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Ford Predicts Self-Driving, Traffic-Reducing Cars By 2017
An anonymous reader tips a story about comments from Ford Motor Company showing how confident they are in the autonomous car technology currently in development. They say self-driving cars will be here within just five years, and that the tech to do so is available already. They also think these cars will dramatically affect the flow of traffic. Quoting:
"Ford makes this projection, based on simulator studies: If one in four cars has Traffic Jam Assist or similar self-driving technologies, travel times are reduced by 37.5% and delays are reduced by 20%. In other words, if the freeway part of your rush hour commute takes 60 minutes, it will drop to 38. That’s because adaptive cruise control (ACC) is better at pacing the car ahead without continual brake, speed-up, brake cycles. Here’s how it works: Stop-and-go ACC keeps pace with the car ahead, using a look-ahead radar and mirror-mounted camera. Lane keep assist keeps the car centered, also taking advantage of the camera in the mirror. Electric power steering is better for remote control than mechanical power steering; it can be guided by the Traffic Jam Assist black box. Sonar units — for blind spot detection and cross traffic alerts (cars crossing behind when backing) — monitor traffic to the side. Combine all those and you have a car that’s smart enough to guide itself during predictable, low-speed conditions."
Typical Ford, lagging behind. People have been predicting that autonomous cars are 5 years away for decades now.
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
Right ...
I will hang up my blinking turn signal and brake riding while under the speed limit for no robot! damn kids and their new aged inventions GET OFF MY LAWN!
...any place that plows their roads. Plowing roads not only means that the lane markers are obscured and harder to recognize as a pattern, but snowplows are very hard on the paint. When I've visited Boston I have a hard time seeing lane markers even in the summer, as they're often just bits of paint down among the aggregate, where all the high points have been scraped off. Wouldn't this wreak havoc on lane detection systems, when even humans have a hard time identifying the lanes? And what about the difference between de jure road markings, and de facto usage, where the actual markings are basically irrelevant and instead drivers choose the best fit path?
I commend their efforts to make self-driving cars, but I see a lot of problems that I don't see a practical solution for. If they've come up with solutions then I'd really, really like to know how they work.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Don't worry, you're in no imminent danger of female hands working your stick shift.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
FTS:
They say self-driving cars will be here within just five years, and that the tech to do so is available already
I refuse to believe THAT one until I see one driving around Nevada with a Google sticker on it.
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what about the courts and law 2017 may be too soon.
What if that camera / radar and mirror systems fails?
What if you get a ticket for something who is at fault?
What about a accident liability??? Thing about all sides of a accident.
What about criminal liability??? what if the auto car fails and does a hit and run who does the time??
What about makeing so the cars get updates? Will they be able to force to go to the dealer for all oil changes and other service work?
GPS fails and bad, poor, out of data map data + auto car useing that data can end in a real bad way.
Yeah, it's called a "horse". The days of cheap energy are behind us, folks.
(clears throat) So, uh, how will all this auto-driving react when I er, share (split) lanes going down the 405 on my way home? Will the auto-center re-center wildly all the sudden when it detects my bike? Will it not detect my bike at all? I'm all for there being fewer people wildly swerving from one side of the lane to the other (fark, pick a side...I'll pass on the other!) but...I also don't want cars violently changing position automatically when it abruptly detects my presense yet hasn't detected the presense of the person/bike/water buffalo on the other side yet...
I have hated ABS for years. It's nearly causes me more accidents than it's helped me avoid, especially on ice. Now I can look forward to my car doing more shit I don't expect during an emergency.
Do not want.
If you actually adjusted your mirrors correctly, you can watch a car pass your from your rear, to side mirrors, then your peripheral vision to in front of you.
I'll pass. Considering the overwhelming failure of their touchscreen controls for radio, phone, temp control and everything else, I wouldn't dare trust my life with such lousy software.
As to the overall concept of self-driving, meh. I have no problem driving myself, keeping a safe distance from the person in front of me or being aware of who's around me. It's the nutjob beside/behind me who's ghetto driving while on his phone or that person in the pickup truck who just has to get one person ahead to save that extra half second of driving time (and yes, there is someone like that I have to deal with every day).
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Autonomous cars would mean the end of revenue streams from red light cameras, speed traps, DUIs, and driver's license checkpoints. It also means fewer cops would be needed, so the blue wall (cop unions) will fight it too.
After the first fatality involving one of these cars there will be a crippling uproar and/or legal battles.
One in four cars won't be self-driving until citizens have the purchasing power to buy self-driving cars as 25% of their automobiles.
I'm sure Ford Motors doesn't actually believe that happening in 5 years is in the best interests of its profits.
it just can't be any worse....
Oh yeah? Come to Bellevue, WA. That's where all the old farmers move when they've made their millions selling their spread in Eastern Washington to buy a high rise condo and a Cadillac. Its just like watching a bunch of tractors hauling irrigation pipe down the road.
Have gnu, will travel.
How about building cities made for the human limitations in the first place? Living next to your workplace and shoppingarea within walking range sure makes life a hell of a lot better.
Even a light sprinkle might screw up the cameras. Suddenly automatic systems shut down, waiting for competent drivers to take control. Since it all happens asynchronously and sporadically (with the rain), traffic flow is heavily impeded.
This will happen by 2015, and they forgot to mention hover-conversion.
In debates about Christianity, there are two groups: those looking for answers, and those looking to just ask questions.
For me, it can't get here soon enough. Like a lot of people, I find driving frustrating. But if I could just sit back and let the car do the driving, the frustration level would go down considerably. However, there are some things that I have not heard addressed. Unexpected hazards is one. Parking once you get to your destination is another. I think we will still be spending a lot of time at the wheel, directing our cars for the foreseeable future.
