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Tesla's Elon Musk Talks With Google About Self-Driving Cars
Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk has been thinking about bringing autonomous driving technology to Tesla's electric cars. Quoting Bloomberg:
"Musk, 41, said technologies that can take over for drivers are a logical step in the evolution of cars. He has talked with Google about the self-driving technology it’s been developing, though he prefers to think of applications that are more like an airplane’s autopilot system. 'I like the word autopilot more than I like the word self- driving,' Musk said in an interview. 'Self-driving sounds like it’s going to do something you don’t want it to do. Autopilot is a good thing to have in planes, and we should have it in cars.' ... Google’s approach builds on a push for the driverless-car technology long pursued by the U.S. military’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which held vehicle competitions for carmakers and research labs. Anthony Levandowski, product manager for Google’s self-driving car project, has said the company expects to release the technology within five years. 'The problem with Google’s current approach is that the sensor system is too expensive,' Musk said. 'It’s better to have an optical system, basically cameras with software that is able to figure out what’s going on just by looking at things.' ... 'I think Tesla will most likely develop its own autopilot system for the car, as I think it should be camera-based, not Lidar-based,' Musk said yesterday in an e-mail. 'However, it is also possible that we do something jointly with Google.'"
Musk later warned not to take this as an actual announcement.
I like to smell the musk of timothy's rotting breath as we make love under the glow of a CRT on old bags of Doritos and Penguin Mints (tm) sold by thinkgeek
captcha colonist
That's just pure boring. Isn't the whole point of such a car that you drive it yourself for your enjoyment?
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IIRC the Grand Challenge winner use a computer vision system, augmented with LIDAR because computer vision is still an evolving field with plenty of risk. I am excited, autonomous navigation in cars seems like the sort of thing that is actually achievable without some major tech breakthrough. Sure it's too expensive currently, but the costs will come down as engineers optimize the system.
I read the internet for the articles.
While cameras may be more cost effective than Lidar, they have problems that lidar doesn't. For example, what does the camera sensor do when it's under direct sunlight and can't make sense of what it's seeing? What about rain / fog? I have a feeling google is has the right idea here.
Don't think that a small group of dedicated individuals can't change the world. It's the only thing that ever has.
Lidar might be expensive, but it gives you the shape and depth of the surrounding environment. Camera based imaging will have a harder time determining the distance to the objects in views. I would think the lidar would also have an advantage with fog or rain that might hinder a camera based system much more. In the end I think having multiple systems that corroborate their view of the world and cover for each other when one has difficulty getting a good sense of the environment is the best way to go. But if it used as a simple self-parking system or a souped up cruise control you might be able to get a camera based system to work well enough in most circumstances.
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The problem is called "humans". Humans love to bask in the feeling of being in control, especially when it comes to cars. With planes, this was different, especially as these from their beginnings on were called "flying machines", i.e. machines made to fly ( with ). I remember that my grandma, born in 1900, never ever called them differently. Cars, OTOH, have never been called "driving machines". And this is where the crux is hidden: humans want to control their cars. I guess it will remain so for a long time.
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That kind of comment can only be made by someone who has never seen the depth map from stereo, or know the kind of computing power required to get even that pathetic depth information.
Personally, I'd barely trusts the Lidar system to get it right.
Feel free to try it though, rather than take my word for it.
I know we're probably not going to read the articles, but... can't we have a link just for old time's sake?
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-05-07/tesla-ceo-talking-with-google-about-autopilot-systems.html
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-05-07/tesla-ceo-talking-with-google-about-autopilot-systems.html
You should teach a car to drive like you teach a human, equip the system with vision and analyse the visual input to control output. Granted I'm not working auto driving systems but it would seem to me that you just need to analyse the road surface to figure out if your centred in your lane and then analyse the environment around you to figure out what your close to. I've done a bit of image / video computer autonomous analyse system design in the past and the technology exists to do this, it's not overly expensive or hard to learn so my question is why aren't they using a system closer to this for the auto drive car?
If I'm completely wrong then okay but could someone describe why it's not possible or who's already doing it.
As someone who's actually done this stuff, LIDAR gives solid data, but is range-limited. Cameras have more ambiguous results. Cameras are most useful when things are going well, as on a highway under good conditions. That was Stanford's approach in the Grand Challenge. All their vision system really did was answer the question "is the near section of road (within LIDAR range) like the far section of road"? If the LIDAR said the near section was OK to drive on and the vision system said the far section was like the near section, then the vehicle could speed up and out-drive the LIDAR range. That sped up travel on good sections of road.
Google is using Velodyne LIDAR units, which are effective but an expensive mechanical kludge. A better approach is from Advanced Scientific Concepts, which has an eye-safe flash LIDAR. No moving parts.
ASC's units cost about $100K each, but that's because they're hand-made for DoD. The technology isn't inherently expensive if made in volume. It uses custom imaging ICs, and because they're made by tens, not millions, they cost far too much. If the cost can be brought down, the vehicle can have multiple LIDAR units around the car to get full coverage, rather than one big spinning thing up on the roof.
Millimeter radar is also useful. It's good to have a Dopper anticollision radar as a backup system. It provides an unambiguous "rapidly approaching big solid object" signal. We had one of those on our DARPA Grand Challenge vehicle as a backup to the fancier LIDAR system.
