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How Tesla's Autopilot and Google's Car Are Entirely Different Animals (robohub.org)
Hallie Siegel writes: Developers and futurologists have long talked of two paths to autonomous cars: the incremental path (where autonomous features such as adaptive cruise control, autonomous parking etc are slowly added to make the car increasingly autonomous) and the revolutionary path that abandons the human driver altogether — the Google car approach. Robocar expert Brad Templeton compares Tesla's latest autopilot technology to the approach Google is taking, explaining why some people think autonomous cars are still decades away, while others believe they are just around the corner.
yet?
Standards are emerging and they aren't gonna be compatible until 5.0.
Regardless of how they get there I'll certainly never buy one. The technology if of course interesting and in some parts very advanced but even so this seems like an awful lot of effort to remove a steering wheel.
You must not hate driving like I hate driving.
"He is so stupid. And now back to the wall!" Moe Szyslak
One looks like it was designed for adults, the other for toddlers. The google car couldn't look any more childish if had pedals inside and coloured wheels.
seems like an awful lot of effort to remove a steering wheel.
Yeah, who needs to reduce the 1.24 million deaths and millions more injuries suffered?
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
I love driving, I hate driving with all the drooling morons on the road that cant do safe lane changes or drive with any semblance of skill.
So I want everyone else to get self driving cars.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Just this morning, after it's not been driven for about six years for various reasons, I paid a very large garage bill for fixing up my 1991 Honda Civic.
This car has no engine ECU, no ABS, no airbags, no lane assist, no automatic braking, no shit at all. What it DOES have is four wheels, brakes, lights and something to steer it with. It also has twin carburettors and a manual choke.
First job was to fill it with petrol, and as the engine warmed up I started to remember just how good this old car is to drive. The large garage bill was well worth every single penny. It puts a huge grin on my face every single time. There's not many '91 Civics around these days, but if you have the opportunity to buy a decent one, do so and care for it. You will be rewarded.
So, as I started to say at the top, Google and Tesla, you can take your autonomous vehicles and shove them high up where the sun don't shine.
I hope they're just around the corner, but they'll be out of reach of most people. Like Tesla now.
Maybe by the time I retire they'll be reasonable so I can tour the country and never even drive.
B-b-but that's what they all say........
Google approach of map everything in excruciating detail has one big flaw - it assumes that we could know in advance how the driving environment would look like and navigate based on this. This is not a reasonable assumption, simply because mapping every back road is gargantuan task. Therefore, we will end up with 'good enough' Google cars, that can drive major roads and urban centers.
Tesla (and all other car manufacturers) approach is to have car react to environment with little advanced knowledge. This is gargantuan task and is still computationally unfeasible. Therefor, we will end up with 'good enough' Tesla-like car, that can drive anywhere but still require driver's supervision.
. . . where the speaker compared the two approaches like this:
Gradually trying to move towards driverless cars instead of working directly on that goal is like thinking that by practicing jumping and getting better and better a jumping that you'll eventually be able to fly.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
Driverless cars are going to be hugely disruptive to a large number of industry. The first Uber/Lyft like company to get them going will be able to undercut every taxi service in the entire developed world. We are talking a billion dollar industry there. They will likely be able to gain a significant share of the existing public transit spend in almost every city in the world - even those with good public transit infrastructure - another billion dollar industry. For many individuals it will be more attractive to spend the considerable amounts of money they currently spend owning a private car on an automated taxi service, which is another billion dollar industry.
The first trucking company to use driverless cars will be able to run trucks more often, for cheaper, undercutting everyone else. This is again a billion dollar industry. Eventually companies like Amazon and Walmart will have vending machine vans that circulate around an area and come to your door with milk and bread faster than you can walk down to your local store. This will change the nature of bricks and mortar retail again. That is another billion dollar industry.
A fleet of driverless taxi services would potentially make the economics of electric cars look unbeatable. The high load factor of taxis means that you can afford to pay a lot more in capital costs in exchange for massively reduced operating costs. Automated taxis could also manage their own charging, and with apps that pre-plan journeys the car sent to you would be able to ensure it had enough charge to get you to your destination, eliminating the main problem with electric cars right now. The system could probably be built with small (cheap) onboard batteries and a limited number of swapping stations throughout a city. This could massively undercut both gas cars and private vehicle ownership without any further reductions in battery prices. Now you are talking about a trillion dollar industry.
There is no doubt that driverless cars are a challenging technology to develop. It will be extremely difficult to make them as reliable and safe as we would all like them to be. But in the end, as long as they are, say, an order of magnitude safer than human drivers, the massive economic benefits (i.e. potential profits) will ensure that they are put on the roads. When there is this level of money to be made, capitalism will find a way.
