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Fully Driverless Cars Could Be Months Away (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: Real driverless cars could come to the Phoenix area this year, according to a Monday report from The Information's Amir Efrati. Two anonymous sources have told Efrati that Google's self-driving car unit, Waymo, is preparing to launch "a commercial ride-sharing service powered by self-driving vehicles with no human 'safety' drivers as soon as this fall." Obviously, there's no guarantee that Waymo will hit this ambitious target. But it's a sign that Waymo believes its technology is very close to being ready for commercial use. And it suggests that Waymo is likely to introduce a fully driverless car network in 2018 if it doesn't do so in the remaining months of 2017. [...] According to a report on The Information, Waymo's service is likely to launch first in Chandler, a Phoenix suburb where Waymo has done extensive testing. Waymo chose the Phoenix area for its favorable weather, its wide, well-maintained streets, and the relative lack of pedestrians. Another important factor was the legal climate. Arizona has some of the nation's most permissive laws regarding self-driving vehicles. "Arizona's oversight group has met just twice in the last year, and found no reason to suggest any new rules or restrictions on autonomous vehicles, so long as they follow traffic laws," the Arizona Republic reported in June. "The group found no need to suggest legislation to help the deployment." According to the Arizona Republic, a 2015 executive order from Gov. Doug Ducey "allows universities to test vehicles with no driver on board so long as a licensed driver has responsibility for the cars and can take control remotely if the vehicle needs assistance." Waymo is getting ready to take the same approach.
Let me guess: the "extensive testing" took care of that problem.
...how is this ride-sharing?
Debate is a form of harassment. Do not question my truth.
I'll bet that you will see them in your lifetime.
I'm thinking that we're looking at about 20 years before driverless cars consist of at least half of traveled miles, assuming that the research projects don't hit a showstopper problem.
Check list.
* Favorable weather
* Well-maintained streets
* Lack of pedestrians.
* Everyone driving slow golf carts
* Shopping malls don't always work.
Sounds like not really ready for prime time, just cherry picked locations.
Sounds weird to me. Where I live, people enjoy warm sunny days, so more pedestrians are on the streets when the weather is like that than when it is cold and rainy.
I too disagree, I'm conservatively estimating that about 10% of cars will be driverless in about 20 years time (+/- 5 years). My guess is that a lot of these will be fleet or co-op owned vehicles.
Only I can judge you.
..multiple times every day. It's no surprise that we're taking a more liberal stance on testing the technology. With that said...
Another important factor was the legal climate. Arizona has some of the nation's most permissive laws regarding self-driving vehicles.
That's because of our lousy state legislature (a.k.a. Ducey's rubber stamp).
The McDonald's manager's pay package ($30K/year salary for their time and trouble - it's for about 6-7 mos out of the year) keeps a lot of people out of the job. Then you get the legislators' pool watered down more by having such a strong GOP-leaning electorate. GOP candidates have a 20% margin of stupidity error, so you get some even more unqualified people in office simply because they're a member of the popular tribe.
So - What kind of results are you going to get out of that "talent pool"?
A: At best: well-meaning but ultimately not-too-bright people willing to tow the Doug Ducey party line. At worst: Evan Mechams and Russell Pearces... Outright kooks with unrealistic agendas, ideologically-driven manifestos, and an SB1070 cherry on top.
If you said "flying car" to them, most would imagine "The Jetsons" cars and just say, "Cool!"
Not any more than pulling the same jack-assery on a meat-bag driver. Don't forget these are literally mobile data gathering systems. It will accurately record how maliciously(and awkwardly) you threw your three hundred pounds of cheeto smeared mountain-dew dribbled slovenly self in front of its nicely maintained chassis.
Only I can judge you.
Go ahead. Find a lawyer that will take your case, move there, sue. I'm guessing YANAL, cause you sound like you have it all worked out.
Only I can judge you.
So last weekend I drove down I-5 to L.A. Trucks in the right line going 55-60mph. Cars in the left lane going 90mph, or passing anyone on the right who isn't.
So how does this work with automated cars? because I didn't see a SINGLE car on I-5 traveling at the legal limit. Will the Google car go 100 on I-5? Cause I can't imagine anyone wanting to ride in one if they only go the speed limit.
