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Blind Man Test Drives Google's Autonomous Car
Velcroman1 writes "'This is some of the best driving I've ever done,' Steve Mahan said the other day. Mahan was behind the wheel of a Toyota Prius tooling the small California town of Morgan Hill in late January, a routine trip to pick up the dry cleaning and drop by the Taco Bell drive-in for a snack. He also happens to be 95 percent blind. Mahan, head of the Santa Clara Valley Blind Center, 'drove' along a specially programmed route thanks to Google's autonomous driving technology. Google announced the self-driving car project in 2010. It relies upon laser range finders, radar sensors, and video cameras to navigate the road ahead, in order to make driving safer, more enjoyable and more efficient — and clearly more accessible. In a Wednesday afternoon post on Google+, the company noted that it has hundreds of thousands of miles of testing under its belt, letting the company feel confident enough in the system to put Mahan behind the wheel."
Grow up. They have done 200,000 miles with a person sat in the driver's seat to ensure he can take control if anything went wrong. On a pre-programmed route this is a very stable system and he had someone beside him in the passenger seat (I also wouldn't be surprised if it was dual-control so the passenger has access to a brake pedal). Meanwhile this technology could eventually change the lives of millions upon millions of disabled people, damn right it deserves the publicity. With your attitude we'd never have wheelchairs or crutches or surgery, all things which, the first time out, could have resulted in injury but have been life changing tech for millions.
Later she was called to the police station to make a statement. The police had arrested the driver. He said he had not seen the crossing because there was thick fog (mildly overcast). Then they discovered that he was registered partially sighted. He had cataracts.
He was convicted of:
His comment to my wife at the police station? "You've spoiled my day". He simply did not realise how serious his offense was.
So I applaud what Google is doing, because I've worked with computers for nearly 35 years, and human beings for over 40, and if the system is designed I would trust the computer over the human being any day of the week, and double on Sundays (drunks with hangovers).
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
"'This is some of the best driving I've ever done,' Steve Mahan said the other day.
I guess he usually uses those pavement reflector thingies to drive by braille.
Driving home tonight there was a young kid playing quite near the road, so I dropped my speed in anticipation of him doing something stupid. He didn't, but I did wonder about the google car making those sorts of calls. I'm sure these google guys are pretty clever and have thought of all these things... are there any video's of self drive cars reacting to these sort of situations?
Like that feeling you get when you see someone else on or near the road and you aren't completely sure that they have seen you and you react by lowering your speed to avoid a potential collision. It's got me out of trouble a few times. If there was an accident you probably wouldn't be at fault, but you've gone one better and seen the accident coming and avoided it.
I'd want to see lots of video evidence of a self drive car doing this sort of thing before I'd be happy sharing the road with one.
Yes, because Google (and the authorities letting these cars on the roads) would have *never* thought of the possibility of pedestrians running in front of these cars.
Quick! Get in touch with them and bring this to their attention!
Most likely an autonomous car can react quicker to an obstacle running in front of it faster than a human can.
And given the average human's driving ability, it probably fares no worse when it comes to being in the correct lane at complex junctions.
Maybe it will need two more orders of magnitude of testing and refinement before it can be included in cars that the blind person can be alone in, but progress is progress, and this is surely a milestone?
Of course I will jailbreak my car when it comes with such technology, so that I can add my own AI modules, such as "HunterKillerMod" that turns the car into a pedestrian killing machine. And "DestroyAllCyclists" too, obviously (who won't have that installed?).
He had a policeman sitting next to him ...
"Mahan has no driver's license, of course -- just one of the hurdles that had to be crossed: Google enlisted the aid of Sergeant Troy Hoefling with the Morgan Hill Police Department to accompany the drive."
Puteulanus fenestra mortis
And to go a little further, technology doesn't get sleepy. Technology doesn't get distracted by cell phones, GPS systems, or the radio. Technology won't have a blind spot. This is going to be an incredible advance. I'm much less worried about a driverless car hitting a pedestrian than I am the average driver hitting one.
I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar.
They can also drive safely millimetres (like inches but smaller) apart from each other, massively increasing the capacity of the existing road network.
I've seen that thing MERGE WITH MOTORWAY (freeway right?) TRAFFIC!!! 8@~~
It's bonkers clever. I want one. Where we all just sit around the table inside it having breakfast.
Automated cars are also unlikely to rip along at 80-90 kph in a 50 zone like the psycho-cabbie who nearly ran me down on my wake-up walk half an hour ago, too.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Did they think of the possibility of driving over a cliff-edge while out of GPS reception?
If the Internet is to be trusted at all, I'll take the chance of a self-driving car careening off a cliff due to lack of GPS reception over the chance of a human careening off a cliff because of GPS reception.
Does it detect ice, snow, oil, sand before the wheels are there?
Humans certainly don't... but there are already automatic traction control systems that do an excellent job maintaining the vehicle's footing in all but the more extreme situations - I can't imagine it would be that hard to send that data to the pilot AI and have it react by slowing down. Also I'd imagine it would be easier for the computer to detect ice and such using sensor data (IR cameras to detect road surface temp, lasers reveal changes in surface reflective properties, etc.)
What about kids throwing stones off the top of a bridge onto the passing cars (common problem in the UK - someone died just the other month from this)? Is the car looking UP too and determining their intent?
Again, I doubt humans would do much better. The radar systems on an automated car could conceivably be used to detect objects that may hit the car even from above and some evasive/mitigating action could take place - with better reaction times than a human driver.
This is why even a jumbo jet - so of the most highly automated and tested machines in the world - has TWO HUMAN OPERATORS. And even there, they have TWO because the first can't be trusted on their own (proven by that recent thing with the pilot).
