"Do any of those other cars have the equivalent of autopilot?"
I'm told yes. At least one manufacturer (Hyundai maybe?) is aggressively advertising the wonders of its automatic braking on TV, and I think I've seen ads for lane keeping capability as well. Sorry I can't be more specific. Like most people, I tune ads out unless they are funny.
"In any accident that hurts the integrity of the batteries, then they should be drained as standard operating procedure"
Safely "draining" 50 or more KwH of electricity is likely to be a non-trivial job. Especially if the battery is damaged and may have a few broken ground/power connections. You can drain gasoline or diesel into a metal tank. Electrons, not so much.
Might be driver error I suppose But if Tesla "Autopilot" is, as critics assert, just conventional collision avoidance combined with lane keeping, shouldn''t the Collision Avoidance part discourage the vehicle from running into concrete lane dividers?
If your solution is writing quality software, that's a non-starter. It might be possible to write really good software. But it'd be text based. No fonts. No images. Very few capabilities. Few or no configuration options. And it'd cost.
Trust me, the world is not yet ready for a life without cat videos. Maybe after another decade of pain, that'll look like an OK idea. But for the time being we're going to continue to hold things together with duct tape and charge forth into a glorious (if wildly insecure) future while blaming other people for the problems we are creating.
"Most of us have a sledge hammer. Which'll knock a ball joint out faster (3 or so swings) than anything else will."
First thing I tried of course. But unless you take the control arm out of the vehicle -- not all that easy -- it's hard to get much of a swing. And you're aiming at the top of a metal rod that moves between swings. Might work on some vehicles. Didn't on mine.
If my wife's relatively recent car is any example, factory reset (if you can find it) probably doesn't really work. Or does something other than what one might expect. The GPS UI is so awful that my wife and daughter have taken to calling it Miss Guided.
I'm convinced, I'm not buying a new vehicle from this generation of products. The mechanical stuff looks mostly OK, but the software sucks.
OBD2 was introduced in the US in 1996, but many pre-1996 vehicles had useful manufacturer specific diagnostic codes for engine stuff.
I plan on spending about $1000-1500 a year on maintenance on older vehicles. Cheaper than depreciation on a new car.
No need to replace ball joints if they aren't malfunctioning. And it's not THAT big a job on many cars although it may require a $100 Harbor Freight ball joint press (basically a HUUGE C-Clamp) that most of us don't have in our garage.
About the only things you get on a newer car that you might not get on an old one are ABS, mp3 playing, a rear view camera, GPS, Hands free Cell phone pairing, and (possibly) collision avoidance. Much of that can be handled by a radio upgrade and installing a camera on the rear. In my experience, ABS isn't needed by careful drivers and works horribly on unpaved roads, ice or snow (now you have two problems sort of thing). Some other modern "improvements" (e.g. TPMS) can be added cheaply if you really want them. That leaves electronic traction control which doesn't seem to work in snow, and collision avoidance which is probably a good idea on balance and can not currently be added aftermarket at a reasonable price.
I'm honestly not sure about the oil weight thing. I'm told that modern oils are very light weight with viscosity extenders for hot weather/highway driving.and that the old SAE viscosity values are no longer very descriptive. Could be.... Or not. And I'm not sure how long the viscosity extenders last.
"If you'd maximize safety in every case, it wouldn't be able to lift off."
Or you could just not fuel it -- ever. That'd be pretty safe
But the real problem was described by Richard Feynman in 1986 in his Appendix F to the Rogers Report on the Challenger Disaster. https://science.ksc.nasa.gov/s...
" It appears that there are enormous differences of opinion as to the probability of a failure with loss of vehicle and of human life. The estimates range from roughly 1 in 100 to 1 in 100,000. The higher figures come from the working engineers, and the very low figures from management. What are the causes and consequences of this lack of agreement? Since 1 part in 100,000 would imply that one could put a Shuttle up each day for 300 years expecting to lose only one, we could properly ask "What is the cause of management's fantastic faith in the machinery?..."
Surely even Uber can program a vehicle to hunt down a target even if he she or it isn't in the road.. I'm guessing that capability is scheduled for a future software upgrade.
Let's try a Muskian solution. We'll just bring the entire payload -- astronauts and all -- in via hyperloop and fire them into the air next to the rocket as the rocket lifts off. The payload will dynamically attach itself to the launch vehicle somewhere around 100 meters into the flight using giant magnets or a vacuum or something. Or maybe they'll just snare the lifting rocket using a giant net.
