Jalopnik asks if self-driving cars will actually happen.
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Please excuse me for starting yet another self-driving car thread, but I did not want to hijack someone else's discussion.
Jalopnik says that self-driving cars have only been a few years away for decades, much like flying cars and virtual reality--and presumably, self-flying cars with virtual reality. I have a friend that insists that self-driving cars would be hacked. I call her a know-it-all. She says I'm a know-it-all. She also says that the same bad drivers will be programming the cars. I insist they will not be texting and coding. Plus, I am pretty sure that programming gets tested, while texts are not proofread. Messages still send with invalid syntax. Jalopnik also brought up terrorist attacks. I recently asked if self-driving cars would be easier or more difficult to steal, but in theory, a terrorist would need to hack a vehicle, but if they could, that could be a pandemic. http://ecomodder.com/forum/attachmen...1&d=1511885337 https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/65/wr/mm6543a8.htm Vehicular injuries are significantly down, vehicular homicide is down slightly, and suicide has roughly been constant. As long as programmers can prevent vehicles from being hacked, all of these go down, if not away, right? In the comments, people discussed requiring continual driver training and testing, but someone asked how much that would cost, who would pay for it, and how it compared to self-driving vehicles. Would the world be better or worse with automatic blinkers? :) Jalopnik pointed out that traffic fatalities would halve if people just wore seatbelts. "I don’t want an autonomous car. I want a robot butler who can drive a regular car." "[T]here are cameras on the highways [in England] that monitor if you’re wearing a seatbelt. I’d imagine similar could be used to flag people on cell phones." I understand that photo radar takes people's money without changing their behavior. In my experience, people slow down for them, but speed back up immediately. "In 2013, at least 697 people were killed in an accident that involved running a red light while an estimated 127,000 were injured. Last year, some 3.7 million drivers received a violation for driving through a red light." https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmc.../#5b3c8f73db27 3,700,000 people were cited for running red lights, but 700 or more people died anyway. Perhaps the fines are not enough. What do you fine and informed people think of these arguments? |
"Super scared" seems like a drastic overstatement, thus suggesting this article is clickbait.
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Uncomfortable ≠ super scared. "It was a short article and nothing else stood out to me. In the comments: Americans are just super scared of everything right now. I have to travel overseas for my job and I do get asked why so many Americans seem so scared of everything, quite regularly. The only reply I can give them is `I don’t know, I’m Canadian', because I’m too scared to admit to being American right now." "Your disguise is up, you didn’t apologize." "To be fair, the auto industry hasn’t exactly nailed implementing security into existing CAN/infotainment systems, so they aren’t inspiring confidence that they’ll get it right for autonomous driving systems either." |
Self driving cars as they exist today do things a human driver would not
These things can be dangerous in the presence of real human drivers. These errors are a form of violating commonly known ediquette by driving in a way human drivers view as irrational (aka common sense) I believe what we will find is that self driving cars won’t mix well with humans or even “open country roads” Does this mean they won’t be put on the road anyway ? Nope, but we probably aren’t going to put out cars quite ready for prime time, we will error proof by making everyone a test driver As for yellow lights around here they flash like a strobe light, Just increasing their duration would help, Also stop and go lights on 45mph+ highways suck, putting a stop and go light on a 65mph highway is poor road design and causes accidents , If that practice were illegal and such intersections were properly designed we might have fewer accidents. |
Mitch Bainwol, the president and CEO of the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, a trade group that represents automakers that produce 80 percent of cars on U.S. roads today, testified to the Senate that retail sales of fully-automated vehicles aren’t expected to begin until 2025 at the earliest.
"[M]ore than 20 percent of cars on the road today were produced before 2002 – [fully autonomous] vehicles [...] will likely not be a majority of the fleet for three more decades." https://jalopnik.com/automakers-admi...tak-1796103407 Someone commented that autonomous vehicles should mean people stop owning cars, but somebody pointed out that we do not need to have our own homes, but we choose to anyway. |
People don't like change, and it comes slowly. They are more comfortable living in the dangerous world they know, then venturing out into the safer world they don't. If you think about it rationally, it should bother you that so many people are not paying attention to their driving and realize that autonomous systems never get distracted.
