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BMW Says Self-Driving Car To Be Level 5 Capable In Five Years (reuters.com)
German carmaker BMW is on track to deliver a self-driving car by 2021, the company's senior vice president for Autonomous Driving, Elmar Frickenstein, said on Thursday. From a report: "We are on the way to deliver a car in 2021 with level 3, 4 and 5," Frickenstein told a panel discussion in Berlin, explaining the vehicle will have different levels of autonomy, depending on how and where it is used. A level 5 vehicle is capable of navigating roads without any driver input, while a level 3 car still needs a steering wheel and a driver who can take over if the car encounters a problem.
Hell! I'm Level 5 right NOW.
BTW: WTF is Level 5?
It would be cool is future BMW have blinkers, because all the ones I see on the road do not!
"Science will win because it works." - Stephen Hawking
So you can't afford a $17k VW Jetta, but you're confident that the $30k Tesla 3 will replace it in the market?
Are you Joe the Plumber?
So it's autonomous except when it isn't.
Wake me when we have a car that's full-time Level 5.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
Back in 2013, Google said their SDCs would be available in 3 years, which means that they were ready LAST YEAR. So BMW is way behind.
LUDICROUS SPEED!
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
I suspect you will see a pretty big shift in what makes a car desirable when self driving cars become the norm, its hard to say if ownership will even be as common as it is now, it seems unlikely that kids who grow up in a family that has a self driving car will ever learn to drive.
I suspect that more and more, in car entertainment, comfort, ride smoothness and fuel economy/range will be the primary things used to market cars in the future and not the ultimateness of the driving machine.
"In America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women..." -H. Simpson
Level 5 takes full autonomy to "all driving modes." That means the car is fully capable of driving itself anywhere in any condition, from a snowy, moonlit road to an unmapped desert. It should be noted that, at this point, Level 5 is theoretical. One Audi representative went so far as to describe it as "mythical." It's unlikely we'll see Level 5 autonomous driving in our lifetimes.
http://mashable.com/2016/08/26...
Level 4 is definitely obtainable though.
- Vincit qui patitur.
TFA is rather skimpy on details.
I presume that Level 5 is possible on clear roads, no precipitation and minimal biologic (humans and animals) interference. Say interstates and major thoroughfares.
Level 4 would be city streets with a good opportunity for unexpected events where the driver has to take over following the event (ie an accident in front of the vehicle which necessitates high level decision (ie find alternate route, wait for road to clear, pull out shotgun to keep looters/zombies away).
Level 3 would be the above with active precipitation (snow and rain) which requires the driver to keep an eye on things.
Anybody have a clearer definition?
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
Kids who grow up in a family that has a car of any kind now are not learning how to drive. Driver education is just about a complete failure. The written tests and road tests to get your license are a joke.
I have about 2 million miles of driving experience and I've just about seen it all. Very few people really know how to drive and phones have made a bad situation worse. I wish they would get off the road and leave the driving to people who know how to do it right.
Instead of self-driving cars we need to have all vehicles equipped with manual transmissions and have real tests of a person's driving ability. I guarantee it would remove 75% of drivers (or more) from the road. Wanta drive, kid? Show how much you want it by learning how or take public transportation.
Much better than the Italians.
Hot Rod magazine has been mocking Ferrari for decades now (e.g. proving the Pontiac GTO was faster than the Ferrari GTO, around Monza. etc etc). They fixed the Enzo that what's his name (comic) 'totaled' and reported on the costs.
Price of a red anodized aluminum washer used to retain the headlight on an Enzo? $5000. They have created a new definition for Chutzpah.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
I'm an advocate for:
* Electric
* Autonomous
* Shared (ie I don't own it)
vehicles. I like the potential for:
* Quiet roads /. :)
* Efficient travel (I'm a lead-foot)
* No fumes
* Shared rides even
* Time to browse
* TXT/IM/phone & drive legally
* Clear the parked cars of the streets (more lanes, even more efficient)
* Garage & driveway space freed up
I'm just a little worried about people tampering with the smarts and picking you off. I know of two incidents where people who were about to "talk" within days /hours seemed to have their high-tech cars go nuts and kill them.
