Slashdot Mirror
Will the Google Car Turn Out To Be the Apple Newton of Automobiles?
An anonymous reader writes The better question may be whether it will ever be ready for the road at all? The car has fewer capabilities than most people seem to be aware of. The notion that it will be widely available any time soon is a stretch. From the article: "Noting that the Google car might not be able to handle an unmapped traffic light might sound like a cynical game of 'gotcha.' But MIT roboticist John Leonard says it goes to the heart of why the Google car project is so daunting. 'While the probability of a single driver encountering a newly installed traffic light is very low, the probability of at least one driver encountering one on a given day is very high,' Leonard says. The list of these 'rare' events is practically endless, said Leonard, who does not expect a full self-driving car in his lifetime (he’s 49)."
didnt RTFA but seriously? Google car can't recognize a red light??
I would've thought some of the better Slashdotters could write software that recognizes a traffic light from a camera feed, let alone the geniuses at Google.
It's pretty clear that all of the automated cars have an extremely limited view of their environment.
They have the senses, but apparently can't use them. As carbon based life forms, we've been able to manage all sorts of safe driving tasks with no local location or map knowledge. Simply following street signs, road marking, and watching curb formations. We can do this day and night, in the dry, rain and snow, in most any vehicle.
But most of the cars seem to have very limited local awareness (i.e. something is too close), and limited lane awareness. Everything else is "built it", and relies upon specific locations.
There was a video about an Audi doing 150 MPH around a racetrack, driverless. Nice and impressive, but what it was doing was just a step above what a video game does. It already "knew" the track, it didn't SEE the track, it was told what the track was, and followed internal programming that coincidentally coincided with how the track was laid out.
Impressive demo, but not really practical.
There's been chatter about making cars "aware" of each other through other mechanisms. That is, besides sight. Having cars broadcasting telemetry that local cars can pick up. "I'm a 6ft x 9ft car at lat, long going Z m/s".
Until cars can legitimately "see", see and interpret things that they are not originally aware of, they'll be little more than tech demos and not suitable for the wild.
"said Leonard, who does not expect a full self-driving car in his lifetime (heâ(TM)s 49)."
He is a man of limited vision. I did a lot of AI research and development, long ago, back in the dark ages of computing, and I disagree. I'm only a few years older and I do expect to see fully self-driving cars in my lifetime. Perhaps I merely will live longer...
The first vehicle with this technology is not going to be a personal car, or anything that resembles a personal car (like a taxi). It's going to be semi trucks with trailers.
From a conference I sat in on last week (dealing with railroads, not trucks themselves), the turnover rate for truck drivers is over 100% per year. This is considered a plus for the railroads. I say that this is a plus for autonomous trucks. They drive autonomously site to site, and then, a driver takes over to get them parked into the loading dock (most likely), the trucks manage to do this autonomously (maybe, but not the scenario I see winning out, not at the beginning), or the docks are redesigned to make it easy for the autonomous trucks to park them in loading position (what will happen once autonomous trucks are widely used).
Yes, I realize other changes will have to be made. Refueling will have to be done manually in the beginning. That may mean the truck stop hires a person or two, that then takes care of the autonomous trucks, and I'm sure the owners will gladly pay a bit of a premium to get their trucks fueled. At least until the automated fuel pumps for the trucks are in place, at existing or new truck stops.
I have zero doubt that my great grandchildren won't have to learn how to drive a vehicle. I have grandchildren, and yes, I expect that they will have to learn how to drive, the technology is moving that fast.
Yet.
Bryan
It really depends on how much "safer" autonomous cars are doesn't it. The current problem with software is that when it fails it fails usually catastrophically, what do you do when you fail, stop that could be dangerous, keep going dangerous too. People don't usually fail as completely as software they make lots of small mistakes but usually do a good enough job.
the road toll is 14.9 per 100,000 per year that is quite low considering how much people drive, you would need a lot of testing, in real life scenarios to convince me that automated car was safer. And each release would need that level of testing. Yes you may get one driver who is bad kill a few people but a bad software release could kill much more.
I am not saying automated cars aren't safer, just that just because they are automated doesn't automatically make them so.
I think his point was:
1) The car can drive for 2.5 hours on the freeway by itself, while you are not paying attention.
2) When the car arrives to an offramp, it will notify you (in advanced) that it's your turn to start driving.
3) If there is a problem along the way, the car will pull over and stop (or similar) before handing you control.
That way, you don't have to focus intently while the car is in control.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Someone(s) at Google didn't think this one through.
I think quite a few people at Google have thought about that, came to the same conclusion as you and started working on the problem.
The thing that people dont get is that it will take years, if not decades to get fully autonomous cars onto the road. They aren't due out in 2018 and yes we know what models are coming in 2018, an updated 370z, a new NSX and a few others no-one has any interest in.
The first autonomous cars wont be by Google, in fact I doubt there will be a Google car, the first autonomous cars will be Merc's or Toyotas built using Googles technologies and the autonomous part will only work on specially outfitted roads (and they will be controlled, limited access roads at first) so you'll still be required to drive a car. In fact you probably wont see a car without a steering wheel or other controls in your lifetime.
You're quite right that roads will need to be upgraded to provide telemetry to autonomous cars, and this will happen gradually over many, many decades.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.