Google: Our Robot Cars Are Better Drivers Than You 722
An anonymous reader writes "At a robotics conference in Santa Clara, California, the head of Google's autonomous car project presented results of a study showing that the company's autonomous cars are already safer than human drivers — including trained professionals. 'We're spending less time in near-collision states,' he said. 'In addition to painting a rosy picture of his vehicles' autonomous capabilities, Urmson showed a new dashboard display that his group has developed to help people understand what an autonomous car is doing and when they might want to take over.' This follows another (non-Google) study earlier this week that found the adoption of autonomous cars could save thousands of lives and billions of dollars each year. Urmson also pointed out that determining liability for an accident is much easier using the data collected by the autonomous cars. At one point, a test car was read-ended, and the data showed it smoothly braking to a stop before being struck. 'We don't have to rely on eyewitnesses that can't be trusted as to what happened — we actually have the data. The guy around us wasn't paying enough attention. The data will set you free.'"
Show time (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Show time (Score:5, Funny)
Some say, "he is actually the robot driving the autonomous cars... All at the same time"
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They had a robot car from Audi (I think?) a couple of years ago doing a lap around the track... it did pretty well, I recall.
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Higher-than-thou attitudes like this are one of the reasons why I would absolutely welcome self-driving cars. And a lot more stricter police enforcement of existing traffic rules.
Re:Show time (Score:5, Insightful)
Where I come from, that's called "gross negligence" and "endangering lives".
I don't know where you are so I can't comment on your local laws. In the United States, it would likely be considered neither. Acts necessary to save human lives are neither criminally prosecutable nor subject to civil litigation.
The important word in that phrase, of course, being "necessary." Here's how a judge would evaluate your affirmative defense of, "Your honor, I had to drive like a madman: I had a man in obvious cardiac distress in the back of my car."
I am generally not a fan of urban driving. I own a Mustang GT and I go to the speedway whenever I can to race at high speeds in a controlled environment, but once I'm on public roads I obey the speed limit and I live in mortal fear of Suzy Homemaker in an SUV who's jawing on her cell phone instead of paying attention to her lane merge. I welcome the development of automated driving: for 99% of people it will be a massive step up in safety.
But let's not pretend that driving at 80mph in response to an immediate threat to a human life is something that we need to condemn. Those drivers amount to such a vanishingly small fraction of all accidents that I'm happy to give them a free pass. Go with God, may your tires have good tread, and I hope your passenger makes it.
Re:Show time (Score:5, Interesting)
Interesting points, btw! If the police caught you doing that here, you would have a hard time talking yourself out. You are simply supposed to leave it to the proper authorities.
Re:Show time (Score:5, Informative)
Detroit is infamously bad, yeah. 58 minutes is the *official* Detroit response time. A few years ago I had to call the ambulance in Detroit for a neighbor who was having a stroke. We never found out what the response time was. We called the ER, who told us to bring her down ourselves. By the time we took her to the ER, sat with her through her diagnosis and admission and returned home, the ambulance *still* hadn't arrived. So I called 911 and canceled the ambulance call.
Re:Show time (Score:5, Informative)
Mostly Detroit having been in a state of slow-motion collapse for 30+ years. Even the bankruptcy is caused by that -- it's not as if it suddenly came out of the blue.
30 years ago Detroit had 1.8 million people. Today it has about 700,000. A lot of businesses have also left, too. The city has spent 30 years acting as if nothing has really changed while the entire tax base has fled. Now the city is in a financial emergency of unthinkable proportions. Something like two-thirds of the ambulances have over 200,000 miles (320,000km) on them; there are 40% fewer police patrolling the streets than there were a decade ago; to save money, the city has shut off streetlights in something like half the city.
To make matters worse, half the city is functionally illiterate and thus can't find work in a modern economy. Unemployment in Detroit hovers around 50%.
Detroit's problems are the result of the city itself collapsing. The bankruptcy is just a symptom of the much bigger problems. Even if the federal government were to cut a $20 billion check to bail Detroit out of bankruptcy, these deeper problems would still exist.
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Check the bankruptcy declarations. The City of Detroit made various statements under penalty of perjury, and one of the most shocking was their admission that emergency response times averaged 58 minutes.