The automated future looks like this?
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=2&ved=0ahUKEwjc74PF1NXWAhWFZCYKHdgvC_oQtwIIKTAB&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DOoETMCosULQ&usg=AOvVaw3MIoTgv0uPGe1y2g--CUp6
You seem to think I am going to let it hit me. I'm not. I know how the computer works, and I know how quickly the car stops. I won't jaywalk in front of a human because they might hit me. But the computer will go into maximum breaking, and throw all the occupants up against their belts, while everything not nailed down careens into the windshield, with surprising regularity and accuracy.
The kids playing frogger on my commute at 55mph on the expressway are going to love it. No more standing on the median getting honked at ... just walk! The car will stop.
Not only that but they then go ahead and compare cherry picked perfect driving conditions that self driving cars operate under to freezing rain pileups and heavy traffic jams human drivers deal with and declare that they are safer.
Cars are operated like that in South Florida . . . all the time!
What all of you luddites are missing is a very simple point - a driverless car only needs to be a little better than the average human driver, and it will take over like wildfire from humans.
Not only is there the obvious savings of not paying every increasing salary and taxes to pay a human driver, but there's the massive hidden savings on insurance costs as driverless cars ratchet up the quality of performance relative to again, the average human.
The demand will be enormous, not only driven by taxi/trucking companies, but by an aging population who no longer have to worry about driving as senses and reflexes deteriorate.
As for the examples you list - most of the deployments would be hard pressed to be confused by much, they will not need ANY network connection because on-board they will have the entire system they might be driving within already stored for comparison with external sensors. And the examples you gave? Why would any *human* driver not be equally confused by a bag or a ladder, plenty of accidents have been caused by people swerving to miss something innocuous - a computer system can classify and react to something WAY faster than human can, while also knowing with certainly if cars are to either side to maneuver - something most humans cannot handle.
I cannot believe how behind the times most Slashdot readers seem to be of modern performance and capabilities of neural networks, to the point where calling this place a technical site anymore seems pretty questionable. I never really bought fully into the idea of the Singularity, but there are facets of life like driving where that concept is obviously valid.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Before you step into the path of a self driving car, consider this - there are going to be MANY cases where the programming will consider pedestrians expendable. After all, if braking super hard means the car behind may slam into them and harm many people, everyone involved will be happier if it just slows down somewhat and hits just you - trying to minimize harm to you, but you are the LEAST important thing in the equation and you should remember that possibility before playing games.
Afterwards of course, it will have a face scan from you that it shares with the network and future cars that encounter you will know to pay you even less attention because they know you are asking to get hit...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Probably not as much as the faster drivers you are seeing, but they will generally be programed to follow the flow of traffic, which is much safer than following a speed limit. Except for school zones where the programming would probably keep it pretty strict out of an abundance of caution...
Basically just think of the best drivers on the road, that is what self driving cars will be doing. Only better. Because once they know how to do something well, they just improve from there.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
As long as one of them is John McCain it's all good. Jeff Flake would be a plus.
sarcasm ;), ;) If you do not settle with us legal action :"WILL BE" taken. . zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz! ;) lol
/sarcasm
;)
;) And a central point to this is the degree of risk the CEO's, bureaucrats and politicians are accepting for the public at large as the kinks get worked out of this technology.
I would like to know what happens if one hits me. Does the vehicle just try and drive off and perform a return to base, while I am trying to get the lic number and vendor id before it gets out of sight.
Will it drop a little paper note saying, "Call this number to settle up with us over your accident."
And when you call you get a message saying, "Your call is very important to us! Someone will be with you soon."
Do these vehicles have orange flashing beacons on the roof letting everyone know "Warning, Be Careful, Be Aware, Automated Machine in your midst!"
Do they have any liability protections built in to the laws to protect the companies deploying these vehicles?
Is it assumed the human is wrong and the autonomous vehicle is right?
Do the companies have complete control of all the logs on the vehicle before the authorities? Do they get to choose what to hand over and when?
I am very suspicious about this being fast tracked. About issues and accidents being covered up. What are the liability protections for the public and the riders?
