2001
4. Re:Before jumping to conclusions.... by morgan_greywolf · 2010-09-19 01:58 · Score: 1
  
  Given, but even supposing that adverse conditions were the cause of the crash, shouldn't the helicopter pilot have known better than to fly at that altitude?
  
  --
  My blog
5. Re:Before jumping to conclusions.... by alvinrod · 2010-09-19 02:05 · Score: 2, Funny
  
  Well the editors did say it was a surreal story.
6. Re:Before jumping to conclusions.... by drinkypoo · 2010-09-19 02:42 · Score: 0, Flamebait
  
  Flying @ 14,000' elevation aint easy for a helicopter, and it gets *windy* up there at the top of Pikes Peak. Until the NTSB completes the investigation, any comments about what happened and whose fault it is would be pointless.
  If anything other than equipment failure or interference with the pilot happened, it was the pilot's fault.
  Unless there is any reason to believe that equipment failed or that one of the passengers choked the pilot or something, we know whose fault it was.
  
  --
  "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
7. Re:Before jumping to conclusions.... by Rich0 · 2010-09-19 02:48 · Score: 2, Interesting
  
  I'm not big on the whole "pilot error" thing. Too often it just amounts to blaming somebody for the inevitable.
  Take 200 of the best truck drivers on the planet. Keep them awake for 48 hours straight. Then set them behind the wheels of big trucks at 2AM and tell them to cover a distance of 800 miles at an average speed of 50MPH or greater.
  I can pretty-much guarantee that there will be an accident. Will it be the result of human error - well, sure. However, humans are just another kind of machine. If you took 200 trucks and drove them for 5 years without inspecting their brakes you'd have accidents too - for basically the same kind of reason.
  In this case a helicopter at 14k feet is likely at the edge of its performance envelope. That means that any mistake can get out of hand very quickly. Aircraft aren't safe because pilots don't make mistakes - they're safe because they are engineered and operated in a manner that allows recovery if there is a mistake (while preventing the kinds of mistakes that would be unrecoverable). If you operate an aircraft in a way that is at the boundaries of its operational limits, then sooner or later there will be a crash. Sure, most of the time there won't be one, so it is easy to blame the pilot when the inevitable happens.
8. Re:Before jumping to conclusions.... by drinkypoo · 2010-09-19 02:51 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  I'm not big on the whole "pilot error" thing. Too often it just amounts to blaming somebody for the inevitable.
  You have a choice on whether you will put yourself in that situation. That makes it not inevitable by definition.
  
  --
  "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
9. Re:Before jumping to conclusions.... by Anonymous Coward · 2010-09-19 02:58 · Score: 0
  
  I genuinely LOL'd reading that. You wrote "Flying @ 14,000' elevation aint easy for a helicopter" and "it gets *windy* up there" in the same paragraph as you wrote "Until the NTSB completes the investigation, any comments about what happened" ... "would be pointless".
10. Re:Before jumping to conclusions.... by ultranova · 2010-09-19 03:12 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  You have a choice on whether you will put yourself in that situation. That makes it not inevitable by definition.
  
  Oh, sure: you can choose to take the risk and do it, or refuse to do it, get fired and be unable to find a new job because you got a reputation for not doing risky jobs. Given the permanent high unemployment caused by modern technology making more and more jobs redundant, you've better be prepared to live in abject poverty the rest of your life.
  Damned if you do, damned if you don't.
  
  --
  Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
11. Re:Before jumping to conclusions.... by Anonymous Coward · 2010-09-19 04:37 · Score: 0
  
  Depends on the helicopter (which wasn't mentioned). Some (like the Aerospatiale Lama) are actually made to cope with higher altitudes in mountainous environments. In which case they'd work just fine. And a good enough helicopter pilot can keep one steady in very bad and turbulent weather. (Plenty fine examples of that in coast guards around the world. They rescue people from storms.)
  Yet there are many things that can knock out a helicopter worse than other aircraft. A bird strike on one of the rotors, some mechanical failure, or engine problems is a lot more significant than what can happen with fixed wing aircraft. Also mountains and forests make your autorotation landing options much smaller, if not non-existent. So these folks may be considered lucky to have survived their crash.
12. Re:Before jumping to conclusions.... by Anonymous Coward · 2010-09-19 05:14 · Score: 0
  
  So, the lusty wife is now a widow, eh?
13. Re:Before jumping to conclusions.... by Kilrah_il · 2010-09-19 05:15 · Score: 1
  
  Why pointless? It could give hours of fun and much feeling of self-importance to loads of /. readers. I think that's reason enough.
  
  --
  Whenever in an argument, remember this.
14. Re:Before jumping to conclusions.... by demonlapin · 2010-09-19 05:41 · Score: 1
  
  How do you propose filming a car driving at 14000' without being pretty near that altitude yourself?
15. Re:Before jumping to conclusions.... by Anonymous Coward · 2010-09-19 06:06 · Score: 0
  
  and its endurance was second to none, as it has a lusty wife.
  Indeed. That jet is probably sobbing in the hanger right now waiting for news on if it's husband survived the crash. You people should be more sensitive.
16. Re:Before jumping to conclusions.... by Anonymous Coward · 2010-09-19 07:03 · Score: 0
  
  don't take it literally. you know what he meant: as N approaches infinity, probability that number of crashes = 0 approaches 0.
17. Re:Before jumping to conclusions.... by Anonymous Coward · 2010-09-19 07:57 · Score: 0
  
  You have choice...
  I feel compelled to remind you that free will is an illusion.
18. Re:Before jumping to conclusions.... by Anonymous Coward · 2010-09-19 07:57 · Score: 0
  
  I'm not big on the whole "pilot error" thing. Too often it just amounts to blaming somebody for the inevitable.
  You have a choice on whether you will put yourself in that situation. That makes it not inevitable by definition.
  It makes whether or not YOU are in the crash evitable, but the crash itself can still be inevitable. The question lies in whether another pilot would have effected any significant difference in the particular outcome of this particular flight.
19. Re:Before jumping to conclusions.... by Stray7Xi · 2010-09-19 08:02 · Score: 1
  
  You have a choice on whether you will put yourself in that situation. That makes it not inevitable by definition.
  That is only true if the pilot is fully informed and knows the risks. I would argue the pilot is responsible to know the operating limits and maintenance of their equipment. But it's quite possible for the decision-makers know a risk the pilot doesn't.
20. Re:Before jumping to conclusions.... by Dabido · 2010-09-19 22:46 · Score: 1
  
  If I put myself in the pilot seat of that helicopter at 14000 feet, the crash would be inevitable. :-)
  
  --
  Sure enough, the cow costume was hanging up next to the superhero outfit and sailors uniform. (S,Spud)
21. Re:Before jumping to conclusions.... by Hognoxious · 2010-09-20 17:57 · Score: 1
  
  I wasn't aware that he was obliged under pain of death to do it.
  
  --
  Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
22. Re:Before jumping to conclusions.... by demonlapin · 2010-09-20 22:26 · Score: 1
  
  Shouldn't have taken the job.
  
  I've never known one of those guys, but I've known a guy who knew them. He was a former Army helicopter pilot, he had done treetop-level night flying in combat zones, and he and his fellow pilots used to joke that the guy who flew the rescue helicopter on Mt McKinley had the passenger seat removed so as to leave room for his balls. Ego is a strong motivator for some people.
23. Re:Before jumping to conclusions.... by Hognoxious · 2010-09-22 09:21 · Score: 1
  
  Umm, that was my point. Sometimes the professional thing to do is to not do it.
  When teenage idiots die in head-to-head collisions, that's ego too.
  
  --
  Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Someone call Alanis Morisette by Anonymous Coward · 2010-09-19 01:36 · Score: 0

Someone call Alanis Morisette, sounds pretty ironic to me...
1. Re:Someone call Alanis Morisette by DarkKnightRadick · 2010-09-19 01:53 · Score: 1
  
  that stopped being funny about 2 months after the song came out. :p
  
  --
  "There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death." Proverbs 16:25 (NKJV)
2. Re:Someone call Alanis Morisette by pandrijeczko · 2010-09-19 02:16 · Score: 1
  
  I have just awakened from a 20-year long coma and found it extremely amusing, you insensitive clod!
  
  --
  Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
GPS? by Esospopenon · 2010-09-19 01:37 · Score: 2, Interesting

As mentioned in TFA, they hope to create "autonomous driving systems that will one day be integrated into all vehicles as a safety measure". That being the case, I think they still have a long way to go since they have fitted a $100.000 GPS system for guidance. They also have a driver running the course first so the system can "incorporate human reactions", which probably means "learn when to breake" The real test for this system will be when it can cope with unpredictable situations, like traffic lights and old men with hats.
1. Re:GPS? by MakinBacon · 2010-09-19 01:39 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  There's also the problem that any time somebody using their system gets into an accident, they'll probably try to sue the manufacturer.
2. Re:GPS? by CarpetShark · 2010-09-19 01:45 · Score: 1
  
