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Singapore Launches World's First 'Self-driving' Taxi Service (theguardian.com)
Days before ride-hailing service Uber debuts its self-driving car in Pittsburgh, a company in Singapore has beaten Uber to the race. The Guardian reports: The world's first "self-driving" taxi service has been launched in Singapore -- albeit with a human backup driver and co-pilot on board for the time being. Members of the public selected to take part in the trial would be able to hail a free ride through their smartphones, said nuTonomy, an autonomous vehicle software startup. The cars -- modified Renault Zoe and Mitsubishi i-MiEV electrics -- had a driver in the front prepared to take back the wheel and a researcher in the back watching the car's computers, the company said. Each was fitted with Lidar, a laser-based detection system like radar. An Associated Press reporter taking a ride on Wednesday observed that the safety driver had to step on the brakes once, when a car was obstructing the test car's lane and another vehicle, which appeared to be parked, suddenly began moving in the oncoming lane. The service would start with six cars, growing to a dozen by the end of the year, said nuTonomy, adding that it aimed to have a fully self-driving taxi fleet in Singapore by 2018.
The worst part about human-controlled cabs is the smell of the driver.
The next self-driving car where they replace 1 driver with 2 drivers.
I believe the self-driving cars follows Moore's law. Double the number of drivers every 18 months!
I'm not familiar with that address.
Would you please repeat the destination?
I'm not familiar with that address.
Would you please repeat the destination?
I'm not familiar with that address.
Would you please repeat the destination?
And no, there is no hole in your mind (Babylon 5 reference for the truly nerdy among us).
I like how everyday we have some more clues that self driving cars are a real thing and that the next generation will find driving as awkward as the millennials find corded phone awkward.
I like it because it reminds me that technical and scientific progress cannot be stopped by morons just saying "it'll never happen". That a positive thing. We will still continue to have technical advancement despite the nonconstructive skeptics (kudos to constructive skeptics though, who make things progress by spotting what needs to be improved).
Video of some good progressive thrash music
Sheesh. And here I thought it would take 5 years for self-driving vehicles to become common.
By my previous estimate, around 5 million jobs in the US alone could be replaced or severely curtailed by self-driving vehicles (about 3.5 million jobs are driving tractor-trailers). I now think that's a low estimate, considering delivery vehicles, taxis, US mail, school busses, and so on.
The first self-driving tractor trailer hit the road about 18 months ago. Yes, they probably won't work in snow. Yes, they probably won't work in some situations, such as finding and backing into the loading dock. You'll still need humans for those situations.
But for the vast majority of cases, they will work for the long-haul across the US. (If you've ever driven across the US at night, you know that the highways are a never-ending chain of tractor trailers in the right-hand lane.) They don't need down time, they don't get tired, they don't get distracted, they can work 24/7. They can learn from each others' mistakes. They don't need salary or benefits.
This is demonstrably better from a safety and cost point of view, and it takes away a lot of tedious work from humans--giving them more free time--but it'll wreck our current economic system.
We currently have about 170 million workers, and sitting at about 10% unemployment. This one technological advance could push that up to 15%. Economically speaking, 10% unemployment is the beginning of the "this is bad, we should do something" level. We only recently dropped below that number from the great(-est) depression.
(How we deal with illegal immigrants is another big chunk of potential workers that could affect unemployment. Not to make this a partisan argument, but if we *do* have amnesty, it should be done in a layered, progressive fashion with an eye on unemployment so as not to tank the economy. Refugees are too few in number to affect unemployment.)
Once this is popular in more countries we will be rid of the problems we often have with human drivers.
No more grand tours taking you via the longest route at a special tariff. No rude comments or "chitchat" because they are bored. No phone conversations or unwanted sexual attention.
I just hope they won't run into too many teething issues to put people off for another few years...
A 'singular oddity' is an event that cannot be explained and only happens when you are alone.
But... reasons!
Bye!
It will be interesting to see how the states, cities and municipalities that depend on speed traps and parking tickets for revenue will react to this. /FCC but on I-95).
Also Insurance, Car Registration.
Car companies will need to morph.
Same as insurance companies (won't someone think of the poor gecko?).
Most roads are funded by Federal or State governments, so they will want oversight (think FAA
In the end, it will all be about money and how these driver less cars handle human interaction (pedestrian and vehicle).
Don't get your hopes up: bots can be programmed to stiff ya and be annoying also. Instead of chit-chat, you'll get pop-up ads. Right now there's too much press and scrutiny, but in the future when it becomes routine, tricks and slack will slide in.
On a different note, Singapore has an advantage over the USA for roll-out in that they are not a democracy* and have fewer checks and balances: if something goes wrong, the gov't can tell the victims and lawyers to STFU and everyone is used to that.
