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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."
I wonder who the first fucker will be to hack together a radar/laser jamming system that sends these cars onto random uncontrollable trajectories and sets it up by the 405 at 7:30 in the evening?
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
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.
"Worse will be when a false positive will induce an accident"
That was my first thought too. Car sees a monster tumbleweed coming and swerves me into the other lane (boom) or the ditch trying to dodge it, not realizing that Ramming Speed is fully authorized with tumbleweeds.
Even worse would be the car dodging a big dog and hitting a small kid instead.
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.
I've actually met several ambulance drivers around here who say the same thing -- these days they simply outright refuse to even consider cars where you can't turn such crap off. Those things are just a major disaster waiting to happen.
Hm. Depends, really. If they "fail" and cause fewer deaths or injuries than they save, isn't it a net gain?
Seatbelts have killed people. But they're still a net gain. Isn't that what matters? Or do we demand that safety mechanisms *never* cause problems? If so, their design would require that the benefits be considerably diluted.
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've run into this on my car. I've got radar based crash avoidance (it's just brakes, no steering assist); it sometimes detects an imminent collision for a fraction of a second just before crossing railroad tracks. Luckily, it's so quick that I get the audible alert, but the brakes don't kick in. It's disconcerting though. If it took steering control, that would be terrifying.
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How easy is it to find a car now without ABS? or even traction control? both of these systems cause far more problems than they solve with even a half way competent person behind the wheel, and yet you can't buy a vehicle without them.
The problem is a dearth of halfway competent people behind the wheel. Even if only a tenth of all drivers were incompetent, mandating things like ABS and traction control will have a positive impact on accidents. And reality is that most drivers would lose the cool and slam on the brakes in a dangerous situation.
IMO, we need two levels of driver's license. A higher level that requires true training, and is much harder to obtain, and which brings privileges like being allowed to disable certain "safety" features when they have shown they can do it manually as well as or better than the expert systems, or exceed speed limits on certain roads like divided highways.
My understanding is that static friction is greater than kinetic friction. For instance when you push say a sofa across the floor a greater force is needed to move it from rest (static friction) than to keep it sliding (kinetic friction). If you're tires are rolling they essentially keep static friction because the surface of the tire is static relative to the ground at any given point. Once the tires lock, kinetic friction takes over and your friction coefficient goes down and the tires slide. I believe engine braking would keep the tires rolling somewhat to maintain some level of static friction. ABS does the same by 'pumping' the brakes quickly over and over in an effort to maintain as much static versus kinetic friction as possible.
While I believe I grasp the idea, my terminology may be off so someone else may be able to provide a clearer answer.
This.
When your tires are rolling, the friction in the direction they are rolling is far from zero, but it is vastly less (in normal road conditions) than from side-to-side. The "contact patch" of your tire is (relatively speaking) in a static position on the roadway, and so is under static friction. That is what keeps you going in the direction you point it.
When a tire is locked up, however, it is in dynamic friction. Dynamic friction is not only much lower than static friction, but since the tire is locked up, it no longer "cares" what direction it goes in, because the friction is exactly the same no matter what that direction is. Sliding is sliding, and the contact area is constant.
So if you are in a situation of rear-wheel lockup, but your front wheels are still rolling but braking, the rear of your car is going to "want" to overtake the front, and there is nothing at all keeping the rear from swinging out sideways and doing so, if there is any deviation at all from a perfect straight line. Not A Good Thing.
You can do this experiment with a small model car. Lock up the front wheels but not the back, and give it a good shove forward on a relatively smooth surface. Chances are, it will keep going more-or-less forward. Then free the front wheels and lock the back, and give it the same kind of shove. It will spin all over the place.
That is why for many years (before ABS), manufacturers would put disk brakes on the front but old-style drum brakes on the back. Because IF you are going to get a lockup, you want it to be your front wheels, not the rear.
Ambulance drivers are usually far better drivers than the rest. .
Not based on what I've seen.
It has to be much safer. Maybe as safe as elevators. Because such stuff reduces the effect of your genetics in avoiding fatalities. ;)
;).
For example say an automated vehicle is 10% safer. If people drove themselves there would be 10% more fatalities, but over a few generations it could get fewer and fewer (if the selection pressure is enough - if it isn't then traffic safety isn't that important compared to other pressures right?).
Similarly for the extreme sports stuff - it might be bad for some of the participants but good for the gene pool quality and spread
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!
"Worse will be when a false positive will induce an accident"
That was my first thought too. Car sees a monster tumbleweed coming and swerves me into the other lane (boom) or the ditch trying to dodge it, not realizing that Ramming Speed is fully authorized with tumbleweeds.
Even worse would be the car dodging a big dog and hitting a small kid instead.
This is why I love slashdot. Full of people brilliant enough to imagine the possibilities of how something could go wrong, but too dim to imagine that the designers have already considered it :)
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?
For what it's worth, the NHTSA (http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/Pubs/811206.pdf) continues to find (every time they repeat the study) that seatbelts are saving thousands of lives a year in the US alone. I would love to know how you've arrived at the conclusion that safety gains in cars are solely attributable to design improvements. And, while 20% may seem modest, you are failing to account for the steady increase in driver speed over that same time period. As for ABS, I'm not familiar with the literature, but I would submit that insurance companies probably don't give discounts for cars with ABS (a common practice, at least in my area) because they fail to improve driver safety. Strictly speaking, that strongly suggests only that ABS reduces the total economic costs to insurers, but I think it is pretty safe to use that as a proxy for the severity/incidence of crashes. And seat belts don't require roll cages to be effective. Are you under the impression that every accident is a gruesome scene involving a semi-truck side-swiping a VW bug? What percentage of accidents do you really think involves the roof crushing the driver during a violent rollover? And in what percentage of those do you think the driver was better off without a seatbelt?