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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."
The Google car detects motorcycles that lane split and doesn't side-swipe them on their way by. Sebastian Thrun addressed this concern in his keynote talk at the Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition conference two weeks ago in Rhode Island.
Speaking about lane markings, there are some roads in Boston where the road has been maintained, and the old lane markings take you on a path to nowhere, say off the edge of a bridge. Humans recognize this and auto correct onto the new lane markings, with minimal swerving and disruption (though noticeable). Would a computer drive off the bridge?
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).
Or maybe you should STFU as the 405 is a highway in CA. It turns out to be legal to split lanes in CA.
Damn CA-ians center-of-the-universe**... ;^)
In case you didn't know, There's a 405 in Oregon (stadium freeway), and a 405 in Washington (east-side lake washington).
Although there were efforts in both state to allow lane-splitting, lane-splitting remains against the law in both states...
FYI, you might have easily predicted the existance of 405's in other states if you knew the interstate highway numbering convention "XYY" (where X is odd for spur routes and X is even for bypass/loop routes and YY is the nearest interstate in this case Interstate 5 which goes through CA, OR, WA)
**yes, I currently live in the center of the universe, but I do visit the back-country from time-to-time ;^P