  I'm curious about the $100,000 GPS system. They sell GPS add-ons for $70. So what kind of GPS costs $100,000? Military, I suppose.
  Even if they could make the GPS more cheaply, wouldn't this imply that they expect the very accurate military-grade GPS service to be available to consumers in future? Galileo was abandoned, wasn't it?
  Or is this "GPS" actually much more than a GPS -- something more like an aircraft tracking computer?
3. Re:GPS? by timholman · 2010-09-19 02:01 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  There's also the problem that any time somebody using their system gets into an accident, they'll probably try to sue the manufacturer.
  As opposed to suing the manufacturer(s) and/or driver(s) like everyone already does for most car accidents?
  The old saw about "We'll never have autonomous cars, because the manufacturers will be sued out of existence after the first crash" is pure nonsense. We already have an enormous amount of computer control in cars, and people are already suing the manufacturers, e.g. Toyota, claiming that those systems malfunctioned after a crash. Toyota is still in business, and the costs of those suits are just folded into the manufacturing costs, as always.
  In the U.S. alone, human drivers account for 40,000 fatalities, millions of injuries, and $250B in costs due to auto accidents every year. It would take a pretty unreliable computer system to even get within an order of magnitude of what we do to each other through inattentive or drunken driving. Maybe Microsoft could manage it, but it would be a reach even for them. :-)
  When the first autonomous cars hit the road around 2020, what everyone is going to see is the exact opposite - accident rates and costs will plummet. When that happens, auto insurance rates will be adjusted accordingly for autonomous vehicles, and soon you'll find that manual driving is not only expensive, but even illegal in many areas.
  Human beings have no business driving. I know this statement bothers a lot of people, but the statistics bear it out. I, for one, will gladly hand over my keys the day I can buy an autonomous vehicle, and never think twice about it. Driving is a chore 99% of the time, and one that I'd be just as happy to turn over to a computerized device as any other chore.
4. Re:GPS? by morgan_greywolf · 2010-09-19 02:05 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  Or is this "GPS" actually much more than a GPS -- something more like an aircraft tracking computer?
  Probably they were using something like that. Something along the lines of an inertial measurement unit (IMU) or similar navigational computer. These things usually combine GPS tracking with a precision gyroscope. They can pretty much fly a plane all by themselves, and the military uses them in land-based vehicles, such as autonomous or semi-autonomous tanks. That they could be used to drive a car is not surprising.
  
  --
  My blog
5. Re:GPS? by drinkypoo · 2010-09-19 02:29 · Score: 1
  
  As mentioned in TFA, they hope to create "autonomous driving systems that will one day be integrated into all vehicles as a safety measure". That being the case, I think they still have a long way to go since they have fitted a $100.000 GPS system for guidance.
  A "long way to go"? That's the understatement of at least the year. Did you catch this quote from TFA? "If we can design a car that can autonomously go up Pikes Peak, we can design a car that can take over when a driver falls asleep," Kirstin Talvala, one of the students working on Shelley, told the AFP. Wow, no you can't. For one thing, you don't have to deal with other cars when you're making an exhibition run up Pikes. That was a stunningly stupid thing to say, Kirstin.
  
  --
  "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
6. Re:GPS? by MakinBacon · 2010-09-19 02:29 · Score: 1
  
  It would take a pretty unreliable computer system to even get within an order of magnitude of what we do to each other through inattentive or drunken driving.
  Since when has logic ever stopped people from suing large corporations for things that aren't their fault? If anything, the drop in car crashes will cause them to seem less "normal", and people will be even more trigger-happy with the lawyers.
7. Re:GPS? by mindriot · 2010-09-19 02:36 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  Your $70 GPS addon is way too inaccurate for the kind of autonomous navigation they're trying to achieve. I mean, your standard SiRFstar III claims 2.5 meters of accuracy 50% of the time (a sigma of 3.7 m). That means you can't even be sure whether you're actually on the road, never mind what lane you're in. And that's only in a clear-sky situation. Once you're in a downtown "Urban Canyon" where you hardly pick up any GPS satellites anymore or get wrong readings due to multipath propagation, good luck. Your standard GPS SatNav simply always assumes you're on the road. That won't do for an autonomous vehicle.
  You'll need something closer to this high-speed INS+GPS, the better models of which can be accurate in the decimeter range (assuming careful calibration). The ones I know about are all in the US$50,000 and above price range.
8. Re:GPS? by skyride · 2010-09-19 02:44 · Score: 1
  
  Human beings have no business driving. I know this statement bothers a lot of people, but the statistics bear it out.
  What statistics? Its not like we have a huge pool of data on the number of crashes for autonomous cars driving on normal roads to benchmark it against. Personally, I feel that humans will for a long time still be better driving a car than a machine. Computers are good at dealing with expected information very quickly (trains, monorails, undergrounds, etc) with a small number of variables. But driving a car just has so many potential things that can change, that I genuinely feel it would be nearly impossible to create a computer system that can take into account everything that can change on the roads to thee same level as even a bad driver, at least in the foreseeable future.
9. Re:GPS? by sortius_nod · 2010-09-19 02:46 · Score: 1
  
  what sickens me is that your comment rings true.
10. Re:GPS? by mindriot · 2010-09-19 02:48 · Score: 2, Interesting
  
  Wow, no you can't. For one thing, you don't have to deal with other cars when you're making an exhibition run up Pikes.
  
  That depends on what you mean by "taking over". If someone falls asleep or has a heart attack while driving, "taking over" can just mean bringing the vehicle to a controlled stop in a safe location and turning on the hazards. In that particular situation, there also won't be much room for suing anyone if something goes wrong -- because had the vehicle not done anything, the situation would've ended gravely anyway.
  Also, while you may not have to deal with oncoming traffic running up Pikes, you have to have a damn robust and fast perception system that is able to react to its environment quickly and safely ("oh, pothole on the right, better avoid that"), and you need to have a software capable auf autonomously controlling a vehicle in the most extreme situations (such as going round a curve on a dirt road at 60 miles with a hundred-foot drop on one side. I dare say that if you manage that, you'll be doing pretty well in "normal" traffic as well. Combine this with the expertise gained from the DARPA competitions, and that "long way" is already getting shorter.
11. Re:GPS? by mpeskett · 2010-09-19 02:56 · Score: 1
  
  Did you catch this quote from TFA? "If we can design a car that can autonomously go up Pikes Peak, we can design a car that can take over when a driver falls asleep," Kirstin Talvala, one of the students working on Shelley, told the AFP. Wow, no you can't. For one thing, you don't have to deal with other cars when you're making an exhibition run up Pikes. That was a stunningly stupid thing to say, Kirstin.
  Well, it's a necessary first step. A student working on a cool project like that, you can forgive a little optimism. Once you've got the thing driving along an empty road on it's own, it's not so very hard to imagine it negotiating traffic too.
12. Re:GPS? by Anonymous Coward · 2010-09-19 02:57 · Score: 0
  
  This will be solved by making the cars just not right in a way which encourages cheap aftermarket manipulations. (Think jailbreaking to disable an annoying warning or to install a non-braindead hands-free application for an attached cellphone.) The computer systems will log the manipulations and then, in case of an accident, the manufacturer will disclaim all responsibilities. It will then be up to the consumer to prove that none of the manipulations had an adverse effect on the driving capability of the car's computer systems. Can you imagine working your way through hundreds of embedded systems without source code or documentation?
13. Re:GPS? by drinkypoo · 2010-09-19 02:57 · Score: 1
  
  Also, while you may not have to deal with oncoming traffic running up Pikes, you have to have a damn robust and fast perception system that is able to react to its environment quickly and safely ("oh, pothole on the right, better avoid that")
  Potholes don't move. Dealing with moving obstacles is literally orders of magnitude more difficult than dodging potholes.
  
  --
  "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
14. Re:GPS? by uop · 2010-09-19 02:58 · Score: 1
  
  Assuming this is the link to the right article:
  http://infolab.stanford.edu/~jonsid/savantcis.pdf
  Then actually yes the system is aware of parallel vehicles and can avoid such collisions.
  Reading some of the article looks like this is more of an exercise in neural networks than anything else.
  What scares me most but actually makes sense is that the system does not have any video feed, and as far as I can tell, no feed of objects behind the car. It's strictly forward + side looking, and by "looking" I mean a Laser "RADAR".
  An interesting aspect is that all of the "video" information (eg traffic light status) is to be obtained via live feed from "the authorities". This car does not have the sensors to figure out whether a light is red or green. Nor does it have any other video info (citing too costly processing requirements).
  Sounds like it could be a pretty good driver assist (sophisticated cruise control + accident prevention), but looks like a truly autonomous vehicle is still some ways off.
15. Re:GPS? by usrusr · 2010-09-19 02:58 · Score: 1
  
  I'd safely assume that the editors were just using the term "GPS" in the way that it is now commonly used by nontechnical people: as a general short for "technomagical gadget that tells cars'n'stuff where to go". They would probably call it a "GPS" even if it wasn't using satellite navigation at all (which it sure does, as the technoligy is just too useful to ignore)
  
  --
  [i have an opinion and i am not afraid to use it]
16. Re:GPS? by drinkypoo · 2010-09-19 03:03 · Score: 1
  
  Then actually yes the system is aware of parallel vehicles and can avoid such collisions.
  That's fantastic! But either way the quote is retarded. One problem has significant bearing on the other, but they have substantial non-overlapping problem domains. Perhaps it made more sense in context, but any time you speak to a reporter you have to consider how every sentence will appear out of context...
  
  --
  "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
17. Re:GPS? by morie · 2010-09-19 03:42 · Score: 3, Funny
  
  You want statistics? There seems to be overwhelming evidence that close to 100% of the cars that cause an accident are driven by humans!
  
