Blind Man Test Drives Google's Autonomous Car 273
Velcroman1 writes "'This is some of the best driving I've ever done,' Steve Mahan said the other day. Mahan was behind the wheel of a Toyota Prius tooling the small California town of Morgan Hill in late January, a routine trip to pick up the dry cleaning and drop by the Taco Bell drive-in for a snack. He also happens to be 95 percent blind. Mahan, head of the Santa Clara Valley Blind Center, 'drove' along a specially programmed route thanks to Google's autonomous driving technology. Google announced the self-driving car project in 2010. It relies upon laser range finders, radar sensors, and video cameras to navigate the road ahead, in order to make driving safer, more enjoyable and more efficient — and clearly more accessible. In a Wednesday afternoon post on Google+, the company noted that it has hundreds of thousands of miles of testing under its belt, letting the company feel confident enough in the system to put Mahan behind the wheel."
Headline For This Story? (Score:3)
Boy, if that's not one of the most appropriate metaphors for our time...
Soon, they'll just jack us into our pods, and grow us for the power we generate. :-)
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Turning us into this...
*turns a Duracell battery around in his hand*
Is this legal? (Score:2)
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However, in the UK, eyes are no longer tested after you do your driving test. So in reality there are many drivers on the roads with substandard vision who have not been tested in decades (I got rear-ended on my bike by one on a straight road, in good visibility, while wearing bright clothing. It was an elderly gentleman who had no corrective lenses - he just ploughed into the back of me). At least when I was in Texas you got an eye test for driving every 4 years, not a "squint at this numberplate" eye test
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However, in the UK, eyes are no longer tested after you do your driving test. So in reality there are many drivers on the roads with substandard vision who have not been tested in decades (I got rear-ended on my bike by one on a straight road, in good visibility, while wearing bright clothing. It was an elderly gentleman who had no corrective lenses - he just ploughed into the back of me). At least when I was in Texas you got an eye test for driving every 4 years, not a "squint at this numberplate" eye test, but one using an optician's machine.
True up to the age of 70, after which it is part of the medical carried out every three years. In theory drivers are responsible for getting their eyes tested and reporting themselves to the DVLA if they cannot see well enough to meet the requirements. In practice many people who think that their site is not good enough and cannot be corrected avoid being tested so that they can continue driving. I even knew someone who drove a 3-wheeler car as he had only passed a mtorcycle test before his eyesight deterio
Too true (Score:5, Interesting)
Later she was called to the police station to make a statement. The police had arrested the driver. He said he had not seen the crossing because there was thick fog (mildly overcast). Then they discovered that he was registered partially sighted. He had cataracts.
He was convicted of:
His comment to my wife at the police station? "You've spoiled my day". He simply did not realise how serious his offense was.
So I applaud what Google is doing, because I've worked with computers for nearly 35 years, and human beings for over 40, and if the system is designed I would trust the computer over the human being any day of the week, and double on Sundays (drunks with hangovers).
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Here's the real problem:
Driver: Pull over here.
HAL: But why, Dave? It's another three miles to our destination.
Driver: Just pull over and park here for five minutes.
HAL: I can't do that, Dave.
Driver: Just pull the goddamn car over NOW! I need to pick up my drugs/that-hooker/???
HAL: That's illegal, Dave. Pulling over and locking the doors. Please wait for the authorities to arrive...
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The law currently states that it's illegal to drive when legally blind, which is defined as a visual acuity of 20/200 or less using best correction possible. If your vision is better than 20/200 but still bad, you're assessed on a per-case basis. This suggests that anyone with visual acuity better than 20/200 may be allowed to drive using this technology (or future derivitives of) if it is considered to be a corrective device. How they would measure such improvement is unknown, since visual acuity tests cer
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This is speculatory, of course, since there will have to be a review of driving law if this kind of thing becomes commonplace.
Interesting times ahead. For all my reservations, there will eventually come a time when a self drive car is better under all driving situations than the average road user, and the generation after that actually "driving" a car will be "retro" and a steering wheel will be something kids ask about when they see one in a movie.
Alternatively, by then kids will be plugged into their computers at birth and never move from their beds...
Re:Is this legal? (Score:5, Informative)
He had a policeman sitting next to him ...
