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Honda To Test Self-Driving Cars In California
An anonymous reader writes: Reuters reports that Honda has received approval from the State of California to test their self-driving cars on public roads. They join not just Google and Tesla, but Mercedes Benz, Nissan, and several other companies with permission to test. Take note: autonomous cars are no longer a fringe research project for a few future-focused companies. The industry as a whole is recognizing that autonomous driving technology will be a vital part of transportation by car sometime in the future.
Too bad there won't be enough people working/able to afford them!
... will it respect the Asian driving style?
Then you'll control the car in a high-level way that resembles how they pilot spaceships in Star Trek.
Given that the intention is develop an autonomous vehicle it should make sense for all manufacturers to work on a common system, rather than a diverse range of competing hardware technologies. At the end of the day, the idea is not to distinguish the company's based on the quality of the AI, but on the service it provides to the customer.
This eliminates duplication of effort and associated costs. Further, a single system can be secured much better that an entire eco-system of buggy solutions.
When they hit your car, you can fight Honda's legal department, in Santa Clara's Superior Court whose sole purpose is to caters to the needs of the wealthy.
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
Being a pedestrian that is just what I need with the idiot drivers on their cellphones trying to run me down, the bicyclists who are riding in the sidewalk (which is illegal in The People's Republic of California) trying to run me off the sidewalk while they are texting.... Now I have to worry about driverless cars with shoddy software and dirty censors running me over. I am going to have to start carrying a flame thrower since open carry of firearms is illegal in The People's Republic of California.
Talk about delusional.. Have you ever been off-road before?
I misread that as "self-destructing" cars and was puzzled for a bit.
Your mom will not miss walking around a store to pick up a few items and than waiting in a check out line to go home again. I would think that she would enjoy shopping on the internet and having the items delivered in a self driving vehicle. I think that self driving vehicles will obsolete almost all or our present commercial areas. It will eliminate a huge number of jobs. It will also save 10's of thousands of death each year and hundreds of thousands of injuries each year. It will also save hundreds of billions of dollars in property damage each year. This also will eliminate a huge number of jobs.
As a truck driver who has a little of this tech fitted to my truck already (adaptive cruise control and automatic emergency braking) I'm not worrying about losing my job any time soon. I live in a country which has lots of rain, fog and where it snows. The ACC and AEBS shit themselves and turn off when it rains heavy or as soon as the front of the truck gets a light covering of snow. Currently no autonomous car can drive in rain, fog or snow. The AEBS also has false positives ocassionally giving heart stopping collision warnings when I pass under certain bridges and more than once its slammed on the brakes when taking a gentle corner that has had metal posts put up along the kerb. Fortunately when it happened I wasn't carrying the load I was on the return journey otherwise there would've been a nasty accident.
And then there's the fact that with a truck there's a massive range of variables to consider compared to a car. A car never changes its dimensions, its weight is relatively constant. My truck changes length by over 40ft, its weight changes by up to 37 metric tonnes. Where the fifth wheel pin is, where the axles are, how many axles there are and whether the rear one is a steering axle on the semi-trailer all affect its cornering, manoeuvrability and reversing characteristics. All the loads on it have different effects on the handling characteristics and themselves need the vehicle driven to accommodate them. A tanker filled with 20 tonnes of milk for example requires a lot different driving technique to a flatbed carrying a 20 tonne slab of aluminium.
As I said, they can't yet even get the self driving cars to work anywhere where there's inclement weather which is why they're being tested in California so I'm not planning a change of job because of automated trucks any time soon.
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The ACC and other bits you have on your truck are designed with stringent operational limitations to reduce liability issues.
The field of vision they have is nothing like what an automated vehicle has.
My decade-old car has ACC and what spooks it is quite predictable - just like a blinkered horse - which is what you'd expect from a very simple system with only one POV of the road ahead - unlike the 360 degree multispectral vision that autonomous cars have.
Autonomous vehicles are nothing like these simplistic creations and they're being prepped to work in all weather conditions.
If you get the chance to try out Mercedes new trucks (freightliners in the USA) then do so, especially their technology demonstrators. Large vehicles are where automation will pay dividends first and fastest, freeing the driver to get on with paperwork, etc.