I think it would also be interesting to hear from inidivduals working in one of the Amazon warehouses that have both bots and individuals working in them. What is their experience? Maybe that would be informative
I am not against this, I just think the path is longer than most think
There are five SAE accepted levels of autonomy:
Level 0: No self driving features
Level 1: Some driver assistance
Level 2: More driver assistance
Level 3: Conditional autonomy
Level 4: Nearly autonomous.
Level 5: Completely autonomous.
When will it get here? Dates range from 2017 (Ol' Musky) to 2026 (president of IIHS) and beyond, from people in the know.
Every bit of driver assistance I think is a good thing, but Level 5 - true autonomy - is still a ways off, it seems to me.
So...100 years = 1200 months. So yes, definitely just months away!
remotely so are they paying an sat + cell link with no caps and no roaming fees?
or an drive in to mexico or canada can cost $10K-$20K for just 1GB of data on some plans.
Tesla Autopilot has already killed several people. Yet Tesla owners continue to use it. Statistically, it is still safer than a human driver.
Waymo's self-driving cars work by having an extremely detailed 3D map of the area in which they are driving (important details like the height of the curb are included). With such a detailed map, self-driving is easier. You don't have to do object recognition of things like stop-signs, you know where they are. If there is an unknown obstacle detected, the car can stop. It doesn't have to distinguish between pedestrians and trees, because the trees are all mapped out.
If Waymo wants the car to leave that small, well-defined area, then they have two options: map the whole world (at a much, much higher quality than Google maps), or develop new algorithms for self-driving cars.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
It is amazing to see that the number of xkcd references are starting to outnumber the number of references in the original Slashdot post, isn't it ?!?
While automakers focus on defending the systems in their cars against hackers, there may be other ways for the malicious to mess with self-driving cars. Security researchers at the University of Washington have shown they can get computer vision systems to misidentify road signs using nothing more than stickers made on a home printer.
UW computer-security researcher Yoshi Kohno described an attack algorithm that uses printed images stuck on road signs. These images confuse the cameras on which most self-driving vehicles rely. In one example, explained in a document uploaded to the open-source scientific-paper site arXiv last week, small stickers attached to a standard stop sign caused a vision system to misidentify it as a Speed Limit 45 sign.
https://blog.caranddriver.com/...
New things are always on the horizon
So... what, you're emitting gamma radiation that disrupts the silicon? Or do you plan to smash through the hood with a hammer to break the computer?
Enquiring minds want to know!
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Sorry, No thanks!
Driver-assist? Lane keeping? Collision warning? Auto-park? Cool.
But I ultimately refuse to put my physical safety into the hands of a machine built AND programmed by humans.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
It might make it seem easier if everything is detailed, but you still need to have enough algorithm to know if things are there that should not be or if things or not there if they should be.
You can't have a car stop, just because some person places a box too close to the road for trash pickup and the AI is not smart enough.
And what should it do if the tree is gone? Did it not see the tree, or is it really gone or is there something else going on? What about a street light? That can be gone, because of an accident and then replaced 3 months later.
So having a detailed map will not exclude a very good AI, but a very good AI can do with a very basic map. Have you seen paper maps? We where able to get where we needed to get, regardless. A better map made it easier, not impossible.
I have traveled half over Europe with a car and no map. And I killed nobody by accident that I know of.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
They said we'd have flying cars when my grandfather was a kid, by the time he was an adult it hadn't happened. He was born in 1913. They also said that when my father was a kid. He was born in 1949. They said that when I was a kid too, that was ~40 years ago. And people have also been saying driverless cars, robots that will do everything and a life of ease that we'll never see.
Serfs might have worked harder, but they had a hell of a lot more leisure time then we do. I doubt we'll see driverless cars within the next 40 years. Hell even the trucking companies who've run trials with driverless trucks are finding that while the workers complain, they still got a better return. If we see a demand for driverless stuff it'll be there first, especially since there's a huge demand for drivers in north america and not many people wanting to do it.
Om, nomnomnom...
Well, the summary hints at it, but in TFA it states it outright:
The company has built a real-time command center that allows self-driving cars to "phone home" and consult human operators about the best way to deal with situations it finds confusing. The ability to remotely monitor vehicles and give timely feedback on tricky situations will be essential if Waymo hopes to eliminate the human driver from its cars.