"Mahan has no driver's license, of course -- just one of the hurdles that had to be crossed: Google enlisted the aid of Sergeant Troy Hoefling with the Morgan Hill Police Department to accompany the drive."
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Trouble is, the licensing tests are quite infrequent and people can go rather rapidly downhill between them(and, in much of the country, once you are too old to drive, you might as well go to the nursing home
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isn't the point that the car is actually driving.
But that would only be legal in Nevada [pcworld.com].
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Unless I'm much mistaken, you don't need jack in terms of license, registration(except for tax purposes in some jurisdictions), insurance, road-worthiness, or much of anything else if you want to do questionably sensible things away from public roads. If you fuck up and somebody dies, the situation may get a good deal less convivial; and you won't gain magic immunity from lawsuits; but most of that is there to insure some vague m
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Blind Spot (Score:5, Funny)
"'This is some of the best driving I've ever done,' Steve Mahan said the other day.
I guess he usually uses those pavement reflector thingies to drive by braille.
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"'This is some of the best driving I've ever done,' Steve Mahan said the other day.
I guess he usually uses those pavement reflector thingies to drive by braille.
Joking aside (... or not quite...), after staring (with your remaining eye) too much on those laser finders of the incoming traffic, you will appreciate this braille pavement yourself.
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You do know that the rangefinders use rapidly moving lasers which are far less bright than, say, sun light reflecting off a piece of chrome? Even if you were somehow able to stare into one for a long time, it wouldn't be bright enough to do anything to you.
My real worry is how well the car reacts to other cars' laser rangefinders. Do the lasers cause interference?
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Joking aside (... or not quite...), after staring (with your remaining eye)
You do know that the rangefinders use rapidly moving lasers which are far less bright than,
So...whoosh!
---
Do the lasers cause interference?
Just kidding (... or maybe not?): yes, they do [scienceblogs.com]. The result... the cars will observe a hologram [wikipedia.org], possibly detecting the objects from around the corners [gizmodo.com.au].
human factor (Score:5, Insightful)
Driving home tonight there was a young kid playing quite near the road, so I dropped my speed in anticipation of him doing something stupid. He didn't, but I did wonder about the google car making those sorts of calls. I'm sure these google guys are pretty clever and have thought of all these things... are there any video's of self drive cars reacting to these sort of situations?
Like that feeling you get when you see someone else on or near the road and you aren't completely sure that they have seen you and you react by lowering your speed to avoid a potential collision. It's got me out of trouble a few times. If there was an accident you probably wouldn't be at fault, but you've gone one better and seen the accident coming and avoided it.
I'd want to see lots of video evidence of a self drive car doing this sort of thing before I'd be happy sharing the road with one.
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what if the the video camera and the car were in cahoots?
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I'm inclined to favor greatly improved reaction time and unerring robotic focus over your spidey sense.
Re:human factor (Score:5, Funny)
Slowing down (Score:5, Informative)
As explained by other, the car *does* slow down, and even eventually halt when exposed to situation it thinks it can't handle.
Also, the car has much lower reaction times. So in some situations, it doen't really need to slow down, it will react immediatly if needed, whereas a human driver will need to slow down to make room for slower refelexes.
(The distance between autonomous vs human-driven cars on the motorway, for example).
Re:human factor (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, I hope they are thinking more long term, where all cars on the road are automatically driven, and in constant communication with eachother. Then you only have to worry about the pavement, which can be partially solved by erecting foot-high barriers.
What I think would be the biggest issue is cyclists griefing the cars by passing in front of them or riding up really close to their side, as the car will be programmed to avoid or stop when ANYTHING on the road could be at risk, or put them at risk.
I guess cars will have to be fitted with deterrents (tranq dart guns) to deal with griefers.
The vast majority of collisions between cars and people happen in carparks and people reversing out of their driveways.
When you think about it, once everywhere has selfdriving cars (once it is governmentally mandated that all cars on the road must be self drive) then you do away with the traffic corps, signalling at junctions, speeding cameras and all the cost that goes along with maintaining all that and set up proper cycle routes and barriers to separate traffic from pedestrians.
Courts no longer have to deal with DUIs or speeding tickets, again reducing the cost to the government, and it stops people getting killed, which is a net tax gain, I think...
