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China Catches Up With Google's Driverless Car
mikejuk writes "While Google makes headlines with its driverless car and even manages to lobby Nevada to legalize driverless cars on the public road — China quietly pushes ahead on its own. A driverless car navigated 286km of expressway all on its own. Using nothing but a pair of video cameras and laser rangefinders, i.e. no GPS, it managed to arrive safely even through fog. The computer vision based approach means that at the moment it can only drive during daylight hours. Google might need to speed up ..."
Apparently they already have driverless high-speed trains.
I have something in common with Stephen Hawking...
It's pretty well known that China has been sending spies disguised as academic scholars/PhD students to appropriate information on research projects conducted in the US (professors in my school had been questioned by the FBI and were advised to be careful of these disguised "students"). I wouldn't be surprised if some of the technologies used were stolen from research projects conducted in the US.
They catch up all right, whether by their own effort, I don't know.
Automatically driving a car isn't easy per se, but it's not anywhere near the hardest AI problems we have. In particular, if we were to take a realistic bar for safety--- beating the average human driver--- the bar is actually pretty low, because the average safety record of human drivers is pretty shitty. A robot driver could just not speed and drive relatively defensively, and that alone would give it a big built-in accident-rate advantage, even if its raw skill was worse than a typical human driver.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Hello, roboticist here. I'd like to ask you a question: how were power steering, cruise control, anti-lock breaks, fuel injection and collision avoidance radar tested before it was introduced to the commercial car market? When you've answered that question, I'd like to ask you how robotic cars are substantially different in terms of 'experimentation'.
Scientists point out problems, engineers fix them
altslashdot.org: The future of slashdot.
I've heard that in China, sometimes richer people drive cars while poorer people ride bicycles. If a car hits a bike rider, the bike rider can sue for damages. Thus, it can be advantageous, and it's allegedly common, for a car driver to accidentally hit a biker, back up, and run him over again to finish him off. I wonder if and when some company (maybe Google, maybe not) will have cars that do this.
He once inserted random mutations into his code, just so he could have the experience of debugging.
Is this a reference to the research vehicle sharing the road with unsuspecting motorists? If so, I agree that could be a problem.
On the other hand, those fatal "automobile-travel systems" are fatal when humans are behind the wheel. One factor was cited in the article: reaction times. Human motorists also tend to violate traffic laws at whim and make judgement calls that are contradictory to best practices. That isn't a lack of ethics (as in the case of a machine), it is contrary to ethics.
If Star Trek (TOS) was made in the current age rather than the 1960s, Pavel Chekov would've been Chinese rather than Russian.
#DeleteChrome
Slashdot: "China Catches Up With Google's Driverless Car"
TFA: "However Google's car has logged 140,000 miles with only two minor accidents to its name and one of those was caused by a human driver. It will take some effort to match this performance."
Let me know when they get to handling pedestrians, traffic lights, cyclists, areas with different speed limits, yields, and turns in intersections.
It would be pretty frightening to have a machine steering a car, instead of a good old reliable human who never gets drunk, tired, angry or distracted, and never has a heart attack or a sudden seizure.
Shady Rat at work?
nice to know that the robot car people have, basically, no ethics whatsoever, considering that automobile-travel systems have killed more people than terrorism.
This is China; I haven't been there in a few years, but I think you'd be hard-pressed to build a machine that drives worse than the typical driver I saw on the roads there.
Im pretty sure they didnt just throw them on the highway with other cars prior to testing.
First of all, killed more people then terrorism? Are you from the US government because I'm pretty certain terrorism is a pretty low bar for deaths, On a national scale america had one big one, and next to nothing for almost all of it's history, on a global scale there's probably 15 different illnesses that can surpass terrorism. Secondly we already are risking our lives due to poorly tested and poorly manufactured systems driving our cars. Humans, we give each new human 30 hours in a classroom, 15 minutes with an instructor, and if they pass that test, good to go. No consent from every driver on the road needed. The high death rate of automobiles is exactly why figuring out something better is a goal. 2 fender benders vs 140,000k miles of drive time is far better then the average human being clocks in when it first learns to drive, and unlike humans as the computer based cars gain experience and intelligence, what they learn is automatically implanted into their next of kin. While humans have to re-learn from scratch every generation.
Automated expressway driving isn't that hard. If you have lane holding and radar cruise/braking control, both of which have been sold in production vehicles, that's almost enough. Quite a number of groups in both the US and Europe have done it. It's mostly a sensor problem.
The remaining hard problems in automated driving involve objects that aren't cars. Children, enemy troops, trash on the road, potholes, bicycles, low-hanging wires - stuff like that. That requires more situational awareness and object recognition, which is hard. None of this comes up much in expressway driving.
Given how Asians drive, I'd say this is a great idea.
* Carthago Delenda Est *
Looks like a novel approach to adding a video camera into one of the available adaptive cruise control systems out there.
If an A.I. driven car is capable of navigating Chinese traffic without incident, it can handle anything the U.S. can throw at it.
I once took an excursion to Reddit, and later HN. Unlimited up/down voting sucks when dealing with a hive-mind.
its called trains, subways, bicycle paths, etc etc etc.
all it takes is the desire to put down the kool-aid and stop throwing money down the car-hole.