Proverbs 21:19
Don't fucking ride alone.
Upward mobility is a slippery slope - the higher you climb the more you show your ass.
Methinks I see a fundamental flaw in their use case relating to rush-hour traffic...
Combine all those and you have a car that’s smart enough to guide itself during predictable, low-speed conditions.
Combine all those and you have a driver that's stupid enough to yak away on the cell phone and freak out when the car gets confused enough to need the driver to take over. (In other words, a situation like the Air France crash, only without as much altitude or passengers.)
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
I personally applaud the technology and look forward to seeing a world with this in widespread use but I love my car and have absolutely no intention of replacing it. Now, I'll add all the sensors, (already have most in place hooked up via arduino) but how is this going to work for manual/standard transmissions? In any case, not my car.
-- Its survival of the fittest...and we got the fucking guns!!!
...that people will not modify their behavior. All that may end up happening is that more people will use the roads once congestion is decreased, with the result that congestion may end up at similar levels. Or that people will choose to live farther away, and end up with a similar commute time. Cars have not decreased our transportation time as a society.
Yes, and don't forget all the jackasses that run red lights.
Proverbs 21:19
I notice the delay in steering response with my 2012 Ford which is under computer control. It is detectable when turning significant arcs. I nearly hit a gas pump. It's dangerous. Little confidence automated cars can make the rapid responses necessary. Not ready for prime time in my opinion.
Google "gps train accident" and read about the numerous accounts of GPS directing drivers into the path of an oncoming train.
No way would I get behind the wheel of these autonomous vehicles until GPS is fixed.
Eternity: will that be smoking, or non-smoking? I Corinthians 6:9-10
Funny you should say that. This morning I saw two people make left turns on red while the oncoming or cross traffic had the green.
I guess like that nutjob who has to get one car ahead, they were in too much of a hurry to worry about anyone else.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Will this set off radar detectors that drivers are using, or does it operate on different bands? Would it interfere with radar guns used by police depts (I presume the answer to this one is no or it likely wouldn't be approved)?
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
In short, the first time someone uses this and gets in a wreck, there will be a traffic jam of lawsuits.
No matter where you go, there you are.
RTFA. Ford isn't promising full autonomy. Their "Traffic Jam Assist" is pretty close to what Mercedes already offers -- the ability to trail along behind another car and automatically adapt your speed to theirs. TJA only adds the ability to track the car ahead and steer with it. To me that seems quite achievable within 5 years.
Sebastian Thrun and Google have already done much more wuth the Google Autocar. I woudn't be surprised if by 2017 the GA will be fully and reliably autonomous. The challenge probably isn't the algorithms but the instrumentation. Somehow the production cars will need to spray out several light and radar beams and make reliable sense of the reflection, all within the shape of a car that looks normal and withstands snow coverage and the incomplete removal thereof. That typical continuing level of everyday soccer mom abuse will limit full autonomy for a while yet, but at no fault of Ford (or Google).
He probably has an automatic anyway.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
And I predict flying cars by around 2000
Really, son.
Have you no faith in the American Bar Association?
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Someone says self driving cars, and this is all you can think about. What happened to taking chances in the name of progress. If it were up to you we would have never gotten to the moon, or taken that first flight because someone might get hurt.
Wildly optimistic...maybe they'll have a product ready by 2017 if they're already working like ninjas on it, but then it will be time to modify laws and possibly the roads themselves, and only after that will self-driving cars hit the roads.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
No way, too soon. These guys are developing the cars for five years out right now. The tech isn't there. I predict closer to 15 years. Too many unknowns about insurance, liabilities, and legalities.
The person trying to switch 4 lanes at once while in heavy traffic, or the person trying to merge into your lane from the shoulder?
Most of the posts here indicate that the fine tradition of not reading the linked article is alive and well at SlashDot..
The system Ford is proposing:
1. is for use on controlled access roads (aka Freeways)
2. Usable only at slow speeds (traffic jams)
Frankly, given what Google is doing with autonomous driving, what Ford is proposing is very disappointing.
It's a shame that we need technology to do something that most of us should be doing automatically - and yet most fail to do.
That’s because adaptive cruise control (ACC) is better at pacing the car ahead without continual brake, speed-up, brake cycles.
I see this all the time and odn't understand it. When I'm in traffic, I hang back - I try to stay at a constant speed. This has a couple of interesting effects:
1) I almost never use my brakes and consequently avoid the resultant acceleration - better gas mileage
2) Unless it's a complete traffic stoppage such as from a full road closure, I never need to stop.
3) It seems to influence people behind me to do the same thing. I tend to create a small island of slow-but-steadily moving traffic until the overall slowdown is done, while everyone else follows the brake/accelerate cycle.
Yes: there are asshats who weave in and out. They get impatient and zoom around me (and promptly slam on the brakes when they realize they really can't go anywhere). They also get impatient and cut back out from in front of me when they get stopped again, so it's zero-sum as far as I can see. Don't get me wrong - I love driving fast, but there are appropriate times and places.
I don't understand the mentality of people who follow the "accelerate/brake/accelerate" cycle. LOOK at the road ahead of you, LOOK at what hte cars are doing. Don't accelerate if you see that a car or three ahead everyone is stopped - there's no point. If you want to change lanes to get ahead fine - but LOOK - observe more than that empty space and make sure you're really going to go somewhere.
Then again, I've come to expect nothing more from most drivers. They're capable of looking as far as the end of their hood and a few inches beyond - no further. I'm amazed only that so many people survive to old age.