* The USA arguably isn't either, but not to Singapore's level.
Table-ized A.I.
I like it because it reminds me that technical and scientific progress cannot be stopped by morons just saying "it'll never happen".
That's quite a different breed of moron from the ones who say "it should not happen". Think stuff like stem cell research, teaching evolution, etc.
There also is a difference between saying something wont happen soon or won't happen in a particular way versus saying it won't happen at all. For example renewable energy very clearly won't replace most fossil fuels for the next several decades at least. That's a very different statement from saying it "cannot" replace fossil fuels and different still from saying it "shouldn't" replace fossil fuels for many applications. I think that renewables will replace much of our fossil fuel use eventually. I just don't think it will happen as fast as we might hope it would. I'm skeptical about the rate of adoption, not whether it will or won't happen.
I am routinely skeptical about overly optimistic predictions, unrealistic economic expectations, incomplete analysis, etc. That doesn't mean I'm skeptical scientific and engineering progress in general. It just means that I think the person has some of the specifics wrong on a particular topic.
Was the guy who got his head sheared off a skeptic?
I like how everyday we have some more clues that self driving cars are a real thing and that the next generation will find driving as awkward as the millennials find corded phone awkward.
I like it because it reminds me that technical and scientific progress cannot be stopped by morons just saying "it'll never happen". That a positive thing. We will still continue to have technical advancement despite the nonconstructive skeptics (kudos to constructive skeptics though, who make things progress by spotting what needs to be improved).
They aren't so ignorant as to believe that it'll never happen. What they really mean is that it'll never happen in your lifetime
Regardless, you never be able to force one upon me.
Never.
Ever.
Fucking EVER!!!
Belie' dat, mofo.
That's what I like.
Here we go....now that it's clear (as it has always been if you look) that "self-driving cars" are mostly hype we will start to see companies moving goalposts to claim they have done it.
Uber is doing this in Pittsburg.
This tech has amazing capabilities but it's not ever going to be able to do what they are claiming.
Thank you Dave Raggett
I like how everyday we have some more clues that self driving cars are a real thing and that the next generation will find driving as awkward as the millennials find corded phone awkward.
I like how "self-driving" continues to be defined down so that the empty-headed futurists can keep banging their drum.
Millenials? They will continue to build lives that don't need cars, period, self-driving or not. What will be awkward is baby-boomers and Gen-Xers trying to sell their house in the car-centric 'burbs.
You are totally fucking blind to all of the challenges that need to be overcome. The clues we see every day demonstrate how far off we are.
I'm not saying "it'll never happen". It will. It just won't happen in the time-frame you're hallucinating.
They won't need to force one on you. You'll eagerly do it yourself, and you'll conveniently forget that you ever claimed to be against it.
The brain damage I sustain after being run over by one might cause me to do that, so yeah, I certainly see a high probability of that happening.
>Millenials? They will continue to build lives that don't need cars, period, self-driving or not. What will be awkward is baby-boomers and Gen-Xers trying to sell their house in the car-centric 'burbs.
Nope. We're just waiting for you to have children, at which point our houses will double in value because the city has been so busy not approving new fully detached homes. That bird is starting to roost just now. I'm glad I bought in a car centric neighbourhood, because my house value increased 20% in the past 5 years because of the policy Millennials demanded. I figure I'll live here for another 10 years and leave once it's doubled in value.
We're just waiting for you to have children, at which point our houses will double in value because the city has been so busy not approving new fully detached homes.
The few that do have children will never be able to afford to buy your house for price you can afford to sell it for.
Sell it now to the last few boomers looking to escape the city and all its confusing hipsters and scary minorities. Or plan on eating it later.
It won't happen. These "self driving" cars HAVE TWO FUCKING DRIVERS in them!
20% in the last 5 years? Um, that is a terrible investment.
Buying a home is "what is done". Everybody knows that. How can that be a bad investment!?
WELL!!??
>The few that do have children will never be able to afford to buy your house for price you can afford to sell it for.
LOL. Spoken like someone who is 25 and pissed off that they are at the bottom of the corporate ladder (or an apprentice if they were smarter and went for a trade). Don't worry, in 10 years you'll have the income necessary to become a mortgage slave too. And while you're laughing at the prospect today, when you are facing eviction because your 2 year old won't stop stomping and screaming all night, you'll also realize it's a better option. We've all been where you are.
The only way you won't be able to afford it is if there's severe deflation (we're not talking about the percentage or two that's likely to happen in Europe, I'm saying deflation of the 20%+ variety). If there's that kind of deflation, owning a fully detached home outright (no mortgage) is the best thing you can do, because there will be civil war, almost guaranteed (Fortunately, this almost never happens). It's a lot easier to defend a house than an apartment.