"There's always a risk that you're going to blow up if you climb in a rocket."
Of course. What's at issue is how great the risk is. Keep in mind that 133 of 135 Space Shuttle missions didn't kill anyone, but that the resulting 1.5% failure rate was generally felt to be unacceptable. It's a little hard to compute a failure rate for Falcon 9. Officially it's around 4% (two failures in 54 launches). But that doesn't count the vehicle that blew up on the launch pad in 2016 during static testing. OTOH, early lifetime failures for a new technology are probably more common than failures after the technology matures.
My gut feeling. Falcon 9 is fine for unmanned launches. For manned launches, it's maybe a bit iffy but it may get better over time.
The AP technology seems basically fine. It'll surely help rational drivers drive safely. The problem, to the extent there is one, would seem to be Tesla's marketing which seems loath to acknowledge that AP is just a collection of simple tools that (usually) make driving a bit safer and are neither intended to, nor capable of, driving the car safely by themselves.
I suppose that if you are trying to sell an odd, expensive, vehicle to people with more money than sense, you are likely find that some customers are... well... not all that sensible.
Given any thought to solar hot water instead of solar PV? Cost effective. Proven technology. When my parents installed it near San Diego 50 years ago, the only permit problem they had was that the 100 gallon or so water tank had to be anchored to the house -- apparently to make sure that the tank destroyed the (quite flimsy) structure in the event of an earthquake strong enough to move the tank.
Ever try plotting a great circle on a globe with a string? Try it. In practice, it's harder than one would think. Good for determining distance. Not good for midpath error. Really difficult if the path is longer than 20000km (half the circumference).
It's been about 50 years, but ISTR that one of the standard map projections has the property that straight lines on the map are great circles when plotted on a globe. Wikipedia says map in question is a Gnomonic Projection. Seems like that might be a good place to start if one needed a quick solution to the problem.
AI is worth considering, although it may be too late to catch that particular wave in the sense that by the time one knows enough to be employable, interest may be fading. It'll come back in the long run of course, but like J M Keynes said -- In the long run, we are all dead. All depends on how far current capabilities can move beyond the parlor trick stage I think. I'm guessing not very far, but maybe I'm wrong.
Security OTOH looks like it will be a pressing issue fpr a **LONG** time, The population of exploitable bugs appears to be immense and most folks are operating on the decidedly dubious assumption that the tradeoffs between security and usability are not a big deal. That leads to the belief that magic like 2FA can somehow get around the fact that secure systems tend to be unusable and usable systems tend to be insecure. I'm guessing that people will be creating new security issues at least as fast as old ones are resolved for decades.
I don't ask questions on SO because the denizens are rude, their rules obscure and their text editor is clunky. But I have to agree that the answers there are usually high quality if and when they deign to answer a question. It's a good place to find alternate answers one might not be aware of and/or problems with what looks to be an obvious answer.
So I guess what they are doing works. Perhaps they shouldn't mess with it.
There's something to be said for "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."
You're talking about V2V? Yes, they have spectrum and some implementations. They don't even seem to have a single agreed to or dictated protocol that would allow, for example, BMWs to talk to Cadillacs. And no, there is no current Implement_by-date although several have been proposed. NHSTA proposed a standard at the end of 2016, but it seems to have quietly died in late 2017
Not that I'm opposed to V2V? Seems like a perfectly OK idea actually if everyone can be persuaded to speak the same digital language.
But what they have does not seem remotely what will actually be needed to support autonomous vehicles.
Thanks, I was afraid that might be the answer. I should think that'll kind of limit the practical utility of quantum entanglement unless loss of entanglement is uncommon..
I wouldn't underestimate how difficult that is going to be. It is one thing to get two or even three cars on a test track in the middle of nowhere to talk to one another. It is quite another to get real vehicles in an environment with a multitude of vehicles plus noise sources, plus reflective surfaces bouncing signals around to identify each other and communicate with 100% reliability. And 3rd party relays/signal interpreters may be needed to reliably "see"/"talk" around obstacles.
Slashdot Mirror
"Do any of those other cars have the equivalent of autopilot?"
I'm told yes. At least one manufacturer (Hyundai maybe?) is aggressively advertising the wonders of its automatic braking on TV, and I think I've seen ads for lane keeping capability as well. Sorry I can't be more specific. Like most people, I tune ads out unless they are funny.