I'm all for reducing deaths on the road. Time will tell if self driving cars are safer or not. Until then, enjoy this video of a car with autonomous features being driven entirely safely:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zY_zqEmKV1k
You can't cure idiocy with technology. If you want to reduce the number of idiots on the road I feel like self driving cars is an extreme solution based almost solely in a sci-fi inspired outlook of technology. Improving public transport would have a marked effect to reduce the number of accidents on the roads for example.
Tesla pushed the "autonomous driving" out in a beta update. Immediately youtube was filled with videos of Tesla's with auto-driving enabled almost crashing as it can't handle corners, swerved into other lanes etc.
Then you have google who is taking a multi year approach of refining the technology before even letting consumers see it.
Tesla is (in my mind) looking hard to make noise about their products and it is dangerous to push out alpha "self driving" software out to the masses. It is quite a difficult problem to solve and people shouldn't be beta testers.
I've seen a thousand texters on the highway that are just as dangerous as that video. You can't cure stupidity, but a car that will automatically slow down before hitting the one in front is better than someone using their smartphone while driving without such a feature.
I'm all for improving public transit, but it takes a generation or so for everything to reorient itself to suit it. So, sure, I'm all for increased spending on public transit infrastructure. Then the 20 year buildout. Then another 25 before businesses and housing re-orient themselves around it. In the meantime you can improve other things without hurting that work. It's not fantasy or sci-fi - it's happening now and improving constantly.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Sure thing gramps.
Driverless cars are going to be hugely disruptive to a large number of industry. The first Uber/Lyft like company to get them going will be able to undercut every taxi service in the entire developed world. We are talking a billion dollar industry there. They will likely be able to gain a significant share of the existing public transit spend in almost every city in the world - even those with good public transit infrastructure - another billion dollar industry. For many individuals it will be more attractive to spend the considerable amounts of money they currently spend owning a private car on an automated taxi service, which is another billion dollar industry.
The first trucking company to use driverless cars will be able to run trucks more often, for cheaper, undercutting everyone else. This is again a billion dollar industry. Eventually companies like Amazon and Walmart will have vending machine vans that circulate around an area and come to your door with milk and bread faster than you can walk down to your local store. This will change the nature of bricks and mortar retail again. That is another billion dollar industry.
A fleet of driverless taxi services would potentially make the economics of electric cars look unbeatable. The high load factor of taxis means that you can afford to pay a lot more in capital costs in exchange for massively reduced operating costs. Automated taxis could also manage their own charging, and with apps that pre-plan journeys the car sent to you would be able to ensure it had enough charge to get you to your destination, eliminating the main problem with electric cars right now. The system could probably be built with small (cheap) onboard batteries and a limited number of swapping stations throughout a city. This could massively undercut both gas cars and private vehicle ownership without any further reductions in battery prices. Now you are talking about a trillion dollar industry.
There is no doubt that driverless cars are a challenging technology to develop. It will be extremely difficult to make them as reliable and safe as we would all like them to be. But in the end, as long as they are, say, an order of magnitude safer than human drivers, the massive economic benefits (i.e. potential profits) will ensure that they are put on the roads. When there is this level of money to be made, capitalism will find a way.
This post literally gave me cancer.
I use a car mostly for going on the road, but sometimes, it needs to drive other places. I go to events where we park in the grass. I go down driveways that are a mile long. I have experienced emergencies where I have to go backwards down the highway. I just don't understand how completely driverless cars will work in these cases. I have driven a car with adaptive cruise control and emergency breaking. It was fantastic. Please continue down this road and make these features required.
-- these are only opinions and they might not be mine.
The road maintenance will make these cars unsustainable. If they use tracks the problems are solved. This is the only way it will work for a future population size of 10 billion. Otherwise, we won't make it past 8 billion.
People are too busy sucking Elon's Musky dick to realize their "autopilot" is shit that Mercedes and other luxury cars have included for years. Tesla is playing catch up but journalists are too busy playing catch they don't realize it.
As for google, jesus christ, why are your cars so fugly?
I would characterise it differently. One is trying to engineer out all the risk, while the other is going to shape the perception of the risk in the market.
The reality is that no matter how long Google spends trying to make their cars safer and safer (and apparently it is already significantly safer than a human) one day their car is going to have a serious accident. Maybe it is not even the car's fault, and some grandma has a heart attack and smashes into the side of it and dies. It doesn't matter, at that point the thing that will decide whether there is a massive backlash against the cars or not is going to be who can spin the story the best. On one side you'll have professional drivers, non-driverless car makers and a sensationalist media who will jump all over the story, showing pictures of granny's sobbing family and Sergey climbing out of his private jet. On the other side Google will probably wheel out some geeks with terrible communication skills trying to explain the numbers. They will lose, set back the acceptance of the cars for a decade, and not understand at all why.
