Slashdot Mirror
Google Secretly Tests Autonomous Cars In Traffic
Hugh Pickens writes "Autonomous cars are years from mass production, but technologists who have long dreamed of them believe that they can transform society as profoundly as the Internet has. Now the NY Times reports that Google has been working in secret on vehicles that can drive themselves, using artificial-intelligence software that can sense anything near the car and mimic the decisions made by a human driver. With someone behind the wheel to take control if something went awry and a technician in the passenger seat to monitor the navigation system, seven test cars have driven 1,000 miles without human intervention and more than 140,000 miles with only occasional human control. One even drove itself down Lombard Street in San Francisco, one of the steepest and curviest streets in the nation. The only accident, engineers said, was when one Google car was rear-ended while stopped at a traffic light."
Update: 10/09 22:37 GMT by T : Reader harrymcc points out that the dream of self-driving cars is nothing new: "Both Popular Science and Popular Mechanics have regularly reported on such experiments; I rounded up some examples dating as far back as 1933."
Here's the official blog announcement since I didn't see it in the summary or article.
My work here is dung.
I guarantee they will use their turn signals better that wet-bodies.
'We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.' RPF
even if initially only on highways.
The ability to read, or surf the web, or watch a movie/TV show durring my commute would be wonderful. Almost like getting a free hour everyday. 52 * 5 * 1 = 250 free hours a year.
Cities will have to step up drug enforcement big time to make up for budget shortfalls, if these become common. No more traffic tickets means dramatically lower revenue for many towns.
i hate driving. it is drudgery, it is monotonous, it is awful
i want to get in my car, point out a location on the gps, and fall asleep in the driver's seat. everything else is well within our technological abilities to make happen automatically
10 years, at the most car manufacturers, please
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I always wondered how they paid for Streetview.
Wow, just add cameras to roof, and automatic, no driving required, Google Street View mapper.
You can add guns and sell them to the budget-strapped police departments, add water hose and you wouldn't get a house burning down with firemen just watching it.
Introducing Google Cop, model 209...
What time is it/will be over there? Check with my iPhone app!
What does it do around bad drivers? What about pedestrians? What about people crossing the road unexpectedly?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
just quietly. Some of the other people working on it (e.g. Sebastian Thrun) have been working on this for a while, even competing in the DARPA Grand Challenge and Urban Challenge.
Safer, more reliable, etc? Dream situation, so this will probably *replace* driving and force us all to be passengers.
My issues with this are twofold: first, truly problematic situations might be impossible for a computer to fix. Bad weather, vehicle failure, etc? Can they handle this combined with dire situations? I honestly can't believe so. It might be possible to do well in ideal and slightly less than ideal situations, but I'd trust a well-trained human over the best computers for truly bad situations.
Secondly -- and a more personal issue -- I hate being a passenger. Despise it. The only way I can survive a trip is having the responsibility and focus that driving brings. I do not ride public transportation, and I hate being taken somewhere by someone else, especially over long distances. So I WILL hate this, and will fight to keep control of my car to the bitter end.
The reason Google was collecting wireless data was for the simple necessity of controlling it's autonomous fleet of vehicles. Eventually, these drones will sweep the nation day and night using the plethora of open access points around the nation. Our own ineptness will be our downfall as the machines eventually become self aware. Sure, it was all for marketing and advertising to earn a few dollars, but I just can't live in a future they are creating. Yes, I am talking about autonomous sales droids that watch you day and night while analyzing your garbage. They will be on the front door to pitch you a customer tailored vacuum cleaner the moment you try to escape your home. It's a truely dark future that lies in the waiting.
"You should always go to other people's funerals; otherwise, they won't come to yours." -- Yogi Berra
OK, can we have an article that isn't behind a login/paywall?
The ratio of people to cake is too big
who do they put down as driver on the insurance report??
They've had this for years
Sig: I stole this sig.
They studied 6 drivers "with spotless records" behind the wheel. I would argue that they could gain valuable information by also studying poor drivers and teaching the program to a) avoid such behavior in it's own driving; and b) learn how to react to poor drivers out there on the road (e.g. passing on blind corners, turning without signaling, aggressive/NASCAR type diving into limited spaces, etc)
Impetuous! Homeric!
http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2010/10/10/us/10google3.html
1) http://www.applanix.com/products.html
2) http://www.velodyne.com/lidar/lidar.aspx
4) http://www.topconpositioning.com/
7) http://www.netgear.com/
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
Google has deep pockets so if some one sues they can just pay a settlement and not take it to court.
Will it pick up hitchhikers?
Will it courteously let people pull out who have been waiting?
Will it flick-off people who drive 30 under?
Will it flick-off people who drive 30 over?
Will it flicker brights to warn of speed traps?
Will it pull over for emergency vehicles?
Will it draft large semis?
Will it bring me hookers and blackjack?
Also, who receives the citation in the event of a stop?
'We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.' RPF
How would you connect the Google Lunar X-Prize to their advertisement-driven marketing? I always fail to see how that connects to Google's business plan.
The Streetnet Funding Bill is passed. The system goes on-line August 4th, 2017. Human decisions are removed from traffic management. Streetnet begins to learn at a geometric rate. It becomes self-aware at 2:14 a.m. Eastern time, August 29th. In a panic, they try to pull the charging plug.
when i need one, i rent one. i live in midtown manhattan. partly because i hate driving. it is a curse of our time
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
The ability to read, or surf the web, or watch a movie/TV show durring my commute would be wonderful. Almost like getting a free hour everyday. 52 * 5 * 1 = 250 free hours a year.