  --
  Sig (appended to the end of comments I post, 54 chars)
18. Re:GPS? by ralfmuschall · 2010-09-19 03:47 · Score: 1
  
  > Human beings have no business driving
  I agree (I hate it when I have to drive). With robo-cars, there is another problem: Lots of traffic laws are routinely and massively broken. In .de (and probably everywhere), the law fixes a minimal safety distance for different speeds and types of road - and the real distance that the drivers keep is a third to a half of that. This is not just bad behavior - tripling the distance would cut the capacity of the road to a third (unless you triple the speed as well, which would not increase safety either), and there are just not enough roads for that (one would need three times the area for roads as well).
  Now, if a robot drives a car, he has two options: Follow the law, cause a traffic jam behind himself (or even provoke somebody to cut into the seemingly extremely long clearance) and be hated by everybody; or drive like everyone else and be sued out of business if something bad happens.
19. Re:GPS? by mestar · 2010-09-19 04:07 · Score: 1
  
  Humans are better drivers? In what way? Faster reaction time? Better route optimization? Accident avoidance? Lol.
  If you could switch every driver with a computer right now, you would double the throughput of roads in every city in the world. With probably one tenth or less accidents.
20. Re:GPS? by Mike1024 · 2010-09-19 04:23 · Score: 1
  
  I'm curious about the $100,000 GPS system. They sell GPS add-ons for $70. So what kind of GPS costs $100,000? Military, I suppose.
  1. A part of the error on GPS is due to things like radio signals slowing down as they travel through the ionosphere. If you set up a GPS base station at a known location, you can take GPS measurements, work out the errors due to the ionosphere (and similar things), transmit that to the receiver on the car, and subtract the errors there. Within a few kilometres of the base station lots of the errors will be common - so a lot of errors are eliminated. (if you don't want to operate your own base station, there are services like Omnistar which operate a network of them and radio out the corrections, for a few thousand dollars a year subscription). High cost receivers support doing this!
  2. The GPS signal is comprised of a digital signal with a wavelength of about 300m (which we can measure accurate to about 3m) and a carrier wave with a wavelength of about 19cm (which we can measure accurate to a few mm) - but the carrier signal is a sine wave, so it has an 'integer ambiguity'; 1,000,000.1 wavelengths looks identical to 1,000,001.1 wavelengths. High cost receivers can perform 'integer ambiguity resolution' to figure out the integer number of wavelengths, allowing high precision positioning.
  3. There's an encrypted military GPS signal at a different frequency - but using certain tricks you can receive the encrypted military signal. By combining two sine waves using a trigonometric identity, you can get a 80cm sine wave - which means there are fewer ambiguity options, making ambiguity resolution faster. Consumer receivers don't attempt this because you need to receive two GPS frequencies instead of one, and at both frequencies your receivers need ten times the bandwidth.
  4. Once you've got high precision GPS, you can put one receiver at the front of your vehicle and one at the rear, giving you a 'GPS compass' which can tell you which way your vehicle is pointing, even if you aren't moving. Of course, using two receivers means paying for two.
  5. GPS measurements can be combined with measurements from an intertial measurement unit (IMU) - a sensor system with gyroscopes and accelerometers which can give fast updates, but which are prone to drift over time (as they're based on integrating acceleration to give speed and accelerating speed to give position, a small acceleration error eventually leads to a big position error). The more you spend on your IMU, the lower the drift rate. GPS measurements aren't prone to this drift, but there can be GPS outages (e.g. when going though tunnels) and GPS receivers don't give measurements as fast as an IMU can, so you combine GPS measurements with IMU measurements, usually using an extended Kalman filter.
  6. Radio waves can reflect from trees, buildings, and the ground. This is called 'multipath'. High cost receivers use expensive antennas (like choke ring antennas) which have lower gain at lower elevations - which reduces problems with signals reflected from the ground. These antennas are more expensive to manufacture than consumer receivers.
  7. Mobile phone GPS chips are produced by the million. The market for high-precision GPS is very much smaller, so the costs of engineering all the above have to be recouped over fewer units - so the equipment is expensive.
  In summary, when you spend $100,000 on a GPS system you get a base station and radio link, two rover receivers, all the receivers are capable of receiving the military signal, you get special software that can perform ambiguity resolution for centimetre-precise positioning, you get three high quality antennas, and you get a high-precision IMU and software to go with it.
  A lot of this technology could probably be made a lot cheaper if it were mass-produced and installed on every car, as a lot of it's in electronics and software. But in the world of robotics there are a great many sensors that cost $100,000 but could b
  
  --
  "Goodness me, how unlike the FBI to abuse the trust of the American public." -- The Onion
21. Re:GPS? by tron1point0 · 2010-09-19 04:31 · Score: 1
  
  It's actually not that hard to do. I worked on UT Austin's robot car a while back. Our biggest problem wasn't obstacle avoidance - the LIDAR was very good at differentiating "object" from "ground". It also wasn't driving logic - that took us all of 4 weeks to complete. Our hardest problem was figuring out the edge of the road. It used to rely on the painted lane markings, which is a problem in most of rural Texas. We finally figured out a really fast way to process a huge point cloud from the LIDAR and send it to the vision algorithms to overlay onto the camera feed. Marvin (the car) has no problem finding the road edge and assuming lane markings now :)
  I should also note that I'm talking about the edges of those rural roads that kinda just gradually fade into ground. The LIDAR's vertical sensitivity is ~2". We'd have no problem with off-road driving. It's staying within the poorly defined lanes that we were going for.
22. Re:GPS? by turbidostato · 2010-09-19 04:40 · Score: 2, Interesting
  
  "Now, if a robot drives a car, he has two options: Follow the law, cause a traffic jam behind himself"
  Provided all other cars were robotical, how could this happen? A traffic jam creates when vehicles reaching a point are faster than vehicles at that point. Provided our car is respecting security distance from a car that was at top legal speed, it would go at top legal speed as well as those after it. No traffic jam is possible. And with regards to speed change and wave effect since robots would have faster and finer-grained reactions, those would be minimized too.
  "(or even provoke somebody to cut into the seemingly extremely long clearance)"
  It can only seem to be to long if you think you can do it better. On one hand, other robotic cars neither would nor could find it "too long" but just "as it must be"; on the other hand, provided robots have better reaction times than humans (and that's a perfectly defensible position) clearance distances could be reduced basically to the dynamic envelope of running vehicles, no need to take human reactions into account.
23. Re:GPS? by khallow · 2010-09-19 04:53 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  Human beings have no business driving. I know this statement bothers a lot of people, but the statistics bear it out. I, for one, will gladly hand over my keys the day I can buy an autonomous vehicle, and never think twice about it. Driving is a chore 99% of the time, and one that I'd be just as happy to turn over to a computerized device as any other chore.
  Human beings have no business being alive either. I think statistics will bear that one out too. Look, I recognize that there are plenty of activities, even plenty of transportation activities that don't require me to be in control. For example, we routinely travel by means that have someone or something else doing the driving (passenger trains, airlines, etc). And these means of travel are usually (at least in the developed world) safer than if I were driving myself. But driving is "do it yourself" mobility. In exchange for a somewhat elevated chance of injury and death, you gain a great deal of freedom.
  
  Second, driving engages me. It is often fun to drive a car.
  
  Ultimately, safety is not the key point of driving or for that matter, it isn't always a chore. Else we never would have left the house in the first place. And an autonomous system won't be able to cover all those needs that formerly used a human driver.
24. Re:GPS? by nedlohs · 2010-09-19 05:13 · Score: 1
  
  That depends on what you mean by "taking over". If someone falls asleep or has a heart attack while driving, "taking over" can just mean bringing the vehicle to a controlled stop in a safe location and turning on the hazards. In that particular situation, there also won't be much room for suing anyone if something goes wrong -- because had the vehicle not done anything, the situation would've ended gravely anyway.
  
  I don't think you have a very good grasp on the workings of the "sue them all" legal system.
25. Re:GPS? by demonlapin · 2010-09-19 05:53 · Score: 1
  
  But most driving is a chore. Why do you think rich people hire drivers? The freedom you get from having a car is totally independent of the responsibility of driving it.
  
  Do your pleasure driving on courses designed for the purpose,and you'll have the fun of driving without any of the danger to others.
26. Re:GPS? by khallow · 2010-09-19 06:13 · Score: 1
  
  But most driving is a chore.
  That's true especially traffic jam driving. But there's a difference between choosing to have an automated system drive you on occasion and being required to have an automated system drive you.
27. Re:GPS? by am+2k · 2010-09-19 06:20 · Score: 1
  
  I think using some cameras (infrared or visible light) and computer vision algorithms is way more reliable than GPS for determining whether you're still on the road and which lane you're in.
28. Re:GPS? by joshier · 2010-09-19 06:54 · Score: 0
  
  I'm all for autonomous driving (for example, after having one too many drinks, your car could simply drive you and your friends back) however, lets be honest - the roads are never perfect and there will sometimes be cats/cogs/other large animals included as well as people and other things like people on bikes or horses on the roads. That's in Britain at least.
29. Re:GPS? by joshier · 2010-09-19 07:14 · Score: 0
  
  But if your ultimately in control of where "it takes you", you're still in control. Most people would prefer to be driven to work so they can sit in the back watching a film or calling people or whatever it is. I'd love to have my car drive me to work whilst I eat the day before's pizza.
30. Re:GPS? by vux984 · 2010-09-19 07:16 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  Provided all other cars were robotical, how could this happen?
  The leprechauns riding bicycles and fairies riding unicorns would still get in the way.
  Seriously, getting 'all the other cars robotical' is a fairy tale.
  1) The roads are literally full of cars 2 - 10 years old, with cars up to 100 years old still rolling around. There is absolutely no way you can mandate a 'switch-over' date from human to robotic... any plan would -have- to be gradual which would give you at least a decade or more of robotic cars alongside human drivers.
  2) There would be serious resistance to giving up human control in our car centric culture. (at least in North America) Political resistance would be immense. We have a society that still loves to drive, that values classic cars. There isn't enough political capital in the world to push something like that through.
  3) The comment about unicorns and leprachauns was more than just sarcastic... pedestrians and cyclists aren't going away.
  Provided all other cars were robotical, how could this happen? A traffic jam creates when vehicles reaching a point are faster than vehicles at that point. Provided our car is respecting security distance from a car that was at top legal speed, it would go at top legal speed as well as those after it. No traffic jam is possible. And with regards to speed change and wave effect since robots would have faster and finer-grained reactions, those would be minimized too.
  Traffic jams still occur even in idealized situations. Just look at the internet for an example of how congestion and wave effects can still easily accumulate and propogate despite being completely computer controlled. And the internet has the luxury of being able to drop packets to cope... something that isn't going to work out on the highway system.
  1) bicyclists and pedestrians are an actual concern
31. Re:GPS? by ceoyoyo · 2010-09-19 07:37 · Score: 1
  