Elon Musk, on the other hand, has learnt a lot about how much of the non-tech world is both ignorant and irrational (remember the whole battery fire thing). What he will be betting on is that by the time his car has a minor accident he will be able to turn up on TV and say how Tesla drivers have used the autopilot for whatever millions of miles and this is the first incident. He will probably have a few canned stories lined up about Sarah the housewife who's toddler was saved from being involved in an accident by the feature. He will fight the PR battle and eventually the media will move onto the next story and subsequent driverless car crashes will get less and less airtime. This will pave the way for the widespread adoption of them. Ultimately the biggest beneficiary of this will probably be Google as it will make it easier for them to bring their undoubtedly far superior technology into the real world. Unless, of course, Musk has gambled too big, and the cars kill a bunch of people due to a software bug.
I think that we're both "decades away" and "just around the corner" for autonomous vehicles. They'll probably be expensive but vehicles that can drive themselves on freeways/major highways are probably just around the corner. However once they're on the side roads they've have to switch back to manual mode. Vehicles that can handle all of the intricacies of side roads (pedestrians, pets, poor maintenance, contrived intersections, lack of centerlines/markings, etc) will require lots of additional programming.
combine this story about wireless EV charging autonomous cars and a crazy software developer and i wonder how long it will be before someone programs their autonomous car to drive them around in an infinite loop after they die...or at least until the car breaks down.
Other industries will try to push back against them such as municipalities who earn income through traffic enforcement, and insurance companies who make big money on point surcharges.
Self driving cars will likely change our relationship with our cars as much as media on demand has with our TV. When we drive somewhere in the city, the car drops as off, looks for parking on it own, and can just keep driving around if nothing is found. Heck, if are going for the day, why pay $35 when it can drive to a further cheaper lot, or even just drive back home. Instead of walking to where we park the car, we will be able to call our car to us. If we need to take something over to a friend, we can have our car bring it without us going for the ride.
What if they made our cars better designed to sleep in? Go to bed in city, wake up in another. Planes suddenly only become attractive if you need to go outside your watch your evening TV and then sleep all night radius.
Not to mention, that self driving cars will very rarely commit traffic violations (speeding, etc). That will dry up a major revenue source for a lot of smaller towns, another billion dollar industry.
Well, when you are retired you can drive around when no one else is on the road and actually have fun. For most of us, the bulk of our driving is our commute in traffic, and it sucks.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Flying cars would also be disruptive, it doesn't mean it'll happen any time soon. Maybe it'll get approval to run on a few well painted, well lit, pre-approved roads in sunny California during daytime genuinely by itself, but from there to an all-road, all-condition vehicle that people can actually use as a full substitute for driving themselves will take many, many years. It's a long step from a test drive with humans that can take over to saying we're confident this can drive by itself, take the back seat and enjoy the ride. A really long step.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
And I am yet another category - I hate driving AND I hate the drooling morons you so aptly describe. No signals for lane changes, driving way over the limit and randomly changing lanes to go around the normal flow of traffic, driving on the shoulder of the road in heavy commute traffic, on their phones and not on their brakes, etc. And I want a self driving car that lets me opaque my windshield and block them all out while I nap or read or work. I don't want some stupid system where "the driver must pay attention and be ready to resume control at a moment's notice". That would be life threatening as it is hard to pay close enough attention if you haven't been the actual driver. I want it to take me from point A to point B with no involvement from me other than charging / fueling / maintaining the thing and telling it where to go.
people say this a lot. Got any data on that. And citation if you will.
If information wants to be free, why does my internet connection cost so much?
capitalism will find a way.
Maybe but capitalists don't solve technical problems; engineers do.
As as aside, the writer states that because Tesla's tech is evolutionary in nature, and this "problem" clearly requires a revolutionary approach, that means it's going to happen quickly. To use [what's bound to be a terrible analogy], just because it'd take forever to come up with a neon-green German Shepherd through selective breeding does *not* mean we'll be seeing genetically-engineered custom-colored dogs on the market within the next five years, even if it's currently do-able (and I'm not sure that fully-autonomous cars are currently even do-able, at least not in a fashion that society will be willing to accept) .
*Summon car from parking space*
*Drive like maniac to destination*
*Let car find it's own damned parking space*
*Summon car from parking space*
*Drive like maniac home*
*Let car find it's own damned parking space*
rinse and repeat
Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.
In essence they are trying to improve commuting. Can you foresee a future where instead of dealing with people behind the wheel who are mad, talking too much and not paying attention, are in a hurry and speeding ridiculously, basically we are talking about removing the emotional fallacies of people and replacing them with fuzzy algorithyms. I wouldn't mind really. It would be like having a chauffer always and not having to pay him, feed him, or even give him a second's break.
Which is a reason more advanced societies don't allow for such a ridiculous conflict of interests.
You sir are clearly a danger to everyone and need to be replaced by a robot. One with a big grin of course.
Actually, when self driving cars become reality, the last thing you will want is to actually own one. The biggest problem I see is in that the cars will be able to be remotely disabled. The privacy and software security implications are ginormous. Deviatons from privacy and the hacking concerns will make all the current hacker's issues look like spilt milk.
When discussing cars, slashdot needs to compare them as animals?