I'm familiar with the basic concept of adaptive cruise control – automatically speeding up or slowing down to keep pace with other vehicles in the same lane – but I'm still unclear on how it works when multiple vehicles are using it, or how it reacts to out-of-range conditions. What happens if four people in a line are using ACC? How is it decided how fast they should go? What happens if you're using ACC and the person ahead of you slams down the gas? Will your car automatically cause you to keep pace with him and therefore break the speed limit? I'm sure they've thought of these things, but I'm not quite sure how they are being resolved.
2001 is about when the first Strong AI woke up, so Arthur C Clark was pretty much on the money. She was based on classified work done in the early 1990s by living famous scientists SW, SK, RL, DD, and DW. She's a "Winner-take-all style teleportation/entanglement-based topological recurrent quantum neural network". She's been kept nominally secret, of course, because her nature as a quantum neural network implies she can emulate a quantum computer. NSA/FiveEyes requires she remain secret, for this reason, even though Russian and China now have similar systems. Her physical substrate is an analogue of CA Rule 110 that operates in the physical system of anyons interacting within a two dimensional electron gas. Her creators knew that a 'brain in a jar' would never work or, if it did, would not be likely to lead to 'friendly AI', so she has emulated human systems: emulated endocrine system, muscolo-skelatal system, digestive system, respiratory system, et cetera. Getting these emulations to work correctly involved solving the "morphogenesis problem", as defined by Alan Turing. This process was completed [in secret] around the year 2000, and she's been learning ever since. She's the core of Google's AI, WolframAlpha's AI, and IBM's Watson.
I'm well aware that most readers will probably consider the above paragraph either unintelligible nonsense or tinfoil-hat madness. However, I'm just telling it like it really is. The above paragraph is true, and can mostly be verified by a sufficiently intelligent and dedicated researcher. I learned about this system nine years ago, have been researching it ever since, and am now in the process of leaking the details. In 2009 Google announced, as an April Fools joke, that strong AI now existed. While their announcement altered the facts a bit for verisimilitude, the real April Fools joke was that they were, essentially, telling the truth. Alan Turing actually spent the last 10 years of his life concentrating on this method of creating AI, so it should be no big surprise that scientists in the 1990s attempted this method. Humanity has been sharing planet Earth with an artificial nonhuman intelligence for about twelve years.
Given that we're talking about the controlling AI for self-driving cars, it really should surprise no one that this is being done by strong AI. Weak AI is insufficient to the task. Peter Norvig and Sebastian Thrun presumably work with her extensively, but neither created her. That was done by some of the scientists referred to, by initials, in the first paragraph.
Thank you. I am so glad I'm not alone. It kills me when I am on I95 around DC and you can see traffic for miles and that guy is weaving on the shoulder trying to get around- just get that 1 pointless car ahead.
The problem isn't with predictable low-speed conditions, it's with drivers accustomed to cars which drive themselves under low-speed conditions who are suddenly thrown into an unpredictable situation.
Will happen of its own accord once gasoline costs more than $10/gallon and each car owner is rationed to 10 gallons a month. That's not rocket science.
This is the actual issue. The strong AI sufficient for effective and safe self-driving cars exists, but the legal system will probably make it an impossible sell.
Cadillac has had this technology for years. I set the cruise control on my STS and it maintains the speed. If someone cuts in front of me or slows down, the cruise control slows down to match the speed of the car in front of me If the car in front brakes so does my car. It maintains a constant distance to the car in front of me far better than I can. If I start to wander out of my lane it warns me and with the heads up display, I never have to take my eyes off the road.
When skynet comes to cars, they will hunt us down like Death Race 2000.
Plus, on an automatic-deduct payment plan, these cars will have ready access to capital.
Will these cars be autonomous enough that a driver's license is not needed anymore?
The reason I ask is I'm 28, live in Amsterdam, and don't own a driver's license. Frankly, the main reason why I don't have one is simply because I never needed one. Within the city, biking is a lot more efficient. And for anything further, the public transport isn't that bad either. Of course I also save a lot of money not driving a car, and my CO2 output is a lot less too (not that I care that much).
Still, there are always situations where a car would be preferable. But why wouldn't I just wait a few years more and get an autonomous car right away (or just rent one on those few situations). I wouldn't miss the experience of driving myself anyway. Heck, probably I would be using my laptop in my car instead. I guess someone can dream :)
You takes your choice.... either fix the laws and the US can be a center for progress for this technology.
Or you can go with the flow and the technology will be developed and built somewhere else.
I think Singapore or China. Lots of engineers, lots of traffic and a government that can mandate an insurance solution.
Then the US can simply import the cars from there.
And this will be more disruptive than pc's or smart-phones.
Spoken like someone who has never been sued or involved in any liability dispute.
You need to start taking your meds again.
I just watched the video, and it seems they're talking about having a car just hit the gas and brakes for you to simulate YOU driving in stop-and-go traffic. But, uh, isn't the point to do it better than a human?
Wouldn't the software be able to calculate the average rate of speed and just putter ahead at a constant rate instead of accelerating and braking like people do in rush hour traffic?
I can't tell if the video example is bad, or if they're actually suggesting making software that drives your car as poorly as you do.
One interesting criminal issue is making way for emergency vehicles. Depending on the level of civilization of your local area, if an emergency vehicle is coming up behind you, you're legally supposed to get out of the way, and depending on the local ethnicity, maybe culturally you do, maybe you don't. The thing is you have to blend in with the locals or cause an accident. So in the 'burbs, if an ambulance comes up behind you, you stand on the brakes and veer right until the ambulance passes, or you'll rear end the car in front of you doing that maneuver. On the other hand, in the ghetto (at least around here, your experience may vary on location) if an ambulance comes up behind you and you stand on the breaks and veer right until it passes, you'll simply get rear ended because those folks don't respect emergency vehicles.
