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Volvo Plans To Have Self-Driving Cars In Swedish City of Gothenburg By 2017
Qedward writes "Volvo is starting a pilot project that aims to have 100 self-driving cars on Swedish public roads around the city of Gothenburg by 2017. The project is called 'Drive Me' and is a joint initiative between the Volvo Car Group, the Swedish Transport Administration, the Swedish Transport Agency, Lindholmen Science Park and the City of Gothenburg, Volvo said Monday. Together they will make an effort to eliminate deadly car crashes in Sweden, said Erik Coelingh, technical specialist at Volvo Car Group. In the next few years, Volvo will develop its Scalable Product Architecture (SPA) in its XC90 model. The goal is to have the first self-driving cars available to 100 consumers by 2017, Coelingh said. They will be able to let their cars navigate about 50 typical commuter arteries that include motorway conditions and frequent traffic jams in and around Gothenburg, the country's second largest city."
I for one welcome my remote car derby overlords and look forward to using my new 100 car derby racers to crash into buildings and lamp posts with great amusement!
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Clueless geek! The capital of Sweden is Stockholm...
Since when is Gothenburg the capital of Sweden?
"Capital..."
"...the country's second largest city."
I have a bad feeling about this.
Gothenburg is NOT the capital of Sweden, it is the second biggest city. Education is like butter, the less you have the more you spread.
the capital of Sweden. Or does Volvo also plan to move the parliament?
Misleading title. Gotheburg is not the capital city of Sweden.
Nowhere in the article is Gothenburg called the capital of Sweden nor is it the capital. Perhaps the submitter is suffering from Gothenburg Syndrome.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
Let me be the tenth to point out that Sweden's capital is not Beijing.
It had to be said.
they already have that in the capital Mexico City. And in the state of Los Angeles they are soon going to have lots of recharging stations for electrical vehicles! You'll be able to drive all the way to the city of Texas! I think this was all started by president Clooney.
Everybody knows it's Bern!
This seems to assume that Volvo will still be in the business of making cars of any sort in 2017. I wouldn't bet on that.
I have to admit I have not been keeping up with all the press on self-driving cars. What coverage I do see is short on details of what they actually can and cannot do.
What capabilities would a self-driving car really need to be acceptable, both to passengers and to the general public, that current prototypes lack?
For example, being able to yield to pedestrians at a crosswalk seems pretty important. In my (work) neighborhood we have a couple of crosswalks with no traffic lights, so drivers are supposed to see and stop for people waiting to cross. How well this works depends on the driver, but a "dumb" autonomous car is equivalent to the worst-case human driver -- it wouldn't even try to yield, traffic law notwithstanding.
What else is important? Maybe being able to follow hand signals from a traffic cop. Or at least knowing enough to hand over manual control to the driver when there's a police officer or flagman directing traffic.
Being able to deal with foul weather and icy roads seems important, as well. There could be a big payoff there, as human operators are pretty bad at dealing with ice.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
The capital of Sweden is Norway.
Clueless geek! The capital of Sweden is Stockholm...
No.. It's the Swedish Krona.. Unless you are talking about the *location* of the capital of Sweden...
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Volvo no more plans TRUE self driving cars for 2017 than it plans for flying cars. The announcement may be compared to similar, laughable, announcements about 'AI' breakthroughs in the area of speech recognition and language translation in the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s, or more recently multi layer holographic disk storage.
What these PR lies are about is politics, and the state of the industry that feels it gains 'advantage' by declaring such dishonest garbage.
Of course, AUTONOMOUS transport systems, 'on rails' (which includes trams and guided buses found in many airports) have been viable for years, and implemented on and off. Given that potential drivers for such transport devices are VERY cheap to employ vs other system costs, the 'reason' for experimenting with driverless vehicles, even on these 'track' systems, never had anything to do with common sense or better engineering of any type.
Why is Google, the R+D arm of the NSA, leading the propaganda push for self-driving vehicles? This has NOTHING to do with domestic transport, and EVERYTHING to do with grooming the sheeple to accept 'autonomous' KILLING MACHINES built for the US armed forces. American military planners want the ability to invade nations via robotic mass murder machines- land based mobile slaughter factories protected by air based drone systems. For such systems to be usable, thousands or years of conventions governing the morality of warfare have to be consigned to the dustbin of history.
Tony Blair already successfully eliminated the rules of warfare established long before WW1. Blair declared that ANYONE targeted by the forces of the West, or their proxies, had ZERO protection under any pre-existing conventions governing the conduct of warfare, and the US armed forces in particular unleashed attacks against EVERY type of civilian system in Kosovo, Serbia, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya- especially hospitals, schools, power and water plants, and the family homes of civilian leaders, and government workers. These were Crimes against Humanity in WW2. Under Blair's new regime, accepted by the populace of the West after masses of grooming propaganda on all the mainstream media outlets, these crimes became the new face of war.
Un-manned, autonomous murder machines are the future of American military might in the minds of most senior powerful figures in the US armed services. Real troops only sweep in after every aspect of the target nation has been ruined.
The last time anything like this happened was when war from the air was being planned (around the beginning of the 20th century), and the horror with which the public viewed such a prospect had to be eliminated.
Again, you are NOT going to see self-driving cars on ordinary roads in your lifetime, but you will see America increasingly invest in 'land drones', and seek opportunities to use such evil devices in actual conflicts. The owners of Slashdot are proud to work to help prepare you to accept this coming eventuality.