Heres what psychologists have to do before they do an experiment involving humans
This is exactly why the Google car doesn't ask other drivers about their feelings while stopped at lights. The psychologists said it wasn't ethical.
Other than that, the driverless car has as much right to be on the road as any young learner driver just starting out. And how else would this technology ever get tested under real world conditions, because requiring informed consent from all the other drivers is obviously impractical.
I'm sure the Chinese research team didn't send their robot car out on the public highway without having tested it a lot in the lab and on closed tracks first, and that Google's robot car team didn't, and that the people who developed power steering etc. didn't either. My guess is that none of the DARPA Autonomous Vehicle Challenge competitors did either (or at worst, not many of them :-).
And you don't send a robot car out to drive itself without a human along to override its decisions, any more than a responsible adult would send a young human out to drive unsupervised in a public road for the first time. (Some of us humans learned to drive in "driver's-ed" cars that had an extra set of brakes in the front passenger seat so the instructor could stop the car if he had to, while others learned in cars that didn't have that, so the instructor was limited to yelling a lot and grabbing the steering wheel if needed. And lots of us learned to drive in mostly-empty parking lots before going out on the street.) Presumably the Chinese car had a human backup driver who could override the autopilot if necessary.
It's more fun if you can have the backup driver in the right-hand seat and a large dog or a Terminator mannequin in the left-hand seat, but that's strictly optional.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
For a test like this I'll bet they found a long straightaway with minimal curves, closed the expressway or used one that's brand new and not opened yet, and set this beast free on it.
Nothing at all like what DARPA challenge or Google do with robot cars
You're using the nice failure conditions on one side of the argument and the nasty ones on the other. That's not fair.
power steering: human is in control, power steering augments that control. if it fails, the human can still control the cars direction
Not if the failure locks the wheel in the wrong orientation. You hit a bus full on nuns in the other lane.
cruise control: human is mostly in control. if cruise control fails, the human can still control the cars speed
Not if the cruise controls locks up at full speed and does not turn off. You rear end a bus full of nuns.
if the anti-lock brakes fail, you just have normal brakes. the human can still stop.
Not if the brakes all lock shut and cause you to lose traction at highway speeds. You swerve into an oncoming bus full of nuns.
if the collision avoidance radar fails, nobody even notices.
Not if the failure is to trigger the brakes due to an "imminent collision." Bus full of nuns hits you form behind.
I share the road with unpredictable humans every day. Sharing the road with a predictable computer should be no challenge. Some people worry to much. Computers never worry. I think I prefer the computer over you.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
It's a stretch to call experimenting with driver-less cars on public roads experimenting on people. Any experiment that could affect the lives of others could fall under such a loose meaning. Does experimentation on viruses require the consent of everyone on the planet because they could possibly be affected if things go wrong? Should we have not ever attempted to launch anything into space without the unanimous consent of the planet? Do you think all drivers on the road should have to consent before allowing an experimental human driver (ie student driver) on the road?
I suppose as long as you announce that you are doing it ahead of time you could argue that people are giving consent by choosing to drive on that road or not. At any rate I would worry more about the hundreds/thousands of texting teens, drunken drivers and distracted drivers than one experimental robot. I also seriously doubt there wasn't testing before hand on closed roads or that there weren't any safety precautions. If nothing else safety precautions help protect investment in the vehicle itself.
it makes sense to be a bit more specific than "China". Was it a government programme, aru university or a company? Saying it's from china almost doesn't add any information by itself, besides that someone besides Google did it
If you honestly think you can compare the two and so easily discount googles system, which really isn't "google's", you are sorely mistaken and obviously have not read a single item about their driving system. The google cars have navigated over 140000 miles without a single accident through day and night, sun and snow and even roads that are not really "roads" by most peoples standards. Its great the accomplishment China has achieved but if anyone needs to speed up its everyone else behind Sebastian Thrun's Teams creation from Stanford University. They all have a lot of catching up to do. The GPS does not help when someone or thing runs out in front of the car and yet that car has no issues traversing even heavy pedestrian traffic or a single deer running in front of it. Its also capable of some pretty amazing high speed race car type driving and car stunts that very few people on the planet can actually do and those that can are typically professional drivers with hundreds of hours of practice.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0FHYpzDinjY
I was thinking about all of these futuristic movies with autonomous cars driving on these California like freeways. In reality if all cars were automated and networked you would only need street level crossings of highways. The cars could weave into the cross traffic at full speed without incident. It might be scary for us old timers but not for long.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
Google's driverless car was just in the news for crashing into a Prius
A human was driving the vehicle.
We're slow because we aren't willing to risk lives.
Nah. Lives are cheap and easily replaced.
The real issue is the compensation payouts that affect corporate profits.
Ah, your posts make more sense now. You're really against cars in general. Ok. Consider, robots will make vehicle drafting more practical and thereby reduce fuel consumption. They may also be able to provide better driving habits to reduce fuel consumption. For example, they are unlikely to punch it when the light turns green only to slam on the brake at the next light. In fact, once all cars are automated there won't be a need for traffic lights or starting and stopping more than the one time for departure and arrival. You're unlikely to get rid of fueled personal conveyance any time soon, but at least automation will save tens of thousands of lives per year while reducing fuel cost and lowering cars environmental impact.