That really is my only concern... (adjusts tin foil hat)...
OK, you excelled at the Luddite test. Well done.
Jeeesuuuzzzz,
Totally BS. Tests have already shown a level 3 (.5) vehicle outperformed a human every time in snow and ice
I've seen far too many idiots behind the wheel that are even worse than the current error-prone "autonomous" systems. They're a low bar to clear, but they're allowed on the road, so that's the reality to measure against. And autonomous systems are improving rapidly, I would not be at all surprised in with another 5-10 years they're significantly safer than even the average driver. Probably not in "weird" scenarios, but weird scenarios are by their nature uncommon.
If an autonomous car can avoid 95% of normal accidents, then it can afford to do pretty spectacularly badly in the face of "weird" scenarios, and still be dramatically safer overall (assuming those weird accidents aren't spectacularly worse than the ones avoided would have been).
At this point I'd say the single biggest thing that could be done to improve autonomous vehicle safety would be to get better at detecting impending weirdness. It doesn't even have to deal with it - just warn the driver that it's not completely sure how to deal with something coming up, and they should pay attention and put get their hands on the wheel.
Unfortunately, I suspect that will prove exceptionally difficult. For the simple reason that current AI technologies are far, far better at recognizing things they expect to see than recognizing that they're misinterpreting the data. Which is not completely unlike humans, but humans possess two huge advantages:
1) We've been exposed to vastly more "weirdness" - in fact pretty much the entire process of learning to be human can be summed up as "WTF!?!... okay, I think I get it... wait, WTF?!?" ,
2) We actually (think we) comprehend what they're seeing, making us far more likely to notice the inconsistencies that indicate that we're mistaken
In fact, I suppose both can be summed up as, humans are accustomed to being wrong and figuring out how to deal with it. An AI only knows "Patterns I recognize" and "What???"
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Yeah because in Europe, all cars are manual and driver tests are much harder so there are only 25% of people driving.
No, people just learn how to drive. Sure, they are more skilled drivers than the average US driver, but they're also more prone to driving like crazy. Incompetent drivers have more frequent, but less serious accidents. See also men versus women statistics. (because yeah, like it or not, men tend to be more skilled in average compared to women when it comes to driving but also more dangerous).
As a counter example I put up my German Aunt. Took her more than two years and five figures to get her license, but she still can't drive for shit. She will stop in the middle of an intersection to argue about the route with her passenger.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
wait, what lane do you want me to go in?
Randomly picks a lane, wait for yelling to commence if I guess wrong.
The problem is needing to drive in the first place.
In places with good public transportation (e.g., Europe), you don't need to drive - you can get around pretty damn effectively with just public transportation. Hell, you can even get between cities taking the trains and planes and never needing to step in a car.
Problem is, then you go to places like North America, where the vast majority of cities are car-only. Walking only gets you from one big box store to another (assuming you can cross that 10 lane highway in-between them), and public transit is non-existent. There you less WANT to drive but instead NEED to drive.
Driving's a chore. It's something most drivers in North America don't want to do (as evidenced by their attention being held elsewhere, typically on small handheld devices). What needs to be done is eliminating the need to drive, so those who drive are those that want to.
Better yet, if we can get your sorry ass off the road and replace you with a self-driving vehicle, we won't have to pay your salary and all the shit you peddle will be cheaper. You'll be fine because you've saved your money and have a comfy retirement, so we all win. Or you'll die penniless having spent your money and had your job eliminated due to automation, in which case we win. Either way, it's a win for most of us.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
If you don't trust an AI while seated in an energy absorbing cage with 3 point restraints and inflatable body protection, you sure as shit shouldn't trust that same AI when you're walking around with nothing to protect you from it at all.
Personally, I'll take an AI over someone driving a 6000lb vehicle while talking on the phone and/or texting and/or posting to Facebook/Instagram/Snapchat any day.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Just took a long trip using Waze/in car nav. In Nashville, Waze had no idea how to get to a starbucks I had programmed in. I found a parking lot, searched for starbucks near me, and it found one, in Atlanta! Overall both Waze and in car did a good job, missing probably 20% of the time. But 20% is completely unacceptable if they were steering. I had snow in DC area, which I am skeptical self-drive works acceptably. Numerous construction areas, again problematic. I got a feeling self drive is going to be like voice recognition was in the 80's, just around the corner, for another 25 years. Even now, I'm not sure I'd trust voice recognition if my life depended on it.