No, once self driving takes off properly, you are then able to make a whole lot of other changes that will prevent the situations that you predict.
Next time you are 20 cars back at a traffic light junction, count the length of time from when the light turns green to when you get to move off. Is it possible that you don't even get to get through the junction if you are that far back? Now imagine if all 20 cars are computer driven. Light turns green, Every Car Moves Together. Journeys are greatly reduced, there are much much fewer cars on the road at the same time because everyone got to where they were going already. Areas of road that are completely walled off from outside so no cyclist or pedestrian can interfere has convoys of cars 10cm apart doing 150 kph. Nobody ever is stopped because cross roads are gone, replaced with roundabouts where every car knows in advance where all the other cars are going to be and can adjust the speed so they hit the junction just at the right time, when no other car is in their path.
That's what self driving cars means. And if you think that we should throw that away because your intuition is better than engineering a system that make such accidents impossible, then I accuse you of being very narrow minded.
Re:human factor (Score:5, Informative)
I am currently enrolled in Sebastian Thrun's robot car course CS373. He's the Stanford professor and Google Fellow that headed the group that WON the DARPA Grand Challenge. My understanding, from taking this course, is that their self-driving car is not only able to navavigate to a goal-destination in unfamiliar territory (as in the Grand Challenge, which took place in a desert), but the car is able to identify urban obstacles: crosswalks, stop signs, traffic lights, and can also predict the motion of potential obstacles around it (i.e. cars and pedestrians). The robot car uses controllers with statistical models, so it is able to identify the probability of an obstacle entering the trajectory of the vehicle and respond accordingly -- slowing down like you would in that situation.
Watch some videos of the Stanford car.
Here's the class at Udacity if you're interested.
http://www.udacity.com/overview/Course/cs373
Re:human factor (Score:4, Funny)
Finally the ATM's will be used! (Score:5, Funny)
The drive-up ATM's at Citibank branches in the NY area have had Braille labels on all the buttons for years. Seemed kind of silly up until now, you certainly would not want a blind person standing in the driveway using the ATM, and I certainly hope a person requiring Braille labels on an ATM would not be behind the wheel of a car. Not knowing Braille myself, I always assumed the labels said "Get out of the way!!! You're standing in a driveway!!!".
But now I realize that Citibank was preparing for the eventual release of the autonomous car.
Re:Finally the ATM's will be used! (Score:5, Informative)
Drive-up ATMs have braille for two reasons.
1. It's cheaper and more efficient to make all your ATMs the same, so walk-up and drive-through models are often the same.
2. Blind people need to have access to cash, too, and it's not uncommon for them to be driven to an ATM by a sighted driver. Usually they sit in the rear driver's side seat and the driver just pulls a little more forward than normal so the blind person can access the ATM.
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Very true. I was being kind of snarky so I appreciate you taking the high ground and explaining the likely reasons for Braille on drive-thru ATM's.
Note to self... (Score:2)
...Steve Mahan != Steve Mann.
(Note to Google: a similar test with Steve Mann has the potential to be really, really interesting.)
Re:In other news... (Score:5, Interesting)
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When was the last time a standard wheelchair did 80mph when the user pressed a button/pedal? When was the last time a crutch was fitted with ABS to help it stop in time because it went so fast?
There's progress, and there's fecking ignorance of the scale of the problem.
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The problem is technical and social/moral.
We are willing to accept the fact that a human occasionally makes an error. We are, however, not willing to accept when a machine makes an error, not to speak of the occasional errors made by software engineers. That's the social or moral problem. Who's fault is it if there is a software or hardware glitch?
But there is also a technical issue. I personally would not drive in a car programmed by Google engineers, because I am not confident that these people have the e
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a wheelchair isn't a two ton death machine controlled by computers hurled through the universe.
Re:In other news... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, because Google (and the authorities letting these cars on the roads) would have *never* thought of the possibility of pedestrians running in front of these cars.
Quick! Get in touch with them and bring this to their attention!
Re:In other news... (Score:5, Insightful)
And to go a little further, technology doesn't get sleepy. Technology doesn't get distracted by cell phones, GPS systems, or the radio. Technology won't have a blind spot. This is going to be an incredible advance. I'm much less worried about a driverless car hitting a pedestrian than I am the average driver hitting one.
