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Google Patents Self-Driving Car That Glues Pedestrians To The Hood In A Crash (cnn.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNN: Google just got a patent for a special kind of coating on self-driving cars that could help prevent pedestrian injuries. The company wants to coat autonomous vehicles with a sticky substance so that if they hit a pedestrian, the person would be glued to the car instead of flying off. "[The pedestrian] is not thrown from the vehicle, thereby preventing a secondary impact between the pedestrian and the road surface or other object," says the patent, granted on Tuesday. Google explains that an "adhesive layer" would be placed on the hood, front bumper and front side panels of a car. A thin coating would protect it until an impact occurred. Google is paying Arizona residents $20 per hour to test its self-driving vehicles.
with all the options
between the car and another object/vehicle
Twinstiq, game news
They're not always good.
Getting stuck to the car could also result in torsional injuries instead
Wow what a way to advertise the safety features of your car.
"Our self-driving cars are so safe they can never hit you" is too tame.
"Our self-driving cars are so safe, we will only hit you at most once"
Why is this story about Google's new patent being linked to a completely different story about them seeking test drivers? It's not like they're hiring drivers to be stuck to the car. Unless of course that's what the editor's trying to imply.
Auto safety features inspired by Carmageddon. That's just what we needed.
I wonder if you get a steam achievement for collecting multiple pedestrians?
"The pedestrian is not thrown from the vehicle, thereby preventing a secondary impact between the pedestrian and the road surface or other object,"
Or...
"The pedestrian is not thrown from the vehicle, thereby ALLOWING a secondary impact between the pedestrian and the next car it hits."
Don't worry- the car won't be damaged because your body will cushion the impact!
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
If you are able to glue the face of the victim to the hood such that they suffocate. Remember this is America and lawsuits are like a friendly hello.
What we should be discussing is why they have Yuri Kochiyama as today's google doodle with a whitewashed description of what she stood for. Apparently idolizing Mao and Osama Bin Laden is somehow important to google.
Self-driving cars are going to be fun after all.
You are welcome on my lawn.
So it just snags the body whipping the spine, head, arms, legs in different directions and catches the body between the car and the next object that it hits.
Naaaaa nanana nana nana na na na ... Katamari Damaciiiiii...
Perfect song for the car.
Ryan Fenton
It will only stick pedestrians. Not dirt, birds, cats, etc ;-)
Before they realize this might have some unexpected problems.
You can't escape Google on the internet, and soon you won't escape it in the offline world either.
To get glued???
Not sure if this was totally thought out but just a "hurry and get the patent filed before someone else does" moment.
It can’t JUST be a sticky layer, otherwise it’ll last about 5 minutes before it gets a layer of environmental debris on it.
what if i can't escape the flames because of your glue?
...this is what you get when you legalize recreational marijuana.
AKA - they become trophies!
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...you don't even have to slow up to grab someone off the street, just jump the sidewalk, glue them on and haul them away to a secluded point for hiding.
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And some days you're the bug.
Okay, so the concept is the person is hit by the car and does not go flying 20 feet when the car hits them. They have an outer-shell that is reasonably strong so you're not picking up bugs, grass, etc. Sounds like a plan.
My question is "How do you get the person unstuck afterwards?"
So I'm standing in the road and the car hits me, I stick to his hood and I'm now traveling the speed of his car, let's say 30 MPH. He jams on his brakes because, let's face it, there's a guy stuck to his hood. The nice thing is that I'm not going to fly off the car at 30 MPH. The car comes to a stop and the driver gets out and asks if I'm okay. I may have some bumps and bruises, but I'm good.
Okay, that's gotta be pretty good stickum to hold my 180-pounds to the car while it's decelerating. So how do I peel myself off the hood of his car? I mean, I would imagine that any stickum that can hold me in place while a car decelerates from 30 to 0 is not going to let me just get up afterwards.
And Lord help the hairy shirtless men who get hit. That's gonna hurt!
A very quick skim of the patent says that there would be a coating on top of the adhesive coating. This top coat is designed to break during impact, exposing the pedestrian to the adhesive underneath.
