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Michigan Builds Driverless Town For Testing Autonomous Cars
HughPickens.com writes Highway driving, which is less complex than city driving, has proved easy enough for self-driving cars, but busy downtown streets—where cars and pedestrians jockey for space and behave in confusing and surprising ways—are more problematic. Now Will Knight reports that Michigan's Department of Transportation and 13 companies involved with developing automated driving technology are constructing a 30-acre, $6.5 million driverless town near Ann Arbor to test self-driving cars in an urban environment. Complex intersections, confusing lane markings, and busy construction crews will be used to gauge the aptitude of the latest automotive sensors and driving algorithms and mechanical pedestrians will even leap into the road from between parked cars so researchers can see if they trip up onboard safety systems. "I think it's a great idea," says John Leonard, a professor at MIT who led the development of a self-driving vehicle for a challenge run by DARPA in 2007. "It is important for us to try to collect statistically meaningful data about the performance of self-driving cars. Repeated operations—even in a small-scale environment—can yield valuable data sets for testing and evaluating new algorithms." The testing facility is part of broader work by the University of Michigan's Mobility Transformation Facility that will include putting up to 20,000 vehicles on southeastern Michigan roads. By 2021, Ann Arbor could become the first American city with a shared fleet of networked, driverless vehicles. "Ann Arbor will be seen as the leader in 21st century mobility," says Peter Sweatman, director of the U-M Transportation Research Institute. "We want to demonstrate fully driverless vehicles operating within the whole infrastructure of the city within an eight-year timeline and to show that these can be safe, effective and commercially successful."
Darpa did this a decade ago, google did it 5 years ago, and so did several foreign manufacturers.
I mean, it's a good thing, but it's been more than 30 years since the American Vehicle manufacturing industry was actually on time for a new idea.
Aren't there any towns hit hard enough to be willing to sell themselves out for this purpose such that building a fake town isn't necessary?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
and busy construction crews
Just where will that be experienced in the real world? All I see is a mile or more of blocked lanes for two guys sitting on the tailgate of a pickup...
Or are they testing how the computers can deal with something that just doesn't compute?
If there is one thing Michigan is good for it's testing vehicles in horrible winter conditions with a crumbling road infrastructure. You get the weather for free and if they can just hire MDOT crews to build the roads you should have no problem testing out some of the most difficult conditions a driverless car will face.
...they could just have used Detroit
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The article is pretty short on details, but implies that the only cars in the test bed will be driverless. It strikes me that a better test would be a mix of driven and driverless cars, since that scenario is both more complex and more realistic. Algorithms developed and perfected in a 'simulated' real world stand a very good chance of falling apart in the 'real' real world - after all, public roads aren't going to be *totally* driverless for a long, long time.
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
Plenty of Driverless Towns in Texas.. they're call "air quotes " >> College Towns
I am glad they picked a location that experiences Winter in all its harshness. I always wondered how an autonomous car would deal with all the challenges that Winter driving poses. Black ice and snow covered surfaces are the worst of the conditions, but throw in snow patches, high winds, variable visual conditions, etc and the software will probably start showing its weaknesses.
"Michigan Builds Driverless Town For Testing Autonomous Cars"
It's called Detroit.
BOOM! Thank you, I'll be here all week!!!
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Detroit is an excellent candidate for this technology as its been a driverless town for 20 years.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Why are they building this and paying millions for it?
Couldn't they just drive around most parts of Detroit? That'd be the perfect test, driving in a ghost town dodging random roving street gangs.
This whole field is interesting to me and so I'm glad to see research being done. That said, for me the place where I most want driverless cars is on the open highway. The problem with driving on the open highway is that it's just complex enough to require some of your attention, but not interesting enough to keep you mentally engaged, so it's really easy to get bored or sleepy or just plain distracted. In other words, it's a perfect candidate for automation.
In an urban environment I have no problem staying focused /because of/ all the chaos these researchers are dealing with. It seems like all of the times I've come close to a serious auto accident have been on freeway / high speed roads and have let myself lose focus. In urban environments I've rarely come close to a major accident both because I'm so much more focused on driving and because the speeds are significantly lower.
Long term I hope we get to driverless cars in all environments, but I hope that sometime sooner we can get driverless cars on the freeway that switch over to human control as you approach the off-ramp or enter a more urban area.
MDOT has "no money" for road repair, but hey, they have 6.5 million for this. Remember that the next time you want more money and to tax gas in the state out of sight.
One thing I'm pretty sure we're not gonna see for a long while yet is contextual awareness, i.e. as a human, you can see something is going on ahead of you, identify the situation and manage your driving behaviour accordingly.
For example, I once drove through a residential zone and up ahead I saw a bunch of little kids playing near some parked cars along the side of the road. The speed limit was 30km/h, but I slowed down to about 10 driving past them just in case. And whaddya know, from between two parked cars one of them rolls out on his plastic tricycle, right in front of my bumper. I stopped in time, but had I been driving at or near the speed limit of 30, the kid would have been injured or dead, no matter how fast the reaction time or how good the brakes had been.
I wonder if that kind of thing is solvable with driverless cars.
That way the cars can learn to dodge being shot at and handle having the wheels stolen when they stop at a stop light.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Michigan is not a state with the extra cash to spend on this sort of thing.
just fenced in a portion of Detroit and used that.