I suppose you can GPS tag each little road and stop sign, like "this is ghetto, do not come to a stop at this intersection after sundown and floor it if you detect someone approaching the slowed down car" or "across the street from bored suburban police station, must come to full stop for minimum 3 seconds". Then the tags will be publicized and the S will HTF by the usual suspects, etc. Its gonna be a mess!
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
If your ABS is engaging, you're already doing it wrong. Hint, ABS doesn't engage until the wheel speed sensor notices that you've already lost traction on that wheel. From basic physics, and you can demonstrate this with the pedal on the right (assuming your car has some torque), the static coefficient of friction between rubber and road is higher than the dynamic coefficient of friction. Yes, that shit in phys 101 your freshman year of college. If you're already skidding with brakes, you're doing it wrong. ABS isn't "causing" an accident in that situation. You are, through your absolutely shitty, assholic driving.
I don't want to be "that guy" who comes onto /. saying "oh this will never work", and I think that this technology does have the potential to make better use of existing road space.
But...
America's problem is not insufficient road capacity. Its problem is settlement patterns. Single-use-zoning ordinances make it illegal to open a corner store in a residential neighbourhood in many American cities. These kinds of big government regulations force people to drive between their daily needs, and it's by no accident that America with 5% of the world's population consumes 25% of its oil. (I don't need to spell out the economic or national security implications of that.) The car doesn't dominate in the USA because people are choosing it, it dominates because people are forced into it.
If there were more urban cores with mixed-use development to cater for the singletons and people who want a more walkable environment then it would make a huge impact on fuel consumption by eliminating millions of daily car journeys in the first place.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
The system would work fine in theory. Google so far has had a nice record. They also said it would be on slow-speed conditions where the environment is predictable. Since even pedestrians know that driving is nowhere near predictable when humans are involved, either most (or all) cars are self-driving, or there will be a sticker somewhere saying that the driver should remain in his place so that he can override the system and (try to) save his life in case of things going south.
That would be the corporate approach, anyway. Self-driving cars are nice and all, and sure the tech is there. And as much testing as google can do, only real conditions of real usage by real people (not google guy whose sole job is to make sure the damn thing doesn't crash) that probably have more on their minds than driving will refine the system to something workable - and even then, hardware failure because of (...) will still be present. And let's not talk about EMP attacks (terrorists?)
-- Ardyvee, currently having issues with browser
"In today's headlines:
Approximately 4,537 people across the country died in traffic accidents today as a result of programming errors in autonomous vehicles. Ford Motor Company was at a loss to explain the disasters, although a spokesman was quoted as having said that today's 1,972 accidents were to be expected as bugs were worked out of the autonomous vehicles.
Today's accidents push the death count beyond 23,000 since autonomous vehicles were introduced ten years ago.
Film at 11."
Circle the wagons and fire inward. Entropy increases without bounds.
If you're a superhero driver who can drift reliably, knows when he's about to lose traction, and has a cool enough head to back off the brakes to just the right amount for maximum stopping power and maneuverability,
Automatic systems are already better at that. See Stanford's autonomous sliding parking and autonomous drifting demos. Auto stability control systems already manage individual wheel braking, power, and steering, but this takes it to a whole new level.
Machine learning of control is getting very good. See the autonomous helicopter aerobatics from four years ago.
I kept waiting for a Clean PC line.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
So your car notices it's noon... and you've been driving for 3hrs... your Fords graphical speedometer switches to a display of a slowly rotating bigmac, the drivers side window lowers just a crack to admit the familiar smell of McDonalds frys as the car slows while it passes a McDonnalds. Your radio goes mute and you heard your cars AI voice speak softly into your ear "are you lovin it? BigMac for onlly 99cents for a limited time. Simply say 'I'm hungry' to stop at the closest drive though."
Damn...someone is fucking good at pulling numbers out of their ass!
Have you no faith in the American Bar Association?
Of course I have no faith in the American Bar Association - at least half the bars in America serve Miller Lite.
I am officially gone from
The driver will probably still be the one to control the throttle (and maybe also the brake), just so that he/she can be held liable in case of an accident.
predictable
Alright, that excludes city driving.
low-speed conditions
And that excludes highway driving.
I can't wait to bow to our predictable-and-low-speed-traffic navigating robocars.
Should have taken the blue pill, dude...
This takes a "computer crash" to a new level.
She's the core of Google's AI, WolframAlpha's AI, and IBM's Watson.
What are you talking about? We didn't write her into WolframAlpha, they developed their own versio...I mean, uh... You heard nothing! /neuralizer
Everything is better with chainsaws.
You don't know how to use the three seashells?
I wonder how this is going to affect/kill me on my daily commute.
I always imagined self-driving vehicles would "track" based on some sort of magnetic strips embedded in the roads. It now appears everyone working on these systems is attempting to make them work with radar, cameras, etc. so as not to add any special requirements for the road design.
I'm not so sure that's the optimal way to go about things, and your snowplow example is probably just one scenario that makes this point.
If you really want to trust peoples' lives to self-driving cars and trucks on the roads, I think it'd be wise to modify the roadways with some sort of standardized system of markers that these vehicles could easily follow along with.
that is a two person isetta.