Or even, let the car go home to be available for other family members to use until it's time to come pick you up from work.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
^^ THIS
plus there are definitely days when the kids were up all night, I stayed up late working, or out late... or whatever... when taking a nap on the way to work is a VERY attractive idea and public transit is not available for with to do such a thing.
What would be wrong with restricting a driverless taxi service to only certain roadways that have been configured to support them (if required)? You could just start with suitable inner city CBD areas, and build out the capacity with a combination of roadway improvements and upgrades to the car so that it can service larger and larger areas. Similarly, the first automated truck systems could just travel between terminals at the ends of motorways (which are already well formed). Human truck drivers could pick up the trailers at these points and complete the local deliveries.
But sure, a driverless car that you can dump on a country road in Scotland and expect to find its way into central London is a long way off. However, I don't think we need that to get the bulk of the benefits from the technology.
Personally I wouldn't be surprised if what happens is that driverless vehicles cut automotive related injuries so much that people become outraged that governments are not upgrading more roads to support them. Think of the children and all that.
Not to mention, that self driving cars will very rarely commit traffic violations (speeding, etc). That will dry up a major revenue source for a lot of smaller towns, another billion dollar industry.
Actually, at first, you'll see the reverse:
Oh, that car in the next lane is driverless - so you know it's safe to cut it off. Stopping at a stop sign and the car to your right is driverless: you know it's safe to go ahead of it. etc.. Driverless cars will start uploading driving violation videos to you tube or some police agency, cities wanting their cut, will start writing tickets as fast as possible based on these videos. Very quickly, drivers will start behaving - but road death rates for the human drivers will still be disproportionately higher. Soccer moms will very quickly use peer pressure to eliminate drivers. Maybe it'll get to the point where, on bad weather days, the roads will be empty.
Also, with all these electric cars driving themselves, owned by some fleet service, what's going to happen to the $50 billion auto service industry?
Seriously, stop listening to these cretins. They give you fairy-tales and other stupid stuff they believe in. They do not give anything of any worth, but drown out people with an actual clue of what is possible and what not and how long things can be expected to take.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
There is zero proof that all those deaths and injuries will be eliminated. I don't care that Google's self driving cars have gone a million miles without a serious accident. So what? I've driven about 800,000 with the same result, only my driving wasn't under laboratory conditions with someone scouting the roads ahead of me for proper markings, no big potholes, etc. Other people have not had those results. That doesn't make me great and them bad, though that's one possibility of course. Small scale tests and wishful thinking prove nothing except that wishful thinking generates an amazing amount of hype and bullshit.
You 'humans are bad at everything' tech fanboys are pretty much the reason I hate reading any articles about self driving cars these days.
They're entirely different kinds of electric cars, altogether.
"These people look deep within my soul and assign me a number based on the order in which I joined" --Homer re:
> We are talking a billion dollar industry there
Uber is already near $11 Billion in bookings.
http://www.inquisitr.com/2358989/uber-on-its-way-to-reaching-almost-11-billion-in-bookings-in-2015/
people say this a lot. Got any data on that. And citation if you will.
Just for speeding tickets: 6 billion dollars: http://www.statisticbrain.com/... An average of $152 seems a bit low to me.
If you look at parking meters in San Francisco http://priceonomics.com/san-fr... you'll see they get about $50 million for paid parking, and get $80 Million in parking violations per year.
It's been 24 hours since the last Tesla story!
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
Car moving forward should have three modes:
1) autopilot - the user need do nothing except enter destination/route and the user can be anywhere in the car, liability for accidents etc is the car manufacture
2) accident avoidance - the user is in control, but the car will not allow an accident to happen, liability for accidents etc is the car manufacture
3) manual - user is in complete control and can do damage, liability for accidents etc is the current driver
This allows for those that want to drive, to be able to drive but also has the advantage of lower accident rates and even allows for people to sleep, read and/or TXT.
I love that Tesla is pushing it forward and being loud (mistakes will happen without a doubt), Google (and others only autonomous vehicles) will have there place in taxi service, semi-trucks, etc) but for a majority the Three Modes vehicles will be a majority.
PS DUI's go away, distracted driving (TXTing, reading, eating, putting on makeup) issues go away, accidents are reduced dramatically (but will never be perfect).
That, and capitalists create at least as many issues as they solve, and the adoption of their 'solutions' often depend on who has the best PR spin and not the actual best solution for the most people.
In fact, capitalists as a rule only offer solutions to problems if they benefit the capitalist. Otherwise they're perfectly content to let the problem exist, especially if there's profit in exploiting the problem.
The notion that capitalism and 'the market' can solve serious problems optimally would be laughable if so many fools didn't believe it.
