Slashdot Mirror
Google Using Self-Driving Car Data To Make Cars Smarter
cartechboy (2660665) writes "One thing Google has perfected is using massive data sets generated from users to improve user experience. Google's self-driving cars may be subject to the same cycle of improvement, as they have racked up considerable mileage on public roads, and each mile generates data that Google engineers can use to 'teach' vehicle. Meet Pricilla — a Google test driver on the self-driving car project as she does a video walk through of some of the improvements created so far. Some are fairly simplistic, for example: 'The car does move to avoid large obstacles." That said, the car can also detect a bicyclist signaling and stay clear — oddly, even when that cyclist changes his mind and zig zags a little." Google is now testing cars on the city streets of Mountain View.
Google has been claiming that its self-driving cars are around the corner for years now. But to this day they never participated in an independent third-party test. We only got their for it that it performs as well as they claim.
It does not need to put one makeup, drink coffee or text on the phone. It has sensors watching in multiple directions at the same time. Considering that most of people look at driving as a secondary thing that you do in the car in between listening to the radio talking on the phone and other things, there is no surprise that this car is a better driver.
1. Cop directing traffic
2. A more complicated construction zone with a badly marked detour
3. A snow storm
Things are coming along nicely, but I still imagine these are a decade away. Still, they should be common and affordable by the time I'm ready to plow through a farmer's market.
...our children and grandchildren would wonder why we ever allowed humans to operate motor vehicles on public roads.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
Fucking cyclists are going to have a free lunch with self driving cars.
Just plain old taking over the streets because they know the computers will give them right of way everytime.
Google needs to program the cars with some assholery in mind where scaring cyclists is as common as checking for the car's fuel.
It appears that back seat driving is a legitimate profession.
Have gnu, will travel.
the prices we charge advertisers! Oh yeaaahhh!
p.s. beta is a travesty, fuck slashdot
Lets see it drive the road to Hana and back. That would be interesting. Bonus points for not getting yelled at.
Yes. That is what companies do, they make money. Astute observation.
I don't want my car to be smart. Instead, make drivers licenses much more difficult to obtain.
Views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of the author.
These kinds of problems do need to be addressed, but I'm not sure they need to be *fixed* before you turn this into a product. For the snow-storm example, I don't think the car needs to be able to drive in the snow. It's much more important that the car is capable of detecting "this is a situation in which I can't operate safely," and refusing to try. It should be good enough if the car's AI can say, in effect, "Listen, human, I can't take responsibility for driving in this snow storm. If you're comfortable driving in it, go ahead and take manual control. Otherwise, we're staying right here." On the other hand, I could see an interesting application in providing some kind of intelligent 'driver assist' for bad weather conditions that helped the driver maintain traction.
Regarding details, I think the ideal would be for most road conditions, detours, and traffic issues to be kept up-to-date on a database that could allow for dynamic routing instead of the car relying completely on markers. It's not a complete solution, but again, it may be enough to pair a large database with some ability for the car to say, "I don't know what to do here, so I'm going to either give back manual control or pull over and wait."
I guess they couldn't find anything that would make drivers smarter, so designing self-driving cars was the easier choice.
Avoided running over another road user.
Why is every article about driverless cars about Google's cars?
Car manufacturers, like Mercedes, Audi, VW, are also working on this topic, and are probably even ahead of Google.
If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
I'm thinking really rare situations, like post-hurricane Florida where all the traffic lights are out and there are trees on the ground. Or during evacuation when you're supposed to go north even in the southbound lanes.
The comments section is filled with people saying how the computer's senses and reflexes are so much better than a puny human, yet in the video clip, whenever the car is faced with anything except an open empty road, the default behaviour seems to be to slow to a crawl. If the other vehicles were also google cars, it would be interesting to see how they reacted to each other's manouvering.
They whose government reduces their essential liberties for temporary security, receive neither liberty nor security.
People talk about cars as the next big thing, but in reality, it's trucks. Google 18 wheeler will be able to get on the highway and travel across the country in a couple of days. The big transit points and warehouses are already next to the freeway, just load up Google 18 wheeler, have it take off and two turns later it is on the highway trucking across the country. Just need to make gas stations with attendants that will fill up the trucks gas tanks and check the tires.
Linux O Muerte!
No matter how many failsafes they put into the engineering and algorithms, there will be accidents. Darn fewer of them since the majority are cause by human error, but they will still happen. I want to know what will happen when the self driving car is in an accident. How will it detect it? How will it determine what works and doesn't work? Will it automatically notify the necessary services (fire, police, ambulance)?