Autonomous cars have not just been around the corner for decades. It's recent cost reductions and improvements in sensors and computers that have allowed it to become financially practical. A LIDAR might have cost several thousand dollars in the past and been bulky, but is now less than $100. My middle school bought a 640x480 digital camera for $3,000 back in the day; now a $30 smart phone has 2 cameras superior to it. Driver assist technologies are creeping in and will become standard equipment just as Bluetooth connectivity is. This will get the average person more comfortable with slowly giving up control. Finally, the whole world is operating on computers, so the "what about hacking" argument can be applied to anything. It's a possibility; and it hasn't prevented us from developing technology in the past. Almost all of my cash and investments are held as binary bits of data, and that is of much greater concern to me than someone hacking my car. I've been wrong about the adoption of home networks, and internet on your cell phone. I'm not betting against self-driving cars, which are likely to be among the biggest advances in safety and productivity in my lifetime. |
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2) First editions of most human-produced items tend to be filled with problems. 3) "Don't TELL me, SHOW me" has eons of foundation. 4) Brownian Movement is Mother Nature's way of letting things "move" without actually displacing...works for humans too. |
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Homes and vehicles are very different. I am perfectly comfortable renting a car or allowing a taxi to take me somewhere, but most people aren't comfortable sharing their personal living space with strangers. Sure, some people will still own vehicles for similar reasons they own their home, but many will forgo the expense. Quote:
No doubt, the 100th iteration will still be filled with problems. Incremental improvement is what keeps things interesting. Commercial airplanes are heavily automated with the goal of increasing safety and efficiency while reducing personnel (where did the engineer go?). The same logic applies to vehicles. This is the show part of the talk. Automation will be worse until it is better. Has it ever been any different? |
I think there are several huge hurdles to overcome, before it has a chance of becoming a reality:
Technical complexity Legal liability Regulations I think it will take a massive leap in computing power (quantum computing?) in order to overcome the massive job if first gathering ALL the data, and then figuring out what it is - and then it has to logically "decide" what to do. And then have a redundant back up for all the technical systems. Who / what is responsible for what happens? How do we decide who / what is responsible? We have not even gotten side video mirrors approved for use - how can we possibly approve fully autonomous cars? |
"It's about the future, Madame Chancellor. Some people think the future means the end of history. Well, we haven't run out of history quite yet. Your father called the future - "the undiscovered country". People can be very frightened of change."--The Priceline Spokesman
Speaking of 640x480 cameras, one help drive an autonomous junk minivan across the country in 1995: Quote:
"For gas and spending money, we sold trip T-shirts. I’m not kidding. They were $10 apiece and helped pay for food and hotels. Seriously." "When we did the trip, the field was about discovery and expanding technical frontiers. I think it still is now, but unfortunately, it’s now also about patent fights, liability concerns, and state laws." How about laws telling humans how to behave around automatomobiles? |
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What bothers me the most is how an autonomous vehicle would decide what to do to escape an ambush or a robbery attempt.
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Self driving cars need special infrastructure and need to be the only type of car on the road to be tolerable as a 4 season car.
