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Meet the World's First Self-Driving Car From 1968
Qbertino writes: The German Web industry magazine T3N (think of it as the German TechCrunch) has an article about a test circuit and a test vehicle -- a modified Mercedes Benz limousine of the time -- that was set up by the German tire manufacturer Continental in order to test tires in a precisely reproducible set of tests. Hence the self-driving mechanism provided by a wire in the test track to send and receive signals from the car and to record data on the test runs on magnetic tape and other high-tech stuff from the time. Here's a short video, erm, film clip showing the setup in action -- driverless seat included. Today's artificial intelligence is nowhere to be seen of course, but the entire setup itself seems pretty impressive and sophisticated.
Even so, isn't the subject of the article five decades late? That's gotta be a new record even for Slashdot.
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I find it hard to claim the car was "self driving" when it was directed by a wire in the test track.
It drove itself without a human. The wire in the rack was the technology used, instead of cameras and computers.
J
instead of the blinkers. I can sleep better now.
The program is really simple. Here it is:-
$ cat Hamlet.txt
A lot of claimed AI is not much more than that, Eliza being the classic example. That is the problem with AI, very hard to define.
But it was submitted only recently. That makes it news. For Slashdot editors. Anyway.
You and the author of TFA weaken "self-driving" to the point where it is meaningless.
Using two steel or wooden tracks to guide a self propelled engine is just as applicable so it was James Watt in the late 1700s.
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Using two steel or wooden tracks to guide a self propelled engine is just as applicable so it was James Watt in the late 1700s.
Using rails to guide a vehicle is just using a physical device to push the engine and keep it on track. The self propelled engine is only moving forward and doing nothing more.
In both modern and this old "self-driving" cars, the cars isn't only moving forward, there's also electronics that does some steering in order to keep following a given path. The subtle difference is in the sensor technology used.
The old car, uses a special purpose guide (a wire) that is easy for the onboard system to detect, and determine how to steer in order to stay on track.
Nowadays, thanks to Moore's law and other miniaturization tech, cars like Tesla, Mercedes, Volvo, etc. use the same visual guide that was laid out for humans (painted lanes marking on the ground) to detect and determine how to streer in order to stay in the lane.
The later has the advantage on using the exact same guide that is already laid out everywhere.
The former sadly has to rely on a custom solution, so it can't scale beyond a test track, and would never be useful to introduce self-driving in a city. But it is already useful : recording what parameters (steering/speed) was necessary to stay on track gives you an exact idea of what you're designing your tires for (having good grip and how it impacts the driving).
It's a distant cousin of the "small electronic cars that follows where you point your light at" gadget that was popular when we were kids. Again, extremely crude sensors (because that's the max you can pack inside your gadget back in the 80s), that give a target for the gadget to track and follow. But it's the device that (autonomously) steers toward the target.
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Note to all millenials - we sent men to the moon only a year after this so yes, things could be quite sophisticated back then. Also London had self driving automatic trains on the Underground in 1967.
The technological revolution didn't start with the iPhone or Facebook. HTH.
Germany had self driving V2s in 1944.
That's essentially a life-size Scalextrix. The "intelligence" is entirely contained in the track embedded in the road deck.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
SuperKendall is a consumer of shiny things, not a producer. Everything to him is magic and "AI".
At what point does a mechanism qualify as self driving?
A computer is just a more complex contraption.
You know there is really no difference between the way this works and modern lane-keeping systems right?
That is not self driving either.
But lets pretend it is - there is a vast difference, because in the case of the lines it's using input meant for humans to control where the car steers, as opposed to using a specific car-road integration that dumbly follows a wire. The difference is intelligence and scope.
P.S. I do not have a Tesla. But I have dabbled in writing software for self driving cars so I pretty obviously know more about how this all works than you do.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
At what point does a mechanism qualify as self driving?
When it is making choices based on real-world conditions without a specialized car-specific input.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
This car was preceded by the General Motors Firebird series, in the 1950s. See . It included the ability to follow a cable embedded in the road: .
Your example is not the same. The wire in the track is not sending intelligent commands from a human. Even if the wire is simply a magnetic "marker", having a tracking device on the bottom of the car and a servo to steer is still self-driving.
J