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Autonomous Audi TT Conquers Pike's Peak
fergus07 writes "After a year long research program, this week Audi revealed that its Autonomous TTS car had completed the 12.42-mile Pike's Peak mountain course in 27 minutes. An expert driver in the same car would take around 17 minutes — now we have a benchmark, the race is on, and it's almost inevitable that a computer will one day outdrive the best of our species, and it may be sooner than you think."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKgeCQGu_ug (Ari Vatanen with peugeot 405 T16, Pikes-Peak 1990)
This is Slashdot, dammit, we're supposed to be talking about the tech the car uses, the sensor fields, blind spots, known bugs, and so forth. What do we get? A typical journalist "the narrative" story, where humanity is in a race against robots which will surely supplant us. Guh, it's like a rejected 1950s sci-fi manuscript. Bonus points for using the tech-y "benchmark" phrase like the car is some sort of Crysis.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
"It's an old racing adage that it's a lot easier to make a fast driver who crashes safe than to make a slow driver faster. The penalty for error on Pikes Peak is massive as the edge of the circuit is often a massive cliff.
Audi is logically taking a cautious and considered approach because the negative publicity of a car plunging over a fatal drop would hinder the development.".
Actually, the dash-cam video of the Autonomous Audi speeding off the road, going over a cliff and crashing in a fiery explosion would be pretty damn awesome.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
I'd be inclined to guess that the easier(and for many purposes more important) area of computer supremacy won't be in absolute speed(outside of carefully-controlled-for-robotic advantage environments like pick-and-place machines and closed rail tracks); but in sheer endurance.
Assuming that you don't totally cheap out on the fault tolerance or get horribly unlucky, the autonomous car should be able to complete the course every 27 minutes, with occasional pauses for refueling, and longer; but even more occasional pauses for hardware service on the car, virtually forever. That expert human driver, though, will do 17 minutes a number of times; but will be a downright danger to himself and others within 24 hours or so.
For many applications(municipal bus service and low-priority-low-cost mail delivery and commodity trucking/train deliver come to mind), it is virtually irrelevant what a top-notch human in fresh condition can do. What matters is either how many of those you can afford as spares, or what an exhausted, bored, hopped-up-on-stimulants-just-to-stay-awake human can do. Computers, on the other hand, may take longer than one would expect to catch up with best of breed humans in anything resembling natural conditions; but will be able to catch up with real world, performance-degraded humans considerably faster...
I imagine the big test comes a few years down the line, when all the major manufacturers let their cars run along Pike's Peak, with varying traffic patterns (i.e., try to hold 80KPH for three minutes, 30KPH for two, et.c.,) randomized for all the cars to see how well the systems handle unexpected events.
In fact, I would probably insist on not buying an automagic car that hasn't been through a multi-car safety test along those lines.
Not that easy. Liability allocation.
Something like a car, in a natural environment(not some empty closed test-track stuff), will suffer an accident from time to time. Human error, mechanical issues, sensor faults, algorithmic fuckups, whatever.
With a human driver(who basically all juries trivially recognize as an autonomous agent, since they think of all reasonably functional humans as such), the liability for accidents typically falls on one of the operators, unless a mechanical fault, braking issue, or something of that sort can be proven.
With an autonomous control computer, a jury will be much more likely to see the "driver" as an extension of the company who built the car, just like the brakes or the steering column, and assign liability accordingly.
Even if, lets say, computer-controlled cars delivered a 10-fold reduction in morbidity and mortality(which would save something like 35,000 Americans a year from death, plus an unknown but even larger number from serious injury, just to put things in perspective), that would likely be a net increase in liability for the vehicle manufacturers.
Until autonomous vehicles prove superior safety and insurers and/or legislators recognize the new state of affairs, it'll be strictly test tracks, tech demos, and internal use....
I don't care about autonomous cars out-driving the best of us. I want to see common cars that can out-drive the morons on the freeways! Out-drive the mediocre and worst of us and I'd be happy.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
While I do not doubt that these e-drivers will quickly come to out drive most of us, doesn't it come down to a question of how close to the physical capabilities of the car the driver can go or is going already? I expect them to be more reliable overall, more attentive (obviously) and more able to repeat their own performance. However, I am not necessarily so sure that there really is that much more capability for them to squeeze out of the cars than a trained pro driver on a test course is already able to squeeze out.
Driving maneuvers are a constant trade off, the closer to the physical capabilities of the car you come, the faster you can traverse a course, however, it also means having less ability to make adjustments and corrections. It is a crude example but, If 99% of my available traction is being used to make this turn, at this speed,I only have 1% more to add if I need to make an adjustment to my course, or speed.
Admittedly cars can then be redesigned to push those limits.....but thats another issue.
-Steve
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
Huh? You can fully automate NASCAR with a steering lock and a brick on the gas pedal.
A quick google search for "Autonomous Audi TTS hardware" turned up these articles, offering various details on the hardware used:
http://sun.systemnews.com/articles/143/2/feature/22601
http://www.audiusanews.com/newsrelease.do;jsessionid=2CB13CF6B9E286A75E8E2B1663E63318?id=1589
http://www.topspeed.com/cars/audi/2010-autonomous-audi-tts-pikes-peak-ar92542.html
I'm not sure how long it will be for truly intelligent machines (could never happen / be impossible without wetware).
But machines able to do our jobs are here now. And for a lot of jobs the annual cost is $15,000. Compare that to $32,000 (after benefits) for even minimum wage jobs and you have to think things get ugly soon.
Already diapers.com has "hundreds of robotic warehouse workers" (business week) and some hospital has "hired" 19 robotic workers *instead* of humans. It seems great as a cost savings measure at first-- but then you have to ask, long term, how do people get even a single dollar to afford the less expensive hospital?
Seriously, we could be looking at 50% unemployment in 20 years. It will be concentrated on the low end. How do we handle that as a society? If we don't, it is going to get violent.
What currently produces more taxes? A robotic factory making a billion a year with 3 human owner/managers or a human factory with 500 workers and 3 owner/managers that makes the same amount?
Substantially lower sales tax, use tax, home property taxes, school taxes, etc. from the first. States will be hurting unless they institute income taxes.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Seriously, we could be looking at 50% unemployment in 20 years. It will be concentrated on the low end. How do we handle that as a society?
Try reading Oscar Wilde's "The Soul of Man Under Socialism". Over a hundred years ago he was imagining a world where machines were the new slaves and the majority of mankind was released from the drudgery of labour.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Yeah, the metro in New Delhi is driverless, too.
Lies about crimes