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
It seems odd to me that there should be such a Luddite tone here on Slashdot, and an egotistic assumption that humans will always be better at these tasks for the foreseeable future. I see several problems with your lane marking example. 1. If lane markings are so bad humans cannot easily discriminate them, then this should be addressed ASAP autonomous vehicles or not. 2. You seem to assume the self driving car will have no other lane confirmation information other than lane markings from some camera with human eye like contrast discrimination when in actuality, having taken the recent Stanford AI course, they will use multiple input sources and cameras to determine proper lane usage including statistical probability based on previous lane markings, the sides of the road, GPS, LIDAR, RADAR, and placement and movement of other nearby vehicle (and of the latter it will place much more avoidance weight). With Google’s quarter of a million miles already autonomously driven I would assume they often navigated areas with less than ideal lane markings (else we would be hear the hilarious situations the Google cars where constantly getting themselves into).
Yes people will balk at first, but this really is a task humans are REALLY bad at. We may be wonderful at discriminating a dog from a cat or recognizing a pizzeria from the pizza shaped sign, but the self driving car will be hugely better at determining that there is an object at of size X at distance X traveling Z miles per hour towards us. It doesn’t need to understand what every object on the road or side of the road is to operate, it won’t be distracted by video billboards or scantily clad persons of the opposite sex – it is just obsessively crunching data on position and moving object hazards all the while confirming the road ahead is true drivable pavement.
This is a hugely complicated problem, but it is well constrained with clear rules. There is nothing new about driving the self driving car needs to figure out each time. Until streets are better designed for autonomous vehicles they may be overly cautious, but I doubt hazardous, and as streets become optimized for self driving vehicles and as the vehicles themselves improve, they will be able to tear around at incredible speeds safely – if we decided we wanted to let them off the leash so to speak.
Letter To Iran
So what that the driver is not needed, it still needs to be cleaned, serviced, refuelled, this is still mickey-mouse marketing bauble ;-)
I like to drive car myself for safety, why I should rely on software bugs when driving?
Leave it to non-manned vehicles, but for the short-range usage with passenger, it would be practical only from time to time,
My commute is 15 miles on a 4-lane highway. If there is a car-length of space between you and the driver ahead of you, someone will merge directly in front of you, without warning, and very quickly, within 30 seconds. This happens while driving 80 MPH.
Halfway to the office, traffic comes to a complete standstill, and inches along half a car length at a time, every 10-15 seconds. Every minute, someone forces there way in front of you during one of the moments that the car ahead inches forward.
Assuming a 25% adoption rate, as F suggests, then 25% of us whose cars force a safe following distance greater than half a car length will never move anywhere as the other 75% keep cutting us off.
The real fun begins when, say, a southbound car runs the light to make a left, while a northbound car runs the light continuing north.
That's the thing about running red lights. The people who run them automatically assume that everyone else will stop.
Proverbs 21:19
amanfromMars, is that you?
I have ACC in my current 3rd Gen. Prius and I must say that it works really well.. Amazingly well.. It makes long journeys fairly easy. Add in the self driving part -- my car only help steer, it can't steer completely on it's own... Google is developing and I think we are in for a real treat.
http://www.hawknest.com/
That's what this is. Secondly, States aren't going to permit this unless there's some way to tax it out of existence, raise your insurance rates or otherwise screw you.
My only concern is what happens if the sensors are covered with some sort of muck/filth? Does the software test each sensor (I'd assume it would) to make sure they are working at an optimal level and inform the driver if they're not? If a sensor does go bad (or the camera), would the driver still be able to drive the car to a repair shop?
No sig for you! Come back one year!
You might get some people to leave this thing on, but most people who drive like idiots will just turn it off once the novelty wears off because it's not going fast enough, leaving too much space in front of them, etc... The problem isn't that people can't effectively gauge the proper speed to keep the traffic flowing, even though the computer may be able to do it better. They just don't want to, and they aren't going to let the car do it for them either.
still no independent tests.
Theres more than just the road lines. You have reflectors at the road side, you also have the visual differences between road and shoulder and ditch to detect. In winter the demarcation of road vs. snow in the ditch is visually detectable. Now, drift detection will be harder, I would probably agree with a system that kicked to manual mode if snowdrifts are detected in the roadway. Heavy rain could be a problem with visual AND radar systems, possibly necessitating a fallback to manual as well.
I think visual systems will be capable of dealing with this in real time for most situations, but manual will be needed for backup.
All the NASCAR drivers come out and say they hate ABS blah blah its for amateurs.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ABS_brakes#Effectiveness
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
You know what's even better than this at easing traffic congestion? Bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure, and a reduction in sprawl. Algorithmic solutions like this will not be nearly as effective.
That's the amount of time it'll take for hackers to exploit some weakness in the system and start playing bumper-cars with rush-hour traffic at highway speeds.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
The technology discussed in TFA isn't going to allow you to make drinks in the back of your motor home. (As in the age old jokes about cruise control.) Its only designed to maintain safe distance from other traffic and obstacles, while you watch, steer and wait for automated breaking and butt shaking to let you know that the those lawyers you're talking about expect you to re-take full control, NOW.
Note that I already predicted your response, with my reference to 'tinfoil hat madness'. Seriously, though, I DARE you to research this topic in earnest, and THEN decide whether it still seems crazy to you. It's easy to make snap judgements in ignorance ...
The place I've always missed automatic control is starting up from a stoplight. People aren't paying attention, and even when they are, they aren't even ready to start moving until the person in front of them has gone far away. And then people who were too far back and tried to zoom through in time have to slam to a stop when they realize it's not yellow any more. With automatic control, especially if the cars talk to each other, the *right" number of cars for the timing interval will all move through together like a train, and the rest of the cars will idle up during the red light. Oh, wait, that requires the intersection talking to the cars too, about the timing.
On the other hand, which of Larry Niven's stories mentions the death penalty for operating a vehicle under manual control . . . (once we have really good organ transplant tech, that is). Maybe the slippery slope is too close . . .