That's one of the major advantages of fully autonomous cars: you won't have to own one. Why buy a car with all your needs in mind, one that is good for your daily commute, weekend fishing trips, the long distance family vacation, the occasional heavy hauling? Get something just for your daily needs and rent an autonomous car for everything else, on demand, spur-of-the-moment, without any hassle: it'll park itself outside your home 30 minutes after you've ordered it, and return itself once you are done with it.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
You can't cure stupidity
Right, it's like a cold. There's no cure and taking something that subdues your body's natural response actually makes things worse. Much like a cold, we should stop trying to cure it and stop treating it, as well.
Phrased differently, when you "treat" a cold, you make the cold easier to deal with on a by-moment basis, but you also make the cold last longer; you literally make it easier for the cold to be a cold. Likewise, when you "treat" stupid, you make the stupid easier to deal with on a by-moment basis, but you also make the stupid stupider; you literally make it easier for the stupid to be stupid. Stop treating either condition and the effective symptoms worsen for a short period as natural defenses ramp up and take care of the problem in short order.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
There is zero proof that all those deaths and injuries will be eliminated.
That's a very hard statement to refute! LOL, are you trying to put words in my mouth so that you have someone to argue with?
You 'humans are bad at everything' tech fanboys are pretty much the reason I hate reading any articles about self driving cars these days.
I don't think I said that, either. It is all speculation, of course, but it's pretty hard to imagine a scenario where machines suddenly stop improving.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
The speeding ticket link is not loading. I assume that is for the whole US. And as for San Francisco, 80M sounds like a lot, but for a city of that size it a line item. 6B for a nation (~300B month just for the Fed + local government) is so small you may as well worry about the lack of tax from buggy whip manufactures.
Sure it a lot of money on its own. But in the bigger scheme of things it just isn't.
If information wants to be free, why does my internet connection cost so much?
And, of course, these self driving cars will be EVs or hybrids, so plenty of lithium to turn the fuzzy algorithms into "warm" fuzzies when they crash.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
There's no cure and taking something that subdues your body's natural response actually makes things worse.
That's not true. People with compromised immune systems (e.g. smokers) tend to suffer fewer cold symptoms. Most of the damage from a cold is your body's overreaction - it's self-inflicted.
But that's a tangent. Let's take your analogy at face value. You are assuming that the technology for treating a cold will never improve. What happens when the technology improves to the point where taking medication can reduce the duration of a cold - will you still recommend not treating it? Because that is what is happening with automotive technology - it is steadily improving to the point where this stuff starts to sound reasonable.
Stop treating either condition and the effective symptoms worsen for a short period as natural defenses ramp up and take care of the problem in short order.
I'd be all for the natural selection route if it didn't risk the careful drivers as well. Hell, a lot of it is still drunks.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Agreed.
Failure to use blinkers. Speeding around me in the slow lane when I'm already going ten over, but have a full two-second gap in front of me. Talking. Texting. Drinking their coffee. Applying their makeup. Shaving. Petting their lapdog. Reading a fracking novel. All things I observed on my 20-mile commute just this morning.
I love driving. I also had the benefit of being taught by a police officer and a race driver. I learned the importance of understanding the limits of my car, and how to handle it when those limits are exceeded. I was also taught to drive as if at least 10% of the drivers out there are about to do something stupid. I leave a good gap in front of me, larger when the conditions are bad. I try to keep an open spot on at least one side of me, and when I can't, I try to get out of that situation as quickly as possible. I'm always checking my mirrors, watching for idiots coming up too fast or closing up gaps, planning for evasive action.
I have been in a grand total of two accidents in my life. In the first, I had a huge gap, but some idiot cut over three lanes and slammed on his brakes to make his exit; I didn't hit him, but I put my car into the guardrail to avoid him. Wrecked my quarter panel, but no injuries. In the second, I was taking a gentle turn and hit a patch of black ice, again winding up in the guardrail. Another wrecked quarter panel. Sprained my ankle when I slipped on the ice checking the damage.
Granted, there's some element of luck. but I've avoided many potential accidents by virtue of driving defensively, a mindset that isn't taught often enough anymore.
I think this will come eventually. I suspect the solution will involve lots of radar, forwards and backwards, along with several pairs of 3d cameras. The problem with lidar is that it doesn't work in snow or heavy rain. Humans drive based on 3d vision, so why not have computers do it. Problems could arise if the cameras get blocked, but the same think can happen to human drivers. If there are multiple pairs of cameras, perhaps with mechanisms to clear their own view to the outside, they could be quite reliable. If one combines this with radar, one could have a computer with a fairly good picture of the outside world.
I know google's car uses a combination of lidar and video. I think it is 2d video, but I'm not sure. Their car probably uses lidar to find objects around the car. The video system then probably uses neural nets to identify what the object is. It can also likely tell whether the objects are moving or not. I suspect that there is research in the pipeline that uses neural networks that have been so successful at 2d image classification to work with 3d stereoscopic imagery. Google "3d computer vision with neural networks" to see that this is being thought about. I suspect that it would be a useful avenue to train the neural networks not just by feeding the networks pixels from the cameras, but also by feeding it the readings from radar and sonar sensors.