There's an OK investment for moderate deflation as well, because they can serve as a cash sink to protect your money from the government, which will usually institute all sorts of taxes on uninvested cash during such times to force stimulate the economy (Expect this in Sweden soon).
If you're thinking the suburbs will just die off and turn into crime infested hellholes, consider that they surround the city. Few city residents will be willing to find themselves in an ever shrinking circle with crime slowing invading their city. So even if that scenario happens, expect your taxes to pay to solve it. And it will make you mad. But hey, the other option is crime waves.
LOL. Spoken like someone who is 25 and pissed off that they are at the bottom of the corporate ladder (or an apprentice if they were smarter and went for a trade).
You read people like you read "investment opportunities".
As someone who lives a 10min bike ride to work in the heart of the CBD, I'm just tired of sharing the roads with wasteful, obsolete technology and paying taxes to prop up infrastructure for mindless consumerist dipshits. I make more than enough to cover a mortgage in this area.
If you're thinking the suburbs will just die off and turn into crime infested hellholes, consider that they surround the city.
I'm thinking that as deferred maintenance costs pile up in this country, the suburbs will be come increasingly expensive to maintain and you will be so mired in taxes and traffic that "crime infested hellhole" will seem like a better bet.
Driver-assist, but not full automation.
Mark my words.
No, you moron, they don't.
>
I like it because it reminds me that technical and scientific progress cannot be stopped by morons just saying "it'll never happen".
I've been active in these debates for a while and I've never seen any reasonable argument that says it will "never" happen. Only that the 'optimistic' predictions of robot cars for all by 2018, 2020, 2025 or whatever are naive.
We know automation works, and those of us who work in it everyday know it's capability. We also know it's limitations, and for an uncontrolled environment such as a public road there is much more than a couple of years worth effort before this is commonplace.
But dream the dream if it makes you feel better. We'll all have flying cars by 1990...
Eventually we will have the opportunity to observe collisions between self-driving vehicles using different implementations from different suppliers. The determination of liability will be interesting, worrying, disgusting, and expensive.
--
Cheap, Fast, Good -- you have selected "None of the Above", OK?
Yes, they do. There's still a chance that the outcome of this experiment will be "tough shit, doesn't work well enough (yet)".
Just for the record, I'm not one of the people who predict it won't happen.
CLI paste? paste.pr0.tips!
Funny. My wife & I (retired boomers) bought old house in the city earlier this year... It needs work, but we're fixing it up. We can walk to the hardware store, to grocery stores, to pubs. I mention the pubs because they are full of young people, and young people, with all their energy and enthusiasm, are fun to be around.
Sometimes we don't drive our car for weeks at a time. Yeah, we still need it for certain kinds of shopping. We're hoping that by the time we're too infirm to drive or to walk as far as we can now, we'll be able to summon a self-driving vehicle.
It's a good existence, and self-driving vehicles will make it even better for us and, I suspect, for subsequent generations.
Sometimes we don't drive our car for weeks at a time. Yeah, we still need it for certain kinds of shopping. We're hoping that by the time we're too infirm to drive or to walk as far as we can now, we'll be able to summon a self-driving vehicle.
It's a good existence, and self-driving vehicles will make it even better for us and, I suspect, for subsequent generations.
I'm sure that companies will continue to invest in technology to replace the car that you rarely use.
sarcasm aside, the answer is using our critical thinking skills and technical knowledge
see, /. is still a place where tech people, the people who *actually* understand how this big new tech works, come to comment
AI-cars can't see in the weather. Even light rain. That's just the vision aspect...it might as well be a warp drive...we just don't have anywhere near what we need with LIDAR and nothing in development now is close.
2nd, the software to make the choices necessary in the time necessary is beyond what we are capable of programming. Our algorythms don't learn properly and we don't have a paradigm for one on the horizon.
Those are two problems, they require some technical knowledge to understand, but even someone with a high school education could comprehend.
Here's where this tech will actually be deployed regularly fully autonomously: long-haul trucking *with* a lead vehicle with a human pilot with drone followers.
Thank you Dave Raggett
Millenials? They will continue to build lives that don't need cars, period, self-driving or not.
What is a life that don't need car? You never get out of the city? Never visit relatives? Never explore your surroundings?
I'm curious, because I can't think about a life without a car. It would be, for me, like being in a prison.
And I'm not a mass transit hater, I take the subway every work day, and sometimes on the weekends when it makes more sense.
Try it! Library of Babel
We still have a car for longer distance travel, shopping, etc.. Even if self-driving cars were the norm, I imagine one could rent a vehicle for the day or week or whatever. I find the notion of renting a new vehicle for vacation use fairly appealing. If there's a business opportunity, people will jump on it.