Autonomous Road Train Project Completes First Public Road Test

theodp writes "Covered earlier on Slashdot, but lost in the buzz over the Google driverless car is Project Sartre (Safe Road Trains for the Environment), Europe's experiment with 'vehicle platooning,' which has successfully completed a 125 mile road test on a busy Spain motorway. Three Volvos drove themselves by automatically following a truck in the presence of other, normal road users. The Register reports that on-board cameras, radar and laser tracking allow each vehicle to monitor the one in front, and wirelessly streamed data from the lead vehicle tells each car when to accelerate, break and turn."

Comments

Or you could just take an ordinary train

[ickleberry]

With mechanical linkages and a track instead of this complicated virtual 'pretend' train

Re:Or you could just take an ordinary train

[ThatsMyNick]

More importantly it does not require laying new tracks (provided the network highways is already good enough), and lets me take my car along.

What's the point?

[countach]

I can't see the point in pursuing automated drivers. I mean, even if you could get them to work well 99% of the time, that 1% failure (or even .001% failure) would be just unacceptable.

I know we get computers to control aircraft, but it is a rather different situation. The problem of controlling an aeroplane with nothing up there to run into is a problem 10000 times easier than on the ground where there are so many hazards to avoid. The software would be so complex, there would be no way of knowing when it is going to plunge the vehicle into a tree. Odd happenings like this even occasionally happen to aircraft, but at least then the pilot usually has time to recover the situation before it is fatal. And that software is going to be MUCH simpler and auditable.

Re:What's the point?

[Baloroth]

I can't see the point in pursuing automated drivers. I mean, even if you could get them to work well 99% of the time, that 1% failure (or even .001% failure) would be just unacceptable.

And in this magic world you live in human drivers work right 100% of the time? For that matter, car breakdowns can cause accidents too, and we more than accept those. A .001% failure rate would certainly be acceptable (although "rate" is, in this case, ambiguous: do you mean .001% of driverless cars would ever crash?) That is vastly superior current percentages, which is roughly 2-3% per year. Even 1% failure rate per year would be a significant improvement over human drivers. And there really aren't that many hazards on the highway or especially freeways. In residential neighborhoods? Maybe, but that is a relatively small fraction of driving which can be overcome by having humans as backups, or highly cautious software. For most driving, you stay between the lines, note the position of nearby cars, and break to avoid any obstacles. A computer can perform those functions better than most humans, since it can track every single car nearby and their exact speed, trajectory, behavior patterns, etc. Humans cannot.

Re:What's the point?

[cavePrisoner]

I suspect laws will still prevent this for a long while, but I can think of two good situations to use automated drivers. The first is very long drives. In a few weeks I have to make a 24 hour drive. If I didn't have to stop to sleep, I could literally be home in 24 hours. Instead it will take much longer. The other case comes up more, since I'm stuck in a place with nonexistent public transportation. It can drive my drunken self home on weekends.

Even sober, long duration driving and driving at night (ie tired) result in a lot of crashes. Even if it has a failure rate, it will be better than most human driving anyway. I can think of times (when overworked of course) in broad daylight that I've fallen asleep at red lights. But I still have to get to work. I can't choose not to drive. This gives somebody like me the ability to get to work more safely, if not completely safely.

Re:I wonder how well it handled agressive passing

[TurtleBay]

If you don't see open road ahead of the car in front of you when you pull into the lane for opposing traffic, you are being an aggressive driver. If you are behind a line of traffic, you should not pass. Allowing passing in oncoming traffic lanes is intended for passing individual slow moving vehicles.

Automatically notify authorities

[erice]

So the options are: (a) break the train --- but this is bad, because you're suddenly going to have to alert everybody from the break downstream that they're suddenly going to have to drive on manual, without much warning, or (b) maintain the train, but with a foreign car in the middle.

In either case, the cars in the train should identify the vehicle and notify the authorities. It would also help to update the traffic law to make it only legal to join a road train from the back with an approved autonomous tracking system. Anything else results in an expensive fine and a moving violation on the driver's record.

Re:I wonder how well it handled agressive passing

[Zaelath]

Agreed, excepting that N meters is rarely "minimum safe distance" in practice. At 60Kph on the 2 second rule, that would be 33 meters which would hardly make most people feel "cut up" if you slot a 5 meter car into it. And I never see "safe" drivers leaving that kinda gap; that might encourage someone to fill it!

Once you do make the pass then yes, you and the car(s) behind you need to slow a little for a short time to re-establish the MSD but the risk there is far smaller than the usual method of maintaining 1s gaps all the time so that no one can overtake 1 car; they need to charge the queue and round up 4-5 cars generally forgetting that it takes quite a while and the whole time they have their foot on the accelerator getting up to dangerous speeds.

This is usually the domain of impatient youths, but I tell you what, the assholes that are riding my ass in traffic while I keep an actual 2s gap in front of me are just as often middle aged. The youths ( 25 ) at least have an excuse, the science says their brains aren't good at calculating risk, it's the 30+ crowd that tailgate and act like the laws of physics don't apply to them that irritate me.

Safe driving also doesn't mean enforcing your own theories on every other driver on the road through passive aggressive driving.

Re:I wonder how well it handled agressive passing

[jeffb (2.718)]

I've never, ever, not even once seen anyone driving at the prescribed safe distance.

I see it all the time. Just look for the person everybody's cutting in front of. Of course, he can only maintain that safe distance for short intervals before the next "above-average driver" cuts in and brakes...