And the town with the largest number of hit-and-run accidents is ...
Confusing enough there making a right to make a left turn lol
Then they should release this right away. A lot of people would jump at the chance to be free to do other things during highway driving. I'd love to watch a movie during the 3 hour drive to the ski resort.
And think of an automated RV that drives itself on highways! These things spend like 90% of their time on the road on highways anyways.
Exactly. Ann Arbor has persistent winter snow and occasional sleet, heavy rain, tornados, and even flooding. Its weather is often a perfect storm for drivers and a far cry from the ideal idyllic settings used so far to test automatic cars.
A2 is the real world. And its mix of academia and auto company proximity make it ideal for this role. Seems like a perfect marriage.
Why not use Detroit?
Funny huh?
I work about a mile from this. It's on University of Michigan property within the City of Ann Arbor - which might make it within the City of Ann Arbor, except that no property taxes are paid on it and the University of Michigan police have jurisdiction rather than the City of Ann Arbor police. (The University of Michigan is chartered by the state of Michigan such that it operates much like an independent civic body.) So maybe it's in Ann Arbor or maybe it's not, but that's probably sharing too much about the local Town vs. Gown whinging that goes on around here.)
I didn't think I'd ever see anyone claiming that A2 is the real world. It certainly isn't what the surrounding conservative communities think of as real - but a lot of those are still besotted by Saint Ronald Reagan.
The most recent tornado that struck the city with any force was back in 1965, but there have been tornadoes in the area much more recently, some causing significant damage. There is a city-wide system of out-door emergency alert sirens primarily for tornado alerts, although I should hope that the monthly testing of those sirens shouldn't adversely affect the behavior of autonomous vehicles. We do get tornado or other severe weather alerts about 3 to 5 times a year.
Yes, we do get snow, but not as much as areas within 15 miles of the Great Lakes. I'm not sure how good a new, purpose-built facility will be able to reflect the decaying roads and (often) horrible snow clearing conditions that exist in this region. In the city, when the snow does get bad, clearing the roads all the way to the curbs is often not possible (due to cars parked or plowed in) and the streets become narrower, and (last winter) virtual potholes formed in the ice covering the streets (as well as real potholes.) Lane markings in those conditions are nonexistent - and even the edges of the roads can be a matter of guesswork. I don't know if a purpose-built facility can quite replicate the chaos of that - you'd need fleets of trucks and cars going out after the snowfall BUT before the snow and ice was cleared in order to pack the snow into an ice, and even then I don't know how you'd achieve the lumpy, washboard effect. And then you'd need to have students, buses (city and university), taxis, ambulances, deer, and pizza cars dodging around. In a controlled, reproducible way.
This is the same autonomous driving city that was reported on by all the news outlets this past spring. Is there something new here?
Sure, so long as Google has mapped every inch of the highway beforehand, and there are no stop lights, construction or deer on the road. Or rain, or snow, or...
I was in Carmel Indiana, a northern Indianapolis suburb, last week. Since the 1990's they have been replacing all of the main intersections with roundabouts. They have over 60 of them now.
While roundabouts have been proven to be safer for average drivers, how easy are they for autonomous vehicles to navigate vs your standard intersection? Is a roundabout an asset to the adoption of autonomous vehicles, a hinderance or a wash?
Average Intelligence is a Scary Thing
Maybe Michigan should put the money into paying the pensions of Detroit workers instead of wasting the money on something already done.
Right. With luck this kind of exurban facility will make good use of selective dispensations from the MI DMV to extend their trials off premises and onto roads like you describe.
Dialing up the real world noise is essential to bring these cars up to speed -- missing or obstructed lane markers and signs, poorly marked or uneven road edges, and the introduction of noise like leaves, snow banks, and pools of accumulated rainwater all need to be mastered before automation has any business driving cars, buses, trucks, or passengers in the many parts of the country like the Michigan coutnryside where often "the sun don't shine".
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Did they really have to build a peopless-town? I thought that there were already a few.
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How'd "eating your words" taste here http://news.slashdot.org/comme... ? Flavored with YOUR FOOT IN YOUR MOUTH to 'ram them down' & then washed down with "the bitter taste of SELF-defeat" too, perhaps? R O T F L M A O, & now, the "TrAnStEsTiCuLaR-MoNsTrOsiTy" Tom (BarbaraHudson, the resident 'confused' on who/what he/she is, evidenced also by multiple sockpuppet accounts on slashdot for cheating moderation http://slashdot.org/~BarbaraHu... = http://slashdot.org/~tomhudson... = http://slashdot.org/~Barbara%2... ) will, of course, "Run, Forrest: RUN!!!" on command from the questions in that link above as always!
Ann Arbor's streets look like they were laid out during an argument between English & French surveyors. It's the only place I've ever seen a 2-way street become a 1-way street half way down the street.
A good test for these autonomous vehicles will be "drive within a 2 block radius until you find a parking spot."
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
They won't need to drive around: they'll communicate the nearest parking spots to teach other! ;-)
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(Ooops, to each other, obviously...but coincidentally, the meaning remained largely the same!)
Ezekiel 23:20
Michigan could have at least taken some dead zones in Detroit and turned them into a testing site. Why they have to build it in Anne Arbour is beyond me.
Paradise City. And make sure there's tons of overlapping bridges that are only partially constructed.