Except you don't need to figure out consciousness to make autonomous cars safer than humans - you just have to program them to deal with a sufficiently large amount of the more common weirdness it might encounter.
Option A: You're a passenger in a car with an average human driver, who can probably figure their way through pretty much any weirdness they encounter, but through carelessness or distraction will sometimes get in accidents even in normal circumstances - odds of death, currently about 10 per billion miles traveled.
Option B: You're a passenger in an autonomous car that can perfectly handle anything it's programmed to, but will probably kill you if it encounters anything sufficiently weird.
So long as the odds of encountering an unprogrammed weirdness are less than 10 per billion miles traveled, you'll be safer with Option B. You may not *feel* safer, but you will *be* safer.
That said, I'm not getting in any autonomous vehicle that doesn't at least possess a big red "Emergency Stop" button. Because as unlikely as it is, I have absolutely no desire to see an impending disaster with plenty time to avert it, but not enough control. That's what dealing with a bureaucracy is for.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
He's totally missing the point of the definitions. Level 3 is "can drive autonomously, in some conditions, with occasional human intervention". Level 4 is "can drive autonomously, in some conditions, without human intervention". Level 5 is "can drive autonomously, in any conditions that a human can drive in, without human intervention". Saying "We can do Level 3, 4, or 5, depending on the conditions" is saying "We can do Level 3".
I wonder how much weight, electricity, extra parts and cost is going to be shifted to the buyer. Tell me, what happens when one of these special parts break? This will also give the insurance companies a chance to devour you $$$ if you don't comply. I hope they keep the manual override option for another 10 years. Hopefully I'll be dead by then, and won't have to contend with the car crushing situation. I'm sure even the bare bone cars will not be cheaper. Why can't they just stick to making life easier in general in the workplace and at home to prove them selves worthy of automating cars??
The problem is that there are no nominal conditions while driving, unlike flying an aircraft, rocket or spacecraft. Nothing is going to be in your way to steer around, your path was charted down to the last meter months in advance, every move that you could possibly make was built into the design years in advance. Automobiles operate under an almost entirely different set of requirements, many unknown until the last hundred milliseconds.
That's a poor example because not a lot of effort has gone into creating a device to sort and fold laundry. Dump a hundred million dollars into the problem and it will likely be solved in not to long of time.
Your Future Car's Hood Will Be Welded Shut
Not in all weather they won't. Only people in moderate climates will be able to use these.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
There are a lot of edge cases in the set of interactions entire physical world can have on a vehicle. I'm not confident they will ever think of enough. Some kid will always be getting run over because he was in a shadow and the sun was shining in a stripe and it reflected off the red shirt the child was wearing and confused the car.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Let it keep itself going in a snow storm. Or try using it after the morning of a snow storm.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
We're running out of places that can afford to keep their public transportation up to date.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Sure. But that's not relevant to the question.
The question is: Will such accidents, regardless of cause, be more common with an autonomous car than with your average idiot driver at the wheel?
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Hopefully it won't drive like a BMW driver.
No, the question is who will compensate for the damage. If a human driver kills a child then it is possibly just a tragic accident where nothing could be done. If an automated car kills a child then it is something that should have been caught unless it can be definitively proven a human would have made the same mistake in the same circumstance. The question is whether the compensation will make it undesirable or unprofitable.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
And why would it need to be "definitively proven a human would have made the same mistake in the same circumstance", when with a human driver it is not necessary to definitively prove that a *different* human would have made the same mistake. And even if it is decided to be a tragic unavoidable accident, odds are your insurance will still have to pay out, you just won't end up going to prison for it.
And as far as financial liability is concerned, Tesla and many others have already indicated they expect to accept full liability for their autonomous vehicles.
Consider this:
A fully autonomous car that does not need insurance, because liability is accepted by the manufacturer, who has deep enough pockets to pay directly.
The cost of insurance can thus be added to the price of the car, allowing the manufacturer to reap the profits previously enjoyed by insurance company.
