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Nissan's Crash-Free R&D: 7 Cute Robots Mimicking Bees and Fish
cartechboy writes "As Nissan develops autonomous cars for its 2020 target date, the company's engineers are modeling the tech after behaviors seen in bumblebees and fish. Nissan actually tests self-navigation algorithms in seven small toy-looking robots called EPORO. The robots have 180-degree vision (modeled after bees) and monitor each others' positions, travel nose to nose and avoid collisions--just like a school of fish. Getting small robots to zip around without bumping into things might be the first step in getting cars to do the same."
Fish don't travel nose to nose. That would cause issues. Nose to tail seems to work much better for them
Does Apple already have a claim on the name? If Japan continues with this trend of cute robots, it'll be the next big thing.
Is Microsoft paying any attention to this?
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Seriously, not a whole lot of zipping - more like ambling. I think they're going to need a whole lot better processing to handle movement at 45mph, much less 75mph.
Still, emergent behavior is definitely a strong idea... just wondering how the "groups" form - what sort of negotiation is needed? Will it require some form of authorization/authentication? What happens when the "group" loses an individual (ie, power/comm failure)? What about rogue elements?
Lots of stuff to study and apply - but it still looks far off in implementation. I'd love to see this research combined with Google's driverless car tech :)
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and transform into a 30 foot tall robot with plasma cannons....
This seems like it utilizes swarm/schooling behavior. This is fine if all the members obey the same basic rules. That however would require all cars to be autonomous, not just some.
Silence is a state of mime.
Do you know how I know you didn't watch the video?
Little robots lurching and stumbling around at random does not impress me as a future smart-car building block.
What doesn't kill you only delays the inevitable
"Getting small robots to zip around without bumping into things might be the first step in getting cars to do the same."
I seriously hope they are past the 'first step' of modeling things in small robots. If they are planning on releasing this thing on the road in the next six years, they need to have tech that is just being refined at this point.
For comparison, it can take six years to test and refine avionics software, even after all the algorithms are known. This software needs to be extremely reliable. Remember that even if a server has 99.999% uptime, it's still going to crash every year or so. When people's lives are on the line, you're going to want 99.99999% availability. That kind of software is not easy to make. If they are still doing fundamental research, they aren't going to have it done in time.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
They are seriously over estimating the demand for such vehicles...
This kind of system needs to be based on natural and fluid situations. Trying to base them on as-presently-constituted traffic laws is a mistake no matter how you slice it. The paradigm has different advantages and shortcomings than manual driving. Build a good anti-collision system, and then as needed, add the other layers on top instead of building a base upon assumptions based on law.
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
Every driven I-10 across Texas? Try it and you'll understand why you might want an autonomous car.
One of the main buyers of an autonomous car would be the elderly, who have just lost the ability to drive. That is a huge loss in self-sufficiency. They can buy a car that can drive itself, so they can maintain independance a bit longer. I hope that these are widely availble by the time (say in about thirty or fourty years) that I become too old to drive.
I could have my car drive me around, so I could yell at kids to get off of lawns!
You might be able get out of the way
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
I-10 is a summer blockbuster movie compared to US-50 across Nevada.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
Once we take the human factor out of the driving equation, can we finally have the flying cars we were promised?!!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Call me cynical, but those robots aren't zipping anywhere. Plod might be a better adjective.
I could have my car drive me around, so I could yell at kids to get off of lawns!
Just accept the spy drone philosophy and set up some low-flying spy drones with a loudspeaker and a recording of your best shout. If it sees anyone on a lawn without a lawnmower, walker, or cane, it plays the recording at full volume and follows the person until they exit the lawn.
Then just sit back on your rocking chair, coffee in one hand, Kindle News in the other and smile (well, scowl differently) each time you hear the drones activate in the distance.
By contrast, my plan involves Lynxes, and I'm still working on the details.