They are incompatible with other human drivers on the road, I do not believe that will change. They are less efficient in most circumstances than a human pilotted car The original reason for autonomous to be spearheaded was due to government community planning intentions, There is a desire to reduce speed, regulate engine size and traffic patterns centrally and it was the only reason these systems started consideration years ago, Expect far future cars to be equipped with amotor just big enough to go 50mph Inevitably the car will become appliance like, car ownership will become rather mundane with driving aspects removed meaning car ownership may become a moot point. Why own something that is pretty much the same as every other one? The real issue is autonomous cars don’t handle off paved road work like moving trailers or farm work, I don’t think it ever will be worthwhile to autonomize that aspect of driving. |
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I experienced a need to move through a non-violent crowd in Las Vegas once. I needed to turn into a driveway that was constantly crossed by pedestrians, and was blocking the street while waiting. After a couple minutes of no end in site, I crept through at a snail's pace, splitting the sea of people. This was all while being observed by a parked police officer, so I must have had his blessing. An autonomous car would have blocked the street for hours. Quote:
The whole goal is to make driving like an appliance. That's what drives the price down. If people are having excitement while commuting, they are probably breaking laws. Excitement will still be available in designated areas, while commuting traffic will be regulated and efficient. Automated driving is less efficient than you, but not compared to the average driver. Off-road and rural routes will be among the last places where automated driving will occur, but there is no reason that a machine would be incapable of eventually performing better than a typical human operator. |
Wouldn't the $30 smart phone also be more powerful than a 486DX2?
Then again, what kind of processing power put men on the moon? |
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A viable transition to self-driving cars would be to drive the technology forward until the sensor chips do substantial preprocessing (like the human eye) and processing is contained to the vehicle and relies on Near Field Communication to assert a presence in the world. Anarchism in the streets. What we are getting is a push to get your car onto Facespook. To enhance user safety. boot_stomping_on_face.jpg I can see some valid use cases
What I get from the Jalopnik article is that they were doing lane-keeping, not navigation. Which you can get off the showroom floor today. |
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The Astronauts were afraid they were going to crash because the cpu kept going red because it couldn’t do the trust calculations fast enough during their descent. |
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Consider your typical suburban home owner who doesn't do their own maintenance and needs a two car garage plus driveway space. Imagine reclaiming 700 sq feet of living space. Consider an urban apartment owner. No more paid parking, or crowded garages. No more worrying about the most expensive thing you own sitting on a dangerous street. Imagine all of the street-side parked cars going away. Imagine costs coming down for those who already don't own a car, because no driver needs to be paid. No more trips to the DMV, no insurance or registration or driver's licenses, no oil changes, charging stations, having to deal with stealerships telling them they need new tires again, or haggling with crooks on Craigslist or used car lots. Sure, some people will still want to spend $30,000 on a car for some things, but my guess is that they'll largely be relegated to expensive toys. |
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The autonomous cars I have seen have about 8 different sensors - that is a LOT of data. It all has to be integrated, to construct an accurate 3-dimensional picture of the world.
Each of those sensors is subject to it's own challenges: weather, obstructions, etc. The overall picture then has to be interpreted - this will take a STAGGERING amount of computing power. Think of a gaming computer - that is simply displaying a largely canned 3D model. Scanning the space around a moving car is MUCH harder than a state-of-the-art game. Making sense of all the data - and then "deciding" what is important, or what COULD be important - is a Herculean task. |
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Humans have similar issues with perception/calculation/execution that computers face. The difference is that the car can be augmented with sensors that detect things not detectable by humans, such as infrared and ultrasonic. At first autonomous features will be a supplement to human capabilities, and eventually it will surpass human capabilities. Computers were worse at chess, go, and Jeopardy than human competitors... until they weren't. Likewise, computers will be worse drivers than humans until they are better. https://electrek.co/2017/08/09/tesla...omous-driving/ |
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I don't think we will see fully autonomous cars on the road, any time soon.
We will see video mirrors, and a majority of cars with automatic safety systems way before we see autonomous cars. |
The sexbots are a lot closer, too.
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How about platonic bots?
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Hey if I had friends (human, android, cyborg, etc.), would I bother you guys so much? Maybe I would have more interesting things to say!
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This discussion is missing the end point of autonomous cars. It's not just a driving aid so that people in their own car can read instead of driving. Driverless ride sharing is the big goal. These cars won't even have any steering wheel or controls and so will be that much cheaper for the fleet to build and buy.