Consider the offshoots of this technology that could enable very high fuel efficient 'gopher' vehicles. A lightweight vehicle designed for running errands. Such a vehicle would not need the extra weight to protect and transport people. This vehicle could go to the store to get your groceries and return them. Take and pick up your dry cleaning. Light-weight and with a limited range such a vehicle might be cheap and easily electric.
BTW planes and trains at least are highly automated. Cars will be the very last transportation method to be automated (not counting bicycles and walking)
Relevant reference videos:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vPxinqO3f8o
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D36eisnZ3A4
If they really do manage a robotic driver to deal with that mess it will be a miracle of modern engineering to rival anything in the history of mankind.
=Smidge=
Because cars work so damned well compared to everything else. Sure, bicycles are safe. They're also slow as hell, can only be practically used by a relatively small portion of the population, suck in bad weather, are terrible when hills are involved, and require a lot of effort to use.
Trains aren't quite as bad; just about anyone can get on them and use them, and they aren't so bad in bad weather. However, unlike roads, they don't go everywhere, not even close. They aren't so good at hills either. Train systems tend to be vulnerable (even more so than automobiles) to single failures causing delays throughout the system. And they're incredibly expensive on a per-passenger-mile basis.
Hopefully the Chinese driverless car fairs better than the Chinese Bullet trains. No one needs another 40 dead.
Which makes the tech actually quite impressive, if it managed to survive the horrible, horrible general traffic behaviour there.
Just wondering, this is China we're talking about (and it's not a racist statement b/c I'm ethnically Chinese.)
Sure, bicycles are safe.
Actually, when we looked at this a few years ago cyclists killed about as many people per passenger mile as motorists. In the UK, anyway, I don't know whether cyclists in other parts of the world are as dangerous as the 'red lights don't apply to me and get off that pedestrian crossing because I'm not stopping' lycra loons over there.
And yet look how much time, money and effort we spend trying (ineptly) to protect ourselves from terrorism while practically nobody seems to give two shits about traffic safety.
In 2001 alone, traffic related fatalities outnumbered terrorism related fatalities by about 14 to 1. If we include all the years since it's over 130 to 1.
=Smidge=
Will it slam into the car infront of it, and then get burried by the government?
No thanks. I'll take Google's approach.
I can tell that you've never commuted on a bicycle. They can be remarkably faster than cars under common traffic conditions, and exceptionally dangerous. (Never forget that a significant amount of engineering is devoted to automobile safety, virtually no consideration is given to bicycle safety.)
There are also hybrid methods of transportation: motorized bicycles are becoming more common, to tackle the hills; transit systems facilitate cyclists on both busses and trains; park-and-ride lots for motorists who can do part of the commute on trains; and so forth.
The final consideration is that cities are unfriendly to alternative forms of transportation because they were designed for the private automobile, and things aren't really going to change because the lobby groups that support the automobile (including people like yourself) fight tooth and nail against accomodations being made for other modes of transportation.
You don't really understand how cars work, do you? Power steering isn't steer-by-wire; it's just power assist. I've driven cars with broken power steering, and while it was hard to maneuver at slow speeds the difference wasn't really noticeable over 10 mph. If your cruise control locks in the on and maximum speed position, put the car in neutral and brake to a halt, just as you would if the throttle stuck in the fully open position. Antilock brakes prevent the pedal from staying down; they can't bring it down on their own. And if the bus full of nuns hits you from behind, it's because they were following too closely.
Well, if you are actually interested in the science, the research this car is based on can be easily found, I think, using google. Here, read this article (exhibited at the 2008 IEEE computational intelligence conference hosted in Hong Kong), and if you comprehend it, you can implement their procedure yourself: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=4634099&tag=1
I'll trust that robotic driver over the moronic human drivers any day.
Power steering isn't steer-by-wire; it's just power assist.
First of all... there ARE steer-by-wire systems. And they are in much more wide use than robotic cars, of course, but they are allowed on the road.
Also... I understand you've driven cars with inoperative power steering, in other words, you were using probably something close to manual steering with total or near total failure of the power assist systems, but that doesn't necessarily mean that all failures of the power steering system have the same outcome or failure mode... what happens when the power steering breaks in a way other than just causing the assist to go away.... what about failure modes of the power steering system that cause the power steering to be apply the hydraulic force TOWARDS one direction, when you are actually trying to steer in the opposite direction, because the servo mechanism has failed, but the power steering pump is still fully operational?
China would do themselves a favor by copying our driving laws.
"There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge." - Bertrand Russell.
In China, "safe driving" equates to "don't hit anything and don't get hit by anything."
"There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge." - Bertrand Russell.
"if the anti-lock brakes fail, you just have normal brakes. the human can still stop."
you have never driven a car with anti lock brakes.
When they do fail and it happens a LOT in specific conditions you do NOT get "normal brakes" you get "OH SHIT NO BRAKES!"
there are two hills near where I work. BOTH if you approach the stoplight fast and hit the brakes kind of hard on dry pavement, the following will happen.
you start braking at a medium level nowhere near Anti lock trip point. and then you hit the washboard bumps that the city refuses to fix. this trips the antilock and disables the brakes because it keeps seeing the tires start to skid.
there is at least 4 rear-end accidents there a week due to this problem. when anti lock fails, you have NO brakes.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
BTW planes and trains at least are highly automated.