From the article:
"By 2017 it should be possible for consumers to read the paper or have a cup of coffee behind the wheel, Volvo said"
I see commuters reading the paper all the time. USA! USA!
If I want to be near hot air I would be flying gliders in Australia instead of listening to marketing BS.
nosig today
Cars driving themselves, flying drones delivering Amazon packages... Very exciting stuff.
Qedward, the submitter, is obiously himself from Gothenburg. They normally view themselves and their city as being the front side of Sweden and not the behind, as Stockholmâ¦
--- Angry is just depressive with enthusiasm.
Everyone knows that the 'capital' of Sweden is 'S'. You can see it right there....
Ol' Rick Dawson had a farm EIEIO
has any kind of change ranging from planed work that I hope get's into the data base in time to WE NEED TO X RIGHT NOW.
Actually, the *location* of the capital of Sweden is 59.3294 N, 18.0686 E.
The capital is most definitely Stockholm.
and prisons filled with people who need a home, food and doctor as most of the jobs are gone.
Must be a bastardized translation or something; Volvo's headquarters (prior to purchase by the Chinese anyway) was Gothenburg.
We used to have things called "trains" for this. Self-driving cars are point-to-point trains for wealthy people.
Always Keep It Simple Stupid. Self-driving car is a oxymoron - if we don't trust people to drive cars - and we should't, 'cause they are the biggest cohort of murderers the world has ever seen - then we should build trains on tracks, or pods on tracks, and get rid of the concrete and asphalt paving nightmare. Car is overkill tech for a simple problem. We're trying to mate the 1950s with a drone. It is a Bad Idea.
Also: dependent on GPS and computers.
Anyone know what a HERF gun is? A EM pulse cannon or gun. Easy to build. Aim and fire, fry the electronics of the car, instant crash.
So is a GPS signal jammer. Some techs had fun with the drones in a test last year - they crashed a hunter killer drone in a test by telling the GPS receiver that the drone was 500 feet higher than it was. It dived into the ground.
Computers have purposes appropriate to their ability to fail. You don't use them to drive cars. A plane, yes, as there are two pilots who will dive on the controls if something fails. Voting - no, too many ways for a motivated man-on-the-inside to rig an election undetected. Tested and dusted. Cars will, if the electronics fail and the driver isn't instantly engaged, will crash and take a highway of cars with them. I know we all love shiny things, but for once, think about this before it happens.
It's strange and sad but true that at the same time as we're automating human beings out of work, those who work are more stressed than ever and squeezing in more and more hours. What should be done is some sort of system that substantially limits the amount of work any individual does over a year. Our societies would perform better if people worked less and instead enjoyed their money and also studied more to keep themselves ahead of what robots can do. However, I don't know how to make that change to society. Regulating the number of hours anyone is allowed to work can be tricky with many white-collar jobs since you can work on your report, presentation or analysis anywhere and you will choose to do that if you can get paid more by simply being "super productive" during "working hours" when you just do a fraction of the total work. Another alternative is some job type -specific maximum wage limits that maintain an incentive to study so you get a high-paying job but give you a disincentive to work more than what is set as the new goal for working hours an individual should have each year but that will be hard to sell to people with long-term plans for when to have enough to buy a new house, kids etc.
I propose that we break all of the steal powered looms so that the textile mills have to hire back the unemployed weavers.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite
Gothenburg isn't the capital of Sweden. Stockholm is
This will be great for those few days out of the year when your Volvo isn't in the shop.
Proverbs 21:19
Anyone know what a HERF gun is? ... instant crash.
Anyone know what an RPG is? Instant crash.
So is a GPS signal jammer.... 500 feet higher than it was. It dived into the ground.
So is a flash grenade. A few guys threw a flash grenade at a human. The thing's eyeballs had no idea where it was anymore. It drove into a tree.
Computers have purposes appropriate to their ability to fail. You don't use them to drive cars.
And don't get me started about what happens if you puncture a human (they leak!) or if the human's brain goes into sleep mode or if the human reaches end-of-life while driving. Humans are clearly too failure-prone to be allowed to operate vehicles.
Now we only need a robot Jean Claude Van Damne
I've got better things to do tonight than die.
Of its local county, Västra Götaland County much as Toronto, Quebec City and Lansing are capitals. Gothenburg is A Swedish capital its just not THE Swedish Capital
The capitol building is in the capital and the capital is Stockholm. Stockholm is the capital city.
Unity? Screw that: XFCE. Slashdot Beta? Screw that: SoylentNews. Australis? Screw that: Pale Moon. UX developers DIAF
oooh, Berned!
So when did Gothenburg become the capital of Sweden?
That meme has been totally played out. Find a new meme.
And Sweden's going Sharia before 2017
Can't believe no one has commented on the City name yet.. sheez getting slow slashdotters
Rumor has it that self-driving vehicles currently work extremely well in normal weather conditions, but not yet in unusual weather, particularly snow.
You wouldn't get to test that much in Silicon Valley. But you definitely would in Sweden.
So it will be interesting to see how this works out. If there are no problems, we're that much closer to being able to use self-driving cars anywhere.
Wouldn't it be spelt 'Berne'? 'Bern' is the German spelling. I wonder how it's spelt in Swedish?
http://news.slashdot.org/story/13/12/03/1919230/rf-safe-stop-shuts-down-car-engines-with-radio-pulse