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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.
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.
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
Truly a cunning retort.
MADD are assholes because they don't actually care about stopping drunk driving anymore. They care about stopping drinking. As stated by their disillusioned founder Candy Lightner, they've become neo-prohibitionists.
"linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)
... 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, $100,000, it would pay for itself in a few years in avoided driver pay alone.
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
Except where state laws also prohibit driving in such a way as to cause a wreck, deliberately. Even if your vehicle is not involved in the impact, if your driving can be shown to have contributed to a wreck in which someone died, you can be charged with murder.
... and not for any job reasons! Because politicians think people can't be trusted to handle such an immensely dangerous item as motor fuel without proper training and certification!
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
I like the article, and it makes some good points. However, be sure to take everything with a grain of salt. According to the article, California gave up its state constitution....which is not exactly true.
Here's a delay-based definition of LOS. (There are other definitions for LOS, but I like delay best. It bears the most relevancy to drivers. There's a lot of work that goes into deciding the delay numbers, but that's a pretty good quick definition. Wikipedia has a good definition that goes beyond the HCM definition. I couldn't find any pretty pictures, but this pdf shows approximately what we mean by the different levels of service.
For poor people like me, the status quo where I have access to decent CHEAP 1000$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.
The offenses for drink-related offenses are often far too lenient. But the laws deciding what counts as a drink-related offense? In just about every state, sleeping in the drivers seat of your car while you have a .08 BAC is a DUI. In some, sleeping in the back seat of your car with a .05 BAC is a DUI.
Bullshit like that dilutes the meaning of actual DUI's, and MADD fully supports it.
Does a line appended to your comment give your post meaning in and of itself, or only in relation to those without?
Sorry, but you're a self-absorbed whackjob.
A person who doesn't want a family is immature or irresponsible? I mean really? You know what I find to be irresponsible? Some notion that a person needs to get married and have children because some lunatic on the Internet says there is a societal benefit to it. I'm sure those kids will grow up in a fantastic loving home what with their parents wishing they were in any situation other than that one. It seems like a fantastic environment to raise kids.
Not owning a home is a result of lacking willpower against compulsion? How about the possibility that they find owning some big house on some big lot to be a wasteful use of resources (and I'm not talking about their money). How about them feeling that they don't need 3000 square feet of space to knock around in on their own, since they have yet to get married and have children to please you?
Maybe they mooch off of people with cars; unlike you, I'm not stupid enough to pant entire categories of people with the same brush. But there's also the possibility that they simply take public transportation or walk places. Tasks which benefit them monetarily and in terms of their own health, benefit society by not contributing unnecessary pollution to the air or crowding to the streets and even benefit businesses by not making parking some huge requirement and by freeing up more money for them to spend on loft apartments and $300 shirts. But I'm sure to you they're just being unfair to all the used car salesman and mechanics and gas station owners out there by not paying their fair share into those peoples' wallets. Those irresponsible kids.
In short? I can tell you're not young by your user ID, but I see you still haven't managed to grow up either. Your idea of a perfect way to live your life is not everybody's idea, nor does it mean it is the right idea just because you happen to be the one who possesses it. So do us all a favor and shut the fuck up. Go about your business your way and everybody else will go about their business their way. Nobody needs your smug sense of superiority, least of all you.
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"