I can't explain the discrepancy between what Detroit says on a web site and what Detroit says in a courtroom. What I can do, though, is point you to my reference. :)
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Re:Show time (Score:5, Informative)
call me when your injured and they want one of these to drive you to the hospital. then tell me how you think of these "autonomous" cars. i'm alive because someone put me in their car as kid and drove me to the hospital as a kid doing 80 the entire drive. believe me these things are going to kill people and the makers are going to be all "it's a flawless system"
Of course, a parent rushing a child to the hospital is not in the best frame of mind for driving, and is more likely to get into an accident, like this:
http://millburn.patch.com/groups/police-and-fire/p/local-girl-hit-by-a-car [patch.com]
So maybe the 2 minutes saved by driving 15 miles to the hospital at 80mph instead of 65 mph isn't worth the risk to others on the road. And definitely the 6 minutes saved by driving 80mph instead of 45mph isn't worth the risk to other drivers from driving nearly twice the speed limit on that 45 mph road. There's a reason why emergency vehicles have those bright flashing lights and sirens - and even emergency vehicles get into accidents while rushing to and emergency.
In most cases, you're going to be better off calling an Advanced Life Support ambulance so the paramedics can evaluate and stabilize you on the way to the hospital, but if you choose to drive there yourself, you're likely going to be safer in a self-driving car that's not going to take unwise risks.
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Re:Show time (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't get why people think they wouldn't do that
In fact, in a world of self driving cars, I don't see why we would need a speed limit. The car can be trusted to drive within its own limits..
and his brother could have told the car that it was an emergency (destination: emergency unit of hospital) and the car could have decided to drive at its maximum speed, broadcasting to other vehicles that it was doing so.
A journey such as this might attract some official attention, but assuming that the hospital corroborates the story of an emergency, then I don't see why there would be any charges..
Re:Show time (Score:5, Insightful)
The plural of "anecdote" is not "data".
If you're going to use such specious reasoning, your driver could have driven you into the path of a falling meteorite that an autonomous car would have missed by being slower.
Re:Show time (Score:5, Insightful)
What a terrible argument against autonomous cars. Are you claiming that if they had only driven 65 mph then you wouldn't be alive? How about 70 mph? Unless you were way way out in the middle of nowhere I find that hard to believe. Protip- instead of the hospital stop at a fire station (if you pass one) instead, as the ambulance can do most things the ER can.
Also, why do you think these cars won't have a manual mode?
Re:Show time (Score:5, Interesting)
It would be completely trivial to let a human override the limits. The car could easily be made to automatically alert authorities and even the other autonomous cars that an emergency override was in effect. That should make the journey considerably safer than when a distressed human driver is trying to deal with an emergency amongst a lot of other traffic who just think he is being an idiot.
Abuse is equally trivial to deal with. Every time you activate the override, you get a nice little chat with either the police or a judge.
In Denmark the law is quite easy: If you are doing emergency driving, you must attach a white piece of cloth to the car if possible (sticking white linen in the bonnet is the typical solution). Other traffic must obey the exact same rules when dealing with a marked car as they would if it was a regular emergency vehicle with the lights flashing. The driver of the marked car is not subject to regular traffic laws (but must of course still try to avoid accidents, it is not a license to kill). Once the emergency is over, the driver must report the journey to the police as soon as reasonably possible.
Re:Show time (Score:4, Insightful)
The only problems is, it makes too much sense. The US are never going to adopt it.
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On the other hand, there will be significantly fewer people needing to go to the emergency room if there are fewer car accidents.
Re:Show time (Score:5, Interesting)
911: 911 what is your emergency?
10 year old: I think my dad is having a heart attack.
911: How old are you?
10 year old: 10
911: Ok, thanks, we have your address at 123 Flower St. Is that correct?
10 year old: Yea
911: Is your dad's car at home?
10 year old: No it is out with my mom
911: Ok we can route a taxi to your home, it will get there faster then an ambulance, do you think you can help him to the taxi?
10 year old: I think so..
911: It will be there in 40...30 seconds. Don't hang up your cell, in case you need assistance.
Taxi arrives exactly as predicted by the operator, child is able to help their father get in, the taxi detects that both are safely in the car and speeds off to the hospital automatically, not asking for fare. The 911 operator walks child through basic emergency procedures though the taxi communication system. All other cars yield properly as the taxi is sending out an authorized emergency signal and has lights flashing and horn blaring at a recognized interval. They arrive at the hospital in a minimum amount of time with less risk then waiting for the ambulance to arrive.
I'm sure that isn't exactly how it would go down, but I can certainly see the advantages of autonomous cars, taxis, even ambulances at every step of this.
