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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 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?
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!
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.
What do you want?
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?
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.
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.
The cure for road rage is to remove such morons' control of their vehicles and give them pacifiers/electronics to distract during their commute.
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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.
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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.
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.