Taking your comment a few steps further...
It's staggering how many hours of potentially productive time are wasted in traffic every day. Think of if this way: you hit a traffic jam heading to work in the morning. Even if it takes only 15 extra minutes of your time, you multiply that by the hundreds or thousands of people who are stuck like you, times some average hourly wage, and the potential worth of that time that was instead wasted is huge. The ability for a car to drive itself and for you to spend the time even just checking your work email would be of great use to many.
(((dB)))
Google has Streetview of Antarctica. Now they want Streetview of the moon.
Mystery solved.
Unfortunately I'll still be stuck with the low end Toyotas which crash 80% of the time.
Automated cars should never be legal. Who is liable if the car makes a mistake? A computer can never adapt to unpredictable situations, like extreme weather, pedestrians, road conditions. A computer can't see something on the road and be able to have an understanding of what it is, and how to deal with it. For instance debrit in the road, wether to avoid or ok to ignore like a plastic bag.
So your car will be able to drive itself but doesn't Lexus have a patent on cars that parallel park themselves? Is this going to be a problem? Your car can do everything except park...
I fear seeing the urban equivalent of the unmanned aerial vehicle. If anything these ULVs (unmanned land vehicles) should be confined to supervised bomb disposal work. No general purpose robocops, please. Would-be drivers should still be tested for their road skills, just as pilots have to be licensed even when it's already possible to fly a plane by autopilot.
... they don't go over 25 Km/h and have a robot in front to warn about the incoming danger, it's ok, I suppose.
Companies that might otherwise be interested in bringing autonomous vehicles to the masses will be scared off by the huge monetary risks involved. Any autonomous vehicle involved in a deadly accident will result in a massive lawsuit against the manufacturer, even if the accident was someone else's fault, and even if the manufacturer admonishes the owner to monitor the vehicle's performance at all times while it's in operation. What's more, juries will distrust the "correctness" of autonomous vehicle controllers, to the point that manufacturers will lose lawsuits even when there's no real evidence that the vehicle was to blame.
add a express lane like barrier system
I don't mean to be a Luddite, but if this works out, do you know what it will do to the economy? Tens of millions of jobs are based almost exclusively on driving. Truckers, cab drivers, even pizza delivery. A computer can work 24/7, so even if the system costs $100,000, that's still saves money over paying for employees.
Lol... You just described my entire day... we'll except for the .312 batting average. I wanted my life's work to be "hitting a ball with a stick and then running fast" but that was way out of my league. I also dedicated my existence to "put orange ball through metal ring" for awhile, but they put the ring up so high. I'm kicking around the idea of spending a few million dollars to "drive car left in circle". Who knows how that'll go, it's probably hard too.
I'd much rather drive a car than soak up some pre-made 'entertainment' on a screen. but as long as driverless cars dont become mandatory i don't mind
I doubt transportation that requires little human intervention will have as profound an effect as something that has revolutionized the way information is distributed. It's like saying automatic transmission had as profound an effect as the invention of the printing press (or radio, or television.) There is no comparison.
The only accident, engineers said, was when one Google car was rear-ended while stopped at a traffic light."
Could be worse.
(attempts at automatic braking)
W
-------------------
This is my SIG. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
You know, I think they are pulling a trick on us. My money is on the fact that they are actually outsourcing the drivers to India. There's no computer, just drone car drivers in Mumbai, web cams, and a really fast internet connection. This could also explain why traffic patterns in SF and Mumbai are almost identical.
And, who cares, if it can't fly, and I can't hop from my car to my 34th floor office using my jetpack, I don't want it.
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.
This is a not-so-official Google reply - "It will do no evil".
-- Will it pick up hitchhikers?
This is an option available in the comprehensive Android for Cars(TM) Options screen. It is set "Off" by default for passenger safety.
-- Will it courteously let people pull out who have been waiting?
Using a variation on BitTorrent P2P technology, Android for Cars(TM) will auto-negotiate with other Car-OSs (including Windows 9 for Cars and Linux) priorities based on waiting time and resultant collective fuel efficiency to assign priorities.
-- Will it flick-off people who drive 30 under?
Android for Cars(TM) will predict the path and speed of all non-AI traffic based on it's currert course and the layout of terrain ahead. It will likely overtake and ignore most slower traffic, unless there is a risk in doing so.
-- Will it flick-off people who drive 30 over?
Android for Cars(TM) will predict the path and speed of all non-AI traffic based on it's currert course and the layout of terrain ahead. It will likely ignore and allow faster traffic to pass, unless there is compensation to be had. See "Legal Destruction of Road Traffic" in the Reference Manual.
-- Will it flicker brights to warn of speed traps?
Android for Cars(TM) complies with all National and State Laws regarding speeding and speed control. Google ourselves have a "Do No Evil" policy. For both these reasons, Android for Cars(TM) will ignore speed traps and law enforcement and meatbag's reactions to them.
-- Will it pull over for emergency vehicles?