"In any accident that hurts the integrity of the batteries, then they should be drained as standard operating procedure"
Safely "draining" 50 or more KwH of electricity is likely to be a non-trivial job. Especially if the battery is damaged and may have a few broken ground/power connections. You can drain gasoline or diesel into a metal tank. Electrons, not so much.
Might be driver error I suppose But if Tesla "Autopilot" is, as critics assert, just conventional collision avoidance combined with lane keeping, shouldn''t the Collision Avoidance part discourage the vehicle from running into concrete lane dividers?
If your solution is writing quality software, that's a non-starter. It might be possible to write really good software. But it'd be text based. No fonts. No images. Very few capabilities. Few or no configuration options. And it'd cost.
Trust me, the world is not yet ready for a life without cat videos. Maybe after another decade of pain, that'll look like an OK idea. But for the time being we're going to continue to hold things together with duct tape and charge forth into a glorious (if wildly insecure) future while blaming other people for the problems we are creating.
"Most of us have a sledge hammer. Which'll knock a ball joint out faster (3 or so swings) than anything else will."
First thing I tried of course. But unless you take the control arm out of the vehicle -- not all that easy -- it's hard to get much of a swing. And you're aiming at the top of a metal rod that moves between swings. Might work on some vehicles. Didn't on mine.
If my wife's relatively recent car is any example, factory reset (if you can find it) probably doesn't really work. Or does something other than what one might expect. The GPS UI is so awful that my wife and daughter have taken to calling it Miss Guided.
I'm convinced, I'm not buying a new vehicle from this generation of products. The mechanical stuff looks mostly OK, but the software sucks.
OBD2 was introduced in the US in 1996, but many pre-1996 vehicles had useful manufacturer specific diagnostic codes for engine stuff.
I plan on spending about $1000-1500 a year on maintenance on older vehicles. Cheaper than depreciation on a new car.
No need to replace ball joints if they aren't malfunctioning. And it's not THAT big a job on many cars although it may require a $100 Harbor Freight ball joint press (basically a HUUGE C-Clamp) that most of us don't have in our garage.
About the only things you get on a newer car that you might not get on an old one are ABS, mp3 playing, a rear view camera, GPS, Hands free Cell phone pairing, and (possibly) collision avoidance. Much of that can be handled by a radio upgrade and installing a camera on the rear. In my experience, ABS isn't needed by careful drivers and works horribly on unpaved roads, ice or snow (now you have two problems sort of thing). Some other modern "improvements" (e.g. TPMS) can be added cheaply if you really want them. That leaves electronic traction control which doesn't seem to work in snow, and collision avoidance which is probably a good idea on balance and can not currently be added aftermarket at a reasonable price.
I'm honestly not sure about the oil weight thing. I'm told that modern oils are very light weight with viscosity extenders for hot weather/highway driving.and that the old SAE viscosity values are no longer very descriptive. Could be. ... Or not. And I'm not sure how long the viscosity extenders last.
Hmmm. I wonder it Uber vehicles can distinguish a pedestrian from a tumbleweed? Perhaps that explains mowing the former down.
"I'm just surprised that this kind of navigational problem wasn't made a part of the baseline autonomous car requirements."
Me too. I don't see how an autonomous vehicle can handle construction zones, parking garages, or GPS "dead zones" without this sort of technology.
"If you'd maximize safety in every case, it wouldn't be able to lift off."
Or you could just not fuel it -- ever. That'd be pretty safe
But the real problem was described by Richard Feynman in 1986 in his Appendix F to the Rogers Report on the Challenger Disaster. https://science.ksc.nasa.gov/s...
" It appears that there are enormous differences of opinion as to the probability of a failure with loss of vehicle and of human life. The estimates range from roughly 1 in 100 to 1 in 100,000. The higher figures come from the working engineers, and the very low figures from management. What are the causes and consequences of this lack of agreement? Since 1 part in 100,000 would imply that one could put a Shuttle up each day for 300 years expecting to lose only one, we could properly ask "What is the cause of management's fantastic faith in the machinery? ..."
Well worth reading and still applicable I think.
Surely even Uber can program a vehicle to hunt down a target even if he she or it isn't in the road.. I'm guessing that capability is scheduled for a future software upgrade.
Let's try a Muskian solution. We'll just bring the entire payload -- astronauts and all -- in via hyperloop and fire them into the air next to the rocket as the rocket lifts off. The payload will dynamically attach itself to the launch vehicle somewhere around 100 meters into the flight using giant magnets or a vacuum or something. Or maybe they'll just snare the lifting rocket using a giant net.