Ride sharing is coming at us at full speed. Uber has already disrupted the long standing taxi business. And autonomous cars will displace the Uber driver. Several companies are all pursuing this at a breakneck pace People in rural areas will still want to have their own car for a while but it will get more and more expensive. But most people in large cities, many of whom already don't own a car, will use autonomous ride sharing. And it will be more like a bus service or car pool using 4-6 passenger vehicles where you schedule a ride from a huge database of available cars and it shows up on time with 3 people already in it. You get in. Several blocks or miles down the road toward your destination, someone gets out. A few more blocks on the way, someone else gets in. A few more blocks and you get out. Ect. Like a custom bus route. This is a huge disruption to one of the biggest money making businesses in the world. New car sales from private dealers will go flat even as world population and standard of living continue to rise (until the Great Simplification at the end of oil). And all of these cars will be electric with 1C charge rates. The parking garage empires in large cities will also be disrupted since autonomous ride sharing cars will never be parked unless they need a charge. If the garages are smart they will work to become charge points for hundreds of autonomous cars to remain valid. 30 minutes of charge later a Chevy bolt type van will be ready for another 100 miles of stop and go traffic. And all of these electric cars in fleets will need minimal maintenance. So there goes the dealer service business. Huge disruption. I'm a dealer mechanic. The end of one of the most profitable private business models is approaching. . Robot taxis are already phasing in at several USA cities. It's like an amusement ride at this point but it will push forward to become mainstream much quicker than we would imagine. Major roll outs will start to seek safety certification in 3 years. Chip makers are focusing on vehicle AI as this will be bigger than the gaming indusry. . https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/self-dr...cars/drive-px/ . |
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Many quadcopters don't even include controls. Instead, they have an app you can install on your phone to control it.
Manual control will always be a necessary option. As I've pointed out, if an angry mob is trying to kill you, you need the ability to over-ride the vehicle and run people over. More commonly there will be instances where sensors are fooled into thinking something isn't safe to proceed, but a human will have to over-ride the sensors. Perhaps there will be a phone app that allows you to take control of the vehicle in emergency situations. Steer by holding the phone like a steering wheel and use the accelerometers to provide the input. Tilt forward for acceleration and backward for braking? |
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smvR7ocyNkM |
Controlling a car with a smartphone, like in that 007 movie, sounds quite interesting. Some years ago a guy in Saudi Arabia fitted a W140 Mercedes-Benz S-Class with a similar system, but IIRC he used a laptop instead. But anyway, it still sounds more likely to happen than a fully-autonomous car. Only problem would be drunk drivers eventually trying to circumvent the risk of being arrested, driving from a passenger seat and when stopped over by police they might try to claim they're doing anything else on their phones.
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Requiring a smart phone is a deal killer for me.
The Arcimoto FUV is supposedly 'autonomous ready" but I don't see how that could be the case with manual steering. |
I am waiting to be able to drive my car with an Xbox controller--or even an old NES controller. Directional control and two buttons! Who needs more?! :D
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I find it silly that auto manufacturers still sell cars with standalone nav systems and wifi hotspots. They are inferior to what apps on a phone can provide, and come at a much greater expense. I think the company that provides nav for my Acura charges $200 for map updates. Sure, some people don't want Google to know where they are, and there are great GPS units out there by Garmin and Tom Tom. |
'Required' was the weasel-word. If I had an FUV, the Enlighten app would start to appeal to me. Not for driving out of town or state, but for riding the green wave.
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Though I think that nav systems and wifi in cars are both silly, and one of the reasons I hope my current vehicles last forever. |
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Meanwhile, advertisers claim that their systems have larger antennae and stronger signals than cell phones.
Supposedly some guy in a huge pickup used to run cars off of the road near a dead spot outside of Payson. One day, he walked up to taunt a lady in a Cadillac saying there was nothing she could do, she did not have coverage. She hit her OnStar button. Did it happen? Probably at least once since OnStar was invented. |
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