So they are taking a hybrid approach, at least initially.
According to TFA:
The company has built a real-time command center that allows self-driving cars to "phone home" and consult human operators about the best way to deal with situations it finds confusing. The ability to remotely monitor vehicles and give timely feedback on tricky situations will be essential if Waymo hopes to eliminate the human driver from its cars.
We can fly drones in Afghanistan from Nevada, it's not too far fetched to think they can have a remote driver for tricky situations. One human could supervise multiple vehicles.
LOL,
Think of all the data Google can collect about road data and road closures via 3d capture methods. Then share it with all it's cars to prevent accidents.
Sorry Tesla, you don't have a chance.
They said we'd have flying cars when my grandfather was a kid... And people have also been saying driverless cars...
I don't get it. Driverless cars are HERE. They need work before we can say confidently say they're safer than humans, but we have prototypes driving around. These aren't illustrations in "Future Now!" magazine; these are actual, moving, autonomous car prototypes.
Hell even the trucking companies who've run trials with driverless trucks are finding that while the workers complain, they still got a better return.
For now. Early adopters never see the highest ROI, but I'm more confident than you that these human truck drivers are endangered.
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
No you don't see any driverless cars. All the "driverless" cars have at least one driver/engineer in them, usually two. Autonomous driving is a joke and is decades away, if it ever arrives.
They HAVE PEOPLE IN THEM
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
So my manual car is safer, and it would be illogical for me to use autopilot. Maybe autopilot is statistically safer for average people, I guess I'm above average since I have never killed anyone and therefore don't expect to. I would be stupid to use a technology that may kill someone.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Once air temperature nears body temperature (~98 F) it's officially hotter'n Hell. Fans and breezes have little to no cooling effect.
"No fear. No envy. No meanness." Liam Clancy
Personally I could also see if having detrimental effects if we don't make the cars more energy efficient at the same time.
That is obviously going to happen at the same time, a big benefit you get from driverless cars is they can go find a charging location while you are busy, meaning you don't have to have every parking spot have charging capabilities (which will not happen).
Instead there will probably be charging hubs cars scattered through cities that cars can top off at, then return to be close to you before you need them.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
such a detailed map will need an big data plan / endless updates for years. And just remapping roads say each 6 months (may be to long of gap) will big a lot of work / need a lot of hardware.
and a drive outside the usa can cost you the cost of a NEW CAR in roaming fees at are as high as $15-$20 a MEG.
Perhaps when it's Waymo/Google's cars that get stuck trying to make a left turn across a four lane road at an uncontrolled non-intersection during rush hour because Google Maps thought that was quicker they'll get around to correcting those suggestions.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
I didn't expect this to become relevant so quickly
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Yeah, from a logistical standpoint it seems completely impractical and uneconomical. But hey, I thought the same thing about Google maps with streetview in the first place, so who knows.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Yeah, it's problematic. Waymo right now has a (relatively) limited AI, with some very good maps of some areas (Arizona is one of those areas, apparently). The interesting question will be whether that combination is good enough to do better than human drivers.
Apparently we're going to have a live experiment where we find out.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Really? When do you plan on dying? The advantages are so ridiculously enormous that it's inevitable.
So, what do you think municipalities will do when they realize that by allowing driverless cars, they've effectively slashed their revenues to the bone?
In the (alleged) words of George Westinghouse, "where will we put the meter?"
Lots of great ideas have died horrible deaths by being suffocated by red tape.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
streetview is years out of date in some areas
hope for a criminal case where that EULA shit goes away!
I don't get it. Driverless cars are HERE.
They aren't here, that's the thing. Those prototypes still have people in them, they still run red lights, still hit people, still drive off the road. Take one into downtown Toronto and it would be in an accident in 8 seconds.
For now. Early adopters never see the highest ROI, but I'm more confident than you that these human truck drivers are endangered.
It has a negative ROI, just like electric trucks do. The problems that persist in driverless cars exist in those trucks too. My favorite case being the truck that got lost, the one that drove off the on-ramp, and the other one that got into on-coming traffic. They aren't even close to prime time deployment. Hell they can't even backup a trailer into a dock, shunt drivers still do that work.
Om, nomnomnom...