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)
Tesla autopilot is the roomba of self driving cars. It's enough to generate interest in self driving cars and will spur more development till we have something more intelligent.The roomba would blindly go in circles but now we have vacuum cleaners that scan the room and create optimal paths.
It's a step in the correct direction.
I was wrong about smokers - it's drinkers. Smoking gets your immune system too fired up and it does more damage than in healthy people. Drinking seems to have the opposite effect.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
So, your idea of 'spur of the moment' is 'order a vehicle and wait around for half an hour for it to turn up'?
I have noticed that the greatest proponents of 'driverless cars' never seem to have any real need to drive anywhere.
That's not true. People with compromised immune systems (e.g. smokers) tend to suffer fewer cold symptoms.
So symptoms are worse than illness, now? By subduing your body's natural response, you are making the illness worse, even if you don't feel the symptoms anymore; just like someone with a compromised immune system. You think we disagree, but you actually simply restated my exact point. Someone with a compromised immune system already has subdued natural responses and, thus, fewer symptoms; treating the symptoms by subduing those responses is, as you continue to correctly state, after your following incorrect statement, self-inflicted.
Most of the damage from a cold is your body's overreaction - it's self-inflicted.
And this is where you're wrong. Most of the symptoms of a cold are your body's overreaction, but any damage is the result of the infection. The symptoms of an untreated cold are very much self-inflicted; but, the only time the damage might be considered to be self-inflicted is when you do something to prolong the infection, like subduing your immune response so your body doesn't fight it off..
I'd be all for the natural selection route if it didn't risk the careful drivers as well.
So your solution is to do away with all drivers by automating the whole process? We can't kill off just the bad ones, so let's get rid of the whole lot. Right.
You do realize that, first of all, I was relating to stupidity in general and not just stupidity behind the wheel and, second, so many stupid people are currently endowed with the power to take out a large number of intelligent people with no risk of harm to themselves. Do you not see the value in increasing the risk of stupidity to the stupid? Let me lay it out for you: as the stupid take themselves and each other out, there will be fewer of them to take out the intelligent people.
Having completely missed that bit of obvious logic, though, I can understand why you're on the other side of the fence. You must be one of the rare ones that still has a sense of self preservation.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
and the other is just another overhyped soundbite from Musky?
I used to hate the fact that people would put on their turn signal only _after_ they started to turn. Then I realized that it was just a dialect problem: these people obvious call it the "turned signal."
By the way, I haven't posted for some time and I see that I can no longer insert any HTML tags in postings. Do I need to enable one of the giant swarm of domains that Noscript is blocking on the page or go to some obscure prefs page or what?
I can mostly predict when I need a car ~30 minutes ahead of time, with things like regular commutes on order so I don't even have to call for one then.
On the other hand, having to wait half an hour seems to be an unusual length of time to have to wait, unless you're looking at an extremely unusual situation. I'd expect 5-10 minutes to be a more normal waiting period for a car to pull up.
I'm a proponent of driver-less cars, and while I don't want to 'have' to drive(that being an active activity), I still need to get places where the only practical method currently is to take a car.
I think it's less 'driverless cars' you're looking at and the proponents of 'don't even bother to OWN a car'. Those who don't want to own a car are the ones that don't have to drive much. I drive enough that it'd probably still be best for me to own my own vehicle.
I don't read AC A human right
Comment removed based on user account deletion
A third approach is to have a robot independent of the vehicle which can drive it, and presumably can switch from one vehicle to another. The best example of this I'm aware of is Yamaha's motobot which is capable of riding a motorcycle on a track. I'm not sure how much of the article is speculation rather than existing capability. http://pcmag.com/robotics-automation-products/39534/news/this-yamaha-robot-can-drive-a-motorcyle
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"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Do you like making money? If so, I may have a nice bet for you.
Tell me, when you do you think we'll have fully autonomous consumer-grade passenger vehicles on public roads in a percentage greater than 10%?
Depending on your answer, we can use an escrow account, and I'll give you at the odds at which I'm willing to make that bet.
Say, five years? I'll give you 5:1 odds, no bets smaller than $10,000 USD. Ten years? 3:1 odds, same minimal risk on your part. 15 years? How's 2:1 sound? Increase the minimal to 20k USD. Withdrawal of the monies prior to the end of the betting period incurs a 33% loss. Escrow fees to be paid by the winner, of course. You can pick the escrow service of your choice, I withhold the right to decline based on that choice - they need to be properly vetted.
Any further refinements to the bet needs to be established before any monies are deposited. Any unclear definitions need also be determined.
I'm game. I worked in traffic modeling for a long time. The idea of autonomous vehicles, while nice, is a long time coming. You will see them in mines, closed circuits like delivery docks and shipping receiving areas, and other similar things. As a solution for the consumer class? Not for a long time, not in any great numbers, and very limited in scope.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
I used to hate the fact that people would put on their turn signal only _after_ they started to turn. Then I realized that it was just a dialect problem: these people obvious call it the "turned signal."