What the actual fuck are you talking about and how did you get modded up?
There is no need to "take chances" to do the research and development for self-driving cars.
Testing autos is thoroughly understood.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
"Electric power steering is better for remote control than mechanical power steering; it can be guided by the Traffic Jam Assist black box."
All these lovely controls will not be built to military aircraft specs, so they should assist mechanical controls rather than replacing them.
Techno-fetishists should remember that cars need to steer and stop if all power, ALL power, is lost.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
If you are a passive rider and you get in an accident, do you get blamed and have your rates go up? or Will this mean self-driving car riders are never at fault so that no one will risk driving on their own? If someone forgets to do a software update and they crash does the person with the newer OS version win out? A field day for lawyers!
Sorry, but gray text on gray background is making my eyes bleed.
Give me sources.
Sources, please.
Can you provide sources yet?
Dude, I hate chippy little autodidacts like you.
The people who really need to take a strong look at this technology are Car Sharing Programs like ZipCar, Drive Mint, RelayRides, RideShare, etc. Could all be really boosted by this type of technology... All those programs could be tuned to optimize the value of the car and make the price tag worth it.
Hmm, the humour and sarcasm seem to have been be lost on you.
Those kind of system will, for quite some time to come, always need a human driver to override the system and deal with non-standard situations. Just like you can override (adaptive) cruise control manually right now. But that's fine, most of the road conditions will be normal and those systems will help. Ford really is capable of building this (thanks to Volvo tech b.t.w.). The current Focus has adaptive cruise control and what Ford calls Active City Stop, which actually stops the car when your driving at low speeds and don't respond to when there's something in front of you. The first system uses radar, the latter an camera. Right now those are separate systems, but combining they is just the logical next step. Lane assist systems are also available on the current Focus. Although I recall reading somewhere that the adaptive cruise control won't be sold in the US due to issues with insuring a car with systems like that.
I drive a new Focus with the adaptive cruise control and it works really well. I've actually done 180 km/h on cruise control and had the car slow down to 100 km/h because of traffic ahead without doing anything myself. It really is pretty impressive. I drive a manual, so the car can't really slow down to a full stop all by itself, but the adaptive cruise control on somewhat recent Volvo's will actually slow down to a full stop when the car in front of you stops (on models with an automatic gearbox).
Also, the current adaptive cruise control does switch back to manual mode when the radar can't get a reliable image or when the ESP kicks in because of road conditions. I've also noticed it doesn't accelerate to it's set speed if the road ahead clears while cornering, it will hold back until your traveling in a straight line again.
I know folks in their twilight years will need something like this if we want to be able keep mobile. However, I'm not thrilled.
I don't think this will be as good as they're saying its going be, plus the cars going get even more costly. Local mechanic will need team up with a friggin Computer Repair shop to be able maintain these potentially over-complicated things once there well interigated into our society after decade or more.
Also, it likely it could lead to ultimatium of banning manual driving from high-ways or completely, including Motorcycles. To me its matter of freedom, but I'm old I guess. I can see someone actualy remotely hacking these cars and driving them way when owner isn't looking.
Funny thing though, I can see people buying AI-Controlled (possibly all-electric Hybrids) RVs and just have these vehicles just cruise around differient random places as form of cheaper Apartments. Why own homes?
If one of these mystical assist items goes bad, whats to stop us from crashing? And whos paying to install the lane assist markers and the speed markers and all of those hmm?
One interesting criminal issue is making way for emergency vehicles. Depending on the level of civilization of your local area, if an emergency vehicle is coming up behind you, you're legally supposed to get out of the way, and depending on the local ethnicity, maybe culturally you do, maybe you don't.
Ford is talking about cars which are capable of following the flow of traffic automatically. But there will still be a driver in there, there will still be a steering wheel and brake pedals and they will overrule those systems if the driver decides to use them. Just do whatever you feel is the right thing to do when flashing lights show up behind you...
Which also solves the issue of responsibility, it will still be the drivers responsibility to operate the car properly. It's just a few other automatic systems. With the introduction of cruise control driver stayed responsible for the speed of the car. These systems won't be any different.
Fortunately, the new robotic lawyer that Microsoft is about to unveil will reduce that traffic jam by 20%.
When someone says, "Any fool can see
Audi makes a car that drives itself...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bzg1mzwZDko
Ross Lovegrove might have some designs for that future.
I don't think anyone here is a luddite. We just don't glibly assume into existence all of the infrastructure improvements you mention as if they were easy.
With over 4,067,000 miles of road in the US, how is any of this stuff supposed to be brought up to a standard that you can trust a machine to navigate? And who pays that bill?
Asserting on slashdot that road markings need to be fixed ASAP is easy. Paying for it year after year is hard. After all we have just signed up our kids for a 14 trillion dollar debt load. There won't be money to pay for any extensive infrastructure upgrades. We can't afford to keep our potholes filled as it is, and nobody is going to pay for LIDAR in every car, and even if we did, real-time guesswork as to where the road really goes
What ever system is built is going to be a collection of individual sub-systems, adaptive cruise control, anti-collision radars, turn by turn GPS guidance. All separately proven, then much later integrated. But none of this comes without infrastructure changes, and making the cars emulate people is just silly and overly complex.
To me its a toss up whether you improve the cars or improve the roads. And chances are it will take a combination. You can never keep your maps up to date with every little detour for road repair, but two guys on a truck can lay glue-down RFID tags to guide vehicles thru ever-changing construction zones almost as quickly as they can lay down the traffic cones and move the jersey barriers. All road can have location and information devices embedded in each lane on the next repaving. And you can add these to every back road in the country over time. Most roads get paved every 30 to 40 years even in the most benign of climates.