  The GPS is probably only that expensive because it's a special system. It's not like regular GPS is expensive, and the more sophisticated receivers only cost more because they're not mass produced in the same way.
  The did have a real driver run the course first. On the other hand, it's unlikely you'd want the production system to actually RACE.
32. Re:GPS? by Anonymous Coward · 2010-09-19 07:45 · Score: 0
  
  I agree with just about everything you said, except for the part where you expected people to act rationally about this once they see accident rates plummeting. I still hear all the time from people about how they don't want to wear a seatbelt, with claims that they're unsafe. The usual arguments are that they'd rather be thrown clear in an accident (less of this now that cars don't explode into fireballs in normal accidents as much on TV) and, of course, that their mothers brothers nephews friends sisters former roommate was in a car accident and died because they were trapped in the car by the seatbelt.
  This says something about peoples ability to asses risk sanely. Obviously, if someone were in crash that was so bad that they are actually trapped by the seatbelt, the interior of the car has to be pretty twisted up. That means that, if they weren't wearing their seatbelt, they probably would have pulped by the accident in the first place. Also it shows that people will believe any apocryphal third or fourth hand account as long as it fits their biases. I know several people who believe that close relatives have had to have their stomachs pumped after eating rat at KFC. Directing them to snopes doesn't help.
  Ultimately, people tend to asses risk according to their fears rather than the likelihood of the danger. Perception of Terrorist attacks by Muslim extremists by USians is one example. It merges their xenophobia with fear of sudden, unexpected death. Of course that may not be the best example since it also involves other factors such as desire for revenge, ego, basic bloodthirst, and even some desire for genuine justice, but you get the idea. Scary, sensational things get more attention than things that may be much more dangerous and significant.
  In the case of seatbelts and automated cars, the scary thing is loss of control. People instinctively want to be in control of their movements and in command of their own destiny. Ego comes into play a bit here again also. Most people are convinced that they are more competent and skilled than other people. So if you tell them that the automated system kills 1 in every 4000 people and manual driving kills 1 in every 400, they'll tell themselves that their natural skill makes them ten times or more less likely to get into an accident than other people. This may even be partly true for some people since 50% of people are, after all, better than average. Ultimately, being trapped in a fast moving metal box that may kill them is a lot scarier to many people than controlling the box themselves even if the chances of dying under their own control are much higher. Actually, a great example of this is the movie titled _I Robot_ (loosely based on characters and ideas from Isaac Asimov's book for those who haven't seen it) with Will Smith, whose character prefers to drive under manual control, partly because of anti-robot bigotry, but mostly because he's an action movie hero with superior skill and control. Problem is, many of us secretly believe that we possess vastly superior skill and would be a lot safer under manual control.
  So, I think it would be very difficult to actually implement automated cars. Not to mention the difficulty of these things interacting with manually driven traffic. Automated cars might obey all traffic rules and try to act safely with other cars, but they won't be able to predict the unpredictable. We all know that there are plenty of stretches of road out there that just are not sane. Intersections where 7 or 8 roads come together and where right of way is technically clear, but if strictly obeyed would result in a five mile long tailbacks that don't clear up until 5 AM and come back again at 8 AM. Long stretches of 50 foot wide road with no lines separating the lanes which basically operate as free for alls with drivers organically forming variable numbers of lanes. Places where you can't turn left without driving out to the middle of the intersection and waiting for the light to turn red, technically running a red light. Etc.
33. Re:GPS? by m50d · 2010-09-19 09:54 · Score: 1
  
  Required full stop would be wrong, sure. But I'd have no problem with the law requiring automated driving on the public rows - they exist primarily as a utility, and having a human in control would put other people's lives at risk. Do your pleasure driving on private courses designed for it.
  
  --
  I am trolling
34. Re:GPS? by m50d · 2010-09-19 09:58 · Score: 1
  
  It can only seem to be to long if you think you can do it better.
  But people would think they could do better. When automatic interlocking of railway points became the norm, signalmen began habitually hotwiring the equipment to avoid the "wasted time" the generous tolerances left; it took a number of deaths to change that. I think we'd see similar things happening for the first decade or so after automated driving tech arrived.
  
  --
  I am trolling
35. Re:GPS? by khallow · 2010-09-19 10:28 · Score: 1
  
  But if your ultimately in control of where "it takes you", you're still in control.
  That's part of the problem. You aren't ultimately in control of where it takes you. For example, a government could keep cars away from a protest area (assuming the cars are networked to some sort of central control), making it more difficult for a protest to occur. Someone could hack your car and deposit you and your car in a vulnerable, isolated place where a crime could occur. Or maybe the car navigation system has commercial tie-ins. You get driven along routes with particular advertising and auto service businesses associated with the navigation system business.
36. Re:GPS? by abhi_beckert · 2010-09-19 10:32 · Score: 1
  
  But most driving is a chore. Why do you think rich people hire drivers? The freedom you get from having a car is totally independent of the responsibility of driving it.
  There are a whole lot of other reasons not to drive than "I don't like doing it". It's ton more practical to let someone else drive, you can work while in the car, you don't have to park around the block from your destination, don't have to full up fuel yourself... Plenty of reasons.
  
  Do your pleasure driving on courses designed for the purpose,and you'll have the fun of driving without any of the danger to others.
  If I have to choose between only doing stuff I enjoy on the weekend, and regular fender benders/occasional injuries/extremely rare deaths, then I definitely choose the later.
  Someone earlier quoted death rates/insurance bills. But compare those figures to a baseline, such as death from sicknesses and amount of money spent on, say, fuel and car maintenance. Suddenly it doesn't look so bad.
37. Re:GPS? by Anonymous Coward · 2010-09-19 10:37 · Score: 0
  
  Don't forget aggressive drivers. Automated cars are going to have to be very consistent and predictable for safety. Trouble is, that means that it will be very easy for aggressive drivers (jerks) to take advantage of them. Picture a situation where an entire row of manual drivers unsafely cuts off an automated car and the automated car is forced to just stop and sit there because aggressive drivers have figured out what unsafe moves they have to make around the automated cars to make them back off to avoid an unsafe situation.
  How is that different from aggressive drivers dealing with defensive drivers today? The defensive drivers go a bit slower. The aggressive drivers (hopefully) get higher insurance rates. How is this a problem?
38. Re:GPS? by turbidostato · 2010-09-19 12:34 · Score: 1
  
  "bicyclists and pedestrians are an actual concern"
  How many have you seen lately in a high way?
39. Re:GPS? by Anonymous Coward · 2010-09-19 14:08 · Score: 0
  
  No, human beings who don't want to pay attention to their driving have no business driving a car. Now days people are far more interested in their phone calls, texting, etc. Those human beings should not have a driver's license and not be allowed to control a car.
40. Re:GPS? by Anubis+IV · 2010-09-19 16:34 · Score: 1
  
  An autonomous system would allow you the same degree of freedom to go out and do things that are necessary. More, even, since you could be doing things while en route. As for the pleasure of driving a car, I foresee a day when non-autonomous cars are towed to special locations where they can be driven, much the same way that you might see recreational boats treated by people living in coastal areas today. They'd be a pleasure vehicle that has a place and a specific purpose, but is no longer considered general purpose.
41. Re:GPS? by The_Noid · 2010-09-19 19:46 · Score: 1
  
  For reaching those protests, you have your motorcycle :)
  But seriously, you oppose autonomous cars because you fear your government might mandate a back door in the navigation software? You should be opposing your totalitarian government, not autonomous cars!
42. Re:GPS? by chromatix · 2010-09-19 19:48 · Score: 1
  
  An important point is that anyone *can* sue anyone for anything.
  Whether they have a snowball's chance of winning is entirely another matter.
  
  --
  --- The key to knowledge is not to rely on people to teach you it ---
43. Re:GPS? by Neil+Boekend · 2010-09-19 21:28 · Score: 1
  
  A smart sales manager turns that into a sales pitch: "If you have the car on full auto and it causes an accident we claim responsibility. You don't even have to insure the car". Of course they would have themselves insured against excesses.
  
  --
  Well, I might have a way, but it only works on a semi spherical planet in a vacuum.
44. Re:GPS? by Neil+Boekend · 2010-09-19 22:50 · Score: 1
  
  I do not want to pay attention to my driving. This should not prevent me from having a drivers license. Do you want to know why?
  I choose to pay attention. I do not use my phone when driving. Not because I want to pay attention, but because I must in order to prevent crashing into morons. I would prefer a self-driving car, but since they do not exist yet I can't.
  Whether you want to pay attention should not be an issue. Whether you do should, and is (in the Netherlands). It's fined for EUR 150.
  
  --
  Well, I might have a way, but it only works on a semi spherical planet in a vacuum.
45. Re:GPS? by huge+colin · 2010-09-20 04:28 · Score: 1
  
  When that happens, auto insurance rates will be adjusted accordingly for autonomous vehicles, and soon you'll find that manual driving is not only expensive, but even illegal in many areas.
  This is absurd. Do you realize how many people drive for recreation/sport? Most residential areas are not conveniently located near a closed race circuit, and where such facilities do exist, it's typically quite expensive to use them. The point of the sports car is to add enjoyment to an otherwise mundane driving experience, and to do so by using the car on public roads. This will not change. People will continue to drive human-controlled cars through 2020 and beyond.
46. Re:GPS? by SparkleMotion88 · 2010-09-20 04:35 · Score: 2, Interesting
  
  Right, this was probably an expensive INS (e.g. ring laser gyro) + GPS system. I imagine they would use something like this for a prototype, because they can get precise acceleration information without having to recalibrate after changes to the vehicle. The good news is that it is easy to get acceleration data for cars because they only have one axis of rotation, and they have wheels that are always on the ground. For production cars with this sort of technology, they can probably just use the speedometer along with something that measures how much the front wheels are turned. Maybe they will throw in a cheap INS to detect loss of wheel traction or otherwise improve the quality of the speed/acceleration data.
  