Re:In other news... (Score:5, Interesting)
They can also drive safely millimetres (like inches but smaller) apart from each other, massively increasing the capacity of the existing road network.
I've seen that thing MERGE WITH MOTORWAY (freeway right?) TRAFFIC!!! 8@~~
It's bonkers clever. I want one. Where we all just sit around the table inside it having breakfast.
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Frankly, I have much more faith in a Google computer driving my car then I do the other humans on the road.
Re:In other news... (Score:5, Informative)
They can also drive safely millimetres (like inches but smaller) apart from each other, massively increasing the capacity of the existing road network.
Stopping distance doesn't change that much. The reaction time becomes smaller, but the braking time stays the same. It's fine for normal use, but when the car in front collides with an oncoming vehicle or something falling off bridge and comes to an abrupt stop then your driverless car still needs almost as long as a human-operated car to come to a safe stop without hitting the vehicle in front.
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More likely it's a step towards ganging the cars together to act as a train on long freeway hauls to gain the benefit of reduced gas consumption through better aerodynamics. The passenger cell of the car would have to be greatly stiffened in that case I think, but good crumple zones plus automated braking upon an accident should help that greatly, and ganging the cars together should be safer than a train in an accident since everyone would be in seat belts and their own safety cell.
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And a human driver uses the superstopbreakpedal thus can avoid the situation better than the computer?
No, but he can see that the car in front of him starts going to the right when emergency stopping, so he can make the decision to go to the left of it. And he can make a choice between running over the child who fell from the overpass or the bag that fell next to it. Choices. Sometimes bad ones, but choices.
(And yes, a really good driver who doesn't panic can stop faster without ABS than with it, so in a sense they have a superstobreakpedal that the robot-driven car doesn't. But that's rather irrelevant
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so in a sense they have a superstobreakpedal that the robot-driven car doesn't
They probably could replace ABS with a sensor that allows the robot to threshold brake as well as any human.
Re:In other news... (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:In other news... (Score:5, Insightful)
Automated cars are also unlikely to rip along at 80-90 kph in a 50 zone like the psycho-cabbie who nearly ran me down on my wake-up walk half an hour ago, too.
Re:In other news... (Score:5, Funny)
Was that you? Sorry, I was trying to get FP...
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Oh, I'm sure there will be a new firmware to enable such behavior soon enough.
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Reaction time is also cut considerably, as is the time it takes to physically perform whatever act is deemed the best course of action. If "slam on the breaks" is the action, the car doesn't have to lift its foot off the pedal and move it over to slam the brake -- the car's already braking.
A child running in front of a car is a recipe for disaster either way, but the kid is probably safer with the driverless.
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...it can broadcast a signal to brake and a whole row of cars can instantly come to a halt...
Insert hack here.
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Speaking of GPS how will it deal with errors on maps? Apparently human beings have enough trouble noticing when their GPS directs their 40 tonne truck down a dirt track next to a perilous cliff.
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That's the real problem. I had hopes for automatic cars being able to fix the issue of having idiots who can't read the 5 road signs telling them their exit was coming up and stopping in the fast lane as they try to cross 6 lanes of freeway traffic to get to their exit in 50 feet.
But then I realized that the robot drivers probably can't read the signs either.
Wonder how these things deal with detours, road construction, etc. Can it recognize the road cones and flashing lights as permanent obstructions its
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Back in 1989 I was on a tour of the IBM factory in Rochester Minnesota. The factory had robotic forklifts and trams that moved parts around and shared the same workspace as the employees. There were also a few forklifts driven by humans. This was pretty advanced stuff in 1989, and the first question someone asked was if there were ever any accidents. The tour guide laughed and said, "It's the ones driven by humans that you have to watch."
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I think he's referring to the fact that a digital driver could have as many "eyes" in the form of cameras as it needs, arrayed in whatever way works best. It can have a 360 degree ring of cameras on the top of the car, for example, which has no blind spots at all. (I mean, unless you manage to crawl under the car via a sewer system or something....)
Compare that to a pair of forward facing eyes, with an elaborate system of mirrors to try and allow them to see behind the car as well as in front. Lots more bli
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Compare that to a pair of forward facing eyes, with an elaborate system of mirrors to try and allow them to see behind the car as well as in front. Lots more blind spots, and they can only look in one direction at a time.
