Self-Driving Car Faces Off Against Pro On Thunderhill Racetrack

Hugh Pickens writes "Rachel Swaby reports that a self-driving car and a seasoned race-car driver recently faced off at Northern California's three-mile Thunderhill Raceway loop. The autonomous vehicle is a creation from the Center for Automotive Research at Stanford (CARS). 'We tried to model [the self-driving car] after what we've learned from the best race-car drivers,' says Chris Gerdes (who talks more about the development of autonomous cars in this TED talk). So who won? Humans, of course. But only by a few measly seconds. 'What the human drivers do is consistently feel out the limits of the car and push it just a little bit farther,' explained Gerdes. 'When you look at what the car is capable of and what humans achieve, that gap is really actually small.' Because the self-driving car reacts to the track as if it were controlled in real time by a human, a funny thing happens to passengers along for the ride. Initially, when the car accelerates to 115 miles per hour and then brakes just in time to make it around a curve, the person riding shotgun freaks out. But a second lap looks very different. Passengers tend to relax, putting their faith in the automatically spinning wheel. 'We might have a tendency to put too much confidence in it,' cautioned Gerdes. 'Watching people experience it, they'll say, oh, that was flawless.' Gerdes reaction: 'Wait wait! This was developed by a crazy professor and graduate students!'"

Re:Seconds?

[Anonymous Coward]

Outside the race track, who cares? It is like saying my processor is 1 Mhz better than yours.

It will win soon

[swamp_ig]

A self-driving car doesn't have to pay much attention to the fragility of the human form when it doesn't have any on board.

Accelerate at 50g? no problem just add extra bracing.

Re:BRAKE

[bdwebb]

I'm confused...AFAIK it doesn't work because in the context of making a "fast break for it" the term implies a breaking of your current action or state (suddenly bolting/running/attempting escape/etc.) In TFS it is stated that it "accelerates to 115 miles per hour and then breaks just in time to make it around a curve" which literally implies that the brakes are being pressed to slow the vehicle's entry into the curve which is 'braking' rather than 'breaking' as either the current state of acceleration or any physical characteristic breaking would need to be specified to give it context and make the this spelling appropriate.

I see what you're saying in that it could be double entendre but for me to call it a clever poke rather than a grammatical error it would have to say "accelerates to 115 miles per hour and then breaks from acceleration just in time to make it around a curve". In a statement like 'take a break" or 'take a brake' I agree that either works as one implies departing from an particular action or state of being and the other implies slowing down or stopping.

I'm not trying to be a dick, btw...just exploring the possibilities. IANAEP (English Professor) so I don't know what I'm talking about probably...that's just how it happens in my head piece.

Re:Seconds?

[dreamchaser]

I've done rally racing and I'm pretty damn good at it, and I'd still welcome an AI assist for my daily driving. Would I want it in a race? Probably not just yet, but when I'm driving to a job site I am not racing and would love to have the extra protection.