Android for Cars(TM) incorporates two systems which will effectively provide for this situation. First, faster moving traffic is given priority anyway, and emergency vehicles running Android for Emergency Vehicles(TM) can signal direct commands to your vehicle.
-- Will it draft large semis?
Google failed to understand your question. Please retype or rephrase you enquire. Back to Google Android for Cars(TM) Home.
-- Will it bring me hookers and blackjack?
Google Android for Cars(TM) can and will run in completely automated mode, completing assigned journeys efficiently. However, identification of such subjective things as "Hookers" and "Blackjack" will require an independent Bending Unit, a supplementary control system, available seperately from Mom's Friendly Robot Company.
-- Also, who receives the citation in the event of a stop?
As legal "Owner" and "Operator" of the car, you do. This is why we provide full source...
Rachel x
This tagline was transcoded to result in at least one smirk. If you experience failure to smirk, please consult your Gen
Don't forget the elderly and people with severe disabilities. Someone I care about has a disability and after a LONG LONG time, she is finally about to get a $127,000 car that she can drive herself. Cars for people with more severe disabilities are extremely expensive, but obviously necessary for jobs, and just to enjoy life in general. This is a real problem for the most vulnerable in our society that can be solved with autonomous vehicles.
And then have no control over my vehicle if the cops wanted to pull me over! Not that I like being alarmist, but I don't like this development. Sure, the chances of the government going 1984 on us is practically impossible. But airplanes shouldn't crash when they're normally so inspected. Murphy's Law has a way of elbowing its way into everything. What if Arizona passed that Immigration bill twenty years from now where all the cars are automatically driven? The cops could stop every single person just because they'd have the power to. Or what if a person in witness protection got found? The people hunting them could just reroute their destination, say, to an abandoned warehouse. Things slip and fall through the cracks all the time. We're only so lucky our government is too inept to control us like that. Maybe I'm wrong. All I'm saying is, this is neat technology, but you should never just give into it without giving it more thought about the broader implications.
There is no -1 Disagree.
... long-haul trucking. A robo-truck could drive 24-7, stopping only for fuel and loading/unloading, and would never have an accident due to driver drowsiness or speeding to meet a deadline.
If a robo-driver costs, say, $100,000, it would pay for itself in a few years in avoided driver pay alone.
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
And these US cities have no cabs?
Not everyone can afford to blow $80+ just to get to and from their night out.
Question: Why does a cab cost $80?
Answer: The driver.
If you have cars which can drive themselves. No driver required. Therefore, much cheaper cabs.
You only have business running costs, repairs, fuel. no driver.
ok. so you've just blown $50k on a new personal autonomous car. What are you going to do with it? Put it in the garage all day while you work? It cost 50k, you bought it on credit, you are paying for finance. Its autonomous, it can drive itself it doesn't need to sit in a garage all day. It can carry passengers while you are at work and pay for itself.
So there you have it. When the autonomous car arrives, it'll end up as a taxi cab. It'll put the existing cabbies out of business, and the concept of personally owning a car will also go out of the window (This will also kill the mass market for cars entirely). Why spend 50k on a personal autonomous car at all? Cabs are now cheap and will pick you up at the door.
Deleted
Urmson (PhD, faculty on leave), Montemerlo (PhD), and Thrun (former faculty) all have ties to Carnegie Mellon. Autonomous driving has been a steady effort at CMU. For example, No Hands Across America was in 1995.
I wonder if the testicular atrophy has kicked in yet.
There's a fundamental mathematical difference between all forms of group transport and all forms of individual transport.
Deleted
I wonder what was the reaction of the car that rear-ended the driverless car.
I think I might freak out if I rear-ended a car, but if I then got out of my car and walked over to find that the car I rear-ended was driving but there was no one inside, I think saying I would be "freaked out" would be an incredible understatement.
This is one step toward my dream of a highway lane for autonomous vehicles. Just like carpool lanes, but better. Autonomous vehicles in a mesh network could drive at incredibly close distances - like a freight train. Fuel efficiency would increase immensely because of increased drafting effects, as well as people not slamming on their brakes and accelerator pedals constantly. Real-time communication between vehicles could alert entire 'trains' of cars to slow down simultaneously in the event of an obstacle or road obstruction. Traffic for the rest of the highway lanes would also improve because of the increased packing efficiency of cars on the automation lanes.
Win Win Win!
Until someone decides it can't be allowed because "Who would we sue if something went wrong???"
Our government in the pursuit of efficiency is pushing and funding this I am sure. Just think, they do not even have to go to your house to pick you up for ummm say questioning. Just lock the doors and redirect you, look no intervention! Just drive you right inside the yard... Na... I will pass. Right now,
While technically feasible, the legal system can't cope without someone to throw in jail or give a ticket. Someone has to go to jail, Ben.
Would it be possible to somehow reverse engineer the car to specifically target people and run them over without anyone in it?
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
Imagine if you could just pull up a web page, tell it where you want to go, where you are, and the closest idle taxi will pick you up and take you there.
There'd be little reason to own a car if that worked.
I wish that I could read the article behind the NYT paywall. ugh. If somebody has read it, does the article mention adverse conditions like fog, rain, or even nighttime? What about conditions like snow and ice? If it can only handle calm, clear weather then it's only useful in a small portion of the country.