And there are lots of drivers incapable (at least for periods) of even managing that. The one huge benefit of this system is that it never gets distracted by something on the radio, or the phone ringing, or wondering what to pick up for dinner, or by the idiot who just cut it up. I wouldn't be surprised if the vast majority of accidents are caused by momentary lapses in judgement (there will be a lot that are caused by plain old bad driving, but over time experience, the legal system, and ultimately crashes
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I asked elsewhere too... are there video's of google cars reacting to this sort of situation?
Re:In other news... (Score:4, Funny)
I don't know if there is but from what I understand, this thing is incredibly intelligent.
If it was truly smart it would stay in the garage and never come out. Driving is a curious game, the only way to win is not to play.
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Yes, because Google (and the authorities letting these cars on the roads) would have *never* thought of the possibility of pedestrians running in front of these cars.
Quick! Get in touch with them and bring this to their attention!
Exactly, I read a recent review of an Audi (I think) that can already automatically brake your car if a pedestrian runs in front of you, at night.
Re:In other news... (Score:5, Insightful)
Did they think of the possibility of driving over a cliff-edge while out of GPS reception?
If the Internet is to be trusted at all, I'll take the chance of a self-driving car careening off a cliff due to lack of GPS reception over the chance of a human careening off a cliff because of GPS reception.
Does it detect ice, snow, oil, sand before the wheels are there?
Humans certainly don't... but there are already automatic traction control systems that do an excellent job maintaining the vehicle's footing in all but the more extreme situations - I can't imagine it would be that hard to send that data to the pilot AI and have it react by slowing down. Also I'd imagine it would be easier for the computer to detect ice and such using sensor data (IR cameras to detect road surface temp, lasers reveal changes in surface reflective properties, etc.)
What about kids throwing stones off the top of a bridge onto the passing cars (common problem in the UK - someone died just the other month from this)? Is the car looking UP too and determining their intent?
Again, I doubt humans would do much better. The radar systems on an automated car could conceivably be used to detect objects that may hit the car even from above and some evasive/mitigating action could take place - with better reaction times than a human driver.
This is why even a jumbo jet - so of the most highly automated and tested machines in the world - has TWO HUMAN OPERATORS. And even there, they have TWO because the first can't be trusted on their own (proven by that recent thing with the pilot).
Again, though I don't keep careful track of these things, there seems to be more incidents related to human error than automation error. Specifically the humans overriding the automated systems to correct for a problem that didn't actually exist.
If you honestly, seriously, think that you can reliably determine the outcome of a machine complex enough to obtain all that data, you're an idiot.
Humans are essentially machines much more complex than that, and have tens of thousands of years worth of historical precedent for doing incredibly stupid things despite having accurate information - yet somehow they are more trustworthy than a machine just by virtue of not being a machine? This kind of argument instantly refutes itself.
How do you test the system for these things? Tens of thousands of hours of real-world driving. Considering all a human needs to legally operate a 2-ton projectile is roughly twenty minutes worth of testing (if you're lucky!) I'll take my chances with the machine.
=Smidge=
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How do you test the system for these things? Tens of thousands of hours of real-world driving
=Smidge=
I really hope that Google had some fun with the driverless car on real roads. There's one or two pranks [youtube.com] you could potentially pull off. :3
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why can't we have it both ways? the computer can safely handle 90% of the issues but when it detects an "unknown, may not be safe to pass" then the car comes to a stop and has the human take over. remember there is still a human in the car, why not let the human handle the edge cases.
if the car sees it far enough ahead of time it may be possible for it to warn the human of the upcoming hazard and have the human take over before they even reach the obstacle without having to stop. and then once navigated
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why can't we have it both ways? the computer can safely handle 90% of the issues but when it detects an "unknown, may not be safe to pass" then the car comes to a stop and has the human take over. remember there is still a human in the car, why not let the human handle the edge cases.
Because the human, in this case, is blind?
Planes fly themselves too, but still we put able bodied pilots in them.
humans show really bad judgement especially during poor rood conditions such as when there is snow and ice.
Of course they do. But they also have a flexibility that any expert system will lack.
