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Nissan Develops Emergency Auto-Steering System
AmiMoJo writes "Japanese automaker Nissan Motor says it has developed a new technology to help drivers avoid collisions. A new computer system automatically steers the car to avoid colliding with objects in the road. The system relies on radar and laser scanners. It also uses a front-mounted camera to provide information on what's happening outside the car. The system first alerts the driver to turn in a certain direction. If the driver cannot immediately turn in that direction, the system takes over the steering to help avoid a collision."
How well does said auto-steering system perform on ice, mud, or fording small streams?
I bet it will be just AWESOME on ice!
I hope that there will be plenty of logs, just in case that when your car avoids a dog and kills a kid you can go to cort and blame Nissan for it
Programmer accidentally casts unsigned to signed: steering wheel turns full lock right instead of a bit to the left?
Whenever they're on TV, they display this awesome mix of pride in their work, humbleness, and cheerfulness. Makes me want to go on a tour of a factory or something.
I , for one, welcome our new automatic steering overlorrrrdd....... Wait, no I don't!
Traffic accidents happen fast. Normally due to 2 distracted (or impared) drivers crossing path.
If you are a defensive driver, you always have an "out". I, like a responsible adult, keep my distance, travel at a safe speed, respect the road conditions, etc. I have only had one near-miss and it was due to someone running a red-light.
I cannot help but actually be quite wary of how these kinds of things are starting to crop up in modern cars. How well do these work e.g. in an abnormal situation, like e.g. there's flood water on the road, or lots and lots of snow like we here in Finland tend to get, or what if the system detects something on the road that it really wants to steer away from, but doesn't detect what's coming up on you from the side and steers you in even worse direction against your wishes? Hell, a proper snow storm is a common occurrence here in Finland and even humans have trouble keeping track of everything that's happening; I really, really doubt a computer can do a better job at it.
These things might be good for people with serious attention deficits or other kinds of similar issues, but an experienced, careful driver could quite possibly make better decisions than these and thus these systems would actually be detrimental in such cases. Hell, they could just as well turn a not-so-serious crash into a major disaster if they screwed up and took control of the car over the driver.
I can just see it, a metallic balloon drifts through a lane of traffic and the Nissan goes into panic mode and starts a big chain reaction because the radar, camera and laser scanner detect it as a threat. A real driver would just try and pop the balloon.
That is also one of my questions about how the Google self-driving cars behave in similar situations. Do they panic when a tumbleweed blows across the road?
This post is encrypted twice with ROT-13. Documenting or attempting to crack this encryption is illegal.
Anything regarding machine vision/learning I've seen/played around with had way too many false positives for such vital decisions.
I wonder how hard it would be to apply a formal proof of correctness for that bit of software.
They were all glued to the boob tube back in the 80s, soaking up inspiration for future products:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytJDJ96Es8Y
If Slashdot had been around 120 or 130 years ago, the first story about a new invention with four wheels and a motor would've been rife with comments about pedestrians not being able to get out of the way, horses being frightened, and predictions of other problems so severe the automobile would never see the light of day as an invention for the common man.
I mean really, I have complete faith in those automotive engineers to have envisioned every single possible condition the system will have to deal with. And also to have designed the electronics so that even if a component or wire fails, hell, even if a bunch of them fail, the system will automatically do the right thing. Don't you?
Has the price for a really good, really reliable and solid laser scanner gone down much from $5k recently? That's before we look at the rest of the system, which can't be cheap either...
I'll take my car, and my own very good driving skill, thanks.
Not all of us are so inept that we need a machine to do the job
for us.
And for those of you whose faith in technology is such that you believe
a machine could do it better than I can, I challenge you to a race. The winner
takes all the loser's assets. I'm open to all challenges. Five laps of any track in the world,
and when I win I get your house, all your money, and I get to fuck your wife up the ass.
And she will LOVE it.
You are experiencing a car accident! Do you require assistance?
Yeh, jeez, what do a bunch of computer geeks and coders know about this! They're just luddites.
I was recently in a car accident. An elderly man drove into us from the front passenger corner. We had nowhere to go as there was a tall meridian on the driver's side. Basically a case of: scrub off as much speed as possible by emergency braking and brace for impact.
When we were struck the steering wheel was forced to one side. Much like the auto system in the video. The difference was I didn't know that was going to happen (like the testers) so I didn't let go. The spinning wheel resulted in a broken radius and I now have a large plate and many screws in my arm holding it together. Are you expected to let go of the wheel when the alarm sounds? My guess is most people won't be able to react like that. No problem for the tester since he knows it's going to occur, in real life you most likely won't be able to react that quickly or your reaction will not be to let go.