I'm not sure the patent designer considered what to do when the car is inevitably hit with gravel or other objects that are sharp or have enough energy to break the topcoat.
to the term "bumper sticker".
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I suspect the logic for this idea comes from considering an elastic collision between a heavy and light object.
for a car with mass M, and intial velocity Vi and pedestrian of mass m, with initially no velocity and then final velocity Vp we can write:
MVi = MVf + mVp
MVi^2 = MVf^2 + mVp^2
for conservation of momentum and energy.
Solving these equations for Vp we get
Vp = 2 Vf *M/(M+m) ~ 2Vf
so an elastic collision throws the pedestrian off at a speed of twice the car's velocity, who then hits the ground.
If the pedestrian sticks to the car their final velocity if half that and four times less energtic.
Even if it's not a fully elastic collision the point is taken it's better to stick to the car.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
I would probably rather continue flying off the back of a vehicle than being slammed into some glue and not only come to a fast stop but be sent going the other direction. That would really jar the internals of a person.
Isn't the point of autonomous vehicles to avoid hitting pedestrians?
Glue all over your car... for one, it's stupid and nobody is going to buy cars with glue all over them. Secondly, it doesn't present the level of confidence in self driving cars that I would have hoped.
I'm pretty sure this is just part of Google's whole skynet thing they have going on. Like it's watched Terminator dozens of times and decided that what it needs to do is snag John Conner with a self driving car before he can become a thorn in Google's side.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
This on all cars http://www.thesneeze.com/art/l... or this for really busy areas https://s-media-cache-ak0.pini...
Rocks kicked up by other cars?
The neighbor kid's Frisbee?
Various other types of road debris?
Hopefully, they've found a way to keep this from happening or it won't be too long before your Google car will look like a garbage dump on wheels. The FA didn't say anything about how often you'd need to take your Google car in to be resurfaced with a new layer of glue.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
Google is paying Arizona residents $20 per hour to test its self-driving vehicles.
I wonder how much they're paying impact-testers!?
Cartoonists are licking their chops.
Table-ized A.I.
...You'll literally turn your car into a giant fly strip? Someone should patent a cover for this to keep your car clean -- sound almost as good of an idea as the original patent.
Since you're already in trouble.
For when you hit a moose at least you can feed your family for the next while because it won't escape.
There is no need to freak out when a pedestrian hits your car and impairs your vision of the road!! You forgot that this vehicle is Autonomous!!
Is that to rid on the inside or the outside of the car?
Bumper sticker?
I hardly even know'er!
I came here to post the same thing, but what you said was even better than what I was going to write.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
"Google is paying Arizona residents $20 per hour to test its self-driving vehicles" I'd want more than $20 to be hit by a car and stuck to it's hood!
I am not a number - I am a free man!
The summary implies that you'd have to hit the surface really hard before it became sticky. There's a non-sticky coating over the adhesive. Presumably they'd formulate it so that you get something that doesn't crack when a bug or even a bird hits it. A pedestrian impact would be hard enough to crack it and release the adhesive.
That still doesn't mean it's a practical idea; but it's better than some people are making it out to be.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
It is hard to take Slashdot articles seriously these days. Lots of hype and wacky stuff announced as almost ready. Who runs this now? They must have a seat next to the kool aid tank.
I can think of dozens of reasons why the adhesive idea is stupid. Here is where thinking goes bad: one single scenario is considered and then they stop thinking. The scenario is: new car, no hand buffed wax, warm climate, city speeds, honest driver who will stop and help injured people, and a mild hit at a cross walk.
The average all-in-one car polish includes an abrasive, and over the years would likely remove any film, or the car may be impossible to wax and buff.
The climate where I live goes down to -20 C at times, and I'm in the southern zone of Canada. Cars are often covered by several inches of snow or ice. Does the adhesive work at cold temperatures, or does it activate and cling to several pounds of snow and ice?
The adhesive would bind to clothes and any carried objects. It wouldn't necessarily keep the person still and depends on the strength of the clothing. In some cases of loose garments, it could lead to dragging the body on the road if they didn't stop quickly. This can be an important factor because there are hit and runs.