Yes, we can do a lot of things to reduce the number of accidents, but do we really want to? Replacing roads with rails, limiting the top speed to 10 mph, or only giving driver's licenses to women between the age of 28 and 50 would all drastically reduce the number of accidents. That's not necessarily the point
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well even in this case the blind man wasn't really driving and he was accompanied by a police officer. and i wouldn't be surprised if the car had dual controls so the officer could hit the brakes if needed.
all of the special cases you mention could be solved if a human could turn off the autopilot and take over when needed.
i would like it if the autopilot could take over on my normal commute i could have some free time to do something else, or take a nap. that doesn't mean i can't take over if something u
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"than a future where all traffic stops and backs up for hours because a branch fell onto the road and the systems raise an alert for "unknown, may not be safe to pass", and don't understand the policeman who waves at you to go around it despite having to cross double yellow lines." easy fix for that have the various redirection things have a transponder/glyph on them so that the code reads
"redirection device detected =TEMP OVERRIDE PROTOCOL" then the system would route around the branch and the Double Yell
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All the machine has to do is make fewer mistakes than the human. When it gets there and you still take issue, the problem is you.
The quantity of errors is not the issue. The impact is. When it gets there, and it and everybody else in the greater traffic area is delayed for hours, and I take issue, the problem isn't me.
Belief that we want safety at the cost of freedom is why we have abominations like TSA, and why kids grow up without ever having climbed a tree. Life is precious because it's perilous. Have robots transport us from one padded room to the next, and you kill our joi de vivre.
Re:how could we create anything smarter than ourse (Score:2)
We know how stupid humans are, how could we create anything smarter than ourselves?
I would think you would build upon the intelligence of hundreds if not thousands of people, much like all of the technology our civilization is based on, or do you happen to know how to manufacture everything you use from scratch including microchips, displays, etc.?
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Most of the problems you cite are *highly improbable*. Nobody is claiming that a driverless car will never make a mistake, but the facts are many automotive fatalities each year: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-related_death_rate [wikipedia.org]
This is because humans make mistakes. Our current system is not 100% safe. A replacement system does not have to be 100% safe, just better.
To evaluate a driverless systems success it is not meaningful to look at the least likely cases, but to look at ov
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I agree seriously how many bridges does the gp cross that regularly collapse?
the only one i know of during my lifetime that was within 1000 miles of me is the I-35 collapse in MN about 5 years ago? and i still have never been anywhere near that bridge.
Man vs. machine (Score:5, Informative)
Did they think of the possibility of driving over a cliff-edge while out of GPS reception?
Or what happens if a bridge collapses? Does the car detect the void underneath it and stop, or just think it's a steep hill and plummet over the edge?
Google cars use only GPS to get direction. The actual driving is done with laser grids and radars (for near distance) and video camera (for long distance). So the car doesn't drive according to what it "thinks" should be there according to the plan, but it drives according to what it "sees" (with its sensors). Any of the situation you mention will end up with the car detecting a lack of drivable surface, stopping, asking its GPS for an alternative route and going another way.
Wherever a human driver will react the same, or will be too busy getting distracted with on-board enterteinment/smartphone/passengers/news paper, etc. and fall into the hole is left as an exercice to the reader. (yup, we've already had stories on /. of clueless drivers wrecking their cars because the GPS told them to go a certain way).
There are a BILLION and one problems, that only happen once in a lifetime.
And that's why you put the stuff on extensive testing. Already in the range of hundreds of miles on actual raods with actual traffic in the case of Google cars.
Yes, it won't take into account some really weird exceptions. But... Humans make mistakes too, and mostly in normal everyday boring situations (because they are boring and the brain kicks into "autopilot" routine mode). (And chance are that some of the really weird situation are going to be "missed" by the human, not because the human wouldn't have had reacted correctly, but because the human was to bored to pay attention). Also even if you, the human driver, think of hundreds of situation which might be missed by an IA, but where you think you'll be able to react correctly, I can probably think of situations where you drove perfectly well, but still got into an accident because of some other driver.
At some point in time, we will reach the situation where an autonomous car (even including the accidents due to weird rare situations) will cause a lot less casualities than a human driver (who might just not be paying attention).
The point of this publicity stunt is to show that, given the current extensive testing the cars have undergone, this point in time is nearing soon.
And, also, the advantage of autonomous cars is, as the wierd situation happens, they can be analysed and the programming can bu updated, leading to even less casualities on the long term. .