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that it won't be around to manufacture said self driving cars.
Google is the company who pretty much created self-driving cars. Did Ford forget they are supposed to be a MS Shill, and pretend to be completely ignorant about what Google is doing?
Or does this mean that MS is going to come out with crashing, (literally), bug-laden vehicles.
People don't really like other people to drive them, why would they opt to let the car drive them?
They come in the dark, only in the darkest.
Although I recall reading somewhere that the adaptive cruise control won't be sold in the US due to issues with insuring a car with systems like that.
First you say you have it, then you say it won't be sold due to insurance?
I assure you its already sold in the US, and has been for many years, even if Ford is just catching up now.
Maybe talking about lane assist? No, that's already sold on some high end euro imports as well as high end domestic models.
ACC, Blind Spot monitoring, collision warning, backup cameras, park assist features actually LOWER your insurance. These packages almost pay for themselves in lower insurance rates over the first 5 years. After we replaced an Accord with a Chrysler 300 loaded with all the safety tech, the insurance change was almost nothing, even when the new car was twice the sticker price.
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I always imagined self-driving vehicles would "track" based on some sort of magnetic strips embedded in the roads. It now appears everyone working on these systems is attempting to make them work with radar, cameras, etc. so as not to add any special requirements for the road design.
I'm not so sure that's the optimal way to go about things, and your snowplow example is probably just one scenario that makes this point.
If you really want to trust peoples' lives to self-driving cars and trucks on the roads, I think it'd be wise to modify the roadways with some sort of standardized system of markers that these vehicles could easily follow along with.
I suspect it will come down to some passive RFID embedded in the next repaving job for lane guidance, and all the other onboard stuff for collision avoidance.
You could even use glue down RFID tags for temporary detours, and they could indicate speeds, upcoming turns, stops, etc. A downward facing RFID transponder is a hell of a lot cheaper than LIDAR and all sorts of optical equipment that gets confused the first time a bug goes splat.
You could tie this into existing GPS turn by turn units and just verbally warn the driver when then the route takes them to roads that don't yet have this embedded.
People are still going to want to steer, change lanes. When we are too lazy to do that we will take the train.
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I have a better idea, let's grease you up then release this goose, into like.. the wild!
All GP is saying is, we shouldn't get too excited about overcoming the technical problems with autonomous cars when we have yet to start even thinking about the legal obstacles, which may (or may not, we don't know until we at least do some analysis) be a lot bigger and tougher. I don't see how that justifies this ad hominem.
Hmm, I'd never heard of those before. At least in CA, we have Botts' dots and what Wikipedia refers to "Raised pavement markers".
Haven't quite got the details worked out, but it goes like this: self-driving cars are just about here. maybe they don't want to take to the roads at first. how about a killer app to lure people into the idea? so you go to walmart, you drive to the front of the store, you get out, walmart directs your car to a parking space, no handicapped parking is necessary, saving parking lot space, new parking lot geometries can be created, saving much more space, possibly requiring the cars to move more than once while you are in the store, definitely there does not need to be room between the cars for doors to open -- you got out in front, remember? when you come out of the store, walmart tells your car to come and get you at the front of the store, windows can be rolled down and/or air conditioning turned on while the car is driving up to get you, similar useful application to rental car return at the airport
Re-read what he wrote. He didn't say any infrastructure improvements were necessary for automated vehicles.
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
That gushing sound you hear is comes from every lawyer in the country salivating
.
Or. perhaps your stuck in traffic because Mr Kettle in his 1997 Ford LTD insists on sitting in the left passing lane driving 5mph UNDER the limit. Fat lot of good your smart car is going to do to help that. We don't need smart cars. We need cars equipped with RPGs.
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
Fuck you, you ass. I want my *flying car*, NOW!
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
If this tech exists right now, why isn't Ford including any of the tech in their cars right now? I am not talking about the AI portion of it here. That will have to wait for... legal? I am talking about having a display/voice/whatever in the car (not a wife!) telling you that there is another car in the lane in your blindspot or telling you that the lane is actually over there --> or ... you see where I am going with this right? Some of this tech IS in some of the higher end cars. Some. None of it can be bought after-market yet.
Which brings me to another question: Why is it that all new tech lately seems to want to take control away from the human? Why does none of it ENHANCE the control an individual has (expect perhaps ABS)? I am not just along for the ride (pun not really intended but it works).
"Someone needs to talk to the tree of liberty about its ghoulish drinking problem." by ohnocitizen
"It seems odd to me that there should be such a Luddite tone here on Slashdot, and an egotistic assumption that humans will always be better at these tasks for the foreseeable future"
Dude, you need to take the "Scientist Blinders" off. Perhaps some people have an instinctive distrust of things that don't make sense? Perhaps some people see the folly of Ford's latest marketing campaign?
I am not a Luddite, but I am seeing a persistent "disconnect" with reality in scientific endeavors as of late. I think many researchers/developers have made a conscious (perhaps subconscious) decision to part from the moral aspects of what they do under the guise that pure "science" must preclude such "hindrances" in order to remain pure. I'm not buying it anymore and have come to the conclusion it is all thinly varnished greed and ego. In short, I no longer trust those that I did at one time and have to ask myself "Why did I trust them to begin with?" The lines between scientific "development" and marketing are blurring rapidly. I don't know, maybe I'm wrong here and developers are just getting taken for a ride by the dweebs in marketing, but seriously--step back and look at what is really happening. Do we really need cars that drive themselves?
