Slashdot Mirror
MIT Creates Car Co-Pilot That Only Interferes If You're About To Crash
MrSeb writes "Mechanical engineers and roboticists working at MIT have developed an intelligent automobile co-pilot that sits in the background and only interferes if you're about to have an accident. If you fall asleep, for example, the co-pilot activates and keeps you on the road until you wake up again. Like other autonomous and semi-autonomous solutions, the MIT co-pilot uses an on-board camera and laser rangefinder to identify obstacles. These obstacles are then combined with various data points — such as the driver's performance, and the car's speed, stability, and physical characteristics — to create constraints. The co-pilot stays completely silent unless you come close to breaking one of these constraints — which might be as simple as a car in front braking quickly, or as complex as taking a corner too quickly. When this happens, a ton of robotics under the hood take over, only passing back control to the driver when the car is safe. This intelligent co-pilot is starkly contrasted with Google's self-driving cars, which are completely computer-controlled unless you lean forward, put your hands on the wheel, and take over. Which method is better? A computer backup, or a human backup? I'm not sure."
I'm sorry David, I cannot allow you to pass that car.
While fully autonomous cars may be the more desirable future, computer backup systems like this are a more likely first step. Once people start getting used to cars making good decisions on the road, they will be more willing to give the computers even more control.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
I'm not certain but I'm pretty sure computers are landing airplanes with the pilots overseeing the process.
I also find it hard to believe that a computer cannot get better at driving a car the most people. Sure there are emergency situations the require extreme skill and judgement calls, but how many people are good in those situations? I have seen many drivers who react 100% wrong in dangerous situations. They don't understand the dynamics of the car and get confused in a panic. Computers don't have this problem.
I would be all for this if the computer would take over once it determines you are driving too slow in the fast lane and blocking traffic. Maybe there can be 2 modes, emergency take over, and 'Nag' mode for when the computer determines your acting like a selfish asshole.
I disagree. Human drivers are always a disaster waiting to happen. Computers don't get drunk. Computers don't get angry. Computers don't get sleepy. Computers aren't trying to impress a woman. (At least not yet...) Sure, computers fail, but humans fail too, but much more often. My concern is with the cases where a malfunction occurs in the system, maybe a broken sensor. How does a computer driver respond to these scenarios, which are guaranteed to happen in the real world?
I'm not certain but I'm pretty sure computers are landing airplanes with the pilots overseeing the process.
There's not many obstacles to avoid up in the air. On the road there's dozens of other cars all around you.
No sig today...
Computers don't get drunk. Computers don't get angry. Computers don't get sleepy.
And computers absolutely will not stop, ever, until ...... ummm, until you arrive at your programmed destination.
No sig today...
There's a whole class of philsophical problems about when to save one life v. n lives http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem. One very awkward thing about this is that advanced emergency driving systems may need to address questions that we are fundamentally uncomfortable answering or discussing. Should a system for example protect the life of the people in a car as opposed to the life of people in a nearby car that they might crash into? Which gets higher priority. Does the number of people in each car matter? Exactly what the cars do in the few seconds leading up to a crash could alter this. Essentially this sort of thing may force us to examine difficult ethical problems.
Because none of those are point-to-point, to your home and place of work especially.
I agree with you up to a point. However, make no mistake that there is a significant difference between a car I don't have to drive and the modes of public transit you have cited. To wit, a car (driven by me or a computer) will take me directly from A to B. No walking, no changing lines, etc. Aside from the fact that most people are incredibly lazy (I'm including myself in that number) the difference in time and convenience is significant. Yes there are cities where that difference is quite small (NYC, London, amongst a few others) but these places are very much the exception and not the rule.
My concern is with the cases where a malfunction occurs in the system, maybe a broken sensor. How does a computer driver respond to these scenarios, which are guaranteed to happen in the real world?
The only thing that the computer can't be designed to cope with is complete hardware system failure. Are the automotive companies really prepared to put dual systems in the vehicle with backup power? And for that matter, are they going to be willing to disable the vehicle if a sensor is out of commission? They will really need to do that because drivers will become used to depending on the system.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Anyone who has been paying attention to the "safety systems" similar to this on commercial aircraft should know that development of systems such as this always have unintended consequences. Even if they work flawlessly the flawless function could still potentially be dangerous.
Just as one example: sometimes "crashing" is the least-bad alternative available to a driver. Given the choice between hitting a person standing in the road or a row of water-filled barriers many drivers would correctly choose the barrier over the human. But this safety system will likely subvert that and take the choice away from the driver.