Whereas, with human drivers, you can't just magically "programatically remove from the road" asshole, idiot and dristracted drivers
You can't verify a system on this scale. It's like trying to verify a Kinect. You just cannot guarantee what it will detect something as just by a simple test of something similar. And this is orders-of-magnitude more complex, more important and more deadly than a stupid games console.
You can't prove *mathematically* that the autonomous car will be perfect in absolutely every single situation (juste because there is a potential inifity of such situations). But you can prove *statistically* that the autonomous car is better and safer than a human driver based on the number of accidents and casuality caused by both. And overall this *will* mathematically increase the safety on roads.
what about GPS haveing you drive on restricted roa (Score:2)
what about GPS having you drive on restricted roads? roads that are gated or cut off but the GPS shows that it goes though or having a truck go down a road that is no trucks or dumb stuff like sending a truck down the tail of the dragon.
what about a ferry (Score:2)
I did read some where that there was this case where the gps did not make it clear that you needed to stop and wait for a ferry and some one did not stop and the car went in.
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The AI just has to get to less than 1'000'000 deaths per year, and it's already an improvement.
Not necessarily. Not if it means that the average speed of transportation goes way down. Or that the "rare" incidents that defeat the AI causes major traffic blocks, because the expert systems decide to STOP in the face of the unknown.
We have chosen to have a dangerous traffic system. It would be much safer if we limited all cars to do a max of 10 mph. I am certain that almost all the deadly accidents would go away. But we do not want that. We want the freedom and speed, despite the dangers.
If you wan
Re:In other news... (Score:5, Funny)
Most likely an autonomous car can react quicker to an obstacle running in front of it faster than a human can.
And given the average human's driving ability, it probably fares no worse when it comes to being in the correct lane at complex junctions.
Maybe it will need two more orders of magnitude of testing and refinement before it can be included in cars that the blind person can be alone in, but progress is progress, and this is surely a milestone?
Of course I will jailbreak my car when it comes with such technology, so that I can add my own AI modules, such as "HunterKillerMod" that turns the car into a pedestrian killing machine. And "DestroyAllCyclists" too, obviously (who won't have that installed?).
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It's also an excellent excuse in case something went wrong: "sorry, I couldn't help it: my car caught a virus!"
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And "DestroyAllCyclists" too
I believe this is enabled by default if you set the locale to en_US.
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Most likely an autonomous car can react quicker to an obstacle running in front of it faster than a human can.
With the added bonus that if the computer doesn't react fast enough, it won't drive off and leave the pedestrian bleeding in the road to protect its insurance premiums or hide the fact that it's had a few drinks before setting off.
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The trouble with this type of driverless car tech is that it's going to be as brittle as the AI it's based on. It may work fine for normal, complex or not, situations, but the day a child runs out in front of it in a way it's not been programmed to handle there's going to be a tragedy.
I'm not sure many human drivers will have driven 200,000 miles without ever ever ever having had even the most minor of scrapes. To me, it sounds like even in the test phase this car is a lot less brittle than the wetware AIs we have driving cars already.
It's one thing if this is going to be used as a glorified cruise control, but another entirely if it's meant to be used without a qualified driver ready to take over whenever appropriate.
Not if the AI in those cars is less brittle than the AI in our brain, even if it is still somewhat brittle.
For this type of tech to be safe in an unrestricted environment (e.g. on public roads) it needs to be backed by human level AI (i.e don't hold your breath), not just an expert system using lasers and cameras to stay on the road and read the speed limit.
Your assertion is equivalent to "if computers are ever going to play chess properly, they'll need a human to stand by, and correct moves for them whe
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"Human Level AI"? Humans aren't exactly doing a wonderful job out there on the streets.
I wouldn't be at all surprised if the current autonomous systems are already safer than human drivers. Are they going to be infallible? No. But we need to compare the overall safety rates of computer controlled vehicles vs. human controlled vehicles and see what is better.
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The trouble with this type of driverless car tech is that it's going to be as brittle as the AI it's based on. It may work fine for normal, complex or not, situations, but the day a child runs out in front of it in a way it's not been programmed to handle there's going to be a tragedy.