Planes are also heavily controlled, that is, you need to get permission to take of, fly at a certain altitude, land and so on.
Trains are, well, on tracks, not much control there - just forward, stop, reverse. They also are controlled by dispatch, like planes.
Cars have more freedoms of movement than trains but are not controller. There are traffic rules, but not everyone respects them, people forget to turn on (or off) the turning signals, do not let you go first even though the law says you can, drive even though the red light is on etc. So, a robot car will require much more complex AI than a robot plane or train.
The number of people that have died from slipping on KY jelly while trying to do Auto-erotic Asphyxia is higher than TERRORISM deaths in the USA.
It's that low of a bar.... but we need to increase security!!!!!
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I've driven cars with broken power steering, and while it was hard to maneuver at slow speeds the difference wasn't really noticeable over 10 mph.
You are assuming all failure modes are the same. The AI car is also designed to fail gracefully as much as possible, yet you cite failures in that. So I cite ungraceful failures in your examples.
If your cruise control locks in the on and maximum speed position, put the car in neutral and brake to a halt, just as you would if the throttle stuck in the fully open position.
Which takes time and in many cases may very well lead to an accident. Guy in front is braking due to traffic? Ooops, crash time.
Stop being a pouty little child and admit when you are wrong instead of trying to dismis problems that are as severe as the ones you tried to cite just because they show you to have been wrong.
Also, in modern cars the electronics can, theoretically, override pretty much everything else so it is, theoretically, possible for the car to not stop. Yet by your own admission you have no problem with them testing those electronics and devices, in non-production quality, on the road.
Antilock brakes prevent the pedal from staying down; they can't bring it down on their own.
Modern variants can automatically apply the brakes. Furthermore, anti-lock brakes don't do anything to the pedal but rather control the pressure to individual brakes. That means a full failure of anti-lock brakes could mean no brakes if it locks in the "no pressure to any wheels" position. Quiet a problem if it happens at the wrong moment.
And if the bus full of nuns hits you from behind, it's because they were following too closely.
And your fault for coming to an abrupt stop for no reason. Welcome to life, things aren't black and white, enjoy your stay.
Google's driverless car was just in the news for crashing into a Prius
A human was driving the vehicle.
Last I heard google has not commented on the accident. IIRC the car always has a driver but it is not clear that the driver was actively at the controls. Much as aircraft always have a pilot even when taking off, cruising or landing on autopilot.
As a motorcycle rider. I would prefer a highway FULL of robot vehicles than the hand-full of complete idiots on the highway I see each morning that almost run people off the road. This morning I watched a complete idiot pass on the shoulder at 80+mph with his expedition XL because he did not want to wait for the traffic back up. the number of bend over reflector posts behind him made me grin wide knowing that his precious canyonero is now demolished in the front.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
how safe is it? and how much will get covered up? who will be at fault?
Over there they can have the car hit and kill some pay the family off and sweep it under the rug. In the us and other places all it will take is one death to put a stop to this.
Last time I was current on the statistics, full-time cycle commuting took two years off one's expected lifespan for the chance of accidents -- and added 11 back on for cardiopulmonary health.
The sport cyclists (the ones in lycra) are a lot less attentive to laws (and safety, and good common sense) than the serious commuter cyclists -- it's a tough thing to deal with as a cycle advocate, as they think they know everything and so won't attend classes unless a court makes them do so. That's a totally fixable problem, though -- it just means one needs to actively enforce traffic laws, and have a cycling-specific traffic safety class offenders get sent to when ticketed. My jurisdiction does this already.
Amen! I can't count the number of times I've had with drivers (whilst on my motorcycle) texting or yapping.
"Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right" - Salvor Hardin
You really don't know how cars work.
You are assuming all failure modes are the same.
No, the typical failure modes for power steering all involve a loss of assist, not too much of it.
Which takes time and in many cases may very well lead to an accident.
Wrong. If the cruise control floors the accelerator, you just hit the brakes. That shouldn't take you more than 1 second. The brakes on any decent car are far, far more powerful than the engine. After you've done that, you turn off the ignition or shift into neutral (or both).
Stop being a pouty little child and admit when you are wrong
You're the one who doesn't understand auto mechanics.
Also, in modern cars the electronics can, theoretically, override pretty much everything else so it is, theoretically, possible for the car to not stop.
Again, you show that you have absolutely no idea how cars work.
That means a full failure of anti-lock brakes could mean no brakes
I challenge you to find any incident of that happening anywhere. Furthermore, that's why cars have emergency brakes.
And your fault for coming to an abrupt stop for no reason.
Now you've proven you don't know road laws. In most jurisdictions, if you hit someone from behind, it's your fault, no matter what. If you can't avoid hitting someone who comes to a complete halt in the road, then you were following too closely. There are no exceptions. It doesn't matter if the lead car stopped because of a brake failure (which has probably never happened in history on a production car), or because they're trying to avoid hitting a moose crossing the road, it's the following car's responsibility to leave enough following distance to stop at any time.
This is why we need personal rapid transit systems like SkyTran. They're much, much cheaper on a per-passenger mile basis, they can be built in a grid fashion so they can go most places, they're suspended from utility poles so they can be installed in already built-up places, and they avoid the traffic lights and congestion that plague cars. Plus, since they're limited to traveling on rails, they don't need a lot of complicated and error-prone computer vision and AI technology to navigate.