Personally I'm a fan of systems like Mercedes has that primes the brakes for you when a possible collision is detected (so it's easier to apply full brake force). Auto braking is OK too, but there are too many factors in auto steering imho. Lane correction is one thing, this type of emergency steering is a whole other beast.
"If you are going through hell, keep going." - Winston Churchill
An extremely awful idea.
The best collision is head on. I don't want my car's automation to remove this life-saving decision from my hands.
I can see it now, avoiding by turning right, and putting me right in the path (driver's door) of death.
Rather than continue to turn out more gimmicks (which do nothing but interfere with natural selection), how about a car that can get 100 Miles to a gallon. Nissan: please go back and work on this one for a while and leave us alone.
There are just too many unpredictable situations that a computer just can't calculate.
Just like ABS, traction control, stability control ... they're all just ways of allowing drivers to become stupid, lazy and less involved. If it were up to me, automatic transmissions would be illegal (except for special cases like disabled drivers, etc.), I really think it caused drivers to pay too little attention.
We need to stop trying to mitigate stupid drivers and just get rid of stupid drivers, either by improving the training regimens or getting them off the road and providing them with viable transportation alternatives.
You'll never get it in your carhole.
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
I have to ask myself what kind of people will buy a car that will assume control in emergencies? Answer: people who are unsure of their own driving abilities, aka bad drivers, e.g. the elderly with failing vision and slowing reflexes; this seems to be obvious. In that case, the car will more probably be better than their driving abilities in oh, say some very high percentage of emergency situations and maybe it will save THEM from crashing into MY car!
Sent from my ENIAC
radar and laser scanners: false positives? sensitivity? distance cut-off? Am I going off-road because of a restaurant at the end of the road?
front-mounted camera: image recognition accuracy? influence of light condition/weather?
alert the driver: how is the driver going to react to a very friendly red-blinking "Imminent death" widget in his dashboard, or a soft-voice "We'reAllGoingToDie" reminder? AirFrance disaster anyone?
if the driver cannot immediately turn: what's the timeout? why he can't turn? Maybe there are obstacles on the sides the front-mounted camera can't see? Just sayin'...
Oh, and let's not forget the most important one!
A new computer system automatically steers the car
That's possibly the worst that can happen when there's a driver trying to do... well... the driver.
First, it's dangerous to drive into any obstacle. You do you know that box/balloon/etc. doesn't have a bowling ball in it?
Given he was describing it as "drifting", not rolling, across lanes I think it would be pretty obvious which you were dealing with.
Second, why do you assume the system would be any worse at choosing among the options -- left/right/straight -- than a human would?
Because it's very hard to have enough sensors and computing power to make that choice.
Ditch or nice smooth road off to the right? An easy choice for the computer, the road. The human driver? Probably not going to pick the smooth road where he can see just cresting the hill a semi truck heading the opposite way at 70MPH.
Or possibly either are really bad and you should just hit whatever it is you are going to hit because that is the best possible option. How long before such a system can decide that is the right thing to do?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
of this system steering a car into a ravine "for safety".
It's not that this doesn't seem like a nice idea, just that it's rife with the same sort of trouble that, oh, a state-mandated speed limiter in every car "for safety" causes. You know, the kind where it cuts off the accelleration just when you're passing a semi because technically you were going over the limit and any transgression prevented equals safety improved, right? Right?
I've done Thrun's robotic car course, and so I know a little about making them. Yes, I know it's but a little and while more than nothing it's not actually very much. It is enough to have an idea what they can and cannot do, though. From that knowledge I don't mind a fully robotic car, actually, but I do mind systems that yank control from underneath the human because they presumably know better. They don't, they're just full of prior assumptions by the programmer (who isn't on the spot) and then try and "fix" a bad situation by, well, often as not making it worse. On balance, the "saves" may well not be worth the extra trouble they cause. Especially since you're not up to mere nature (as fly-by-wire systems are) but against for machines extremely hard to predict adversaries, other humans.
This sort of system does best with untrained, barely minimum standard capable drivers. Thus, if you must put such systems into cars, at bare minimum there ought to be a way to disable this sort of thing. If we need legislation about this at all, legislate that it must be possible for any driver-overriding system to be turned off. In the end, someone must be responsible, and that someone is the driver. If he cannot bear that responsibility, then he must not be allowed to drive.
The driver of the car in front of you jams on his brakes. The road is wet and your car can't stop in time. There is a truck to the left so your brand new intelligent car decides to swerve to the right because there is only a small object there and won't cause as much damage. Too bad for the student walking home from school.