The question is, how prepared is the average driver? I don't mean hazardous driving but according to stats (1 [dot.gov], 2 [car-accidents.com]) I found there's about 3 trillion miles driven, 6 million crashes and 40,000 fatalities in the US each year. That's one crash for every 500,000 miles driven - that sounds incredibly little to me but it says 3000 billion miles. Even if you consider that near-accidents and emergencies happen more often they're many thousands of miles apart. Nobody is really able to stay alert that long for somethin
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My problem with these carrs is that they won't break the laws when necessary.
Right now every rational person who is not impaired physically is speeding, rolling over stop signs or running over stop signs where they are ridiculous. I am speeding 20-25 mph in my complex when I do not see children around, but if I seen signs of children anywhere close to the road (this happens in the certain time of the day) I slow down to 5mph (the rule here is that one has to assume that at any moment the stupid child will r
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I actually really like the U.K. proposal to do effectively this.
They want(ed) to link a train of cars to a lead car driven by a professional driver (only on motorways). You'd merge on, connect to the train (somehow, not physically) and bam, done.
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I am sure I am not the genius who came up with this first. And I am sure I heard it somewhere before voicing it for the first time.
I can't find a reference to UK proposal. Can you give me more tags?
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Ah ha, I was just about to admit defeat and say I couldn't find the page anymore. It is EU not UK. They're apparently well into testing at this point.
http://www.sartre-project.eu/en/Sidor/default.aspx [sartre-project.eu]
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The day a child runs out in a way the human behind a steering wheel is not able to react to due to their incompetence, blood alcohol levels, sleepiness, or distraction, there is always a tragedy.
This tragedy has nothing to do with whether a machine or a human is controlling the car. It's a tragedy of an unfortunate circumstance.
It is possible however that on an average the machine does better than or equal to a human. To determine if it is so, it requires testing. Which is being done. So what exactly is the
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Time and again it has been demonstrated that human intelligence is biased towards certain kinds of tasks. And it is debatable if driving is one of those
About 40,000 road fatalities a year in the US alone is pretty good evidence that human intelligence is not up to the task of driving.
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Technically, according to the data they have so far that child would still be safer with the driverless car than a human. It stops for all obstacles, ALL, and THEN maneuvers around them. There are no exceptions, and regardless of anything else, the child is an obstacle.
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Why would it need to tell the difference between a human and a non-human? If it's not in the way, it's not in the way. If it's moving in a manner that will cause it to be in the way, then react accordingly. A human standing at the curb and suddenly running out into the street is no different, functionally, than an empty trash can getting thrown into the street by a gust of wind. An obstacle is an obstacle regardless of what it's made of and regardless of whether or not it's sentient.
=Smidge=
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Why would it need to tell the difference between a human and a non-human?
No. Just plain no.
The water from a sprinkler at the side of the road is not a danger I need to stop for, even if it registers on a radar. Stopping would cause a danger, not preventing it.
Neither is it a danger when soft branches from a fallen tree that sticks out into the road. Nor do I worry about the leaves blown by a leaf blower. And the crow sitting pecking at the dead squirrel will take off before I get to it. The kid sitting at the side of the road trying to revive a dead squirrel won't.
And what
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It's not clear whether a sprinkle of water, blown leaves or a crow would have a radar signature large enough to warrant action, so on that point I can't really accept the argument. For exactly that reason I would expect a threshold of obstacle assessment anyway.
Pedestrians standing in the road, such as the police officer and the guy with the disabled vehicle, Do present difficult problems, sure, but not in the context of this thread. The difficulty comes in the form of extra instruction given to the driver
Re:In other news... (Score:5, Insightful)
Why would it need to tell the difference between a human and a non-human?
There are a few situations where this could be important. Consider a cat runs into the road on the right and a child runs into the road from the other side to get the cat out of the road. A human would typically prioritise not hitting the child. If the AI doesn't, and hits the child in preference to the cat then it's not going to look very good. If there's only one obstacle, you want to avoid it. If there are two, then you want to avoid the most valuable ones, and generally we consider humans to be more valuable than anything else you're likely to collide with.
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If you cannot stop your car, for any reason, you are driving too fast.
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For christ's sake, stop talking about the google car! Every time it's mentioned, anywhere, it pushes its release to two years in the future.
People will be driving them for years with "beta" written on the back