And your fault for coming to an abrupt stop for no reason. Welcome to life, things aren't black and white, enjoy your stay.
Actually, in the US, if you hit the rear of the car in front of you, you are at fault. Period. It is, legally, black-and-white. No gray.
No, there's more to it than that. To make a city friendly for bicycles, you'd need to have extremely high density, like Manhattan. With a city where everyone has a house and a yard, there simply isn't any way to pack everyone in close enough so that it's realistic to bicycle between any two arbitrary points in the city.
The other problems that bicycles have don't go away even if you do bulldoze your city and rebuild it with high-rise apartments. Bicycles simply aren't ridable in bad weather. Well, I guess they are if you're young, fit, and motivated, like I used to be in college. But if you're older, not as in-shape, and not really wanting to ride in freezing weather, they're simply not a reasonable option. They're also not a reasonable option here in Phoenix, where the outside temperature is above the human body temperature for half the year. It's simply unhealthy to ride a bike outside in this climate, plus breathing the dust here in the frequent dust storms can make you very ill.
Bikes are a nice way to get around in small towns that don't have a lot of cars, and have a mild climate. Unfortunately, that's not the way it is with modern urban life.
Fog *and* laser rangefinders?
Speaking as someone who used to use laser rangefinders in inclement weather, I have to call *bullshit* on using any kind of laser in a fog.
Having billions of little floating lenses in the air tends to play havoc with getting any kind of reflectivity beyond 20 feet even from a the most expensive retro-refracting prism you can find. I don't care how much money and technical expertise you've got but you can't fight physics.
Fog turns a laser into the light equivalent of a plant sprayer..
--
BMO
Actually, when we looked at this a few years ago cyclists killed about as many people per passenger mile as motorists. In the UK, anyway
That seems somewhat unlikely. Who is "we" and do you have the figures on a website? Also passenger miles are misleading, as I could drive 200 miles to the NEC and the only place I am likely to kill any pedestrians is in the first and last mile. That would reduce the car figures by a factor of 100 compared to the 2 mile cycle ride in a city. Cars with passengers reduce your car statistic even further, and the calculation seems to favor cyclists on tandems in some bizarre way.
The figures for cyclists killing pedestrians on UK sidewalks seem to be about 0.3 per year, compared to more than 500 pedestrians killed by motorists every year.
There are actually a couple of exceptions, but they are VERY narrow.
A) Being cut off (fast lane change and simultaneous brake), usually takes some fighting to win that one
B) Baking into someone. had this happen to a family member (person put their car in reverse at a stop sign by accident), it's a bitch to prove without witnesses...
Really? I've driven cars where the anti-lock was completely busted and other than the little light on the dashboard you would swear it just had regular brakes.
Even if your POWER brakes (which almost all cars since 1970 have) die, you still have brakes, you just have to push REALLY hard.
Now if you were out of brake fluid (or had the master cylinder go), the yes, you would potentially have no brakes. But that really has nothing to do with "anti-lock".
WalMart?
Have gnu, will travel.
Its funny that everybody is picking apart all your comments except the last one...
is the government watching over these robot experiments, to make sure they are done properly? maybe in the united states, but i can assure you that in China, scant attention has been payed to safety, and any whistleblowers have been put in prison (google Xiao Lianhai).
Why on earth would I want the Government to be watching every aspect of this? There are safety standards by which companies must follow to ensure the public safety. If there is a reason for suspicion of failure to meat those standards, then sure, they should investigate, otherwise keep out of businesses way and let them create. These companies know that if they cause a major accident on public roads, that they are liable. OMG! Think of the children.
Some days I get the sinking feeling Orwell was an optimist.
After watching this simulation of a computerized intersection, I would say that the situation at the street level would mean the end of airbags in cars, and the introduction of anti-pants-shitting technology for the passengers.
The group's videos page with their approach and statistics is quite good as well.
Wrists killing you? Not in 2 weeks. Learn Dvorak.
He may not know how cars work, but you don't appear know how safety-minded robots work. Google [model verification of control systems] for a taste of the kind of building blocks you can use. You layer the controllers so that at no level does it allow something that will break the systems below it. One of the lower layers will prevent it from flipping the car at speed by doing something dumb with the steering wheel.
Of course, this isn't something that robotics folks invented, its just something they borrow from model verification and control systems folks. IOW, the ones who designed things like power steering controllers, ABS brakes, and the other things you cite as failing gracefully.
It's true that higher layers can fail, such as perception, but then we're not comparing to car engineering to the robot, but humans and robots. Since we can't do model verification on humans, nor can we enumerate all possible inputs to a perception system, so the best we can evaluate is statistics. Robot cars are not as good as the best drivers, but at this point they are probably better than a 15 year old who just got his permit. If we let every permit holder drive in order to improve, it seems reasonable to let a few robot cars run so that all of them can improve.
I think you have missed quite a few important details especially in bus full of nuns case i.e. body sizes, the way they were (un)dressed and what playthings they were using at the time (and in whith whom) - what is the title of the movie by the way?
Unlike the summary states the article says: "It also encountered some problems with fog and indistinct road markings."