This idea, while the concept has good intentions, just sounds like a disaster waiting to happen with a huge lawsuit for an ending.
I can think of some more ways to avoid collisions.
Keep your eyes on the road.
Put your cell phone in your pocket when you're behind the wheel.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=WhNM2K8cmU8
In the year 5555
Your arms are hanging limp at your sides
Your legs got nothing to do
Some machine is doing that for you
lyrics: http://www.lyricsmode.com/lyrics/z/zager_and_evans/#share
There's actually not a lot of full blown idiots out there. But the ones who are out there leave a trail of death and destruction. To the tune of about 30,000 dead a year, plus some multiple significantly injured.
As someone who has well over 10,000 hours behind the wheel, and a good driving record, I don't think the roads are going to be made safer with this system on my vehicle. I already keep my eyes forward, maintain sufficient following distance and slow down in bad weather. However, for a teenager, an elderly person, a drunk driver, or just someone who is stupid and gotten hold of a car, I think something like this will be very helpful in reducing roadway fatalities and injuries. Disabling the system should require the factory key and a passcode.
I wonder how the system would handle animals on the road. I don't know exactly how many animals I've hit since I've been driving, but I'd bet it's been dozens. 3 deer, all on the highway, some raccoon, some squirrels, some opossum. I was in a situation where I literally had to choose between swerving and wrecking in to the cars beside me on the freeway or hitting the deer. Needless to say, if its an animal, it's game. But, OTOH, computers are faster than humans, and sometimes things happen so fast that you don't get time to think.
In the split second between imminent danger and reaction, the speed of your vehicle, it's trajectory, and where your likely to have impact...these are all things a computer can calculate nearly instantly. I am not saying Yay for driver-less cars, i'm merely saying that If your going to crash, and with so many variables associated with crashes, at least if it's computer controlled, your risk is calculated, instead of solely relying on random reactionary impulses.
There is always that scary feeling like you lost control. Humans like to give control up for mundane and repetitive tasks, However, this is literally putting your life in the hands of a machine.
I'm more in favor of safety warnings that get noticed by the computer and escalated to the driver. For example, if your switching lanes and a car is in your blind spot, and you put your signal on, the computer warns you there is a car there in the blind spot. That's awesome. Or if standards were in place cars would talk to each other in such a way that Jimmy's BMW could bug the shit of of him for being a dick and cutting me off and getting too close while doing it...that's awesome too.
Or if i'm getting on the freeway and my Jeep knows that the guy coming down the road is going too fast and chances are high that if I try to merge on, he'll hit me in the rear. Or, (and this one is great) if your trying to get out on a busy road, the system could let you know when it is truly safe to pull out on to the main road, based on the speeds of the oncoming cars.
There are all kinds of things a computer system can do to make us safer drivers, without outright taking full control of the situation.
A Penny for my thoughts? Here's my two cents. I got ripped off!
and when the car automatically "Avoids" some obstacle, real or not... and plows into a 4yr old on a tricycle... Who's liable? This seems like a horrific idea that I can't believe Nissans lawyers would allow on the road.
This could just as easily CAUSE an accident. Really, computers should be ASSISTING the driver, not making decisions for him.
your gonna have a bad time
Fully automatic driving is likely to work better than trying to steer out of trouble just before a collision, after the driver has already botched it. A full auto system, which doesn't have an inattention problem, is more likely to see the problem early. What you'll see with a full auto system is a tendency to slow down in ambiguous situations until the picture becomes clearer. This will probably happen more often than with human drivers, but won't add noticeably to trip times.
A driver may well choose property damage over bodily harm--eg crash into another vehicle rather than hit a pedestrian that radar may not even detect.
I cannot believe this will sell.
I have no problem with handing more control of a car to a computer, rather than the person. People are stupid, after all - every accident I've seen or been involved in, some stupid person was at fault, and that *includes* the time I wrecked my own car.
I just have one request. Put a big, easily-slapped button, preferably red, on it that completely overrides everything. EVERYTHING. Collision avoidance. Lane-follow. Auto-braking. Fucking cruise control. I should be able to kamikaze the car into a building as long as I'm pressing that button. And there should be no cutoff or limit or penalty - if I duct-tape it down, it should disable everything just as I asked. And the only penalty should be that, if I use that button and cause a crash, it counts as deliberate, not accidental. No "you pushed that button once, your insurance just tripled", no "you pushed that button for no reason on our list of acceptable reasons, you get a fine".
If you do that, I'd even accept more restrictive controls. You could put in a speed cap that cuts the accelerator off when it hits the highest speed limit in the country (85mph, I think). Or something to prevent you from changing lanes without using your turn signals. Or something that cuts the engine if you pull out your phone.