Even greater profits in fact, because statistically speaking the autonomous cars are (expected to be) safer, and insurance is an industry that lives and dies on statistics.
And as an added bonus, further safety improvements will be doubly profitable - customers will almost certainly be willing to pay a premium for a safer car, while simultaneously the company can now expect fewer losses due to liability payouts.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Americans seem to think that. True if you are in a big city like Berlin or Paris... Anything else... not so much.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
> In places with good public transportation (e.g., Europe)
What? Have you ever been to Europe? I live there, probably in one of the places with the best public transport and it's STILL a disaster. Sure, I can get to work with public transport but it'll take me 3 times as long and I'll be stuck in a cramped space with people I don't want to be stuck with.
I'll just take the car, thank you, like most people around here who can afford one.
I think reliability would still have to be at the top of the list.
Sure I'm fine with it as long as the manufacturer pays, I just don't see it that way. I see insurance companies raising premiums on people who were never responsible for their accidents in the first place.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
the single biggest thing that could be done to improve autonomous vehicle safety would be to get better at detecting impending weirdness
The problem is that, even assuming your AI was able to realise something weird was coming up, most drivers don't have the reflexes of a fighter pilot or F1 driver, so being given a split second warning to get your hands on the controls and do something won't be enough.
Most accidents happen very quickly indeed.
The scenario of "there is a massive snowstorm coming up in five minutes time, please take manual control" is totally different.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
That's a poor example because not a lot of effort has gone into creating a device to sort and fold laundry. Dump a hundred million dollars into the problem and it will likely be solved in not to long of time.
I'm pretty sure there was an article here a few months ago about a laundry folding machine. It was very slow, extremely expensive and had already killed two users (joking).
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
What's the level where the car can take me home, legally and safely, when I'm drunk, and then go find itself a parking spot?
That's called the cold fusion level.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
$60 million is really not a lot of money.
I agree that would be a problem - but it's a problem already being addressed by the manufactures themselves saying that full liability should fall on them. A completely reasonable position, since any avoidable autonomous accident clearly reflects a product defect.
If the eventual reality fails to reflect that, then yes, we'll have a problem. But I suspect they have a major vested interest in making sure it does - they want to sell expensive new autonomous cars, and customers are going to be a lot more confident in making that purchase if the manufacturer consistently stands behind their product.
Plus, you know, the whole "they get to steal the profits from the auto insurance industry".
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Still it remains to be seen if autonomy will be affordable once all these costs are considered. There will be several deaths due to various situations possibly warranting settlements into the billions. Will these be just as safe on ice as on pavement? What happens when someone directs their automated vehicle to drive into a weather condition that is "not supported"? Many questions, and many people thinking that it will just work itself out somehow.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Let's be clear - by "weirdness" I'm not talking about an imminent accident. Collision avoidance is a comparatively simple thing, at least in theory, and autonomous cars are mostly *really* good at it, far better than a human. Except when they misunderstand what they're seeing.
What I'm discussing is that last part - and it covers pretty much all the autonomous vehicle accidents we've seen so far - not noticing there was a semi crossing the road, driving into lane-squeezing road work barriers at high speed, etc. Some of that can be fixed with better sensors, but they all boil down to the computer misinterpreting what it was seeing, and better sensors can only help so much with that.
If we could, somehow, get the computer to recognize when it doesn't really understand what it's seeing, then generally speaking all it would need to do is stop as rapidly as it safely can, blinking it's hazard lights so that everyone around it know that something is wrong, and ask the passenger what to do. Sure there's no doubt a few cases where that might be exactly the wrong thing to do to avoid disaster, but in the vast majority of situations a stopped car is far safer than a moving one.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
>There will be several deaths due to various situations possibly warranting settlements into the billions.
Well, I have no doubt people will *try* for that, but I see no reason why courts would be any more inclined to award such a penalty than they would with a human driver at the wheel.