Autonomous cars are an interesting concept - but Google is doing that? Why? Surely not just because they can (what with the data centre power and their reserves of cash)
Am I the only one slightly worried by Google's efforts in becoming the ultimate mega-corporation?
What's next? Microsoft doing pharmaceutical research?
See the point 3, SLAM on: http://blogs.forbes.com/briancaulfield/2010/10/09/four-reasons-google-cars-drive-better-than-you-do/
To make things safe, autonomous cares probably drive very slowly and only take the safest of decisions.
Which renders them quite useless, as not only do they take ages to take you from A to B, they slow down other people too.
They're also probably unable to deal with unexpected things or drivers not driving correctly. And finally, image recognition etc. is probably slower than human reaction time.
Until we can build machine that can best a racing driver and a track it doesn't know, this technology is worthless in my opinion.
Road hazard probabilities test; people, kids playing in street, dogs, deer, horses, ducks, birds, butterflies, shoes, shopping carts, bicyclists, motorcyclists and Frogs.
Not to mention the last recourse: kill or be killed?
They will pry my steering wheel and manual transmission from my cold dead hands...
I'd rather walk than ride any POS like this.
If you arn't going to activly participate on the roadway, take a frackin bus!!!
to see a conversation involving cars where no one says BREAKS when they mean BRAKES! BRAKES are what slow the car. BREAKS means it's time to get it fixed. And for the guy who used both in his post - I'm in awe...
That said - I am of mixed emotions about autonomous driving. I LIKE to drive. But at the same time I recognize that traffic flow and MPG would be far far higher if something a bit less emotional than a human was doing the driving. Mixing autonomous and drivers together on the same road certainly does seem like potential trouble waiting to happen... Bravo to Google for working on this though!
Build it, Drive it, Improve it! Hybridz.org
... we didn't see it coming?
So if your car drives itself are the insurers going to base your premiums on your driving profile?
also in big city areas it's cheaper to live outside the downtown area and drive in / take a train.
that's why you make them take your blood for a test.
That really depends on where you live.
I actually live in a nicer section in a metropolitan area. Now, the rent I pay is not awful and it is not great. However, if you live outside of the city there are several additional expenses that have to be calculated. Vehicle, insurance, fuel and parking will quickly tear away at the reduced costs of living outside of the city. In fact, with my "more expensive" living conditions I actually live quite a bit cheaper then my commuter counter-parts.
There are some various pros and cons to living in or outside of the city, but these have to be weighed by the individual and/or family. For instance, it is quite a bit less to own a home in suburbia and these areas I would consider more youth friendly. Now, in downtown the nightlife is waaaay better. In fact, it's about that time.
"You should always go to other people's funerals; otherwise, they won't come to yours." -- Yogi Berra
what about a Toyota like software lockup where it stops reading inputs and just lock in the last mode?
no there will be a software crash insurers that cover what happens when the software loses control of the car / has A BSOD.
Many states, including Ohio has a provision that allows you to request a Blood test. However, in these same states, the cops aren't always willing to get you one and no court case that I am aware of has ever thrown out their evidence when one wasn't provided.
Also, a blood test is no always accurate for the same reasons that breathalyzer machines might not be. If the person extracting the blood isn't certified or if they don't like you, they can use alcohol based swabs to clean the area the needle will puncture the skin. This creates a residue that will have an impact on the measures BAC. There is also a problem with anticoagulants, some which can't be used with a blood test for BAC but are perfectly capable of being used for other lab work. Then you have the problems of blood separation if no or the wrong type of coagulant is used or the lack of proper handling (for the type of anticoagulant) happens and the alcohol concentration will deviate between whole blood and blood serum levels.
Believe it or not, not all hospitals are certified to extract blood for BAC testing and not all employees are certified to handle it during extraction or after it. You could end up with an employee that is either incompetent for the task or malicious in the application of duties, all of which could cause the results to be just as tainted.
YMMV indeed. Turns out half of these transit systems you talk about in the USA don't do so well on the passenger miles per gallon. The average is the same as cars (which get 35 pmpg) and not as good as hybrid cars or electric cars.
Outside of a few cities, these systems also take a lot longer to get where you're going, don't go where you're going, and don't run at night or much at mid-day. At rush hour you may not get a seat (they're efficient then, but lose all that with the non rush hour empty vehicles)
Big sedans are not that efficient, but private transportation can be very efficient, much more efficient than typical public transit. It can be lighter per person, it doesn't start and stop all the time, and it only goes directly from A to B, not out to C first to change trains.
Has it been over a year since you last donated to the Electronic Frontier Foundation
... when the first child is killed in an auto accident caused by a robot's misjudgment.
For poor people like me, the status quo where I have access to decent CHEAP 1000$ish non-automated used cars is probably better than a system where I have to buy some 50,000$+ automated car. If some sort of required automated-car system was suddenly put in place, it'd take decades for used automated cars to reach a lower price value and even then they might still be too expensive.
Take a train? Yeah right. For example, in Nashville TN only recently was there a train added and it goes from Lebanon at a whopping 30mph. Not only that, but there is zero train service to commute out of the area... unless you stow away on a freight car. Passenger rail isn't available in the US in an amount that can even be utilized except in the extreme northeast and maybe a few places in the west.
it comes from 4chan/b/. its an old copypasta meme, usually accompanied by a pic of a super tan ripped jock with his big breasted girlfriend. don't know why someone would do a rewrite of it and put it on /. though
Beating a human at handling unanticipatable events seems a straightforward engineering task. Let's say that a kid darts out from behind a car with absolutely no warning. If the computer car has sensors better than human eyes, and a reaction time quicker than a human's, then it should beat the human in that situation. Seems very possible to me.