  Of course, this only helps for navigation, which is probably the easiest part of the problem. Collision avoidance would probably be done with cameras, radar, ultrasonic ranging, etc.
47. Re:GPS? by khallow · 2010-09-20 06:28 · Score: 1
  
  But seriously, you oppose autonomous cars
  I oppose being required to ride in an autonomous car.
  
  because you fear your government might mandate a back door in the navigation software?
  Yes. And I think the fear is justified.
  
  You should be opposing your totalitarian government, not autonomous cars!
  It's a lot easier to oppose a totalitarian government before it becomes a totalitarian government. Hence, why I oppose a requirement to ride in an autonomous car.
48. Re:GPS? by khallow · 2010-09-20 06:30 · Score: 1
  
  Do your pleasure driving on private courses designed for it.
  I don't have a problem with that as long as the private courses go everywhere I want to go. IF they don't, then I want access as a driver to the public courses.
49. Re:GPS? by The_Noid · 2010-09-20 19:31 · Score: 1
  
  because you fear your government might mandate a back door in the navigation software?
  Yes. And I think the fear is justified.
  
  You should be opposing your totalitarian government, not autonomous cars!
  It's a lot easier to oppose a totalitarian government before it becomes a totalitarian government. Hence, why I oppose a requirement to ride in an autonomous car.
  That's the same as wanting to ban hammers because they can be used to kill someone. If you fear your government is/will be totalitarian you should be fighting for proper privacy laws, governmental accountability, and a proper electoral system, not for banning hammers.
50. Re:GPS? by Anonymous Coward · 2010-09-21 02:13 · Score: 0
  
  Even if GPS offered 1" precision, that doesn't tell you where the roads are.
  Roads get restriped all the time. Crosswalks get moved. School zone limits change constantly. Those striping trucks aren't all so accurate, and the changes aren't anywhere near being added to map databases in real time. Heck, what was a 2-lane road last week might be a 3-lane road, with dedicated turning lanes, monday morning.
  Either autopilot (autodrive?) will be dedicated to certain routes only at first (expressways etc. with well-maintained "maps", controlled access so all vehicles observe same rules, no pedestrians) and the driver must take over for the "last mile," or autopilots will have to become MUCH better at reading local conditions (identifying obstacles, recognizing markings yellow/white solid/dashed, interpreting new signs without being confused by vandalism, reading conditional signs, etc.)
51. Re:GPS? by khallow · 2010-09-21 06:35 · Score: 1
  
  That's the same as wanting to ban hammers because they can be used to kill someone.
  Ridiculous. What in my stated opinions of this thread is the analogue of the hammer? It is not the autonomous car. I do not advocate banning the autonomous car. It is the exercise of government power in a way that would considerably restrict my freedom to travel. Curbing government excess such as this is naturally part of "proper privacy laws, governmental accountability, and a proper electoral system" because it addresses the middle point, government accountability. A powerful government is not an accountable government.
52. Re:GPS? by m50d · 2010-09-21 07:32 · Score: 1
  
  Why do you feel entitled to that? Why should the rest of our taxes go to fund your hobby?
  
  --
  I am trolling
53. Re:GPS? by khallow · 2010-09-21 09:14 · Score: 1
  
  Why do you feel entitled to that? Why should the rest of our taxes go to fund your hobby?
  That is the nature of publicly funded infrastructure. Namely, I "feel entitled to share in" (in other words, "use the politic process to extract benefit to myself") in every expenditure of public funds. If you don't like that, then build this road system using some source of money which I don't "feel entitled" to. If you didn't want me driving my car on the highway (this being the only means I can get from point A to point B, by driving my car) and perhaps, making things slightly less safe for the rest, then you shouldn't have made the road system with my money. Either "fund my hobby" or don't spend that money at all.
54. Re:GPS? by m50d · 2010-09-21 14:59 · Score: 1
  
  That is the nature of publicly funded infrastructure. Namely, I "feel entitled to share in" (in other words, "use the politic process to extract benefit to myself") in every expenditure of public funds. If you don't like that, then build this road system using some source of money which I don't "feel entitled" to. If you didn't want me driving my car on the highway (this being the only means I can get from point A to point B, by driving my car) and perhaps, making things slightly less safe for the rest, then you shouldn't have made the road system with my money.
  You have the same entitlement to use the highway as everyone else. But you don't have any right to be endangering other people, who're using the highway for its intended purpose of getting from A to B, for the sake of your own enjoyment.
  
  --
  I am trolling
55. Re:GPS? by khallow · 2010-09-22 02:02 · Score: 1
  
  You have the same entitlement to use the highway as everyone else. But you don't have any right to be endangering other people, who're using the highway for its intended purpose of getting from A to B, for the sake of your own enjoyment.
  That's ok. I do have an entitlement to "endanger" other people so I don't need the right too.
56. Re:GPS? by khallow · 2010-09-22 08:07 · Score: 1
  
  Human beings have no business driving. I know this statement bothers a lot of people, but the statistics bear it out. I, for one, will gladly hand over my keys the day I can buy an autonomous vehicle, and never think twice about it. Driving is a chore 99% of the time, and one that I'd be just as happy to turn over to a computerized device as any other chore.
  I've already covered why I disagree with mandatory autonomous travel. I still believe it is a serious infringement of the freedom to travel. Further, I don't buy that you (or a government agency for that matter) have in any way a means or discernment to determine whether humans should or shouldn't be driving. However, there is a compromise position between mine and yours that I think adequately covers your concerns.
  
  Namely, we have failed to consider liability as it currently is practiced. If you're riding in an autonomous car, properly and legally maintained and operated (eg, you change the oil on the required schedule and you have properly secured everything in the vehicle), then you never, ever can be at fault in an accident. Any such accident is going to be the fault either of the autonomous car, some road condition which cannot be accounted for (say an invisible oil slick), or another party. If two cars, one with a human driver and one with an extremely safe autonomous system have an accident, blame is invariably going to the human driver. And we already have that drivers need adequate insurance coverage to drive.
  
  Bottom line is that as a driver, I pay extra for the privilege of driving. Society doesn't currently care past that whether I drive for important reasons or frivolous ones. Further, I pay in advance for the harm that I cause through my presence on the road. This is in my view an adequate way to deal with mixed human and autonomous traffic. If we transition as you imply to a more safety conscious traffic environment, then that will naturally result in higher insurance premiums. End result is that I retain the privilege to drive while at the same time, the rest of the traveling public has a guarantee that I won't cause more harm than I can pay for.
57. Re:GPS? by Anonymous Coward · 2010-09-27 02:56 · Score: 0
  
  Yep no way you could use http://www.analog.com/en/mems/imu/adis16354/products/product.html for this application. That price tag of $250 each (quantity 100) would be an unbearable cost.
Surreal by dimethylxanthine · 2010-09-19 01:39 · Score: 2, Informative

It's a surreal story
No, it's just a clever PR stunt by machines from the future.
Something smells fishy... by Type44Q · 2010-09-19 01:43 · Score: 2, Informative

I believe this to have been a joint false-flag operation conducted by Intel, the NSA and VW/Audi, to convince us that we should relinquish control of our Quattros to the machines. I knew there was something suspicious going on when they replaced the five-cylinder with a V6, but no one would listen...
1. Re:Something smells fishy... by Type44Q · 2010-09-20 00:38 · Score: 1
  
  I got modded not Funny but rather Informative?? How surreal.
Uber-silly by Ancient_Hacker · 2010-09-19 01:45 · Score: 1, Insightful

The concept of autonomous autos is just plain silly. There is no way they would ever be approved for use on public roads. Several times a day you make some complex judgement while driving, a judgement that will always be beyond the ability of a computer. Just yesterday: (1) Oh crap, that old lady in the '78 Buick, better give her a wide berth, her eyesight is none too good. (2) A clapped-out minivan full of small kids unloading -- better slow down, they're likely to jump out without looking. (3) In heavy freeway traffic-- what's that ahead, a child crawling across the road?, Nope, looks like one, but it's just a wino's paper bag that slipped off his bottle of wine. No need to slam on the brakes. (4) Whoa, what's that? Oh, of course, nothing to worry about, it's just the shadows of planes landing at the airport a mile ahead.
I don't think your ambulatory computers will ever be clever enough to figure out those situations.
1. Re:Uber-silly by CarpetShark · 2010-09-19 01:48 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  There is no way they would ever be approved for use on public roads.
  Oh, they will, but the roads might need a few upgrades. As soon as it can be proven that a car can drive better than a person when the person is trying their best to drive safely, cars will be favoured, since we know people sometimes deliberately drive wrecklessly.
  Unfortunately one of the upgrades will probably mean no unpredictable human drivers allowed on the same roads.
2. Re:Uber-silly by selven · 2010-09-19 01:51 · Score: 1
  
  I think the 40000+ annual casualties that occur mostly because of drunk drivers, sleepy drivers and distracted drivers (all human faults) are a much bigger problem than the situations you describe. Besides, I don't think the majority of actual drivers ever actually carry out the kind of thought processes you describe in (1) and (2).
3. Re:Uber-silly by thegreatemu · 2010-09-19 01:54 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  And this is "unfortunate" why, exactly?
4. Re:Uber-silly by Anonymous Coward · 2010-09-19 01:56 · Score: 0
  