"There's always a risk that you're going to blow up if you climb in a rocket."
Of course. What's at issue is how great the risk is. Keep in mind that 133 of 135 Space Shuttle missions didn't kill anyone, but that the resulting 1.5% failure rate was generally felt to be unacceptable. It's a little hard to compute a failure rate for Falcon 9. Officially it's around 4% (two failures in 54 launches). But that doesn't count the vehicle that blew up on the launch pad in 2016 during static testing. OTOH, early lifetime failures for a new technology are probably more common than failures after the technology matures.
My gut feeling. Falcon 9 is fine for unmanned launches. For manned launches, it's maybe a bit iffy but it may get better over time.
The AP technology seems basically fine. It'll surely help rational drivers drive safely. The problem, to the extent there is one, would seem to be Tesla's marketing which seems loath to acknowledge that AP is just a collection of simple tools that (usually) make driving a bit safer and are neither intended to, nor capable of, driving the car safely by themselves.
I suppose that if you are trying to sell an odd, expensive, vehicle to people with more money than sense, you are likely find that some customers are ... well ... not all that sensible.
Given any thought to solar hot water instead of solar PV? Cost effective. Proven technology. When my parents installed it near San Diego 50 years ago, the only permit problem they had was that the 100 gallon or so water tank had to be anchored to the house -- apparently to make sure that the tank destroyed the (quite flimsy) structure in the event of an earthquake strong enough to move the tank.
Ever try plotting a great circle on a globe with a string? Try it. In practice, it's harder than one would think. Good for determining distance. Not good for midpath error. Really difficult if the path is longer than 20000km (half the circumference).
It's been about 50 years, but ISTR that one of the standard map projections has the property that straight lines on the map are great circles when plotted on a globe. Wikipedia says map in question is a Gnomonic Projection. Seems like that might be a good place to start if one needed a quick solution to the problem.
AI is worth considering, although it may be too late to catch that particular wave in the sense that by the time one knows enough to be employable, interest may be fading. It'll come back in the long run of course, but like J M Keynes said -- In the long run, we are all dead. All depends on how far current capabilities can move beyond the parlor trick stage I think. I'm guessing not very far, but maybe I'm wrong.
Security OTOH looks like it will be a pressing issue fpr a **LONG** time, The population of exploitable bugs appears to be immense and most folks are operating on the decidedly dubious assumption that the tradeoffs between security and usability are not a big deal. That leads to the belief that magic like 2FA can somehow get around the fact that secure systems tend to be unusable and usable systems tend to be insecure. I'm guessing that people will be creating new security issues at least as fast as old ones are resolved for decades.
I don't ask questions on SO because the denizens are rude, their rules obscure and their text editor is clunky. But I have to agree that the answers there are usually high quality if and when they deign to answer a question. It's a good place to find alternate answers one might not be aware of and/or problems with what looks to be an obvious answer.
So I guess what they are doing works. Perhaps they shouldn't mess with it.
There's something to be said for "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."
"my prices are lifetime locked" ... whose lifetime?
You're talking about V2V? Yes, they have spectrum and some implementations. They don't even seem to have a single agreed to or dictated protocol that would allow, for example, BMWs to talk to Cadillacs. And no, there is no current Implement_by-date although several have been proposed. NHSTA proposed a standard at the end of 2016, but it seems to have quietly died in late 2017
Not that I'm opposed to V2V? Seems like a perfectly OK idea actually if everyone can be persuaded to speak the same digital language.
But what they have does not seem remotely what will actually be needed to support autonomous vehicles.
Thanks, I was afraid that might be the answer. I should think that'll kind of limit the practical utility of quantum entanglement unless loss of entanglement is uncommon..
Humans are allowed to drive, and generally do so pretty well, even if one "camera" is defective or inoperative.
"...once we have car to car communications"
I wouldn't underestimate how difficult that is going to be. It is one thing to get two or even three cars on a test track in the middle of nowhere to talk to one another. It is quite another to get real vehicles in an environment with a multitude of vehicles plus noise sources, plus reflective surfaces bouncing signals around to identify each other and communicate with 100% reliability. And 3rd party relays/signal interpreters may be needed to reliably "see"/"talk" around obstacles.
"(ie. one must be opposite the other if they maintain entanglement)...."
For those of us who are a little slow, how does one know entanglement has been maintained?