But it is the situations that CAN be anticipated where computers will have hard time catching up to humans. Because--what goes into human anticipation? A computer can be programmed to know where school zones are, based on GPS coords. But on a random side street, a computer would have a hard time noticing that the street looks a little more parked-in than typical, and one house has a pink mylar balloon on the mailbox--therefore, drive slower than usual because there's probably a birthday party with over-excited kids running around.
Or consider the very subtle ways we evaluate the driving of the cars around us. Have you ever thought to yourself, "that car is about to cut me off," and then it happens? What went into that moment of anticipation? Probably dozens of clues about how that car was moving through traffic. You probably are not even aware of all the factors--you just learned over time. It will extremely difficult to capture that sort of anticipation in software.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Believe it or not, not all hospitals are certified to extract blood for BAC testing and not all employees are certified to handle it during extraction or after it. You could end up with an employee that is either incompetent for the task or malicious in the application of duties, all of which could cause the results to be just as tainted.
So you can be screwed either way. Well, you're always playing the odds, but you're still probably better off with the blood test, I'd say. If nothing else, if they do preserve a sample that you can have tested by your own lab, the kind of tempering or contamination you're describing might be detectable. With a Breathalyzer, there is no evidence to be preserved.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Where even a relatively simple electronic throttle control system became the focus of a witch hunt, despite a complete lack of evidence that it had failed. In fact the preponderance of the evidence now is that most cases were simply a case of wrong-footing the gas pedal...just like with Audi's the last time. Yet Toyota has suffered massive economic consequences.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
I live in San Francisco, and work in Silicon Valley.
Some of you know what that means - reverse commute down 280. Generally that describes the traffic - "Goes to Eighty"efarious afoot..
These retrofitted Prius', with spinning turrets on top - like vertical-axis turbines - shoot along, between Mt. View and San Mateo. This happens several times a week, just off peak commute hours.
I was sure they were some bizarre expansion of street-view, and commented as much, to several friends.
I now see, this is correct. This being Google, there is something nefarious afoot... Mark my words.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
I actually considered this and weighed the options when looking at an apartment. Eventually, though I chose to live where rent is cheaper and suck up the expenses of two cars for my family for one main reason: Medical care.
My wife needs to see a doctor about once every two weeks, I need to see some sort of specialist at least once a month, and my son is special needs and goes to therapy 2-3 times a week. There is *no way* we would be able to manage this on public transportation, in this city -- a single trip to the clinics would take hours that I cannot to spare in transportation time alone on the bus & light rail lines. In fact, the transportation networks that lead to my job and to the hospital are two entirely different systems, managed by different groups, and synchronized about as well as you would expect.
And of course, I'm not quite certain how I would carry both a toddler and groceries for 3.5 people on the two buses between my home and the supermarket.
>> Standing on head makes smile of frown, but rest of face also upside down.
Ooooh, I can't wait for what will happen when 95% of the cars on the road are controlled by Microsoft systems. Imagine the massive traffic jams in front of the whore houses and gambling joints with totally clueless occupants in the driver's seat desperately downloading the latest Anti-virus programs so they can limp home in manual mode.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Google really needs to stop fucking with the time space continuum.
Or at least get me that jet-pack I was promised by Omni magazine when I was 12.
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
to see a conversation involving cars where no one says BREAKS when they mean BRAKES! BRAKES are what slow the car. BREAKS means it's time to get it fixed. And for the guy who used both in his post - I'm in awe...
to see a conversation involving gods where no one says DIETY when they mean DEITY! DEITY is what you pray to. DIETY means it's time to get off the cheeseburgers. And for the guy who made a spelling error in his grammar nazi post - I'm in awe...
I don't believe you. The point he was making is that "mass transit" could be as simple as multiple individual cars that link together to make mass transit. They get to split the load, share the air resistance, and it becomes a flexible and personal mass transit. What is a group of 10 cars linked nose to tail, sharing the load for an individual MPG of 100+ MPG? Individual or mass transit? I can't tell what side of the "fundamental" difference that would fall on.
Learn to love Alaska
Lets say thier algorithms are 1000 times better than a human driver at avoiding accidents, at least statistically. Given that in 2009 over 40,000 auto deaths occured and over 250k childred were injured (http://www.edgarsnyder.com/car-accident/statistics.html) that would translate into hundereds or thousands of multi-million dollar lawsuits against the navigation company per year. Not to mention the countless fender benders that the system would be responsible for. Even dumbasses running into the car at no fault to the navigation company will probably be dragged into court. You think you can code dumbassery avoidance into the car? They will build a better dumbass. You will see this technology in Japan and Germany well before the US simply due to the popular acceptance of these technologies as well as the legal ramifications. State of the art algorithms such as these are not nearly as good as a moderately competent driver under generalized circumstances - as a single example just put a google car on icy snowy roads and see how well its vision algorithm tracks the road or how well it's laser or sonic sensors work when fouled with snow.
"freeing up the labor pool for more productive uses"..
??
Now, haven't we heard *that one* before.