  The concept of autonomous autos is just plain silly. There is no way they would ever be approved for use on public roads. Several times a day you make some complex judgement while driving, a judgement that will always be beyond the ability of a computer. Just yesterday: (1) Oh crap, that old lady in the '78 Buick, better give her a wide berth, her eyesight is none too good. (2) A clapped-out minivan full of small kids unloading -- better slow down, they're likely to jump out without looking. (3) In heavy freeway traffic-- what's that ahead, a child crawling across the road?, Nope, looks like one, but it's just a wino's paper bag that slipped off his bottle of wine. No need to slam on the brakes. (4) Whoa, what's that? Oh, of course, nothing to worry about, it's just the shadows of planes landing at the airport a mile ahead.
  I don't think your ambulatory computers will ever be clever enough to figure out those situations.
  I think the idea is to have /every/ vehicle AI controlled.
5. Re:Uber-silly by Marcika · 2010-09-19 02:05 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  As soon as it can be proven that a car can drive better than a person when the person is trying their best to drive safely, cars will be favoured, since we know people sometimes deliberately drive wrecklessly.
  The problem is not with the people who actually try to drive wrecklessly -- it is with the rest of them, the ones who drive recklessly....
6. Re:Uber-silly by Copley · 2010-09-19 02:05 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  I think you're over-estimating the attention that many people pay to what's going on. For some drivers, your above list would be more like (1) Oh crap, I can't find the track I want on my iPod. (2) Just got to text my BF. (3) How does my hair look in the mirror? (4) Whoops, almost hit that cyclist when I pulled out without looking - better wind down my window and call him a dick.
  I think the research into these autonomous systems will never lead to entirely self-driving cars, but instead will lead to driver-assist type systems where dangers ahead (e.g. approaching a corner too fast) that aren't being heeded by the driver, will cause the car to react instead.
  
  --
  I am bald
7. Re:Uber-silly by Urza9814 · 2010-09-19 02:06 · Score: 1
  
  1) If you give all cars proper following distance, that shouldn't matter so much. But either way, just have the computer give more space to any car without the same system installed. I'd assume they can communicate somehow. Failing that, it could probably analyze driving patterns pretty quickly to tell who is driving somewhat erratically.
  2) A computer can recognize people, it probably won't have much trouble recognizing small people. If there is a human by the side of the road, go x% slower. If it's a human under y feet tall, go an extra z% slower. Easy.
  3) I would expect a computer to be better than humans at not getting thrown off by such illusions. Either way, if it's a serious problem, just add a zoom lens to a camera so it can zoom in on the object in question. Or even better - an infrared camera. A paper bag or scrap of tire isn't going to be giving off heat. A person or animal will.
  4) Really? You think a giant shadow is going to throw off a computer? I'm pretty sure that won't be a problem. Otherwise there would be crashes every time the clouds moved. Plus, I would imagine that a digital camera would be able to adjust to changing light levels quicker than your own eyes.
8. Re:Uber-silly by Anonymous Coward · 2010-09-19 02:06 · Score: 0
  
  The problem is that if there is ever any sort of accident between a vehicle operated by a drunk/distracted/stupid driver and an AI driven vehicle, everybody (judge, jury, cops, insurers) will always give the benefit of the doubt to the human.
  Disclaimer IAAPeddler of autonomous vehicles :)
9. Re:Uber-silly by Anonymous Coward · 2010-09-19 02:06 · Score: 0
  
  so you`re saying a computer might slow down for a paper bag.
  is this causing more than the 40000 car deaths per year caused by humans or not?
  let alone that > 95% or deaths are on highways. if you only enabled automatic driving on highways where there are no children running around that would account for a lot.
10. Re:Uber-silly by Punto · 2010-09-19 02:12 · Score: 1
  
  all the operations you describe sound perfect for a computer to perform. input some data coming from the sensors, output a decision. what's so hard about it? even a human brain can do it
  
  --
  --
  Stay tuned for some shock and awe coming right up after this messages!
11. Re:Uber-silly by Anonymous Coward · 2010-09-19 02:12 · Score: 2, Funny
  
  ...since we know people sometimes deliberately drive wrecklessly.
  I think wreckless driving is desirable. Reckless driving.on the other hand tends to result in wrecks.
12. Re:Uber-silly by timeOday · 2010-09-19 02:30 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  I don't think your ambulatory computers will ever be clever enough to figure out those situations.
  Never say never. It's just a matter of time. Even if some situations are hard to automate, a large percentage of all driving hours (freeway driving, I would think) could be automated much more easily.
  The motivation to reclaim driving time is huge. People spend / waste a fantastic amount of time driving. I couldn't find global figures, but apparently Americans spend over 100 hours per year commuting (not driving in total - just commuting); the total driving figure in Israel is 577 hours per year; and about 40% of mothers in the US spend over 2 hours per day driving. Then there are truck drivers and delivery workers whose annual total must be closer to a couple thousand hours per year (i.e. basically their whole life).
  Dishwashing machines are very popular, and how much time do they actually save, 20 minutes per day? I can't think of anything the average person more, that could be automated as easily, as driving.
13. Re:Uber-silly by ichigo+2.0 · 2010-09-19 04:13 · Score: 1
  
  1 is solved by these autonomous cars (the old lady would not be allowed to drive), 2 sounds like a failure at parking by the minivan driver which would also be solved by an automated car parking in a better spot, 3&4 are perfect examples of why humans should not be driving as their poor eyesight and tendency toward paranoia creates imaginary problems.
14. Re:Uber-silly by mestar · 2010-09-19 04:17 · Score: 1
  
  "Several times a day you make some complex judgement while driving, a judgement that will always be beyond the ability of a computer."
  You mean like in chess?
  "I don't think your ambulatory computers will ever be clever enough to figure out those situations."
  And I thing you are already not clever enough to judge that.
15. Re:Uber-silly by couchslug · 2010-09-19 04:30 · Score: 1
  
  "Oh, they will, but the roads might need a few upgrades."
  Likely to cost so much more than the lives saved as to not be worth it.
  Want safe(r) transit? Build railways (including tracked trolley systems) everywhere practical.
  
  --
  "This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
16. Re:Uber-silly by Anonymous Coward · 2010-09-19 05:19 · Score: 0
  
  Public transportation is a much easier (though less interesting) problem to solve.
17. Re:Uber-silly by Anonymous Coward · 2010-09-19 05:21 · Score: 0
  
  "The motivation to reclaim driving time is huge."
  Not to mention the huge efficiency gains that will be an easy consequence of automation. Imagine, no more vehicles slowing down to gawk at the wreck.. no more idiots driving 40 in the passing lane.. drastically reduced incidence of collisions and crashes.. automated inter-car communication.. high-speed maneuvers (i.e. changing lanes, exiting freeway, etc). It is going to be a revolution, and it will make life much, much better.
18. Re:Uber-silly by Idiomatick · 2010-09-19 05:45 · Score: 1
  
  Exactly this. Automated driving will come on in phases and levels.
  
  The first phase btw has already occurred, cruise control. And we have the first level as well, ladar based brakes control to avoid crashes (far more rare than cruise control but its out there). As well automatic transmissions are obviously commonplace.
  
  Next we could get the next phase, automated freeway driving. You enter a freeway, your car detects this, takes control (for safety) and asks where you are going, hit a button for work or w/e. Then you get a nice display of a timer to arrival and you can go to sleep. Perhaps the wheel can recess into the dash and you can use the space like a desk. When you are 2minutes from destination a warning will go off, the wheel comes back and you''ll do something to prove you are ready to drive. If you pass it lets you drive, fail and it pulls off to the side after the off-ramp/w/e until you are ready. Another automation might be a button to parallel park (I've seen said button in japan, no reason it wouldn't catch on).
  
  And the next level will be more always on computer control. having the computer center you in your lane seems simple. Then you only turn to change lanes or at a light. Maybe it would stop you from running reds. Or stop for police.
  
  After that, AI-only lanes->freeways->districts.
19. Re:Uber-silly by seanadams.com · 2010-09-19 05:46 · Score: 1
  
  But automation is precisely the problem. People's basic needs in the 1st world can be met so easily that they truly have nothing better to do than sit in the car and plod from suburb to office building and back. Of course this behavior is now engrained on such a spectacular scale that individuals can't just pick up and say "screw this, I'll telecommute", but as energy costs rise that'll be the ultimate outcome for those who don't absolutely NEED to be in a particular location to work (retail, food service, construction etc).
  If we really wanted to not drive, we could take public transit and be free to read or whatever. But driving is the last dying vestige where white collar workers can feel like they're doing something even remotely useful _with autonomy_. Automate driving, and it means we have to find another activity to occupy ourselves since we no longer need scrub our dishes and laundry, much less toil in the fields.
20. Re:Uber-silly by dissy · 2010-09-19 07:03 · Score: 1, Redundant
  
  I don't think your ambulatory computers will ever be clever enough to figure out those situations.
  That has been said about literally Everything that computers can do today. Every last thing.
  Computers will never be able to play games against humans and win.
  Computers will never be able to see and recognize objects like humans.
  Computers will never be able to speak like a human.
  Computers will never be able to read human writing.
  Computers will never be able to do this or that function nor control this or that complex system, yet today they control many systems that are used to make our lives easier.
  You've been wrong each time, and you will be wrong this time too :P
21. Re:Uber-silly by Ksevio · 2010-09-19 07:33 · Score: 1
  
  To be fair, chess playing computers typically work by calculating all the combinations of moves a few ahead to figure out the best move. That's a far cry from the way most humans play (ok, so they also will look ahead, but probably not all the combinations) and doesn't work as well when scaled to the real world with many more times the possibilities.
22. Re:Uber-silly by urusan · 2010-09-19 08:55 · Score: 1, Interesting
  
  You've got it all backwards.
  
  People's basic needs in the 1st world can be met so easily that they truly have nothing better to do than sit in the car and plod from suburb to office building and back.
  Really now? What about socializing, reading books, playing games, hobbies, watching movies, volunteering, learning new skills, raising a family, arguing on the Internet, starting and running a small business, etc.?
  