I'm not certain but I'm pretty sure computers are landing airplanes with the pilots overseeing the process.
Correct. However, it requires a pilot to program and monitor its progress as well as very specific requirements for onboard equipment, crewmember training and triple redundancy in the event of malfunctions. I've had numerous Cat III approaches to a safe landing and it works but I wouldn't say the computers are better than the pilots. Its only used when there is not adequate visual reference for the pilot to do it. After the aircraft finishes its rollout in a straight line using ILS, the pilot still has to find his way to the gate with visibility at only a few meters.
Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?
Auto pilot for landing exists, but it requires ground equipment that is only available in the biggest airport, and it's only installed in the biggest airliners.
The vast majority of landings are done manually by the pilots, while the autopilot is sometimes used in extreme conditions (fog especially).
I believe this very question distinguishes Boeing and Airbus and their autopilot philosophy. IIR, Boeing says the pilot is the senior authority, Airbus prefers the computer's judgement. Note the similarity in the sounds 'airbus' and 'skynet'.
Not many obstacles, but there's one really big one. And on landing, you're not tring to avoid it, but have to hit it just right.
Interestingly, both approaches have been tried in aviation.
A while back, Aviation Week reported on an experimental system that could override fighter pilots when they would otherwise crash. It waited until the absolute last second, when the required maneuver was just within the structural limits of the airframe.
Using humans as backups has a long and good operational history, but it might not work as well with undertrained personnel like car drivers. Even with highly trained pilots, dropping control onto a human suddenly in a disorienting situation can be problematic, e.g. Air France 447.
Firstly: How does the system detect imminent crashes? If this makes mistakes, it can wrest control away from the driver when unnecessary and cause a crash.
Secondly: How does the system react to imminent crashes? If this performs worse than what the driver was already doing, it can cause a crash.
The main problem with autonomous driving is the legal liability. The problems above still introduce the legal liability, yet without the major benefits from a broader system. I think the industry will simply skip over this straight to broader systems.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
Actually, the autopilot will usually take you to the "minimums" which is usually set to several hundred feet above the deck at which point, an audible alarm is sounded "Minimums!" and the pilot is expected to take over the throttles and yoke. If that does not happen, the AP will make an attempt at landing using nothing but the ILS and glidescope, provided you are nav and gs captured (which you should be while landing).
"Freedom in the USA is not the ability to do what you want. It is the ability to stop others from doing what THEY want"
> There's not many obstacles to avoid up in the air.
> On the road there's dozens of other cars all around you.
>
> (Score:5, Insightful) <========
Thanks for the lol, people!
(A few days ago at MIT) "Hey. Shouldn't we consider that there might be other cars on the road before we release?"
"Oh, yeah! Duh!"
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
What if there was a switch where the operator of the vehicle could choose between normal driving, computer-assisted driving (MIT), and human-assisted driving (Google)? I think that would be a better option than having to choose between expensive automobiles.
~Jarmihi
Not many obstacles, but there's one really big one.
That one's only dangerous if you approach it off course or at a sharp angle. Computers are pretty good at linear algebra (better than humans), getting it right isn't a massive problem (how many years have they been doing it now...?)
Guiding a car safely along an arbitrarily curved road full of unpredictable other users is much trickier than landing an aircraft.
No sig today...
Even a suborbital hypersonic aircraft wouldn't land anywhere near those speeds. That's close to mach 1.5 at sea level. Divide by 2 and that's still close to a modern airliner's full cruising speed.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Automated landing systems can rely on radioguidance devices and airstrips are usually large enough to take into account for error. That is not the case on a road where you have nothing else than road marks which may not always be visible if any. The speed of the airplane isn't really a factor provided the computers are much more faster at doing computations and evaluate sensors than a human given the overall setup is much more simple than the one required for a car. No computer vision is involved into an automated airplane landing system. And even if it were, the overall scene is a simple one compare to a car road where you can have pedestrians, bikes, cars, obstacles of all kind, curves, bumps, sidewalks, posts and so on.
Achille Talon
Hop!
Most airliners land around 130 to 150 knots, 140 to 160 MPH, and cruise around 400 to 500 knots, 450 to 600 mph. Don't be silly!
But Mommy I have TO GO NOW!!!!
Dear, please hold on the car won't stop. HOW DO YOU REBOOT THIS THING?
Uh-oh Mommy I peed on the seat...
Damn Bluescreen! On-Star,help my car won't stop and nav has gone bluescreen. what does STOP 0X00C553E mean?
I pooed too....
---Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right B A START
In important industrial applications, a set of 3 sensors is used.