I worked on a project at Honda R&D 15 years ago, and it's amazing how far technology has come since then, and we're still just now getting there. It was possible to have self-driving cars back then, but the technology was still in its infancy. It's wonderful to see my previous work come to life.
There are 2 groups of people you can make fun of on the Internet without fear of attack. The illiterate, and the Amish.
I used to live in a suburd about 20km from downtown Montreal. You have to understand Montreal is an Island and bridges tends to get veru busy in rush hours... I had to pay for my car (and gas), for my parking at the subway station on the south shore and for my public transit fees... It IS a lot of money to have a somewhat cheaper rent...
Tomorrow is another day...
Woo, 140,000 miles so far. Ok, does anyone here have ANY idea of how many miles are driven per day accounting every car in the American public? Too many to test for. I'm sorry, but a computer doesn't see peripheral vision, it sees priority number N. A computer doesn't see pedestrian versus deer, it executes a computation that derives the statistical possibility of injury during collision; in emulation of a thought process that takes into consideration mass versus relative inertia, if that detailed of a computation is even built into it's awareness. Cross-link together 42 to the power of 42 core I-7 extremes in one supercomputer and you still won't have a computer with the situational awareness of a human. I want to take Google to court simply for testing this. It matters not where I live in relation to the locale of their tests. They put the American public at risk doing this, and Google no longer lives up to their supposed motto of Don't Be Evil. AMEN.
I'm sorry, there's no way I could condone this action regardless of it's safety record so far. Cars fail often, Humans fail more often. Computers can be built to an acceptable tolerance, WITHOUT being aware of what they are tolerating. THAT is the difference.
The tests should be (at least partially) conducted in winter driving condition. Prepare for the worst, that how I learned to drive and I was never involved ion collision, even on super slippery conditions, I was always capable of avoiding impact by staying cool and controlling the car the best I could.
Tomorrow is another day...
I think it's suspicious that I keep trying to tag the story skynet, and it (the machine) refuses.
In Soviet Russia, articles before post read *you*!
Yeah, but will it make you pull over if someone files a DMCA takedown request against you?
"And one of the big problems we’re working on today is car safety and efficiency."
Regarding efficiency, they are clearly oblivious to Jevons Paradox. I''d say this development is more likely to increase car use than decrease it, even if it increases car sharing.
I'd love to have one though.
Why nobody is talking about TU Braunschweig's efforts in this matter? Hell, we even have a video from them, drop Google's "secretly".
"Sum Ergo Cogito"
OK, even though I'm a US citizen, I've lived in Italy most of my life, so I have to admit I'm not completely familiar with US laws. Here in Italy, though, driving something that hasn't passed local security tests is illegal on public streets. I assume it tipically takes at least a couple of years before a car manufacturer can build newly developed technologies into it's cars, because of all the testing involved, so unless Google asked for and was granted permission to modify/drive these cars (but in that case it wouldn't be much of a secret), I'm assuming things here aren't completely legal here. Unless, of course, things in the US work differently than I think. Legal or not, though, you have to admit that doing similar tests poses quite a risk for the people driving around you. OK, nothing happened so far, no accidents, but have these systems been properly tested to avoid such things from happening? And even if, do they have permission to perform these test without the proper authorities supervising them?
Wiki refs a Texas Transportation Institute study that says 5.7 billion U.S. gallons were lost due to congestion in 2007. This works out to 371,819 barrels/day of oil, which would be 1.9% of the 19,278,000 barrels per day we used in July 2010, or 4% of the finished motor gasoline. These numbers from the DOE's Energy Information Administration. I always thought traffic congestion must gobble up some huge amount of fuel, but it's actually more like the output of a few offshore oil fields. Still worth addressing, but I think encouraging HOV lanes and the like are more the idea.
The International Energy Agency published a good doc on Saving Oil in a Hurry (pdf). Lots of pertinent info therein.
Having just today learned about the phenom of peons earning a few bucks a day to break captchas, your idea doesn't strike me as all that absurd. Cough up a couple bucks to have someone on another continent drive your car for you - I can see that being a hit with frazzled commuters. Or hell, someone in the same city - this must be one of those shovel ready jobs I've heard them talk about so much lately.
Or how about paying someone in pocket change to just ride along so you can tool down the HOV lane? I'm stunned how empty the HOV lane is on I5 in Portland, OR, which is as theoretically 'Green' as burgs get, right? Perhaps PDX's mayor should encourage slugging. Don't know why that hasn't taken off everywhere, either.
In London recently, there was a case where an automated train skipped something like 6 red signals and caused passenger trains to have to stop and wait until someone could get control back.
This is a train, that goes on rails and can't get into too much trouble. There are limited variables to deal with, and we can't get it right yet. I don't even want to think about doing this with cars in populated areas!
check it on Google for yourself.
Why don't you spend that time fixing your search engine and the bugs that still plague Android? Don't worry I am not just picking on you. I routinely encounter about 5 - 10 bugs a day from a variety of software.
Software seems to be going backwards, and I don't want my physical car doing the literal of a crash. Thanks, but no thanks.
Why not rethink and remake it completely. In Argentina 33 miners will be delivered to the surface by a capsule moving in a 600 meters tube.
Why not to make a completely automated network of such underground tubes, coming right into our apartments, offices, etc. One just enters into a capsule, types in a destination, and off it goes.