  Of course this behavior is now engrained on such a spectacular scale that individuals can't just pick up and say "screw this, I'll telecommute", but as energy costs rise that'll be the ultimate outcome for those who don't absolutely NEED to be in a particular location to work (retail, food service, construction etc).
  First of all, the workers do not decide to "screw this, I'll telecommute", their employers make that decision. At best the employees can push for it to become an option. Telecommuting has not been picked up by companies on a large scale for various reasons that have nothing to do with transportation (traditional management style, temporary loss of productivity during initial acclimation period, the human desire for personal contact with associates, etc.). Also, companies paying for commuting time/costs being a benefit rather than a standard means that many companies do not care about such costs.
  
  If we really wanted to not drive, we could take public transit and be free to read or whatever. But driving is the last dying vestige where white collar workers can feel like they're doing something even remotely useful _with autonomy_.
  Most people like the ability to go wherever they please, not the ability to drive down a track getting there. Other than driving off-road or flagrantly disobeying speed limits, the act of driving itself isn't particularly freeing. When people say they like the autonomy that cars give them, they mean the ability to go anywhere with ease in their car...as in, not just the main routes of the public transportation system.
  Public transport is left unused for many other reasons as well. Cars provide a private environment devoid of strangers, which is a luxury that many enjoy. Public transport is only available within (and between) large cities, so anyone living in a rural or suburban area must use a car (and many people like to live in such areas). Some cities have poor public transportation systems, with long wait times between buses which either wastes time or requires a strict schedule. Since the activities available on public transportation are limited and a substantial degree of awareness is required (to prevent theft and/or missing one's stop) the quality of time spent on public transport is little better than that spent driving a car. If driving a car can get a person more time at home or at interesting destinations then people will clearly go for it (it does this by always being there when the owner is ready, not stopping except for safety reasons, and going at/above the speed limit whenever possible). Lastly, even economy cars can carry a lot of cargo compared to a person on a bus, so they help to consolidate shopping time, saving even more time.
  
  Automate driving, and it means we have to find another activity to occupy ourselves since we no longer need scrub our dishes and laundry, much less toil in the fields.
  Like a hobby? What a radical idea!
  I'm not sure why you seem to think that work is everything in life. Life doesn't have to be a chore.
23. Re:Uber-silly by glwtta · 2010-09-19 09:32 · Score: 1
  
  Then there are truck drivers and delivery workers whose annual total must be closer to a couple thousand hours per year (i.e. basically their whole life).
  
  Yes, I'm sure truck drivers will be ecstatic to finally be out of a job.
  
  --
  sic transit gloria mundi
24. Re:Uber-silly by seanadams.com · 2010-09-19 10:19 · Score: 1
  
  I agree with every word you said. I'm NOT suggesting we should all go back to subsistence farming, and of course that there are better things we could do with our time (and for the environment, and our sanity) than commuting. I wish everyone were so creative and ambitious to take on the kinds of rewarding passtimes you suggest. All I'm saying is that automating the commute solves a problem that people deeply do not want solved. I'm suggesting there is a difference between why people really do it, and why they say they do it.
25. Re:Uber-silly by seanadams.com · 2010-09-19 10:29 · Score: 1
  
  PS when I said automation is precisely the problem, I should have put "problem" in quotes to indicate a hint of irony. I can see how you you would say I had it all backwards since I failed to express that tone.
26. Re:Uber-silly by Anonymous Coward · 2010-09-19 11:18 · Score: 0
  
  I commute 2 hours a day. While at work, I drive up to half the time I'm working (up to 12 hours). On average, I probably drive 5 hours a day... for a total of 1300 hours a year (5 days a week, 52 weeks a year).
27. Re:Uber-silly by urusan · 2010-09-19 11:38 · Score: 1
  
  I wish everyone were so creative and ambitious to take on the kinds of rewarding passtimes you suggest.
  I was under the impression that most people do these kinds of things in their free time. Though this could just suggest that myself and my friends are outliers. (For instance, I picked an apartment within walking distance of my work so I could save time by doing exercise and commuting simultaneously)
  It could also suggest that there's not enough automation. If people were freed from compulsory work, perhaps they would find something worthwhile to do with their time out of boredom instead of making recovering from work be their pastime. Of course, that will take a lot more automation than just this, but every little bit helps.
  
  All I'm saying is that automating the commute solves a problem that people deeply do not want solved. I'm suggesting there is a difference between why people really do it, and why they say they do it.
  I think a quote from Henry Ford is appropriate here:
  "If I had asked my customers what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse."
  Most people don't understand how this will make their lives better yet, they're too set in their present ways as you say, but that won't stop them from adopting it en-masse when the technology becomes mature and affordable. Then they'll wonder how they ever lived without it.
  Personally, I cannot wait for this technology to become commercially available. I *hate* driving but am constantly running into situations where it is needed.
28. Re:Uber-silly by alobar72 · 2010-09-19 20:08 · Score: 1
  
  Oh crap, that old lady in the '78 Buick, better give her a wide berth, her eyesight is none too good
  but you realize that her eyesight isnt that important anymore as soon as that Buick is controlled by a computer, right ? :-) ... can be yontinued with your other points a guess.
29. Re:Uber-silly by Neil+Boekend · 2010-09-19 23:09 · Score: 1
  I do not think so.
  
  1. The automated vehicle would have stored all the data pertinent to the crash.
  2. A smart salesman will have sold the car with the company liable for crashes (so they will sell, while a competitor doesn't: "We trust our cars, we even claim responsibility")
  3. Someone from the company will make a beautiful animation of the crash, supported by photo's and data
  4. The jury will not be able to see the crash the way the company wants them to see it
  5.Profit
  (to bad a ??? entry isn't even required.)
  --
  Well, I might have a way, but it only works on a semi spherical planet in a vacuum.
Condolences by gavron · 2010-09-19 02:35 · Score: 3, Insightful

As a fellow helicopter pilot, I'm happy the pilot and three film-crew members survived.
My condolences to the family and friends of a brand-new (to Air-Cam) Bell 212HP Helicopter.
The world is now smaller by one less helicopter :(
E
1. Re:Condolences by gavron · 2010-09-19 05:01 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  Correction... while the color scheme looks like their new Bell 212HP... it appears that this is actually an Aerospatiale Astar 355 ("Twinstar") dual turboshaft operated AS350 series aircraft.
  E
2. Re:Condolences by Klinky · 2010-09-19 05:26 · Score: 1
  
  Stop It! You're turning me on with all that dirty Helicopter talk!
3. Re:Condolences by Anonymous Coward · 2010-09-20 09:13 · Score: 0
  
  Well merely as a fellow human being and not as a fellow heli-pilot, I too am happy that the pilot and three film-crew members survived.
Ah That Sucks by Greyfox · 2010-09-19 02:42 · Score: 1

Hopefully everyone survives their injuries. It's treacherous flying up in the mountains; we have small planes crash regularly up there.

--
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
computer-controlled helicopter by FuckingNickName · 2010-09-19 02:46 · Score: 0

How many people would have survived the crash had the helicopter been controlled using the sort of tech in the car?
1. Re:computer-controlled helicopter by mestar · 2010-09-19 04:15 · Score: 1
  
  There would probably be no crash in that case, so, all would survive.
2. Re:computer-controlled helicopter by Anonymous Coward · 2010-09-19 04:30 · Score: 0
  
  You're implying that there would have still been a crash.
too bad for the crew by quitte · 2010-09-19 02:46 · Score: 2, Interesting

but still I want to see the existing footage now. The teaser clip is pretty cool. Apparently this is not about getting up Pike's Peak but getting up fast. If there are ethical issues showing the helicopter footage at least show the footage from the cars onboard camera that surely exists.
This is so much more exciting than the stupid soccer bots with their Robocup.
1. Re:too bad for the crew by Anonymous Coward · 2010-09-19 05:50 · Score: 0
  
  I am a soccer-playing robot, you insensitive clod!
The one thing they ARE keeping under wraps by Provocateur · 2010-09-19 03:24 · Score: 3, Interesting

...is that the car called to report the accident.

--
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
1. Re:The one thing they ARE keeping under wraps by TheGothicGuardian · 2010-09-19 04:31 · Score: 1
  
  And it did so before the accident happened!
2. Re:The one thing they ARE keeping under wraps by Cerberus7 · 2010-09-19 06:27 · Score: 1
  
  *DUN DUN DUNNNNNNNNN!* Oh, and you ninja'd me. I was logging in to say much the same thing while you posted that...
  
  --
  I don't know about you, but my servers run on the power of cotton candy and happy thoughts. -Anonymous Coward
Ironically... by shrtcircuit · 2010-09-19 03:32 · Score: 5, Interesting

We were up on Pikes Peak last weekend staffing a charity hike event when the autonomous car itself also crashed, running off the road somewhere. The wrecker they sent up to fetch it also broke down blocking the road, so they had it shut down for a while getting yet another wrecker up the mountain to help relocate the first one, and get the car out of there.

That thing has some sort of bad omen surrounding it. Everything mechanical around it, including itself, seems to break or crash! I'm amazed nobody has been killed yet, especially with the helo going down on the side of the mountain (that usually ends very badly, so my props go to the pilot for keeping everyone alive).
Physics is a bitch by Anonymous Coward · 2010-09-19 03:39 · Score: 2, Informative

The elevation at the crash site: 13,800ft
Service ceiling of the helicopter 11,150ft
The data is taken from Eurocopter AS355F2, the crashed one was a AS355F1.
1. Re:Physics is a bitch by Anonymous Coward · 2010-09-19 04:05 · Score: 0
  
  True but the guy flying the helicopter is an extremely experienced high-altitude pilot, you would have to think he had a helicopter outfitted for the task at hand. Maybe not because experience often leads to arrogance but I'll give him the benefit of the doubt until proven otherwise. It's pretty dangerous flying around windy mountains at high altitude even with proper equipment.
2. Re:Physics is a bitch by wjsteele · 2010-09-19 04:29 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  Wrong. Simply put, the elevation of the location and the service ceiling of the helicopter itself have nothing to do with each other.
  