If they all agree, fine.
If one of them disagrees by a certain margin, use the information of the other two and light up a warning.
If they all disagree, turn it to manual and blast the alarms.
In really important stuff, like nuclear stuff, it is used up to 5 sensors, each with a different functioning principle.
Why mod this guy down to -1?
;-)
I don't see the advantage of living in a world where people more and more are discouraged from learning to do things themselves. As is people on average are not really very good drivers, if you take the wheel away from them how are they going to be even minimally competent in the event of an emergency that requires human input?
If I was forced to purchase a car with either of these technologies, I'd opt for a backup system for me, and not the other way around. As a sidebar, if this is the direction things are going then I guess I'll be riding motorcycles more and more.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
I miss the time when we could buy cars that put the entire responsibility of keeping the car on the road in the hands of drivers. If I want to do a maneuver that seems like a better solution (flipping the car's tail out while purposefully messing with the throttle to induce a controlled sideways skid on a wet road) to avoiding a dangerous situation, traction control already messes with it. I wonder what it will be like with systems like these being applied as mandatory safety features.
That's silly.
A car can't drive now with a LOT of different electrical or mechanical failures. Adding one more into the mix isn't really changing much.
The legal compliance issue (what if the car knows one of its sensors isn't working) is actually a serious and legitimate problem. In that case who is considered responsible for 'operating' the vehicle? If a device has a tendency to catch fire or otherwise fail unsafely it tends to get recalled and the manufacturer blamed, so a car may not automatically do anything other than drive to a repair shop if part of its own diagnostic system fails. Right now you can just ignore those warnings and keep driving (at your own peril naturally).
Was gonna flippantly reply "if human is a healthy, reasonably young member of the species in all five senses and with sufficent experience, computer should stand back, else the old fart should RIDE in the back."
But then someone mentioned planes. Anyone up to date with the news and who read the final BEA report on the Air France crash in the South Atlantic with 200+ dead will recall that the primary cause was lack of crew preparedness. Dumb pilots who couldn't fly a plane? Yes, but not cause of their choice.The airline chose to invest more in wiz-bang automated avionic wizardry instead of proper and traditional pilot training; pilots were just for show and just expensive chauffeurs who drove the plane in and out of the landing/takeoff strip, rest of the time the thing flew itself. Until the circumstances got beyond the capabilities of the dumb computer who panicked and handed over the controls to the pilots, who had no idea how to fly a big airliner out of a high altitude stall by the seat of the pants with minimal instruments cause they had never been trained to do so.
Given that there are WAY more cars, SUVs and trucks than planes, let's make sure this situation does not repeat itself in our streets and roads. How many young drivers know how to pull a motor vehicle out of a spin in an icy road, emergency brake successfully in a pouring thunderstorm, etc.?
So do you only drive cars which predate ECU computers, and for that matter automatic chokes and starter motors? It's a shame that so few people know how to properly adjust spark timing and fuel air mix as they drive, just in case the automatic systems fail.
I did not miss your point. However, if the computer does actually prevent accidents, which I assume would have to be the case for people to become so complacent, the number of accidents may well decrease even with lowered human alertness, i.e., the type of accidents that are increased may be fewer in number than the type of accidents mitigated. In that case, lives are saved, damage is lessened, and it is an overall gain. Your position seems to assume that the computers do not actually work.
I also find it hard to believe that a computer cannot get better at driving a car the most people. Sure there are emergency situations the require extreme skill and judgement calls, but how many people are good in those situations? ... I have seen many drivers who react 100% wrong in dangerous situations. They don't understand the dynamics of the car .... Computers don't have this problem.
The problem with a computer is that a situation may arise which the guy who programmed it never coded for. You get this with ordinary app coding too (think the Millenium bug), although the consequences do not matter so immediately. Humans are much better at improvising in a new situation, for instance in recognising a good spot to run off the road if an overtaker is coming at you the other way. It is not a matter of the racing-driver type skill of understanding dynamics.
I'm not certain but I'm pretty sure computers are landing airplanes with the pilots overseeing the process.
Routine landing an aircraft is a very predictable operation. Even potential complications (such as tyre burst) are few enough to be programmable. There is nothing like the infinite variation you may meet when driving a car on a public road.
Rail is more expensive to build than asphalt. In fact, where I live, some roads are still just flattened dirt surfaces, and will likely stay that way in the foreseeable future. Also, light rail is not very fast, and the lighter the vehicle the greater the chances of derailment. Not to mention that it's impossible to make emergency dodges when you're on rail.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.