Driving country highways at night I frequently flatten animals that are in the highway for one reason or another. Raccoons, opossums, etc. It sucks to hit them, but what's Nissan planning to do - toss me off the highway at 60mph instead? No thanks, I'd rather plow ahead and deal with any damage (usually none) that it may cause.
Even with larger animals like deer it's best to hit the brakes and keep the wheel straight than it is to try swerving at high speeds. At 60mph a swerve will most likely result in you flipping the car multiple times, whereas hitting a big animal straight on during a hard deceleration may not do anything more than give you some front-end damage.
Machines can't reason, they can't consider context, and they can't predict severity of consequence of one decision over another. There is no way that this move by Nissan doesn't have some very bad outcomes.
Nissan Motor has deep pockets and if this fails and some get's hurt or dies not only should a big law suit there will need to be a government investigation as well.
and not they can't hide by subbing work out and trying to hide under a EULA
If I know in enough time that someone is going to jump out at me to let go of the wheel, there are plenty of other corrective actions I would perform ... if the wheel suddenly jerks the first think in my head is that I blew a tire or hit something or both and try to correct it before my car goes into the ditch, not let go and shrug... possibly causing a even bigger problem the moment this thing lets up and my muscles are still fighting a servo.
how about people just dont haul ass on a street where people might walk out? dude is fucking flying for a simulated road where this situation would happen.
If my car were to drive fully on it's own, then yes - automatic collision prevention is a must - but a car that tries to make a guess about what I'm going to do and takes control away from me in a very shitty situation is definitely a horrible idea.
If the system is not good enough to drive in normal conditions I don't want it to take over from me in an emergency.
Just like ABS, traction control, stability control ... they're all just ways of allowing drivers to become stupid, lazy and less involved.
Not just less involved but less in control. They either need to go the whole way and have properly driverless cars where the computer is responsible for everything or have the driver responsible for everything which means that a computer cannot override the drivers control. Having both driver and computer each partially in control would be like having an aircraft piloted by committee.
Yes, the first generations of traction control systems were rather crude and didn't work well on ice. However, some manufacturers actually evolve their product and modern TC systems are doing a whole lot better than the ones that caused all the urban myths. That doesn't mean that every car you buy now has a capable TCS on it, but if you steer away from "We sold this model for the last 100 years, why change?" or "Our car is cheaper because we copy old Euro tech" style manufacturers, you will probably find capable electronics that actually help prevent accidents. However, there is no recipe against a driver that chooses to drive way too fast under circumstances that will most likely cause ice on the roads. Once you go 50 mph in a certain direction and hit ice, there is no amount of electronics or steering that will stop you sliding straight ahead in the direction you were going. It often takes a tree, house, rock, car or other large object to stop you, or you'll roll over once you gain grip again or hit a ditch. Physics can be a bitch sometimes and there will always be people that fail to realize that in time.
This new technology isn't about traction control, it's about not hitting that pothole or lost cargo on the road. This will mean that your car will suddenly swerve hard, slamming the steering wheel out of your hands, breaking your thumb or fingers and making you spill your hot coffee on your lap. People will blame that on their car, but they fail to realize that you shouldn't be holding the wheel with just one hand, or with your thumbs hooked, or drinking hot coffee while driving. It's the same as with driving under icy conditions; these mechanisms are put on cars to help good drivers deal with situations the human brain can't cope with, not to substitute the driver. If you want that, go talk to Google.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
I can understand going fully robot controlled, and sitting back to let the car drive you, but to have a car suddenly grab control of a car in what is likely the most stressful moments of a person's life is a horrible idea. Why do all the car companies keep thinking this is a great idea. Self-Driving cars are not something to do halfway.
And everyones penis is 10 inches too. Even the girls. Or maybe that is just the bars I visit. Good coffee though.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
And what if I really want to hit something with my car ? Let's say, hypothetically, there is a terminator on the road and I need to run him down do save the planet. Can't do that anymore. A machine protecting a machine. This whole thing is very fishy.
First off, The most effective way of handling snow and ice is a light car with thin snow tires. That's just how physics works. Grip/Weight.
Second, Traction Control usually means throttle control. If tires start to slip the ECU (Engine Control Unit) reduces engine power. In AWD cases it may shift power to different wheels or in more advanced systems it may modulate specific wheel braking but that's a best case scenario.
The bottom line here is whether your ECU is a better driver than you are. I'd like to believe it's not, but most people have no idea what to do if their vehicle starts to skid so this is probably a benefit, provided you (and those pesky Ambulance Drivers) can easily disable it. Everyone should know how to handle their car in a skid but it's not something you'll get in your typical drivers-Ed course.