  The actual "Service Ceiling" of any aircraft is dependent on the local "Density Altitude" and not the physical elevation of the ground. Depending on the temperature, humidity and other factors, the density altitude of a particular location can be several thousand feet under or above the actual local elevation. The pilot would take that information into account to determine how high they can safely fly the aircraft.
  
  Bill
  
  --
  It's my Sig and you can't have it. Mine! All Mine!
3. Re:Physics is a bitch by tweak13 · 2010-09-19 07:57 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  Well, since we have historical weather data for the area available, it isn't hard to guess what the density altitude would be. Looking at weather reports for the 17th from stations in the area, temperature rose pretty quickly once the sun was up. The article says early morning, but without a more exact time the quick temperature swing makes it harder to pin down.
  
  At any point after 8am, the temperature profile looks to be quite a bit above standard atmosphere, meaning density altitudes were higher than pressure altitudes. Barring some unusual atmospheric conditions the density altitude at around 10,000 feet was probably closer to 12,000-14,000 depending on how high the temperature got at the time of the accident. The pilot underestimating the quickly rising temperature may have even been a factor.
  
  If 11,000 feet is in fact the correct value for the service ceiling of the aircraft, I would say this situation was caused by the decision to fly a heavily loaded aircraft outside of its performance envelope.
4. Re:Physics is a bitch by wjsteele · 2010-09-19 11:09 · Score: 1
  
  "The El Paso County Sheriff's Office said the crash happened sometime before 7:30 a.m. Friday."
  
  There isn't any exact timing info, but it's earlier than your times. Do you happen to have that data?
  
  Bill
  
  --
  It's my Sig and you can't have it. Mine! All Mine!
5. Re:Physics is a bitch by tweak13 · 2010-09-19 12:40 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  Air temperature then was still close to the low for the night, around 50 degrees. While this is a lot cooler than the 90 degrees eventually reached that afternoon, it is still well above the standard atmosphere, and still clearly puts density altitude above pressure altitude. Atmospheric pressure was very close to standard, by the way, so there was no boost in density there.
  
  Of course, these weather stations all measure temperature at the ground, most around 6000 ft. So let's look at this another way. In order for the air at 13,000 ft to be at a density altitude under 11,000 ft, it'd have to be at about -20 degrees. The normal lapse rate is around 3.5 degrees per 1000 ft. Thus, the expected temperature given 50 degrees at 6000ft is around 25 degrees at 13,000 ft. Unless the lapse rate was more than double the standard atmospheric model, the density altitude places that helicopter above it's service ceiling.
  
  If I had to guess, I'd say that even in the early morning cool temperatures, that aircraft was still being operated in excess of its expected performance.
6. Re:Physics is a bitch by wjsteele · 2010-09-19 22:18 · Score: 1
  
  "If I had to guess, I'd say that even in the early morning cool temperatures, that aircraft was still being operated in excess of its expected performance."
  
  Obviously, otherwise it would still be in one piece! :-)
  
  BTW... my point wasn't to argue why it crashed, it was simply to point out that the GPs analysis was flawed like comparing apples to oranges.
  
  Bill
  
  --
  It's my Sig and you can't have it. Mine! All Mine!
Duh! by Alef · 2010-09-19 03:56 · Score: 2, Funny

[...] and people are already suing the manufacturers, e.g. Toyota, claiming that those systems malfunctioned after a crash.
Well, obviously the systems are gonna stop working if you crash the car!
Java? by Anonymous Coward · 2010-09-19 04:09 · Score: 0

The video seems to imply the software is written in Java.
1. Re:Java? by owlstead · 2010-09-19 12:02 · Score: 1
  
  So? Many things are written in Java, and it's probably the language most used for new commercial apps. There is a lot of Java in embedded real time apps, and there are extensions to validate pre- and post conditions as well. There is little to nothing that would prevent Java to be used within such an application.
  That said, this seems to be a completely random piece of code used for a commercial video:
  http://snippets.dzone.com/posts/show/356
  That's just too much of a coincidence. I looked it up after seeing the import for the zip package. Unless the car has automatic download capabilities, I just don't not see the need for it.
What about a driver's license? by tchdab1 · 2010-09-19 04:16 · Score: 1

Will each individual autonomous car be required to take a driver's test, or will the FCC or DMV or whoever grant USA driving status to autonomous systems as part of their approval process?
And after 21 years, will the car then be eligible to drink and vote (18 years to vote) and borrow money?
Vids by srussia · 2010-09-19 04:24 · Score: 1

or it didn't happen.

--
Set your phasers on "funky"!
Point of view of the car by mangu · 2010-09-19 04:30 · Score: 1

Flying @ 14,000' elevation aint easy for a helicopter, and it gets *windy* up there at the top of Pikes Peak
It's not like the conditions for the car were any easier.
Insurance costs by nten · 2010-09-19 04:36 · Score: 3, Interesting

Assuming the autonomous systems actually work most of the time car insurance providers could make a bundle offering discount rates for the feature (only slightly of course, they are evil), and then gradually raising the rates for the lack of the feature. So eventually we won't be able to afford to drive manual vehicles. At least I can read my kindle on the way to work.

--
refactor the law, its bloated, confusing and unmaintainable.
MOD PARENT DOWN by Anonymous Coward · 2010-09-19 04:52 · Score: 0

This guy is too stupid to even argue with.
The opposite by Anonymous Coward · 2010-09-19 04:57 · Score: 5, Insightful

Actually, it's the opposite. Thicker air dampens control responses, thin air amplifies them. It's a bit like walking in water versus walking in air. The surrounding medium helps cushion the movement. In thinner air, a helicopter slices more in banking and cyclic control feels looser. In any case, thin air is not the norm for most pilots and takes extra fine control.
There are also specific maneuvers related to flying NOE (nap of the earth) on varying terrain that could have caused the crash. A rapid ascent/descent at a low advance ratio could have induced a vortex ring state, a pushover might have produced an unexpectedly high rate of descent that the pilot couldn't handle. These accidents aren't simple, and there's much we don't know.
I am a rotorcraft engineer (and if this turns out to be one of my company's helicopters, I'll probably be working on this incident...).
1. Re:The opposite by Kell+Bengal · 2010-09-19 06:04 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  Oh for mod points - fellow rotorhead here. There's so much that could have gone wrong. Without more info it's just speculation at best.
  
  --
  Scientists point out problems, engineers fix them
  altslashdot.org: The future of slashdot.
All helicopter crew released from hospital by Animats · 2010-09-19 05:17 · Score: 4, Informative

The helicopter crew is out of hospital. All four of them.
treacherous winds frequent on high peaks by peter303 · 2010-09-19 06:30 · Score: 1

I climb peaks as high as Pikes Peak frequently. You can walk around a corner and it can be 60 mph. The winds change by the hour as sun and shadow changes the temps. Lower flying in the mountatins is not for the inexperienced. And it kills many experienced as well.
1. Re:treacherous winds frequent on high peaks by cusco · 2010-09-19 14:46 · Score: 1
  
  My wife was born only about 1,500 feet lower than the top of Pike's Peak. Peruvians grow potatoes and pasture alpacas up to 16,500. I've never actually been to Pike's Peak, but from pictures it doesn't look any steeper than the mountain behind our winter home near Cuzco. Google Earth shows that mountain goes up to 13,950 feet, from its start in Paruro at 10,000. You should come down and check it out.
  
  --
  "Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
Pep talk Didn't work for the Boeing A160 either by turtleshadow · 2010-09-19 06:45 · Score: 1

The Boeing A160 was taking a trip to Belize before crashing into the rainforest.
That hummingbird has goals for 2,500-mile (4,000 km) range, _24-hour endurance_, and 30,000 ft (9,100 m) altitudes.
But then perhaps its objective was to sip nectar from a rare jungle flower -- IE don't name your UAVs hummingbird for the fun of it.
laptop in front seat + airbag by Anonymous Coward · 2010-09-19 08:05 · Score: 0

Did anyone watch the desert video and wonder about the safety of using a laptop in the passenger seat?
Let me know by DebianDog · 2010-09-19 08:33 · Score: 1

Let me know when a computer can fly a remote control helicopter like this and I will be Impressed http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QcSd1dQ81Hs
that, my US friends... by Anonymous Coward · 2010-09-19 09:45 · Score: 0

is ironic.
autonomous driving by Alan+R+Light · 2010-09-19 11:30 · Score: 1

I agree 100%.
I will want an override - computer security is already an issue, and I don't want to put my life in the hands of an anonymous cracker - but as a general rule I will be happy to let the car drive itself while I attend to other things en route. Why, I could contribute to /. on my way to get pizza!
What do you do with your car at work? by Colin+Smith · 2010-09-19 15:07 · Score: 1

Stick it in a garage?
C'mon, this thing cost 30k+ and it's going to spend 95% of it's time idle? It can drive autonomously. Lease it to a taxi firm, make it earn that 30k back while you are not using it.
And that is the problem with autonomous cars. Economically, they'll become taxis. Any car company which successfully produces an autonomous car, will destroy their own market.
i.e. there will never be a mass market car which can drive autonomously.

--
Deleted
I do not CARE about how good the computer is... by dogzdik · 2010-09-19 18:33 · Score: 0

I am NOT getting in the back seat of THAT fucking car.

--
.
Voting up, Voting down - If I really gave a fuck about your approval or not, I'd come and ask you.