Now, if there's systematic flaws warranting a class-action lawsuit - maybe. But so long as the manufacturers can point to a track record proving that their vehicles are substantially safer than those with a human driver, justice would be on their side (the law? who knows) And if they can't do that... well then let them burn.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
You try telling that to a family that lost a child because a computer got blinded by the sun.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Don't have to, that falls under "I have no doubt people will *try*"
The question is whether they can convince a judge and jury to inflict such an outrageous penalty.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Having a child die in a tragic accident that is caused by an imperfect human is one thing, but releasing and profiting from driving software that knowingly has flaws and has not been tested for every situation is quite another. In the former case you are likely to just receive an insurance settlement, in the other case the irresponsible party is a billion dollar company that should have done everything within their power to prevent the death from happening in the first place. America is a place where you can get a million dollar settlement if you serve the coffee too hot, how much is a child's life worth in punitive damages to a company with deep pockets. It's not just the deaths either, it is every fender bender, every scrape. It will probably just make more sense to have a system whereby they can accept claims and pay them out to the vehicle owners rather than going through small claims court for every one.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
No, it really isn't. You're arguing that anything short of perfection should invoke penalties, by which standard no business could ever afford to produce *anything*. So long as my kid is provably safer in an autonomous vehicle than with me at the wheel, and there's no actual attempt to cover up known flaws rather than trying to improve them, I have no case.
Also, your invocation of the McDonalds hot coffee suit is way off base - look it up, it's nothing like you probably imagine - that's the result of a massive spin campaign by McDonalds to try to weasel out of a case of serious criminal negligence. Their coffee was just shy of boiling, far above safe limits, and they had been repeatedly warned about the risk over the course of many months. Not "Yow that's hot!", but "Holy shit the skin is falling off my genitals!"
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
http://schoolsucksproject.com/... ... ..."
"Now come back to the present while I demonstrate that the identical trust placed in ordinary people two hundred years ago still survives where it suits managers of our economy to allow it. Consider the art of driving, which I learned at the age of eleven. Without everybody behind the wheel, our sort of economy would be impossible, so everybody is there, IQ notwithstanding. With less than thirty hours of combined training and experience, a hundred million people are allowed access to vehicular weapons more lethal than pistols or rifles. Turned loose without a teacher, so to speak. Why does our government make such presumptions of competence, placing nearly unqualified trust in drivers, while it maintains such a tight grip on near-monopoly state schooling?
It should strike you at once that our unstated official assumptions about human nature are dead wrong. Nearly all people are competent and responsible; universal motoring proves that. The efficiency of motor vehicles as terrorist instruments would have written a tragic record long ago if people were inclined to terrorism. But almost all auto mishaps are accidents, and while there are seemingly a lot of those, the actual fraction of mishaps, when held up against the stupendous number of possibilities for mishap, is quite small. I know it's difficult to accept this because the spectre of global terrorism is a favorite cover story of governments, but the truth is substantially different from the tale the public is sold.
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
I don't care if a business is making teddy bears and every fifth bear missing an ear. This is a little different. They don't make front end loaders that can explode and kill the driver, so automated cars shouldn't be killing drivers either. Maybe just maybe the technology isn't really quite there to do it safely yet, I'm not willing to give these companies a pass because they relaxed their standards enough to get out the gate first.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
The idiot driver goes to jail. What happens when the autopilot does it? Not sure how placated a lawyer and jury will be with yeah, sorry, but your kid would have died last week because statistics..
full liability
When death is involved, it goes beyond liability.
I see no reason why...
You sound very young and inexperienced in the real world.
>They don't make front end loaders that can explode and kill the driver
Of course they do. They do their best to make it not happen, but just the wrong combination of bad luck, poor maintenance, etc and it can still happen.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
We're not talking about age and maintenance. We're talking about out of the box brand new.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
That's my thought too. There's just way too many corner cases and unforeseen circumstances out there. We may eventually get there, but I'm guessing we'll be stuck at level 3 for quite a while, with vehicles that can really only be autonomous in limited, well-defined situations. Even with your ferry loading situation, even if an AI was capable of understanding what it needed to do, it may just be quicker and easier for a human to take control and just do it rather than having to figure out how to tell the AI exactly what it needs to do. On a ferry with dozens of vehicles, all it would take is one car where the AI just doesn't "get it" and refuses to move to cause a big problem. That's one of the reasons I don't see myself ever buying a car that doesn't have a steering wheel or some way for me to manually drive it.