How does it deal with adhering to skin? Sounds like it could be worse than a typical crazy glue accident.
So do these people have a wacky idea, get it posted to slashdot and have people like me do the work of hitting the potential flaws?
nt
no more humping on the hood of the car.....
The same thing happened with the "cow catchers" on cars from 1917.
The problem in both cases is velocity.
The first impact breaks things. But then there is the inevitable recoil - aka, the bounce. Since the car has the higher mass, the bounce is far more on the person than the car - and will pull them apart.
In the "cow catcher" situation, it worked fine... until the cars were moving faster than about 20 miles/hour, in which case the legs were broken ... off.
In this, the legs will get stuck under the car and ground into the road surface until the car comes to a stop.
What about the rest of the stuff that normally lands on cars? Like bugs, birds, leaves, squirrels, chipmunks, poop, dust...
Has any of these brilliant Google people ever figured out what happens when your hit by a Google car and are stuck to it and then the Google car has a secondary accident? In which case because you are stuck to the car you end up being crushed. Sadly these Google people think that their is a solution for every problem.
The problem is, they may be great in offering up solutions to certain situations. But don't know much about the overall problem especially when it comes to car vs people accidents.
I live in Wisconsin. On the back roads, it's not uncommon to see deer attempt to cross traffic, and there are quite a few unlucky motorists who manage to hit one.
Now, if the impact doesn't kill the deer, I have an angry/terrified deer thrashing about on my hood.
If the impact *does* kill the deer, I'll need to have tags with me, since I'm now transporting a deer that I just killed.
Take it to the limit, everybody to the limit, come on, everybody fhqwhgads.
So when you are hit leaving the beach, how much of your skin will be stuck to the car when they pry you off?
How much of the "Golden Hour" will be spent prying someone off of a car, rather than getting them to the hospital?
Is there going to be a big label on the car warning about the dangers of touching it? Is Google ready to bear the burden of lawsuits over cancer caused by the adhesives?
What about knowingly and willfully exposing the public to cancer-causing compounds, knowing the risks?
way to bring back the hood ornament.
If the goal is to "glue" the pedestrian to the car, but we worry about having a coating that might be damaged by other things, how about (since it's an autonomous car with lost of sensors) recognize we are about to hit someone, it is "unavoidable" so we deploy something just before impact. As a bonus, maybe it can be a air-bag type of device that deflate as it hits to help reduce the force of impact, as well as being sticky to keep them from bouncing off. Then again, a passive safety system doesn't suffer from cases that there is not time to deploy, or the pedestrian is not recognized.
This greatly simplifies the score tracking in Death Race.
Some settling may occur during posting.
If this ever comes out, I give it five minutes before some drunk folks decide to try to stick themselves to their friend's car and go down the road at a high rate of speed for the thrill of it. Let's hope that flypaper is strong enough to hold at 50 or 60 miles per hour.
Never mind that the surface of a car can be blazing hot even in the winter...
This is the kind of idea that sounds good in theory but I suspect won't actually work as well as hoped in real life.
For starters, it will be highly dependent on the clothes being worn; Woollen fabrics will not adhere well to the car, and just leave a fluffly layer.
Thin/delicate material would likely just tear off in places leaving partial adhesions which could send the pedestrian spinning off instead of just bounced flatly.
Loose-fitting clothing would likely cause constriction issues on limbs as they are thrown against their own clothes while the front of the clothes is stuck to the car.
Partial adhesions could also be horrific; Imagine if your arm or leg stuck to the car but the rest of you didn't?
And lastly, if this adhesive is strong enough to hold a grown adult to the bonnet, how the heck are they going to unstick them? esp. as the bonnet will probably be wrapped around them, given that it is a primary crumple-zone!
Today, I can be hit by a fast car, fall over it, and the car will slide away under me. (Low profile sports car). Nasty experience, but it could be worse:
Ge hit by a fast car, fall over it, suddenly get stuck to a car moving much faster than me, breaking my back/legs/arms as I'm violently accelerated up to car speed. A tremendous yank on whatever body part got stuck to the car.