I think that it's actually a learned behavior, especially for people who regularly drive in dense traffic. Signaling before you change lanes very often results in the surrounding cars speeding up to close the space so that you can't change lanes. I suppose if you get in front of them, you're somehow "winning" or something and they can't allow themselves to "lose". Signaling while changing at least provides notice to the other driver that a lane change is happening right now, whether they object or not. Me, I signal and then just change lanes even if the other car is trying to block me. The nice thing about having a rusty old POS is that I always win at lane-change-chicken.
By the way, I haven't posted for some time and I see that I can no longer insert any HTML tags in postings. Do I need to enable one of the giant swarm of domains that Noscript is blocking on the page or go to some obscure prefs page or what?
There used to be a drop down box under the comment to change how posts were formatted, but I don't see it anymore. HTML works in my posts without changing anything, but I know I've heard other people complaining that it doesn't work for them. Beats me. Check the options on your account page... maybe it's set there now.
Speeding around me in the slow lane when I'm already going ten over, but have a full two-second gap in front of me.
I agree with everything you said but this. If somebody can pass you on the right, then you're in the wrong damned lane. It doesn't matter how fast you're going. My drive to and from work is hellish, and it's almost entirely due to people hanging out in the left lane and forcing people to pass on the right or weave through traffic to get past them. At times, there a whole stack of cars in the left lane (often riding each other's ass) and the right lane is clear for literally miles. Keep right except to pass, OK?
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a youtube comments section scrolling - forever.
You are probably a good driver one of the best 10%. But what about the worst drivers?
Except why would any company with a driverless car SELL it, when they can lease it to Uber/Lyft and force them to pay them a fixed monthly fee AND a slice of the revenue. Further, they'll want to lease the cars because they'll eventually get sued if the cars malfunction. I myself do not fear driverless cars, I fear 10 year old driverless cars that haven't been maintained.
And yes I do work at an auto company.
10% is a big number when cars are lasting 10+ years. I could see 10% of new car sales, but these things are going to be expensive at first. I think the first autonomous cars are going to be big luxury vehicles, not normal consumer-level stuff. And what is "fully autonomous"? No steering wheel? Good enough for a commute in a typical urban/suburban environment? In snow?
So if we were betting (and I'm not), I would guess that a very high percentage of luxury cars (in the $100,000) range will be autonomous over the next 15-20 years. Then a trickle-down into less expensive cars as the bugs get ironed out and the liability and insurance benefits become clear. I can't even rule out a government mandate at that point. I imagine that you are right and commercial applications will be at the front of the line - commercial trucks, for instance. It'd be very interesting if the drivers were allowed to put them on a highway, safely engage the autopilot, and then go take a nap. But again, government regulation is a huge wildcard here.
For each, more lax, definition of "autonomous", bring the estimate in a little. The Q35 is somewhat autonomous on the highway right now. If you are some asshole who insists on texting while driving, that car will absolutely make you safer right now. You could probably read the paper if you wanted. Pretty much all of the luxury cars will keep a lane automatically in the next product cycle... and it will just keep getting incrementally more automated. I don't know where you draw the line and call it "fully autonomous" - for some people that day will come a lot sooner than for others.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
So symptoms are worse than illness, now?
For both colds and stupid people driving, the answer is yes. A cold without symptoms is just a parasitic virus. My modern diet has more than enough calories for a parasite here and there. If there are stupid people on the road, what do I care if they can't hurt me?
but any damage is the result of the infection.
No, sorry. Look up "inflammatory response". Your body can be an absolute bastard to itself.
So your solution is to do away with all drivers by automating the whole process?
Yes, why is this a problem? I don't see manually driven cars going away any time soon. It will just (eventually) be very expensive to insure them compared to the self-driving variety, and I suspect the highways will eventually ban them to improve capacity.
Let me lay it out for you: as the stupid take themselves and each other out, there will be fewer of them to take out the intelligent people.
Yes, I understand your argument. I'm familiar with natural selection. Social Darwinism and other such ideas have been tossed around for a long time. Sometimes "obvious" ideas are not so obvious after some careful thought and research.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
For both colds and stupid people driving, the answer is yes. A cold without symptoms is just a parasitic virus. My modern diet has more than enough calories for a parasite here and there.
That only holds up at controlled levels of infection. Unchecked (because you trained your immune system to ignore it and let it just do its thing), the common cold will eventually overtake your body. Before you say it, yes, I know we don't hear of people dying from the common cold; I'll leave it as an exercise for you to figure out why.
If there are stupid people on the road, what do I care if they can't hurt me?
And if that were the only symptom, we might be able to agree on that point. However, their stupidity is not simply limited to one activity, or even a handful; and it is certainly not limited solely to activities where we as a whole would benefit from giving up control. I certainly don't want to lose my right to vote and my ability to dissent from the actions of my government, but if we keep letting stupid people vote that's where we'll end up and it'll be "for our own good". So, how do we stop stupid people from voting? And who decides what's stupid?
The fact is that stupidity infects every facet of society, it soaks into everything we do, and it affects us in ways we simply cannot understand. Death is a function of society's immune system; it keeps one person from gaining too much power and keeping it indefinitely, it keeps society from being overrun with people whose bodies and minds have long grown incapable of productive contribution to humanity, and it should prevent us from being overrun by ignorance, as well. We just have to let it do its job.
As cool as I think self-driving cars are, and don't get me wrong I think they're awesome, they won't solve the problem you think they'll solve; to the contrary, they'll likely make it worse. There are plenty of stupid people out there who drive without a license or insurance, on expired registration. They're out there, everywhere, all day, every day. Even if you are correct and manual-driven vehicles become too expensive to insure, that won't affect these people; and they'll be unlikely to comply with a ban, either. There are simply too many of them for police to bother trying to do anything about it; plus, police and emergency vehicles will still need to be manually driven, as their routes and maneuvers often are based on non-traffic factors, of which the computer driving the car can't possibly have knowledge or understanding. I certainly don't want people without years of experience piloting a manually-driven vehicle behind the wheel of emergency vehicles which, by their very nature, require extremely skilled drivers in order to operate safely
For many of the same reasons I feel we should stop protecting stupid people (and, in fact, we encourage their stupidity, which also needs to stop), I also feel researching immortality and life-extension techniques is immoral; we already live far beyond the usefulness of our minds and bodies and far past our ability to enjoy comfort; at some point, life just becomes uncomfortable, but our society is afraid to just let it end when the time comes for it to end. Bear with me, I'll bring the point back around shortly.
Yes, I understand your argument. I'm familiar with natural selection.
Would it be cool to live forever? On an individual level, and assuming we're able to solve the body/mind degradation issues, yes, it would be. On a societal level, if we removed natural death, we'd have to implement some form of population control; we'd have to kill people off at some point. Who? The poor? The old? The disabled? Who decides? What gives them the right to decide? If nature stops killing us, we'll need natural selection to step in and take over. Probably best not to do away with it, then.
Social Darwinism and other such ideas have been tossed around for a long time. Somet
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
taboola
I don't think you need taboola, but I did recently have to add slashcdn.com
Please stop using the word theory when you mean hypothesis.
You are presuming that bad driving is a proxy for stupidity. I submit that a person could be a brilliant rocket scientist and also be a terrible driver.
On a societal level, if we removed natural death,
There is nothing "natural" about a car accident.
I also feel researching immortality and life-extension techniques is immoral
Well, I don't feel that way. Any research that yields something like immortality would necessarily also attack the aging process - which would remove your objections.
Probably best not to do away with it, then.
We can't "do away with it". Natural selection is not something we can remove. We will all die someday. Many of us reproduce, and not all of our offspring survive. This will always be the case. If we outgrow our planet and billions of us starve to death, well, that is natural selection.
You do realize that Social Darwinism [wikipedia.org] relates to governement and economy and not live and death, right? You're thinking of Darwinism [wikipedia.org]
No, I meant Social Darwinism. You are talking about policy decisions based on natural selection theories.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Well, I don't feel that way. Any research that yields something like immortality would necessarily also attack the aging process - which would remove your objections.
It would remove one of my objections. For reference, here's just one of my (already stated) objections that is not solved by attacking the aging process:
Death is a function of society's immune system; it keeps one person from gaining too much power and keeping it indefinitely
Please note that this was the first objection I made, so it's not even like you can claim you stopped reading after the objection you attacked and began your reply without having read this one.
As I've learned that it is impossible to argue against someone who doesn't acknowledge your responses, I'm out.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
Nobody will take my bet. :( I don't blame them.
Anyhow, for fully autonomous, I mean no user-control aside from setting the destination though I'd allow for route specifications. And yes, there are stupid drivers who are unsafe. They need to go. At first blush you appeared the type who claims that autonomous vehicles will be here, and mainstream, in five years. They pop up here fairly often. Now that I see your reply, you appear more reasoned.
We'll have them. Just not for a while. Probably not until I'm gone, at least not wide-scale.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
As I've learned that it is impossible to argue against someone who doesn't acknowledge your responses, I'm out.
Or - and I'm just throwing this out there - you could point out that I made an error, I could acknowledge that I made a mistake and we could continue the discussion.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
I was hoping they'd be here in time for my kids not to drive (my oldest is 9). But unless I'm willing to be on the bleeding edge and fork over $100,000+, it's not going to happen. Oh, well :)
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
I could, but history shows that this typically is ineffective. It is only very recently that I have adopted this policy, so I've got plenty of history to go on.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
And these JohnnyCabs won't have to be able to go everywhere.
If they can just navigate between the airport and all the hotels in the city, that alone would be able to kill the taxi business.