Again, though I don't keep careful track of these things, there seems to be more incidents related to human error than automation error. Specifically the humans overriding the automated systems to correct for a problem that didn't actually exist.
If you honestly, seriously, think that you can reliably determine the outcome of a machine complex enough to obtain all that data, you're an idiot.
Humans are essentially machines much more complex than that, and have tens of thousands of years worth of historical precedent for doing incredibly stupid things despite having accurate information - yet somehow they are more trustworthy than a machine just by virtue of not being a machine? This kind of argument instantly refutes itself.
How do you test the system for these things? Tens of thousands of hours of real-world driving. Considering all a human needs to legally operate a 2-ton projectile is roughly twenty minutes worth of testing (if you're lucky!) I'll take my chances with the machine.
=Smidge=
Was that you? Sorry, I was trying to get FP...
Did they think of the possibility of driving over a cliff-edge while out of GPS reception?
Or what happens if a bridge collapses? Does the car detect the void underneath it and stop, or just think it's a steep hill and plummet over the edge?
Google cars use only GPS to get direction. The actual driving is done with laser grids and radars (for near distance) and video camera (for long distance). So the car doesn't drive according to what it "thinks" should be there according to the plan, but it drives according to what it "sees" (with its sensors). Any of the situation you mention will end up with the car detecting a lack of drivable surface, stopping, asking its GPS for an alternative route and going another way.
Wherever a human driver will react the same, or will be too busy getting distracted with on-board enterteinment/smartphone/passengers/news paper, etc. and fall into the hole is left as an exercice to the reader. (yup, we've already had stories on /. of clueless drivers wrecking their cars because the GPS told them to go a certain way).
There are a BILLION and one problems, that only happen once in a lifetime.
And that's why you put the stuff on extensive testing. Already in the range of hundreds of miles on actual raods with actual traffic in the case of Google cars.
Yes, it won't take into account some really weird exceptions. But... Humans make mistakes too, and mostly in normal everyday boring situations (because they are boring and the brain kicks into "autopilot" routine mode). (And chance are that some of the really weird situation are going to be "missed" by the human, not because the human wouldn't have had reacted correctly, but because the human was to bored to pay attention). Also even if you, the human driver, think of hundreds of situation which might be missed by an IA, but where you think you'll be able to react correctly, I can probably think of situations where you drove perfectly well, but still got into an accident because of some other driver.
At some point in time, we will reach the situation where an autonomous car (even including the accidents due to weird rare situations) will cause a lot less casualities than a human driver (who might just not be paying attention).
The point of this publicity stunt is to show that, given the current extensive testing the cars have undergone, this point in time is nearing soon.
And, also, the advantage of autonomous cars is, as the wierd situation happens, they can be analysed and the programming can bu updated, leading to even less casualities on the long term. .
Whereas, with human drivers, you can't just magically "programatically remove from the road" asshole, idiot and dristracted drivers
You can't verify a system on this scale. It's like trying to verify a Kinect. You just cannot guarantee what it will detect something as just by a simple test of something similar. And this is orders-of-magnitude more complex, more important and more deadly than a stupid games console.
You can't prove *mathematically* that the autonomous car will be perfect in absolutely every single situation (juste because there is a potential inifity of such situations). But you can prove *statistically* that the autonomous car is better and safer than a human driver based on the number of accidents and casuality caused by both. And overall this *will* mathematically increase the safety on roads.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
They can also drive safely millimetres (like inches but smaller) apart from each other, massively increasing the capacity of the existing road network.
Stopping distance doesn't change that much. The reaction time becomes smaller, but the braking time stays the same. It's fine for normal use, but when the car in front collides with an oncoming vehicle or something falling off bridge and comes to an abrupt stop then your driverless car still needs almost as long as a human-operated car to come to a safe stop without hitting the vehicle in front.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
The drive-up ATM's at Citibank branches in the NY area have had Braille labels on all the buttons for years. Seemed kind of silly up until now, you certainly would not want a blind person standing in the driveway using the ATM, and I certainly hope a person requiring Braille labels on an ATM would not be behind the wheel of a car. Not knowing Braille myself, I always assumed the labels said "Get out of the way!!! You're standing in a driveway!!!".
But now I realize that Citibank was preparing for the eventual release of the autonomous car.
"We make our world significant by the courage of our questions and by the depth of our answers." Carl Sagan
Why would it need to tell the difference between a human and a non-human?
There are a few situations where this could be important. Consider a cat runs into the road on the right and a child runs into the road from the other side to get the cat out of the road. A human would typically prioritise not hitting the child. If the AI doesn't, and hits the child in preference to the cat then it's not going to look very good. If there's only one obstacle, you want to avoid it. If there are two, then you want to avoid the most valuable ones, and generally we consider humans to be more valuable than anything else you're likely to collide with.
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As explained by other, the car *does* slow down, and even eventually halt when exposed to situation it thinks it can't handle.
Also, the car has much lower reaction times. So in some situations, it doen't really need to slow down, it will react immediatly if needed, whereas a human driver will need to slow down to make room for slower refelexes.
(The distance between autonomous vs human-driven cars on the motorway, for example).
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
When automated cars form convoys, they are in communication with each other. That means if something causes the first car to brake, the rest of the cars know instantly that the lead car has braked, and that they should brake. Insert "you go left I go right" logic (if needed), and these cars are now better than you at doing it. There is nothing human drivers can do that these cars can't, as their sensor packages are far better than ours, and they can communicate with other cars allowing driving formations humans simply can not handle. The logic they've put into these cars is simply staggering, and that's what's taken so long to develop.