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U. Michigan Opens a Test City For Driverless Cars

Posted by timothy on from the thought-that-was-what-jade-helm-was-for dept.

An anonymous reader writes: The University of Michigan has opened Mcity, the world's first controlled environment specifically designed to test the potential of connected and automated vehicle technologies that will lead the way to mass-market driverless cars. Mcity is a 32-acre simulated urban and suburban environment that includes a network of roads with intersections, traffic signs and signals, streetlights, building facades, sidewalks and construction obstacles. The types of technologies that will be tested at the facility include connected technologies – vehicles talking to other vehicles or to the infrastructure, commonly known as V2V or V2I – and various levels of automation all the way up to fully autonomous, or driverless vehicles.

9 of 76 comments (clear)

  1. At least it is a place that gets some snow... by QuietLagoon · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It's about time driverless vehicle testing has moved away from the snow-less climes and into an area that presents some actual challenges to the driverless vehicles.

    1. Re:At least it is a place that gets some snow... by gstoddart · · Score: 4, Interesting

      More than that ... they need to recruit some of the absolutely terrible drivers we've all seen, and send them into the mix to do their usual random shit.

      Because I think it will demonstrate how this stuff will totally fall apart when non-connected vehicles are in the mix, and highlight that there is no way in hell the entire road infrastructure and all cars are going to be updated for this connected stuff.

      This stuff all seems to assume the world will change to suit it and we'll spend huge sums of money to make the infrastructure work.

      And that's simply not true.

      --
      Lost at C:>. Found at C.
    2. Re:At least it is a place that gets some snow... by HiThereImBob · · Score: 2

      ... they need to recruit some of the absolutely terrible drivers we've all seen, and send them into the mix to do their usual random shit.

      As someone who frequently drives in the Ann Arbor area, I suspect they have been recruiting for decades.

    3. Re:At least it is a place that gets some snow... by singularity · · Score: 2

      Yes, because the terrible drivers we have all seen are not causing accidents as it is.

      Every time I see a discussion about autonomous cars, someone chimes in that there are terrible human-driven cars on the road, and that an autonomous vehicle cannot deal with that. What they fail to mention is that no human drivers can really deal with them either, if the terrible driver is driving so badly that an accident is bound to happen.

      Bad drivers causing accidents because they are on the cell phone? Yep. Bad drivers causing accidents because their vehicles are not properly maintained? Yep. Bad drivers causing accidents because the do something unpredictable without looking? Yep.

      In all of those cases, you are right - an autonomous car will probably be no better than a human driver. You have yet to convince me that it will be *worse*, though. As more autonomous vehicles are on the road, though, accidents caused by bad, distracted drivers will go down. So at worse it is no improvement, with an almost assured big improvement as time goes on. Or we can just stay with the status quo.

      You are right, though - replacing the entire infrastructure is not going to happen. I am guessing the Vehicle to Infrastructure communication they are talking about are things like red lights (why have a camera in the car to determine the color of the light when the intersection can just broadcast directly to vehicles?), train crossings, and so on. An autonomous vehicle should be able to deal with these things as they currently are, but if a town's red lights are due for replacement, why not replace them with autonomous vehicle friendly versions?

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      - (c) 2018 Hank Zimmerman
    4. Re:At least it is a place that gets some snow... by burtosis · · Score: 2

      Dear god I couldn't help but comment or I would mod this up huge - someone with points please do. The google car is about the best there is and yet without painstaking manual mapping of every driveway, every road sign, every lane, every curb, every traffic light, manual entry and review of every goddamn last detail along the route it's absolutely helpless and yet it still can't handle erratic human drivers, many obstacles, rain, snow, occlusions of nearly any kind, any sensor failures of any kind, it's very early in demonstrating the technology.

      I just wish google would be honest with the masses what the actual state of the technology actually is.

    5. Re:At least it is a place that gets some snow... by cascadingstylesheet · · Score: 2

      why have a camera in the car to determine the color of the light when the intersection can just broadcast directly to vehicles?

      Not sure I want to need a firewall and strong encryption on my car though ...

  2. Why create a model city? by Rosco+P.+Coltrane · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Just use Detroit: it's full of real roads and building, full of perils, and many parts of the city are virtually devoid of people.

    --
    "A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
  3. Re:Just curious. by Cro+Magnon · · Score: 2

    They do the same thing as a human? Treat it like a four way stop.

    I'm confused. Will they do what humans do, or treat it as a four-way stop?

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    Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
  4. Re:Good it's about time by Kjella · · Score: 2

    It goes from Google, who is extremely professional, but still gets rear ended a lot because the vehicle is over cautious

    Troll much?

    Anyone in the field gets an immediate appreciation of how their toddler far exceeds a supercomputer and 500k in sensors even in 2015.

    Last I checked toddlers can't drive a car, sunny highway conditions or not.

    etc. when a computer 'sees' a cyclist they may or may even not recognize its a cyclist (ie maybe it assumes pedestrian given its sensor history)

    Actually, they've already learned to recognize hand signals that indicate where they're going.

    If you look at any of the videos where they show the cars "vision" of the world it does a damn good job of tracking cars, trucks, pedestrians and cyclists, spotting them in plenty time. You're right they don't do subtler things like make eye contact or consider if the person is drunk, but they're probably good at spotting someone swerving in their lane which is the second best thing.

    Fact is, I don't know WTF some people are trying to do. I just keep my distance and speed such that I don't end up in a collision with them. So will presumably the Google car, here's a loose cannon on deck that doesn't drive like the other 95% so just give it a wide berth. You really don't have to figure them out to drive safely, you just need to recognize the signs to spot them.

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    Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings