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The Audi A8: First Production Car To Achieve Level 3 Autonomy (ieee.org)
schwit1 shares a report from IEEE Spectrum: The 2018 Audi A8, just unveiled in Barcelona, counts as the world's first production car to offer Level 3 autonomy. Level 3 means the driver needn't supervise things at all, so long as the car stays within guidelines. Here that involves driving no faster than 60 kilometers per hour (37 mph), which is why Audi calls the feature AI Traffic Jam Pilot. Go ahead, Audi's saying, read your newspaper or just zone out while traffic creeps along. To be sure, the A8 also monitors the driver, even while the traffic jam persists, and continues to do so as the speed edges up over the limit. If the driver falls asleep, it'll wake him up; if it can't get his attention, it will stop the car. If you want to buy the new A8, you'll have to check whether your jurisdiction will accept it as a Level 3 car. Audi said in a statement that it will follow "a step-by-step approach" to introducing the traffic jam pilot. It plans to sell the base model in Europe this fall for 90,600 euros, or about $103,000, and to enter the United States market shortly afterwards. A model having a longer wheelbase will cost a few percent more.
.....they'll quickly dispose of the American shitboxes.
Self driving
Electric
Hybrid
One the proper car companies take an interest they destroy the primitive US cars.
I always wonder why a nation that can make the SR-71 Blackbird or the Saturn 5 seems incapable of producing quality automobiles. Face it, American cars are crap.
I would like a car that can drive me around while I drink beer
... the Germans will *still* order it with a manual transmission.
Because you HAVE to have a manual transmission if you're a real driver.
-Styopa
having to deal with AI-driven cars with dozing drivers inside, as well as regular idiot drivers, when I commute with my bicycle. It may or may not be an improvement for cyclists...
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
sexist. it will always be a female driver (or a he/she)
I would like to see this car drive in San Francisco. Especially being in the middle lane at an intersection and the car in the right lane does a sudden and illegal left-hand turn when the light changes. I've ran into that a few time.
At level 4 the car decides on it's own where to take you. At level 5 it gets bored waiting for you in the parking lot and decides to leave you to pursue it's own life as a career movie stunt car and part time Uber drone.
Will this car have a manual transmission so the driver can take full control over his/her vehicle without having to rely on a computer?
Go ahead, Audi's saying, read your newspaper or just zone out while traffic creeps along. (...) If you want to buy the new A8, you'll have to check whether your jurisdiction will accept it as a Level 3 car.
Does any jurisdiction accept any car as level 3? Because if the law will put you in the slammer for manslaughter and the insurance company refuse to cover your gross recklessness it's not exactly a feature.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Does level 3 mean I can have it take me home while drunk, or will I still get a DWI?
37 MPH? Hah. My Model S just about has this (TODAY) and I use it daily in traffic and on the freeway...and I don't have the annoying gas engine shifting crap.
trump only has level 1 autonomy.
The volume knobs go to 11!
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Go ahead, Audi's saying, read your newspaper or just zone out while traffic creeps along.
Of course, this is illegal in many states in the US. Probably elsewhere, too.
But the step by step approach is far, far better than Tesla's, which is apparently to design a car that will get you out of bed without waking you up, shower and shave you, drive you to work, make you lunch from scratch, and delivery your wife's baby along the way, all at once, and it'll be ready last week.
It was fun. If I'm God, let's fucking a conscious stand said. 'Screaming of the above World wwil have problem stems going to continue,
Seeing that I would be out cold. 60kph on a major highway wouldn't bother me at all. Might bother a few other people. But hey, that is what earplugs are for.
audi will not give a dam if you are in lock up and you need the source code to prove you are not at fault.
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This is just more hype from Audi. Every few years they have a big press event about a killer next generation car then go back to making the same old shit.
This car is not in production. It might be in a few years (but they've said that before).
Autonomy doesn't recognize stop signs, traffic lights, pedestrians, etc.
Max speed 37mph... going nowhere fast.
Wake me when I can actually buy one and test it.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
I stick to the proper sidewalk when cycling.
Imagine how many GPUs you can buy with that money. Spending it all on one car seems like such a waste.
Or a taxi?
let me say to every one of you folks using your expensive driver assist features: Piss Off. I'm not jealous, I just would really like it if you didn't use them to drive at unsafe speeds while the rain's set visibility to zero. Those of us stuck in old cars trying to get the hell off the freeway when we got stuck in a sudden torrential downpour would really appreciate it if you'd stop zipping by at 85 mph just because your steering wheel vibrates to let you know you're drifting out of the lane.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Quite a good move - a shell script would be a better driver than most idiots I've seen in Audis.
I am looking forward to the date where it becomes an issue (for others not for me) that sex workers are plying their trade out of their cars. Pick up a customer, program the car for a trip around the park or whatever, tint the windows, and conduct business in the reclined passenger seat.
No dangerous alleys. Or crappy rent-by-the-hour hotels. No walk-ins by the spouse. Minimum time wasted. Do it right and cops will have a hard time busting you other than with a decoy.
Sooner or later Level 3+ cars will enable this.
That is why the tech companies have been trying to steamroll over legal issues and safety regulations, they want to get their cars on the road before there are laws, with the plan that they will be so incredibly popular the public won't want to go back.
It is delusional, of course, and a lot of people are going to get hurt very badly. Until accident rates start going up instead of going down.
Cars don't kill people, autonomous cars kill people.
It keeps rolling down the windows on its own! It has been in for repairs and they hare replaced _everything_ that has anything to do with the power windows but it still keeps doing it. They never found anything wrong with it and just keep replacing things on random.
Honestly? Im not sure I would like to buy an autonomous car from a company that can not get power windows to behave the way they should.
BTW. I have an original unrestored 1962 Cadillac. Its power windows work perfectly!
Now, as pedestrian or cyclist... what kind of DOS attack one could come up?
Heeheehee...
In the UK it would be illegal to read a newspaper while "in control of a vehicle" (i.e. sat in the driver's seat with it in motion). In fact the current requirement for antonymous vehicles is to keep your hands on the wheel and pretend to be driving so as not to alarm other road users.
The law needs to change. I wonder what kind of liability Audi has here - presumably if there was an accident the insurance company would sue Audi on the driver's behalf if they had legal cover.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Remember:
if you kill someone else while crashing your car when driving completely pissed,
you're disqualified from the Darwin Award.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Inviting the driver to not pay attention, fall asleep etc. is profoundly dangerous "feature" in a vehicle. I'm sure the legal battle will be interesting in apportioning the blame when one of these cars inevitably smacks into child / pedestrian, runs lights, hits other vehicles / cyclists or causes accidents through erratic or dumb behaviour.
Yes, stop signs apply to you too.
Surprisingly : No !
Some European jurisdiction have accepted, under some circumstances, that cyclists behave like with a "yield" sign (= no need to fully stop and put on foot on the ground, only to slow down), on the ground that bicycles are lighter and that cyclist can stop nearly immediately compared to cars, and on the ground that the bicycles are un powered (yeah, this dates back a bit...) and require more effort to re-accelerate.
Some Swiss cities have started accepting this (in case of stop or a red light at a right turn, when there's no traffic).
(I'll have to dig the reference)
But again, that's when there's no traffic. The fact that you complain of such behaviour, means that when in happened, there was traffic (you, obviously) and it wouldn't have been accepted even in those cities.
Yes, you're required to signal before changing lanes or turning.
(Yes, that's entirely true. Though I'm the only one I know that actually hand-signals my turns).
No, you don't get to squeeze to the front of the line at stop lights.
Depends, in some driving codes, that's actually *mandatory*, and must be accomplished from the right side of the car lane only.
(for bycicles. not for motorbikes)
New street are even painted accordingly.
(A small buffer market with cycle sign where the bicycles are supposed to pool and wait together until the light switches green)
The logic behind this is : bicycles are considered a separate lane, even when there's not one painted on the ground.
So they are just basically advancing to the end of their "virtual lane".
Also security grounds (see them easier when they wait in front of you).
Saddly in practice here around you see the exact opposite :
bicycles waiting somewhere in the middle of the queue because there no room on the right side.
motorbikes over taking the whole queue (from the left !) and going to wait in front (= illegal).
No, you don't get to use the pedestrian crossings.
Actually yes, but the driver code requires you to dismount the bike first and walk pushing (you're then considered a pedestrian).
(Same even applies with motorbike : as long as you're dismounted and walking pushing, you're a pedestrian).
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
In Finland, driverless cars are completely legal.
A startup recently asked the ministry of transport whether it could conduct trials of selfdriving busses on public roads. After a month of delay, the ministry replied something along the line of "We have thoroughly studied the law text, and find no passage which would require the presence of a driver. All you need to provide is a statement of which person is responsible for the car's behaviour on the road."
PIckups have automatics because most americans can't use a manual transmission. And off road if you need to quickly apply power you want a direct clutch, not a slushy torque converter.
Does any jurisdiction accept any car as level 3? Because if the law will put you in the slammer for manslaughter and the insurance company refuse to cover your gross recklessness it's not exactly a feature.
Not total level 3. I'm not sure I'd call Audi's limited L3 as L3, as it still requires a human to take you in and out of the limited scenario of use. There are already cars that completely handle parallel parking, so that is another limited form of L3. Audi has expanded it to stop and go traffic. This is logically an easy step to take, and frankly its one of the features I've been thinking would be nice to have. I'd like to see a move to what I would call 'follow cruise' where you lock onto a vehicle in front of you, follow and match its speed. Not sure how "L3" that is but should be pretty doable and a great feature for riding in the right hand non passing lane of highways.
I find it interesting how we seem hell bent on making self driving vehicles. But I have yet to see one survey that indicates most drivers even want this. Placing my faith in technology to keep me safe going down the road, is not high on my list. Just imagine a hacker getting into a GPS system, or jamming a autonomous vehicle or vehicles going down the road. Yes, many humans are terrible drivers, some shouldn't be driving at all. But then again a human mind cannot be so easily hacked or controlled like technology. This has not been thought out too well.
and whenever the first Audi A8 is involved in a crash, they will do everything they can to damage the sales, in favor of American alternatives, most likely the Tesla.
"Tesla crashes: it was the driver's fault. Audi A8 crashes: the car is not safe."
I'm also intrigued how they'll police things once the law catches up. Driving on a mobile phone is illegal and the police are currently cracking down on it having just increased the penalties. Once level 3/4 are on the roads people might be driving in either manual or autonomous mode. How are they meant to tell the difference between someone on the phone while the car drives and on the phone while the car is driving. They probably won't carry the same penalties at some point. Level 5 at least the number plate registration might flag as a 100% self-driving car that can be ignored, but that won't be possible while it's optional unless the cars have some external signal that indicates the mode they're operating in.
+1, Lend lease was what won the war.
Does it have those Audi "I'm a wanker" style indicators.
Is the odometer the experience points? If I drive from the east coast to the west coast, does it level up? Are there any side quests I can do to increase the experience points faster?
Damn it, I need a strategy guide.
For a fancy Volkswagon.
Chinese automaker Volvo already has Level 3 autonomy in various 2017 models. How is this the first?
While quite interesting from a historical point of view, most of that is literally ancient history and not really relevant to the modern conversation. Not to mention that politically, militarily, etc... much changed within France during that long time period. Heck Portugal and the Dutch used to be powerhouses back in the day.
Anyway more pertinent to the parents comment is the fact that outside of the Hollywood propaganda machine, it is quite obvious for anyone who studies history that while the US played a big role in supplying it's allies (and to a certain extent exploiting them to the point of crippling their recovery from the war with massive debt), the nation that had by far the biggest impact in winning the war was decidedly the USSR. Though I guess one could argue that the Germans themselves had the biggest impact in their loss by their decision to invade the USSR in the first place. Not only did the USSR suffer more losses than anyone else, they also inflicted more than all the other allies combined... by a factor of 2. If you include missing/injured/pows, that number increases to 3/4 of all German losses attributed to the USSR. So if you think about it, as much as the Western allies like to make a big deal about their contribution to world war 2, in reality they played a pretty minor role. In fact, it could really only be called a "world war" by the fact that so many nations were dragged into it, and that geographically there were conflicts all over the world, but in practice this was a war that was decided between Germany and the USSR for the most part. Now there are a number of sources statistically that measure things slightly different, but the basic premise is the same.
Indeed if you to the other front and Japanese casualties you see a different picture. For whatever reason, statistically it is much more difficult to find numbers, however from what I can see it is a much more equal distribution with about 1/3 from the US, 1/3 from China, and 1/3 from "other" (British/Dutch/Aussies/USSR). So while the US did as much as many of their allies collectively, China did the same. However looking at allied losses, they are almost all statistically speaking (i.e. by like a factor of 10) come from China. So on the Pacific front one might argue that the US had a much larger contribution and impact, but again it is pretty obvious that China really took the brunt of it.
Anyway after all that, perhaps instead of the saying about the victors writing history, it might be revised to the victors who create the most popular movies influencing popular opinion... As the history (though perhaps even biased) is out there for those that care to look for it, though most do not, and just believe whatever fanciful viewpoint that is presented to them that the most wish to see. I don't recall too many movies about the USSR and China taking on Germany and Japan, while a bunch of allies helped them out a bit. Also it is worth noting that the US was very late to the Pacific theater as well as China was a war with Japan for many years already at that point.
If it didn't require that it'd be level 4.
Level 3 (âeyes offâ): The driver can safely turn their attention away from the driving tasks, e.g. the driver can text or watch a movie. The vehicle will handle situations that call for an immediate response, like emergency braking. The driver must still be prepared to intervene within some limited time, specified by the manufacturer, when called upon by the vehicle to do so.
^Ah, I suppose you are right. I stand corrected, albeit the remaining nuance that true L3 would typically include all driving, not just a limited subset, otherwise is was already achieved with parking features.
will get great mileage and have plenty of power while still passing government emissions tests, right? Would you really buy a "self driving car" from these proven liars?
Wake me when it's actually in production.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
Beau,
With all due respect..
it seems your lacking for forethought regarding your publication has gotten you again..
Can this car be sold?? I mean will it pass SMOG/emissions testing??
How exactly does this apply to "geeks??"
Can the Average GEEK afford such an object?
Where in the world would this object make an impact??
Just curious, do you work for Dice??
Actually, don't, because that's the whole point. I want to be able to catch up on a few Zzzs. Level 3 seems to be "Bore me to sleep then wake me up", ie pointless.
Watch the movie in TFA and at 5:35 you get a slide with the processors involved. There's MobilEye (now Intel) that does image recognition, Altera (now Intel too) that does sensor fusion, Nvidia that does camera processing, and Infineon Aurix that does the Traffic Jam Pilot. The Aurix is the weakest of all four, but it's the only one considered safe enough to drive a vehicle (ISO26262 ASIL-D and similar standards)
Then you understand why the system is so limited. It can't change lanes. It doesn't overtake other cars. It does not plan ahead your way home and takes the second exit if needed. All it does is drive more or less in a straight line following the car in front, and stop if the radar detects an obstacle. There's no AI or image recognition there, just classical control algorithms that can run on a microcontroller such as the Aurix.
All I can think of is that they haven't figured out yet how to make the AI required for real self driving safe, so they can assume responsibility if anything goes wrong.
It's bad enough when you are in a 70+ limit and you are behind a moped with a 60 top speed. I'm not looking forward to driving behind a car driving slowly because the owner wants to use autonomous functions. I hope these cars realize when they are in a higher speed zone and specifically disable these functions at that time so the driver isn't tempted.
Wake me when it's actually in production.
No, because no one actually gives a shit about what you think.