I work in IT, I am well aware of just how fallible software is and how many problems there are with firmware, hardware, malware and everything else that impacts the whole works. The last thing I want is a computer driving my car. I'll stick with computers managing my fuel, brakes, handling, engine, air, exhaust, entertainment, electronics and maintenance tracking. Let a computer fly a 747 up in the sky, full of passengers, sure, it's miles from anything with professional pilots ready to take over. Let a computer drive my car on the ground with all of the idiots driving around, hell no!
If only because technology marches on. I would think that as long as the human can choose whether or not to activate an autopilot, then its existence doesn't have to be considered a problem. So, along the lines of making fancy tech happen (what nerds do, after all), here's a notion.... When Google decided to compete with Apple's Siri voice-recognition system, an infrastructure was created that might be enhanced to do image-recognition. And Google has vast numbers of images from its Street-View system, probably all linked together in an orderly way (such as the route a autopiloted car might take). From there, the conclusion should be obvious, if not so simple to actually achieve.
The liability of self-driving cars will prevent this from ever being offered as anything but a gimmick. The real future is in computer assisted driving where the car helps the human driver prevent accidents.
Autopilot is a good thing to have in planes, and we should have it in cars.
I like the notion, and it's a great frame of reference for consideration. One major distinction between planes and cars: When a plane is on autopilot in a relatively sparse chunk of sky, the time between sensor warning and twisted burning wreckage is tens of seconds to minutes. Most of the time in an ordinary flight plan the plane can wander hundreds of feet without a problem. On a typical chunk of sparsely populated two lane highway, however, If your car's autopilot travels twenty feet out of its lane -- things get exciting very quickly.
Moreover, most airplanes are like long-haul trucks -- they spend most of their miles in transit between heavy traffic areas. A major chunk of American automotive miles are spent with other vehicles within a few dozen feet.
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And as soon as it has voice control and feedback, I'll want that too. Me: "Car, take me to work. And take Alvarado." Car: "Do you want me to take the 10 to Hoover?" Me: "Sure, if traffic isn't too bad. And queue up 'Wait, Wait Don't Tell Me.'" Car: "Sure thing. Buckle up!"
Let me escape the tyranny of screen interfaces AS WELL as the tyranny of driving.
How about toning down the ADHD and maybe getting ONE thing done first?
A perfect circle of "not my fault"! I'm gonna get me some popcorn and watch the blame game if this happens.
"You ran out of gas"
-"no you did"
If his name was Joe Smith nobody would care about him. People get off on talking about him because they get to use the word "Musk" in normal conversation. Can he just go away, like Kim Dotcom, or any of the other "personalities" ?
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
It's the result of seeing something; going, "Hey, that's neat, and I have no fucking clue why it works"; and then deciding that a part of it you don't understand is expensive and accomplishing the same sort of thing as another thing you know about that's cheap, and so you should do it that way. It's what you get when you don't employ expert judgment, and instead make decisions based on the analysis of completely unqualified non-technicians.
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When our roads are autonomous, you will get to point B faster, safer, with less fuel, less wear on the car, and better rested. You can also stop worrying about parking, fueling, and maintaining you car as it can go and do all these things automatically while you go about your business.
My God can beat up your God. Just kidding...don't take offense. I know there's no God.
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"The Ultimate Driving Machine"
My God can beat up your God. Just kidding...don't take offense. I know there's no God.
Once cars are robotic enough that we are only giving guidance to the car (pretending to drive but the car will ignore stupid inputs) insurance will become the battleground. I can see a car company like Tesla offering free liability insurance with their cars. They will know that basically their car can not cause an accident and with the camera/computer system will have the proof to avoid a he-said-she-said situation.
At the same time I can see the insurance companies realizing that a huge huge HUGE market will simply go away when car accidents become unlikely enough for car companies to be able to cover it. Think about it. Every car that you see is paying in around $1,000+ for insurance. The only insurance people will want after robotic cars will be theft (hard to do with a hi-tech upgradable car), vandalism, trees falling on them kinds of insurance. Plus nearly every jurisdiction says you must have something like 2 million in liability; that need will vanish or at least be covered by the manufacturers.
So my robotic car prediction is that car companies will be trying to terrorize us into hating robotic cars. They will show videos of families being driven off cliffs, or saying it is our god given right to have control of our cars. And of course they will spend ungodly amounts of money lobbying everyone from the president down to your school board to stop this.
But the simple reality is that 35,000 people are killed every year in the US and robotic cars might take this down to a few hundred. (mechanical failure, trees falling on them, sinkholes, etc)
Often I sight-see, get intentionally lost, or even prefer to visit locations with no name (to hike, to consider buying, etc).
Are driving cars another round of "consumer" vs "creator"?
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criminal liability
Who pays a ticket? Who get's points? Can you have a bot take traffic school?
Now on to bigger stuff What it does some thing that you can get jail time / big fines / ect...
What it drives into some one at speed and does not even to try to stop? misses a road closed and hits people in the street?
Hit's a work worker? Will Mushishkabishalishdish Jaboodiboodi do the 14 years and pay the 10K fine? Will all people get off how fast will that EULA be cut down in a court? will Google take the 5th?
He is a scam artist and a bullshitter and should never have been
allowed into the US.
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