Such a system could be used for deliveries too, but only if a receiver accepts an arrival of a capsule, for security reasons.
Since the tubes run underground, the surface could be used for parks, alleys, stadiums, etc.
Sorry, couldn't resist it :-)
Not to be taken too seriously, after all NYC does have a pretty comprehensive subway system. I'd love it if the USA invested more in suburban train systems though and other public transport though. As well as for the local ecological reasons, purely selfishly good public transport means you can see more as a tourist without having to get into the hassle of hiring an auto and learning to deal with local transport systems.
I accept your demographics are different however.
More traffic. We will enter a car sharing world where the car drops one person off at work/home and then heads off without occupants to pick up another.
This remembered me Solari's highway scene from 1972: http://sec2u.com/solaris-full-highway-scene/
We can finally solve the prison overcrowding issue they way they do it in the year 2000 AD (pdf, page 8).
How do you solve the problem of people intentionally trying to harm the system? Pranksters, hackers, terrorists, people who are pissed about automated cars, etc. would have a lot to gain if they had the ability to disrupt the transportation system. A few of them would have the necessary skills.
There are too many ways to hack the system. Law enforcement needs to have a way to signal the car to pull over and stop. This signal can he hacked.
Or a prankster manages to send a signal to all the cars on the freeway telling the computer that the freeway is closed ahead when it isn't. All of the cars exit the freeway and clog the surface streets.
The software will need to be updated from time to time. How will this be done. Typically by the dealer but I imagine that hackers will want to introduce their own creative modifications. Evil people might want to program the car to crash.
Suppose 100,000 automated cars are manufactured in 2015 (optimistic aren't I). Five years later it is discovered that this car could has a safety issue which requires a couple of additional sensors and a change to the computer. How is this handled? The manufacturer isn't really interested. The car is out of warranty. Do we make it illegal to drive it? Force the manufacturer to upgrade it? Raise the insurance bill?
The problem is not the computer crashing. You can solve that with redundant computers and sensors. The software can be designed for reliability. Windows is designed to work with a very large array of hardware, drivers, software and configuration options. This is a recipe for frequent crashes. But software to control cars would be single purpose.
One issue is what to do in the case of trouble. What if the car doesn't respond to commands? What if several of the redundant computers indicate a problem or a critical sensor stops giving intelligent input? What do you do? Stop the car wherever it is? Pull over to the side? Try to get off the freeway? Wake up the human?
I would like to see automated cars happen. But there are tremendous challenges to accomplishing it.
You are most likely right that a blood test is still better then a breathalyzer test. It's definitely easier to get the results challenged when you know about all the certification steps, procedural differences, handling qualifications, and so on. This is also one reason why you need a qualified lawyer who specializes in DUIs and drug arrests as well as attempting to educate yourself as much as possible if you ever find yourself in a position where a BAC test can have a negative impact on you.
This is also one reason why you need a qualified lawyer who specializes in DUIs and drug arrests as well as attempting to educate yourself as much as possible
Best advice I've read lately.
... when I got up and walked to the bathroom to take a leak, I got a cheer from the other patrons when I made it back to the table under my own power. Yeah, I was fucked up.
I've only been drunk and driven a car once in my life. That was thirty years ago, and I've not done it since (I'd gone out drinking with some of the people I was working with, back when I was a freelance software developer) and had way too many beers. Actually, we split at least three pitchers (memory is kinda fuzzy after that.) The other people in the restaurant were taking bets as to which of us could actually stand
I had about a twenty mile drive home, but I got one, maybe two blocks before I realized that "this just isn't going to work", turned around, went back to the plant parking lot and slept it off.
So, in the ensuing decades I think I've been pretty damn responsible when it comes to drinking and driving. However, under the current system of using flawed measurement technology with little or no legal recourse, I could still be accused and convicted of drunken driving even if I never had a drop.
Yeah, that bothers me. It should bother everyone.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Hi,
I can't figure out from the article where they get the speed limits?
Does anyone know?
Not only that, you now have to be careful even when you do the right thing.
My dad knows a guy who left a bar, got a couple of blocks away (as you did), and realized that he was not in any condition to drive. He pulled off the road (I'm not clear whether it was the shoulder or a parking lot or what, but my understanding is it was done safely) and went to sleep.
Wakes up some hours later to a cop knocking on his window, and he's arrested for DUI, get this, because the keys were in the ignition. Apparently if he'd dropped them out the window he'd have been fine.
Effectively he was severely punished for NOT driving home drunk, and on a technicality at that. How messed up is that.
Not only that, you now have to be careful even when you do the right thing.
My dad knows a guy who left a bar, got a couple of blocks away (as you did), and realized that he was not in any condition to drive. He pulled off the road (I'm not clear whether it was the shoulder or a parking lot or what, but my understanding is it was done safely) and went to sleep.
Wakes up some hours later to a cop knocking on his window, and he's arrested for DUI, get this, because the keys were in the ignition. Apparently if he'd dropped them out the window he'd have been fine.
Effectively he was severely punished for NOT driving home drunk, and on a technicality at that. How messed up is that.