They need a system that can identify visually, as well as with radar that can not be fouled by other radar to scan the road ahead. Because I can see scumbags setting up a radar broadcaster in their junker to cause an autoguide car to hit them for insurance money.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
What fun is a normal car? I mean, I can't think of any activity that involves nearly as much banal, repetitive tedium combined with the need to be vigilant against life-threatening danger that doesn't involve enlisting in the military.
I hate driving. You can't do anything really exciting with a car 95% of the time, because there are (necessary) safety laws preventing it, and the road is full of drivers worse than you (or at least worse then you think you are). I waste about 5% of my life every day on driving the same route back and forth from home to work, and I would trade a fair amount of money to be able to put my attention elsewhere for it. Sure, that won't happen for at least a few decades after driverless cars initially hit the market, but if I still have to drive myself when I'm old and infirm, it will be a huge disappointment.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
It ain't the other 'bumblebees' that will be the issue; it's the 1975 1/2 ton with a pair of cataracts driving, or the mid-70's Thunderbird ahead of the car in front of it that no longer has visible tail lights due to the shitty design that let dirt and water inside the lenses.
Go home Miley you're drunk again!
Just because you can get a small number of autonomous robots to not crash into similar sized objects in a controlled environment does not mean it's ok for giant metal death traps to careen down streets and (usually) not hit small children darting into the street when their ball rolls away or as they bike.
It's all fine and dandy until someone gets hurt. And the second it happens to a little kid, it doesn't matter that you have 99.999 percent uptime, that 0.001 percent exclusion means obsessed parents will shut you down faster than you can say "I'm Just A Bill".
That's why God invented lawyers.
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Actually, electric vehicles have a much lower maintenance requirement than gas/diesel vehicles do - on average about 1/4 the cost factor and time factor.
Requiring auto-guided vehicles be electric only, with max speeds of say 30 mph (typical highway speeds during rush hour) might go a long way to making them safe. Potential energy drops as speed drops.
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All I have ever seen with autonomous cars is controlled tests in controlled areas under ideal weather conditions in Nevada or California.
It's time to put up or shut up about autonomous cars and put them under some real world testing.
Put 100 of these things on the Trans-Canada highway and ask them to drive from St John's, NL to Vancouver, BC in the middle of January and get there faster than a horse drawn carriage. Use the schmucks who want to fly to Mars as their passengers because they have no value for their own lives.
The biggest issue is they will have to face is driving through Montreal and the province of Quebec, no autonomous car is going to come out of that city and province unscathed.
A box of Timbits and a large Double Double for the first passenger that survives the trip.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
Fish and bees do not have to deal with two dimensional intersections.
When fish or bees touch each other it does not cause an accident that could kill someone.
Fish and bees are not constrained by the width of roads.
Vehicles move much faster than fish or bees and momentum is a much bigger issue.
Fish or bees generally do not have individual destinations which require movement in many different directions.
As for the demonstration, it was laughable.
Extremely slow.
No crossing.
No joining or leaving.
The term "zipping" is relative. They were "zipping" if you are a snail. To me, the apt description would be meandering.
They are seriously over estimating the demand for such vehicles...
I doubt it. It's not like it will debut as an expensive mandatory package on every car. It will be an (expensive) option on cars where it makes sense. Nissan just introduced steer-by-wire. They already have smart cruise control, lane drift prevention, blind spot detection, impact reduction, and so on, but the cars only steer themselves gently by using the brakes on one side.
In a few years I expect options that will give the computer far more control of steering, brake, and throttle in situations where the driver doesn't seem to be paying attention - this would be an incremental change to what Nissan has already.
By 2020 I'd expect the goal would be a "full computer control" option, but one where legally you might still need to be able to take over driving at a moment's notice. Certainly you'd be able to take over driving by just switching the option off, just like you can switch all the current stuff off with a couple of buttons while driving.
