Making Driverless Cars Safer 140
colinneagle writes "Several autonomous cars have been developed elsewhere, most famously by Google, and they are generally capable of identifying objects in the road directly ahead of or behind them. The challenge undertaken by MIT researchers is making these cars aware of dangers lurking around corners and behind buildings. MIT PhD student Swarun Kumar showed a video of a test run by the MIT researchers in which an autonomous golf cart running the technology, called CarSpeak (PDF), encountered a pedestrian walking from the entrance of a building to a crosswalk. The golf cart stopped roughly five yards ahead of the crosswalk and waited long enough for the pedestrian to walk to the other side of the road. The vehicle then continued driving automatically. The solution Kumar presented is based on a method of communications that is intended to expand the vehicle's field of view. This can be accomplished by compressing and sharing the data that autonomous vehicles generate while they're in motion, which Kumar says can amount to gigabits per second. In a comparison test, a car using CarSpeak's MAC-based communications was able to stop with a maximum average delay of 0.45 seconds, compared to the minimum average delay time of 2.14 seconds for a car running 802.11, the report noted."
I wonder if it might help to record video... (Score:4, Insightful)
Even with faster stopping, there will be those who deliberately jump in front of cars in order to get hit, hopefully to score a big jury verdict.
The solution -- a camera that turns on and records encounters with pedestrians, bicyclists, etc, with a timer in place. That way, if there is a wreck, there is documented proof that the other party jaywalked or violated traffic laws.
Of course, if it is the car's fault, it will be documented as well, but assuming a fully automatic vehicle which obeys all traffic signals, it likely won't be the vehicle that caused the collision.
you know what? (Score:3, Insightful)
Do not want. It's obvious at this point that the real deal with all these innovations is to retain more and more control over what people do and where they go. They entice us with convenience as they remove the control. I realize this article is about technical minutiae, but I have no desire to help this project along.. Until society matures such that those in charge don't have insatiable desires to micromanage individual choice as much as possible, I'd rather deal with driving my own vehicles around, thanks. Besides, with the right fit, driving a car is enjoyable.
Re:you know what? (Score:5, Insightful)
I have the opposite reaction. I think we are entirely too cavalier about the unbelievable human toll that our current reliance on human-guided cars takes. Tens of thousands die in the US every single year. Look at the way the country responds to something like war casualties at 1/10 the scale and ask if this situation makes any sense.
Communication (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, and this communication is not authenticated... which means you now have up to seven tons of machinery barreling around a corner... and if it's told that the way is clear, instead of blocked, instead of a gentle deceleration and safe crossing you get human hamburger. Up next on CSI... hacking GPS signals and inter-car communication to create the perfect murder: No forensic evidence, looks just like an accident.
I do not like the idea of autonomous cars depending on or accepting unauthenticated inputs, or having two-way communication abilities while in operation. We already have a pile of broken nuclear facilities in Iran caused entirely by malicious digital communications, the source of which can't be proven. Most systems rely on GPS and network communication for route planning, which is problematic enough but can probably be made reasonably secure... but when you start processing realtime data from unauthenticated sources to make operating decisions, not just navigation decisions, I just don't see it as being possible to secure because of the wide number of variables which could be influenced independently or collectively to create an unsafe condition.