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Making an Autonomous Car On a Budget
cartechboy writes Tired of waiting for self-driving cars from the automakers? If 2017 and 2020 just feel too far away there's now a solution. It's called Cruise, and for $10,000 it'll turn your current ride into a self-driving car. Kyle Vogt started the company and recruited a team of engineers and roboticists from MIT to work on autonomous vehicles. Cruise plans to market the hardware as something that can be retrofitted to existing cars using roof-mounted sensors near the windshield, actuators to operate the controls, and a trunk-mounted computer that manages everything. The idea is that drivers can merge onto the highway and simply hit the "Cruise" button on the dashboard. This will engage the system and basically turns the car on autopilot. The system can use the steering, brakes, and throttle to keep the car in its lane. Currently the first system, called RP-1, only works on current-generation Audi A4 and S4 models. RP-1 is currently available for pre-order with the launch set for near year.
this may be a nice step forward in terms of cruise control, but there's nothing autonomous about their system.
Once you are in the right place on the freeway this system supposedly will keep you in the same lane and will slow down, as well as accelerate, but you are still responsible for a lot of the driving.
It will be fun to read the changelog of the first patch.
"Fixed an issue regarding the situation in which reaching a speed of 90mph could make the car turn 90 right if fuel was below 20%."
Yet another excuse for drivers to text, yap on a cellphone, read a newspaper, apply makeup or just generally not pay attention to the task of driving. That will make things so much safer on the roads.
I wouldn't get something like this and trust it. I don't know who wrote the software. I don't know how much testing it's been through. How can I trust my life and the life of my wife, child or any other passenger to something that doesn't even have the tiny bare protection of government testing.
I hope this is swiftly banned, I don't want to be on the road with a person using this kit when it first tries to divide by zero.
I am not against autonomous cars. In fact working on a project of that nature is one of my dream jobs. I love the idea. I believe eventually it will save lives. But it must be tested for 100,000s of miles. It will require a large scale testing project with 100+ cars and vehicles.
For each software/project/kit someone has.
For crying out loud, NASA has some of the best and brightest engineers, they aren't quite so beholden to investors and they still produce software with catastrophic errors. While these guys might be from MIT (same as the NASA people), I doubt they are held to the same standard right now.
Anyway, I am happy more groups are working on it but it's not ready for consumers.
... for being the first to be sued when a car equipped with his hardware has an accident. Google will be able to design their system around existing legal precedents instead of waiting to be sued by an ambulance-chaser.
Nobox: Only simple products.
Why is this system only usable on these two specific models of cars? Is there something special about the cars that makes them easier to automate, or does everyone at the company drive exclusively brand-new Audis and they have nothing else to test with?
It seems oddly specific for a system that should be pretty universal.
Even if the kit does have to be custom-made for each model of car, wouldn't it make sense to design the initial version for something with a wider market, like a Toyota Corolla or Ford Focus?
Our government in action:
Eleanor Holmes Norton ‘kills’ driverless car
Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D) was invited Tuesday, along with fellow members of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, to test drive — er, test ride — a driverless car on the Capitol grounds.
Well, the ride never happened, because Norton did a particularly good job of testing the car’s bright-red “kill” button — which, as captured by WRC-TV’s cameras, killed the car to the point that it could not proceed with the test ride.
The video there is not flattering to her - at all. And some of the comments are priceless.
The sounds of US lawyers smacking their lips with anticipation upon the first accident with a self-driving car and a human.
Time for a Google image search on "Audi A4" and "Audi S4" - gotta add those to my list of people to give plenty of elbow room on the Interstate.
The specificity is key. This kind of system must be exhaustively tuned and tested on a very narrowly controlled hardware platform. Why do you think Google has been running their program on what looks like a 2006 Prius for so long? Supporting new models of cars will require significant configuration and testing for each new model. Just because you can attach this device to the roof of most cars, doesn't mean it is able to drive that car autonomously. Even the actuators and wiring is probably pretty specific to individual car models, and must be extensively tested as well.
From a business case perspective, I don't see people spending $10K on this unproven mountable hack, when they could spend $40K on a new Volvo or similar that has the same functionality.
My God can beat up your God. Just kidding...don't take offense. I know there's no God.
... unless there's a sue-able multi-billion dollar corporation behind it. Even then, big automakers are barely able to afford recalls and liability suits now - a major wrongful death suit from a errant self-driving car will take out a smaller firm or make their insurance impossible to pay.
Everybody!!! Isn't the legal system great!?
Yes, the driver, the installer, the manufacturer, the programmer - pretty much anyone who ever touched any part of the project will be named in the suit. It happens in building/architectural lawsuits all the time. The plumbing fails and everyone, including the drywall company, is in the list of defendants. I wouldn't be surprised to see the sidewalk lunch vendor on the list.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Who pays if you get into an accident using cruise control on current cars?
I can't wait for the first lawsuit because the driver wasn't driving with due care and attention.
4 out of 5 days of the week, my commute is slowed down by an accident on a more or less straight highway. I can't figure out how people are having accidents on this road unless they're texting. Something like the car in front of them slows down, they don't notice because they're not looking at the road, and rear end someone. I had some idiot teenager total my car with 2 kids in it because he was fishing around for CDs on his floor. 40mph straight into the back of the car behind mine, which still hit mine with enough energy to total it.
See above. I only have to look out the window of my car to see why I'd rather not share the roads with some drivers. I also feel like driving is a waste of my time the second a computer is better at it than I am. I'd rather read, make calls, or any number of other things.
I want one.
This is not good. This is being done by people from "social", where nothing really has to work. It operates in the "deadly valley" - enough automation to allow the driver to take their hands off the wheel, but not enough automation to handle hard situations. Most of the major auto manufacturers already have that working. Toyota calls it "Lane keeping assist". It's coupled with "smart cruise control", which measures the distance to the car ahead and controls speed and braking. Ford, Mercedes, Volkswagen, and Cadillac have similar systems. Audi already has such as system. But Audi won't let it take full control. "The driver is still responsible", they say. Audi disengages their system if the driver takes their hands off the wheel.
So this is a known technology which none of the major automakers trust enough to give it full control of the vehicle. That should tell you something.
"Cruise is currently taking pre-orders for its first system." Typical. Is there a Kickstarter, too?
Three-ton motorized projectile that is expected to autonomously navigate roads with other multi-ton motorized projectiles, bicycles, pedestrians, wildlife and any arbitrary conditions you haven't even imagined yet... I think "on a budget" is about the scariest phrase you can utter in this context.