That's a feature I'd pay for, even if I only used it in commuter traffic.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
I noticed two things right away when I read TFA:
1. The article has them traveling nose to tail- not nose to nose.
2. According to TFA, the robots have 180 degree vision, not the summary stated 360.
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
Why is it that if you put even the dumbest electronics into a package that looks sleek and smart people think that it must be 'intelligent'? They did it a long time ago, stretching back to the mechanical turk I guess, where if the machine just looked human then it must contain advanced intelligence. Even these days whenever the Japanese put out some terrible uncanny-valley type robot that can only sit there and try not to be outwitted by SIRI people will still think it's some kind of advanced WALL-E style intelligence just because they jammed it into a real-doll body.
Every time an effort is made to ease traffic congestion, such as adding lanes, it works temporarily until people take advantage of it, and then traffic resumes its previous speed. While adding lanes would have been a permanent solution for the existing amount of traffic, now you simply have more people commuting from farther distances, creating more pollution etc. Self driving cars will temporarily improve travel times until sufficient numbers of people use them, then the roads will again be clogged. The only real solution is population control.
Actually, electric vehicles have a much lower maintenance requirement than gas/diesel vehicles do - on average about 1/4 the cost factor and time factor.
The origin of the engine's power is irrelevant, unless somehow a car that is propelled by an electric motor is safer than the one that is propelled directly by an ICE.
Maintenance would be relevant in the areas of power {brakes,steering,etc.} but that is already electric in hybrids.
Requiring auto-guided vehicles be electric only, with max speeds of say 30 mph (typical highway speeds during rush hour) might go a long way to making them safe.
I fully agree. Not a single human would die in any such vehicle on the road. But the reasons for that lie not in their electric power, but in their speed. Most humans drive considerably faster than 30 mph, and they have a life to live instead of sitting extra hours per day in a hot tin can.
Tell that to my boss, who thinks I live just to work for him. That's the case of the majority of employers.
that's great. but thats not my point. my point is how little maintenence the owners of the cars will actually perform. electrics have lower requirements? that's great, and comepletely beside the point that cars get treated like sht by a lot of their owners. yet the cars still have to have X level of reliability precisely because of that in order to meet all the regulations and be attractive to customers.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
The origin of the power train is relevant - fewer moving parts, less subject to corrosion, no controlled explosions (in grade 10 I took power mechanics, I could build an engine for you if you want.
Brake maintenance tends to be about the same.
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According to industry standards, total cost of maintenance is much higher for gasoline or diesel engine cars than for electric cars.
(source CNN Money)
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I drive 20,000-30,000 miles a year here in the UK. 95% of that is on motorways in the leftmost lane (rightmost in your country) at 65mph bored shitless daydreaming. 20,000 miles at 65mph is 310 hours, which translates into almost 13 *full* days. 30,000 miles is 460 hours, more than 19 full days.
In my lifetime, I never have brought any car more than $5,000 and never will due to the mileage I drive causing steep deprecation[1], but I will buy the first reasonably priced car that has this tech brand new even though I'd have to take out a loan. I'd love to spend the time on more worthwhile activities. Daydreaming while driving is also dangerous.
Don't get me wrong, I love driving hard and fast like you, but fuel costs are prohibitively expensive in this country - no, yours is ridiculously cheap compared to ours - and I simply cannot afford to drive fast - I already pay $3,000 a year in fuel costs - if I had a fun car, that'd be $6,000 a year in fuel costs, at least, just for a few miles of fun driving.
[1] Car prices here tend to be inversely proportional to mileages - my car cost $24,000 brand new, but I paid $3,000 for it even though it was only 6 years old and in a good condition, the only reason why it was cheap was that it had 100,000 miles on the clock, even though this model of car with this specific engine is well known to run until at least 250,000 miles trouble-free before being scrapped due to failing safety tests on the bodywork, not from anything to do with the engine. The value of my car with 200,000 miles on the clock is literally $100 even if the car starts and runs good and is in excellent condition.