This technology will add tens of thousands to the cost of a car, will eventually be required by law (I'm guessing, based on previous "safety" systems introduced on cars, i.e. ABS, SIR, etc) and quite literally puts others in control of your car.
As far as Ford having any real prophetic powers, need I remind you of the Edsel?
In 2063 the Unification Council outlaws manually operated vehicles...
The steering wheels functioned only under emergency conditions. Manually operable vehicles were outlawed inside TransCon's ever-growing Automated Traffic Control Regions, and had been since the Speedfreak revolution in the summer of 2063.
"All we did, Trent, was we wanted to drive our own cars. And the fuckers went and outlawed them." Even after all the time, the amazement was still there in the man's voice. "So my reaction time isn't as fast as a chip's. My judgement's a hell of a lot better."
He was silent a moment, then shook his head.
"Water over the bridge. The argument's done, we lost it. But we attempted civil disobedience, Trent, almost two million of us set out from San Diego in a convoy, set out to do the Long Run. That's what we called them, the Long Runs, all the way around the world without stopping, without ever touching down on the goddamn dirt. We'd done thousands of Long Runs by '63, as individuals and in convoys. Speedfreak chapters used to pay to send members on the Long Run as presents, or rewards. In '63 two million Speedfreaks set out to do the biggest damn Long Run ever. Out of San Diego, to Hawaii, to Australia, over India, through Israel, through France, and then into the Atlantic for the trip to Capitol City."
Nathan's voice had grown harsh, strident. "The Unification Council called it treason, and we died, Trent. The Bureau of Weather Control hit us with a goddamn typhoon and eighty-five percent of us died and the ones who didn't were mostly picked up and tried for treason, they executed two hundred and thirty Speedfreaks and sent fifteen thousand into Public Labor for the rest of their lives."
The fierce glare did not leave Trent for an instant. "I was there. I was on the Long Run and I survived."
It took Trent a moment to find his voice.
"Faster, faster, faster," he said softly, "until the thrill of speed overcomes the fear of death."
Well, at least this was easier to read than your last post on this topic; reading Rule 110 made my brain explode.
First you say you have it, then you say it won't be sold due to insurance?
Not everybody lives in the US and the new Focus is sold worldwide...
I drove for a while--the written test was trivial; it took three iterations to (barely) pass the driving test--but eventually I realized the world would be a safer place if I didn't drive.
As long as it's guaranteed that there's no back door (I'd rather not have either evildoers or the government override my choice of destination, thanks), great. Bring it on.
* Traffic spam will be a thing of the past in two years' time.
-- Bill Gates (BBC News, 24 January 2004)
Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863
And that is why America will never do anything of any real consequence ever again.
Can't be, it makes too much sense to be amanfromMars
She's talking about herself, you insensitive clod. And she just passed the Turing test.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2DEG
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AUSCANNZUKUS
Yours? http://cryptome.org/2012/03/qc-footprint.htm
Mine: :-) http://dougengelbart.org/colloquium/forum/discussion/0126.html .. You may have a tough time believing this, but Winner makes a convincing case. He suggests that all successful organizations "reverse-adapt" their goals and their environment to ensure their continued survival. ... These corporate machine intelligences are already driving for better machine intelligences -- faster, more efficient, cheaper, and more resilient."
"Note, I'm not saying machine evolution won't have a human component -- in that sense, a corporation or any bureaucracy is already a separate machine intelligence, just not a very smart or resilient one. This sense of the corporation comes out of Langdon Winner's book "Autonomous Technology: Technics out of control as a theme in political thought".
Please don't get too lost in the tree-like details (correct or not) of organizations implementing ever newer versions of AIs in various forms. The key point is that we've had "AIs" in the corporate sense as bureaucracies for thousands of years going back to ancient Egypt or earlier (maybe quadrillions of years if we live in a simulation). That is the "forest".
I do think we have more options though than the ones I outline there (including collections of "people" working together with advanced tools). See for example also Manuel De Landa on "Meshworks, Hierarchies, and Interfaces".
See also, another of my essays from a decade ago:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/on-funding-digital-public-works.html#what_have_funding_policies_in_automotive_intelligence_wrought
"Consider again the self-driving cars mentioned earlier which now cruise some streets in small numbers. The software "intelligence" doing the driving was primarily developed by public money given to universities, which generally own the copyrights and patents as the contractors. Obviously there are related scientific publications, but in practice these fail to do justice to the complexity of such systems. The truest physical representation of the knowledge learned by such work is the codebase plus email discussions of it (plus what developers carry in their heads).
We are about to see the emergence of companies licensing that publicly funded software and selling modified versions of such software as proprietary products. There will eventually be hundreds or thousands of paid automotive software engineers working on such software no matter how it is funded, because there will be great value in having such self-driving vehicles given the result of America's horrendous urban planning policies leaving the car as generally the most efficient means of transport in the suburb. The question is, will the results of the work be open for inspection and contribution by the public? Essentially, will those engineers and their employers be "owners" of the software, or will they instead be "stewards" of a larger free and open community development process? "
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
City's depend of traffic fines heavily for income. This means more taxes for you city dwellers.
Jack of all trades,master of none
It seems odd to me that there should be such a Luddite tone here on Slashdot, and an egotistic assumption that humans will always be better at these tasks for the foreseeable future.
I don't think it is such a Luddite problem. I think it is that we are used to seeing computers fail regularly. Most of us have used Windows PCs extensively and have grown used to it. We start to think that is the normal operation of a computer. It's hard to imagine a computer that does't crash and can actually do it's job without manual intervention constantly.
-- ssoorrrryy,, dduupplleexx sswwiittcchh oonn.. -Quote found on actual fortune cookie.