What can we say... it's Slashdot, actually understanding a text is not a need to submit a piece on it!
...car drives you!
Like learning drivers? Sorry but even if this is done poorly, its still gota be better than 30% of the other drivers out there.
The Grey Goo disaster happened 3 billion years ago. This rock is covered in self replicating machines!
I think it may be more rational than you're making it out to be:
For instance, the brake system is comparatively simple. And you can test it easily. Press pedal, brake activates (or not).
Not so for the robot driving system. It's hard to set up a full test scenario that'll exercise all possible latent bugs in that system. And the software probably won't be open source.
Not only that, but people have learned from their computers and phones that software hangs.
So how are people supposed to trust the robot? Answer: they don't.
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
Normally these types of tests actually do have drivers in the driver's seat in case they need to take control. Lots of Google's tests have done as such. Just because there is a driver at the ready doesn't mean the vehicle was driven by a human. Being robotic and driver-less in no way needs to require increased danger to the public.
I imagine Google plans on marketing a delivery system for mail, etc.
Does anyone know what their plans are?
Eg. will it ever be open source?
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Again, you are showing how you not only do not know what anti lock brakes are but have not driven one in a failed state.
Anti lock brakes RELEASE THE BRAKES when triggered. in other words they run a pump that actually lifts your foot off the brake in a sense (it actually modulates the braking pressure) to pulse the brakes and make the tires stop sliding. guess what, there is a failure mode for Anti Lock that leaves the valve in the bypass and you CANT STOP. I have seen this failure mode many times and there are several driving conditions that will cause a working anti lock system to completely fail and cause the vehicle to not stop. It's why Anti Lock is instantly removed from any car that is used for racing because it is inherently unsafe. If the anti lock system is being triggered and does not disengage, you will have no brakes at all. because it's triggered and releasing pressure. Stop foaming at the mouth go find yourself a very bumpy road on a downhill incline and hit the brakes when you hit the bumps to experience exactly what I am talking about. In racing just hitting the side rumble strips while corner braking will trigger this problem. And because most cars are designed cheap, Anti Lock kicks in for BOTH the wheels in the set. Front tire triggered? both front tires go into antilock. 70% of your braking power is the front so you just lost 70% of your brakes... now the rear tires have to stop the car, they ski triggering the antilock... you now have 0% brakes.
so yes. Really. Just because you dont understand the systems well does not give you the right to claim they still work when failed. a light on the dash is not "failed" FYI.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Because their automated train system works so well?
Would you give up your control of the motorcycle, in exchange for everyone else doing the same?
In your original post you said "nice to know that the robot car people have, basically, no ethics whatsoever, considering that automobile-travel systems have killed more people than terrorism." which I assumed you meant referred to ALL automated control systems.
Here, you're basically saying that you only meant the fully robotic controlled cars.
Can you point out even one single death from one of these cars?
In China, "safe driving" equates to "don't hit anything and don't get hit by anything."
I'm pretty sure that's what "safe diving" means everywhere in the world.
The car safely arrived at its destination. In other news dissidence have seem to have been in some sort of hit in run by a car speeding at 286kmh.
Back in AI Class when I was in college we discuses the AI for driving on a highway we noted on a good stretch we could drive a car with some simple AI... Heck you can get fairly good if you just put a brick on the petal.
Then they asked how about having you car to drive in New York City... We came up with an algorithm that works just as well as the average human... Put a brick on the petal...
For some reasons American these past couple of generations have been playing it safe, In my opinion too safe, we are loosing a lot innovation to other countries because new innovative ideas are tossed out because there is some odd chance that something dangerous will happen. Other countries for years earlier had cars that can parallel park on their own, they didn't go to the US Market because of the Law Suits that could happen if a kid or a pet was in the sensors blind spots. (which would probably be a humans blind spot). Yes Human lives are valuable and should give due diligence towards keeping them safe, however it has gone too far in many cases (I know if I loss a loved one due to a safety accident I wouldn't care that it is for the greater good) it is preventing the improvement of technology for humans,
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Actaully Early power steering was much different then it is today's. I had the opportunity to drive my Dads 1968 Caddi. Its power steering was a full power steering so you had no feeling of the road or resistance when you turn the wheel, It was like driving a video game steering wheel. It was later replaced with the partial power steering we have today because it was safer when people could feel and respond to the road.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Aside from the fact that Google was founded by and employs many multi-ethnic, immigrant (1st, 2nd, 3rd generation), and foreign nationals... here we are comparing a company to an entire country.
That bodes well in Google's favor, I think.
I8-D
I usually find that it's the parking that usually makes everything worse. There have been times that the distance I would have had to walk to get my car plus the distance I would have had to walk from where I could have found parking to the place I was going, often was close enough to the total distance to get there that driving was just more trouble than it was worth. Either that, or pay $12 to run into a store for a few minutes. Then there is finding parking again once I get back home.
Daylight illumination is fairly uniform throughout. Streetlights are very spotty, with the same thing looking very different depending on whether it's directly under a streetlight or distant away from it. Hence figuring out things at night with just a camera is a comparatively more difficult computational problem.
A key factor in reaction times is also whether or not the human driver has encountered a particular driving situation before. Do most people know how to properly recover from a loss of traction and avoid an accident? I would suspect not.