Experienced cyclists will not pass on the right for safety reasons, yet this is what geekoid forced the cyclists to do. He also failed to realize that he violated two traffic codes:
1. Obstructing traffic by stopping in the travel lanes.
2. Assuming that he was waiting for the cyclists to pass before turning right, he is in violation for not merging into the bike lane before turning right (CVC 21717).
If he/she got in front of the cyclist without sufficient room to turn right then he/she should have continued strait and made the maneuver at another location or by another route.
There is insufficient information to know if the cyclists had enough time or space to even pass on the right or to stop. It may take be around two car lengths to safely stop my bicycle or maneuver around a stopped vehicle, any less than this and the vehicle driver is the cause of the cyclist hitting the vehicle.
There is also insufficient information to know why the cyclists was out of the bike lane. Besides the need to avoid debris and to make left turns, the cyclist could also be avoiding the door zone of parked cars, positioning to stay out of the right turn lane (riding strait through a right turn only lane is illegal and unsafe), any location where a right turn is possible (such as approaching a street or driveway), or any other of the list of reasons including an generic avoiding unsafe conditions.
I have had conversations with cyclists who run stop signs, swerve on and off the sidewalk, and other illegal and unsafe actions. The two major reasons are the lack of training on how to ride and the harassment and road rage from motorist who do not think that cyclists have a right to the road. Motorists complaining about cyclists are often the cause of the problem.
Complaints of illegal acts by cyclists often include leaving the bike lane at any time (there is a long list of reasons for safety and usability) and controlling an unsharable lane (14 feet or less, about the width of two cars) that are legal and the safer way to ride. In some states riding in bike lanes or riding on the shoulder is not even required.
Sigh me:
Bicycle League Cycling Instructor 39XX.
It takes an incredibly narrow minded and anal personality to come up with situations 99% of customers will never encounter and therefor conclude that because 1% might encounter them in a life time, an entire line of products is useless.
Oh no, a product isn't perfect for everybody! USELESS!
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
99.9% of the time when I'm going slower than the speed limit, or have to break unexpectedly, or any of a hundred other minor incidents... it's because of other cars on the road. If you think cyclists are the problem then I counter that you're allowing a cognitive bias to influence your perceptions. Bikes are unusual, therefore you notice them more when they appear, therefore they figure much more prominently in your accounting of traffic problems than they should. How many times have you found yourself in a 65 mph zone crawling along at 5 mph because there are hundreds and hundreds of bicycles stopped in front of you?
Also, drivers generally could be a lot more patient around cyclists. You've got a few minutes at stake. We've got our lives.
Smart cars for people with smart phones. How smart is that?
The mind conceives, the body achieves, the spirit manifests.
Imagine you have reached an age or have a disability where you cannot drive. How amazingly liberating would it be to be able to use a self driving car instead. It's not just a safety thing, think of how profound this would be for the blind community.
(If at first you don't succeed, do it different next time!)
not a native but Wiktionary says the former
One thing Google has perfected is using massive data sets generated from users to improve user experience.
I have to disagree. Google Search keeps changing the rules and doesn't always respect your query elements.
For example, you can read about how Google replaced the plus-sign operator with quotation marks: http://www.seochat.com/c/a/goo...
But what's worse than that: sometimes Google just plain ignores the quotation marks you put in your query. They're supposed to mean that each search result must contain the search term that you've surrounded with quotes. Nope, lately I've been getting a lot of search results that just don't contain the term in quotes.
Help fight against this trend toward dumbed-down search!
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
We're all aware that bots are all around us. Anyone with a website has probably more bot-generated traffic than human-generated traffic.
I wonder what will happen with cars. In 10 years we will not just have the occasional Google car filming the neighbourhood.
There will probably a whole industry of robot-cars without humans. Designed to look like cars, like a mini-car, but without seats, without stearingwheel and dashboard, etc.
It will be designed just for the robot. I cannot oversee just for what they will be used, but I reckon it's not just for Google-cars.
You could have a courier-botcar deliver a package, cheaper that a car with a human inside. Or maybe even cheaper than a bike-courier.
There will be new uses invented for cars. 20 years from now the landscape and the roads might look very different from today.
Well, don't worry about that. We can get you back before you leave. (Dr. Who)
In CA (as in most other states) a driver is required to move as far to the right as practicable to prepare for a right turn. This includes merging into a bike lane. The Google car didn't do that. It stayed in the through lane and turned (illegally) across a bike lane.
Seems that the car's programmers need to know a bit more about the driving rules.
My sig is wonderful. I love my sig.