We will see accidents where people have an arm ripped off because it got stuck to the car that hit them. Get your head stuck at an angle, have your neck snap.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4rASq52zRFs
... in a heavy snowstorm.
It's incredible how many boneheads can't read past the title and make idiotic comments based on nothing but their own ignorance.
Welcome to the internet I guess.
So in other words, Google is admitting that their so-called 'self-driving cars' will hit pedestrians, and they're trying (vainly) to mitigate that already. Face it, people: You're going to be driving yourself for a long, long time to come, so you'd better get to a driver training school once in a while to make sure your skillset is up to par. Also, who the hell would be insane enough to want to sit down in a box on wheels with no controls for a human being and let it control YOU? That's nuts and I'll be having NONE of it, thank you very much. This whole idea is rediculous, self-driving car fanbois apparently don't understand the technology involved and how far short of the mark it falls, the so-called 'statistics' of Google's cars' safety is meaningless because it turns over control to the human operator all the time, only goes 20mph max, never on a freeway, and otherwise there isn't enough data to call any 'statistics' reliable, and last but not least: so-called 'self-driving cars' will actually take away people's very much human right to choose, and will control THEM instead of them controlling IT, and that's just plain wrong. Technology is supposed to be tools for humans, not something that controls or enslaves humans. I am and will continue to be philosophically opposed to the entire idea of a vehicle I am not allowed to directly control and would not own one for any reason. The most I'll accept is a 'driver assist' system that acts as a sophisticated autopilot when I flip the switch to allow it to do so. Otherwise I'll just keep driving myself, thank-you-very-much. Oh, and by the way? You people get your way anyway? I'll go out of my way to troll your self-driving car to the point where it has an epileptic fit and just shuts down, just for the lulz. Oh, and also: Enjoy knowing that your utterly uncontrollable self-driving car can be brought to some other destination than what you intended, or brought to a complete stop in the middle of nowhere, wirelessly, by any cop that decides he wants to do so, or government agency, or criminal wanting to carjack you, or any bored script kiddie. That's the world you're buying into, and I will LAUGH OUT LOUD at you when it happoens -- then drive or ride away knowing that it won't happen to me. {/rant}
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
This could be a good way to get rid of those pesky fast food wrappers, and keep them from blowing around the street.
Did they also submit a patent of a product that makes it possible to get bugs off of the new adhesive?
I think the obvious solution here is that similar to jaywalking laws, there should be a law that any pedestrian cross a street should be required to wear "Glue Suits" that would glue them to any objects that hit them.
If you think about it, this is really much more beneficial as it also works with the legacy car systems of today - you would be glued to the vast hood of a '76 Buick just as well as you would to the sloping sides of a Google Egg Car.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Am I the only one who thinks that this stands a VERY good chance of ripping the pedestrians skin off their body?? This sounds completely horrifying.
Or, maybe it's not a kidnapping, it's a surprise adoption!
This comment is my opinion and does not represent an official position of Donald Trump or others I do not work for
"What a great idea", I thought. I'll volunteer to be a tester for this. So I did. Right away I realized the the problem is not what sticks to it when I am driving as much as what sticks to it when it's parked. So far I've had to pry off dogs, cats, two neighborhood children and a variety of homeless (when I park downtown). My test week was cut short when a pedestrian jumped out from between two cars in front of me and became stuck to the front right area. I swerved to avoid him, but he was stuck tight. Unfortunately, when I swerved left I crossed into the oncoming lane where I was hit by another car, which sent me spinning into a nearby wall. The pedestrian was stuck on tight, did not fly off even as the car spun around, and was completely crushed when I hit the wall head on. When the wrecker finally moved the car to remove the body, police discovered the remains of a small dog stuck to the center of the bumper. Guess that was why he jumped out and yelled at me. Without the sticky substance this guy would have walked away with a bruise, but the glue stuff carried him to his death.
"What a terrible idea", I thought.
Do you get paid $20/hr for driving the car or getting hit by it?
If it works, this sounds like a great way to kidnap someone.
Examine even your most deeply held beliefs. Nobody is always right.