One of the positive aspects I can see with driverless cars is that they would have far more information on hand to make a good decision in a split second. They would know exactly how fast each tire is rotating, be able to judge immediately if any tires are losing or have lost grip, sense not just the car right in front of you but all vehicles and roadways surrounding you, and decide instantly the best way to avoid an accident or result in the least-harmful accident possible.
Essentially, people learn by doing and often by making mistakes. In driving, that sort of "learning" can get people hurt or killed, as it's difficult to train people on those rare situations where an instantaneous, instinctive judgment must be made and applied in order to avert disaster. Over time, driverless cars could actually get smarter as they encounter more and more situations and learn to make the right decisions--and share that knowledge across all such vehicles, a distinct advantage over the status quo.
Personally, I would love to be able to sit back and read a book while my car drives me to work.
Check out my world simulator thingy.
Life being as cheap as it seems to be over there, perhaps it's no wonder they neglected to mention 'the midget Chinaman' peering out from behind the grill... :p
I did a pretty good search and EVERY instance of "anti-lock" failure I could find indicated the same symptoms I described. If the master cylinder has problems, it could cause the conditions you were expecting, bu that is not a problem of the anti-lock. As for the race car thing, could you provide a citation on that? I couldn't find a SINGLE mention of them being unsafe. Every single mention of them not being in race cars is for fairness.
BTW, I am fully aware of how Anti-Lock works, but you description shows otherwise. They haven't used cylinder-bypass anti-locks in a long time, now-a-days the computer (cars have these now by the way) simply overrides the power-braking. And no, I was unable to find a SINGLE article about the anti-lock failing in the "bypass" position...
Wrong. I actually do a bike-train-bike commute fairly regularly.
Theory, meet reality. Reality, in this case, being a New Jersey to NYC commute, with a hill. Park and ride lots? Ha... the waiting list for a spot in the rather small train station lots is nominally 5 years, in reality indefinite (because they don't acknowledge requests to be put on the waiting list). Motorized bicycles? Illegal in both states (and I've got a ticket to demonstrate that). Cyclists on buses? Forget about it. Maybe a few buses do, most do not. Trains? Sure, if it's a folding bicycle; otherwise, permitted only outside commuting hours.
NYC was not designed for the automobile, nor the bicycle. There's lots of accomodation for bicycles, including bike lanes. Which tend to be occupied with garbage trucks, pedestrians, street sweepers, taxis, homeless people pushing shopping carts, pushcarts, police and police cars, etc.
The problem is that people are assuming the worst possible robotic failure and the most mild (even if most common) power steering failure. That's the way it works with things they don't understand. It's always the horrible failure modes for the unknown things and the common failures for the known one (and those have had decades of tuning the failures to make them as mild as possible). It makes as much sense as saying that a power steering failure is a noisy belt or pump, and no loss of power, and a robotic car failure is explosive ignition of the CPU resulting in a gasoline-filled fireball headed at the closest school.
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Wrong. If the cruise control floors the accelerator, you just hit the brakes. That shouldn't take you more than 1 second. The brakes on any decent car are far, far more powerful than the engine. After you've done that, you turn off the ignition or shift into neutral (or both).
The actual failure when that happens often results in a crash. Why? Beause WOT (Wide Open Throttle) is often applied in poor weather (weather being a cause of the failure) and hydroplaning and loss of control are much much more likely than you imply. The second is that people, in practice, *never* respond as you assert they "should." Instead, they note increased speed and conuter with mild application of the brakes. After a few seconds of that, the brakes are in a failure mode as well, and are then unable to stop the car. Yes, if at first problem the brakes were applied 100% then the problem would have been averted. However people do not do that. Hence why there are a number of cars adding what Mercedes calls Brake Assist. When the brakes are suddenly applied, the car brakes harder than requested as a safety feature. Go ahead, read up on it. You'll find that you are 100% wrong on every point. People will ride the brakes until the brakes don't work anymore. Thus a stuck cruise control will accelerate uncontrolled until the driver crashes at high speed. It may not be the "fault" of cruise, but it's the result...
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Actually, in the US, if you hit the rear of the car in front of you, you are at fault. Period. It is, legally, black-and-white. No gray.
That is 100% false. There have been people convicted of felonies for stopping abruptly with the intention of causing the person behind them to strike them. It is gray. My sister was stopped in a parking lot waiting to park in a spot with her signal on and someone rearended her. She was declared at-fault for that crash as well. It didn't help her that she was hit by a lawyer. If it's legally black and white, then you should be able to point to the law. There isn't one because you are wrong. Quit spreading lies. Someone out there might actually listen to you.
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I had a Subaru WRX that I couldn't keep from rolling into a particular busy intersection. There was a steep down hill with a pothole. The pothole would bounce the wheel while you were stopping, making ABS think that you were suddenly skidding. So brake pressure would be released. Then you would roll through the stop sign and into traffic. It happened as well over rail road tracks. There was a non-mandatory recall on the issue. I got the ABS CPU "fixed" (NHTSA and Subaru stressed it was not a safety recall and there was no evidence of a safety issue, but a comfort issue to make people think the brakes stopped better). After the non-safety safety recall, there were no more issues like that.
ABS on sand would so the same. ABS, when confused, defaults to "disable the brakes." The NHTSA considers that acceptable.