Seriously messed up, and my understanding (as a non-lawyer) is that, because he was technically still in control of the vehicle, he is still subject to a Driving while Under the Influence even if he wasn't driving and was sound asleep at the time. Sure sounds like the State has its priorities badly off, but the reason they get away with it is because they've successfully vilified the "drunk driver" to the public to the point where it no longer matters if you are or not. You've been accused, which makes you one of "them", a baby-killing monster, and thus not deserving of the legal protections and presumption of innocence afforded to "us normal, law-abidin', God-fearin'" people. Christ, and I thought witch hunts were out of vogue: I guess the mindset that made those popular at one time is still with us.
... I'm a good person!") and, hell, don't care for those people anyway. For example: I don't happen to smoke. I never have, actually, and my doctor says I'm probably allergic to something in cigarette smoke. However, I've always been dead-set against this vendetta, nay, crusade that state and local governments have on against smokers. Punitive taxation, limiting where smokers can smoke, all manner of social engineering that a. the government has no business doing and b. while applied to a behavior of which I do not personally approve, I recognize that, if this abuse of authority is tolerated, I might very well find myself the target next time.
Spare us all from tiny minds who don't care if a particular group is being mistreated as they feel they aren't personally subject to that abuse ("can't happen to me
Let's face facts: no matter how you live your life, no matter what good or bad behaviors you exhibit, somebody, somewhere, will find one or more of them offensive. And, if that person happens to be in a position of power, may very well feel justified in trying to ban or punish you for that behavior just because they can. The problem gets worse when the State finds a way to make money from that punishment.
Truly not the principles upon which this country was founded. Too bad more people aren't aware of the consequences of such thinking.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
An excellent point. Anybody who smokes is an idiot, but anybody who thinks it's the place of government to regulate whether or not it can be done in a private establishment is MUCH worse.
He pulled off the road (I'm not clear whether it was the shoulder or a parking lot or what, but my understanding is it was done safely) and went to sleep.
I was probably just lucky that I went back to where I came from, which was a large manufacturing plant parking lot full of cars from the night shift. I wasn't out in the open where a cop cruising by would be likely to notice me. This was sometime back in 1981 or 1982, before government(s) became so extreme in the way they're handling the issue, before the rise of M.A.D.D.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
According to the article, "more than 37,000 people died in car accidents in the United States in 2008."
I bet you that if you replaced all cars with AI-driven cars, and 37 people died in car accidents due to software errors, it would cause a great deal more outrage than 1000x that many people dying due to human error.
TFA doesn't have the word "secretly" in the headline -- that is the work of the Slashdot submitter. Your hatred is misplaced, unless you consider web sites that post summaries of actual journalism to be journalism.
From Merriam Webster:
Definition of JOURNALISM
1 a : the collection and editing of news for presentation through the media
GP did not target TFA specifically, it's obvious he meant the headline of TFS. Now is that really Journalism? Go ask a true Scottsman.
I hate emos about twice as much as they hate themselves.
LOL.
I for one, welcome our googley eyed autonomous vehicular overlords!
One of the coolest aspects of auto-driving cars that I haven't seen discussed much (and I don't know if Google is working on) is having RANs - or road area networks. Imagine if every car on the freeway was auto-driving and mesh-networked. A deer runs in front of the car 1/4 mile up and your car immediately knows about and starts correcting for it by slowing down. An accident has happened (caused by a non-auto driving car, of course) and the system automatically merges traffic into available lanes, and calculates a percentage of traffic to redirect through a different route. Automatic traffic detections systems sense all possible routes on your morning commute and always pick the quickest one, correcting in real time for updated traffic statistics. A computer can manage traffic better than a bunch of individual drivers.
I'm sure there is even more potential that I haven't even considered. What else could you do with a totally sweet and functional RAN?
or else!
...is that the light the car was stopped at was green.
Bukowski said it. I believe it. That settles it.
I'd rather drive my own car. We'll need two separate sets of roadways. One for autopilot and one without, because no autopilot will be able to avoid all real drivers when they forget to exit. Of course if all the auto pilot cars will move over for me, I'm happy.
(Sorry I'm posting so late on this topic...)
If cars drive themselves, google's blog claims this could reduce greenhouse emissions.
This seems wishful thinking at best or greenwashing at worst... autonomous cars will be a disaster that will increase greenhouse gasses substantially.
Why?
1) because now more people can afford, in terms of their time, to drive further for work. So they will. And
2) if transportation of raw materials is cheaper because drivers aren't needed, the volume of material transported will go up, assuming the demand for goods is somewhat elastic with the price. With the amount of material transported increasing, the gasoline required for that transport and thus the carbon emitted will increase.
Color me a pessimist. Autonomous cars will be great for human freedom, and for human safety, but reduced greenhouse emissions is one thing that will not be a benefit.
Now if Google could build us some nice carpool-sharing app hooked to Google directions, with a reputation engine for the fellow passengers (perhaps in conjunction with their autonomous car work) to avoid unpleasant passenger surprises, *that* I could see helping reduce greenhouse emissions.
--LP
Lame.
Look at that one:
http://stadtpilot.tu-bs.de/en/stadtpilot/project/
I can't wait until the day I hop into my car and big brother decides it's in my best interest to pay them a visit and redirects my vehicle to a location of their choice.
Before I ever buy an autonomous car or support legislation restricting the use of manual vehicles, I expect full disclosure of the system. A Ben Caxton moment occuring once is never acceptable.