Can Nissan be brought up on charges of sodomy accessory (not to confuse with the accessories one might use upon going route 3)?
And they are also great ways of avoiding accidents. I prefer being "lazy and less involved" (I fail to see how "stupid" comes into the equation) to being dead or crippled, thankyouverymuch.
Well, if history is any indication, getting rid of stupid drivers Just Does Not Work(TM) *, while all the stuff to mitigate the dangers does, just look at the steady decline of fatalities per mile travelled
*: furthermore, you personally might be offended by your not being allowed to drive any more, unless you meant to "get rid of all the stupid drivers, but me", of course
Real life is overrated.
In the meanwhile Nissan is doing a recall for cars that have steering wheels that may get loose while driving. Is this a resolutuin for that problem? On the other hand, will the new system do a correct decision if there is a running child and stopped bus at the road?
I've got a cheaper solution. Instead of adding technology to make the car steer itself because you don't have time to react to the obstacle in the road - lower (and enforce) speed limits. 60mph instead of 70 give you 15% more reaction time and 15% more distance to react. If this is truly about safety, slower speeds are the answer. However, if it is about trying to make it safe to be able to drive ultra-fast then the technology is probably a good idea. Then again, lower speed also has the benefit of reducing demand for gas and oil, less wear and tear to the vehicle and pavement and a number of other benefits.
The system first alerts the driver to turn in a certain direction. If the driver cannot immediately turn in that direction, the system takes over the steering to help avoid a collision.
Either this system is incorrectly designed or the article is incorrectly summarized. What this article is saying is, if something runs out into the middle of the road, and the computer recognizes both sides of the road as clear and randomly decides I should turn left, but I veer right based on my own thought process, habits, etc, the computer will take over and turn the wheel back to the left as I'm already turning right? Thereby countering my original veering and possibly putting me right back on course to ram head-on into said obstacle?
What a grand idea.
Is this supposed to be revolutionary? Any kid with a mindstorms kit can do this in a matter of hours, if not minutes. Why are these mega corporations getting billions of dollars to develop solutions that any 10 year old can develop for fun, and free at home? I am not impressed but I am playing with my own self driving, collision avoiding, ABS equipped mindstorms robot/car.
That is why the computer has multiple cameras and radar to check, and since it can see in all directions at once it can be even more sure than a human driver.
But it cannot see very far because of blocks from cars in front and behind. If the driver was paying attention they know what traffic is to the right and left for a much longer way than the computer reasonably can with technology we might have for the next twenty years.
The computer can make great choices about stuff right around it, but not about choosing which way to deviate from a lane.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
If a vehicle was going to take steering out of the hands of the driver, I'd hope that it would be done such that the steering wheel is not involved. A steer-by-wire system offers a mechanism for doing just that. With such a system, the car would swerve and correct, with the driver continuing to hold onto the steering wheel all the while. It would be insane to yank the steering wheel from the driver's grasp unless the car was going to continue to self-drive long enough to allow the driver to recover from whatever mayhem might ensue in the driver area.
There may be unwise ways of holding the steering wheel, but I don't see a reason to attack the driver simply because the car designers have decided that the car should have a "self-steer.event". I'd hate to be a diligent driver with a firm grip on the wheel during one of those events.
Wish I had points. people don't like the truth.
The costs on roads for higher speeds are amazingly HIGH. Especially when you kill your infrastructure and move everything by heavy trucks. F=ma.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
There is no way in hell that this sounds like a good idea for anyone who knows how to drive and is either not drunk or asleep behind the wheel..
G00gle may be thrilled to implement this technology into their driverless cars. It is where the world is going.. Unmanned aircraft, driverless cars, sounds like their preparing for a world with not too many people.
Open space on the left and the right... the right side is preferable (no oncoming traffic) so turn right... and OFF THE BRIDGE!
Ok so bidges have side rails that are usually solid (but may not be) but what about most bridges which lack side rails before and after the bridge? There are really steep hills leading up to many bridges.
As you launch off the side hill, the car sees the ground quickly approaching you don't respond quick enough due to the shock of being airborne so you hit the ground with your wheels turned right; breaking your steering mechanism and causing the landing cart to veer right and tumble down hill sideways.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Right, but if the computer can't see because the view is blocked then it won't swerve.
So then it would never swerve because it cannot see far enough. In the end then the system is utterly pointless if it will only activate in cases where it can see far enough it would never need to activate. The only time you need to swerve is when you are close enough to something the computer cannot see.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
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Bad thing about anti-lock brakes is that people are depending on them more and driving more aggressively. I hope the same thing doesn't happen here.