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I can't say I've ever heard of a crash where the cruise control floored the throttle. Not saying it's impossible, but it seems about as likely as getting hit on the head by blue ice as you walk down the sidewalk.
Anyway, yes, a lot of people aren't very good at responding to emergency situations behind the wheel. However, this shouldn't be much of a surprise, because a lot of people can't even handle driving their car down a straight road without somehow "losing control" and running into a tree. I can't tell you how many times I've heard stories on the local news about someone driving their SUV and then mysteriously "losing control". Face it, much of the population has no business driving a vehicle. It doesn't matter how much you dumb down the controls or add safety features, they're simply never going to be safe drivers.
Anyway, the fact remains that if your CC goes into WOT somehow, there's many things you can do to avoid disaster. I never said it was foolproof, or that other factors in the situation (traffic, wet roads, etc) wouldn't complicate things and reduce your odds of success. But there's usually several things you can do to regain control: 1) brake hard, 2) turn off CC (many cars have a master CC button for this reason; the one on my Acuras is a big round button to the left of the steering wheel; hitting it turns off the entire CC system), 3) put the car in neutral (manual transmission makes this easy and nearly foolproof), 4) turn off the ignition, 5) use emergency brakes (I wouldn't bother until turning off the ignition or switching into neutral however because e-brakes are pretty weak and only brake the rear wheels).
As for being wrong on every point, sorry I don't think so, I appear to be correct on every point in the previous post. Would you care to point out point-by-point where I'm wrong?
I should have said, "there is a legal presumption of negligence on the part of the party that hits the other that is almost impossible to overcome, unless you can demonstrate that some third party actually bears the guilt by virtue of jumping in front of the car, or blocking them in from the side, or attempting to conduct insurance fraud". Happy now? BTW, in the cited example, the driver of the "bus full of nuns" is likely to be held to an even higher standard than an average driver by virtue of being engaged in commerce.
I can't say I've ever heard of a crash where the cruise control floored the throttle. Not saying it's impossible, but it seems about as likely as getting hit on the head by blue ice as you walk down the sidewalk.
I love how a standard counter is "I'm ignorant of the topic, thus my opinion must be correct." Just because you've never heard of it doesn't make it less true. The cruise control moves the throttle cable. Have you ever heard of a stuck throttle cable? It happens all the time. And cruise control has caused that. One of the most nefarious is when the problem is caused by cruise itself. Drive on a rutted road in the rain. The ruts fill with water. When you are in the ruts you could be hydroplaning. The cruise will detect the slow down when you hit them and will often accelerate. This has resulted in a number of crashes. That you've never heard of them is a testament to your ignorance, not the lack of such incidents resulting in crashes.
Learn to love Alaska
"a legal presumption" is not the same thing as "you are at fault. Period." There is not set legal presumption of what you say either. Perhaps a programmed human presumption, and the legal system is run by humans, such that human's irrational assumptions are propogated through the system. And I'm confused why somone would presume sheltered nuns would have any other standard applied other than assuming they were at fault because of their obvious limited experience driving.
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I never said it didn't happen, just that I've never heard of it. I do however doubt its frequency, as you seem to be implying that it's a common occurrence.
Drive on a rutted road in the rain.
I don't know about you, but one time I definitely DON'T use cruise control is in the rain, on wet, rutted roads. Maybe that's why I've never had such a problem. Cruise control is for driving on wide-open rural highways in good weather, not negotiating wet roads. If anyone's had CC fail on them in such a situation, I'd say the crash is mostly their fault, for misusing CC.
Do you also use CC in the winter on ice-covered roads?
Anyway, what I was really complaining about in my last post is where you said everything in my post before that was incorrect, including things like drivers who rear-end others always being at fault. You've obviously ignored that, and I still contend that everything else I wrote there, including that, is correct.
I don't know about you, but one time I definitely DON'T use cruise control is in the rain, on wet, rutted roads. Maybe that's why I've never had such a problem.
Because you choose to not use it at such times indicates the opposite of your statement is true. If you've never heard of any problems on rutted roads in the wet, why do you have such a strong aversion to using the cruise control at such times? Or would you suspect that it would fail in that manner, reducing your safety, all the while arguing the opposite of your personal beliefs because you have some other agenda you want to push?
Learn to love Alaska
If you've never heard of any problems on rutted roads in the wet, why do you have such a strong aversion to using the cruise control at such times?
I imagine I've never heard of any problems because most drivers also have enough sense to also turn off CC at such times.
Why do you think it's a good idea to use CC in wet conditions on bad roads? Where would you ever get such an insane idea? Anyone with the barest knowledge of physics would understand that it's not a good idea to have something holding down your gas pedal at a time when your drive wheels may encounter a loss of traction at any time.
Then you and your associates are irrational. "I'm going to not do something beacuse I'm afraid of the unknown." With no evidence that it's unsafe at all. How old is your car? New ones have mention in the user manuals about it (in which case you have heard of the problem), but older ones have no such warning against cruise in the rain.
Either you and everyone you know is irrational bordering on insane, or you know of a problem with it and are choosing to be obtuse because that suits your argument best. It's like a game to you of how much you can give the perceptions the opposite of what you actually think without forming a falsehood. Cruise in wet has caused crashes, despite your initial claims otherwise.
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