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Honestly I see nothing there related to autonomous cars
Except that there is a taxi that can just get there, that the taxi can be trusted to safely deliver the passengers at higher then normal speeds and violate various predetermined traffic laws, that the other cars can already be pre-warned and move aside, that traffic lights can be adjusted to let the car through, etc.
Beautiful in concept, but you must understand that actually implementing such a thing will almost certainly concentrate considerable information and power in the hands of whoever is doing the allocating.
I fear this type of control is already upon us. Not that I like it.
Any good argument has many strong sides, allow me to take one opposing yours.
How right you are.
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I don't think your lifestyle is worth 30,000+ dead folks each year. Sorry. There is always the track, and I suspect driving refuges will spring up for like minded folks such as yourself.
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Look, if you think improving automotive safety is akin to restricting freedom, then I can't really tell you not to believe that - but I will tell you that I disagree. One does not have a natural right to speed around in a giant chunk of metal at 70 MPH. If you think it is worth 30,000 lives to have this deluded sense of control and liberty, then, like, that's your opinion, man. I simply disagree and will vote for people who politicians who promise to improve automotive safety.
At what speed? (Score:5, Funny)
Autonomous cars will more than likely drive at exactly the speed limit. So on that stretch of highway you were used to doing 65mph in a 55 zone... well that slow car (hopefully in the right lane) will be the Google one.
I guess that's when the human takes over?
Re:At what speed? (Score:5, Insightful)
I can see this as having a raft of unanticipated consequences.
Suppose that driverless cars never broke the speed limit & other traffic laws, except in an emergency. Then, revenue from traffic tickets would disappear. Now, many police departments rely on those revenues. So, will they shrink, or find some other source of revenue? (I suspect the latter, and worry what that might be.) And, both the safety and the revenue desire to keep speed limits low will largely disappear, so many speed limits are likely to rise. Likewise, low speed limits are also used to keep people out of residential areas, and that could be accomplished by setting navigation preferences in the autodriver's GPS system, so those could rise too.
And, of course, if you want to have a mistress, she had better be within walking distance, or accessible by public transportation, lest Google start sending your wife ads for Private Investigators and Divorce Attorneys ...
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Never underestimate the creativity of the government when it comes to taxes.
Re:At what speed? (Score:5, Interesting)
revenue from traffic tickets would disappear. Now, many police departments rely on those revenues. So, will they shrink, or find some other source of revenue?
Conversely, city costs would shrink. There is a good deal of tax and ticket revenue money that goes toward special police traffic units, driver instruction, court costs, emergency services for accidents, highway signage, etc. that would decrease dramatically.
It's possible that auto-drive cars could actually save the city costs.
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Maybe if everyone's cars drive at exactly the speed limit, then people will realize how ridiculous some of them are and get them changed.
Re:At what speed? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:At what speed? (Score:5, Insightful)
The first car cannot avoid the deer, true, but this condition will not cause a pileup.
Think about the physics. The inelastic collision between the deer and the car will marginally slow the front car down, true, but only slightly. (since a car weighs 2000 kgs and a deer weighs less than 100, for an estimate). So the combined car-deer vehicle will be going only slightly slower.
Ok, so now the car that is about to hit the deer applies maximum braking force. It begins to decelerate at a rate limited by friction between ground and car. This friction is independent of the mass of the car, for reasons I can't fit into here.
The moment it hits the brakes, the car behind it will see the distance between the two begin to decrease. They are "bumper to bumper", or within 1 meter of each other. The car behind will apply maximum braking force the very moment a single cycle of it's control loop happens (probably 1/1000 or a second or so).
The car behind that will do the same, and so on.
As long as no car in the pack has significantly better brakes than the other cars, no one will hit anyone. Even if a particular car does have better brakes, the collision will only do slight damage, as the relative velocities will be low.
Contrast this to what can happen in a real highway, where a car in front can have time to decelerate to a stop in some cases, and the cars behind may be driven by a distracted driver who does not see the stopped vehicle in time. The collision happens at highway speeds between the trailing car and the stopped car. This, in some cases, will be fatal.
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The first car cannot avoid the deer, true, but this condition will not cause a pileup...
Actually, the situation is safer than that:
The moment it hits the brakes it transmit an emergency network STOP code to cars behind it. They are "bumper to bumper", or within 1 meter of each other. Every car in the chain behind will apply maximum braking force the very moment it receives the STOP code, bringing the entire chain of cars to a smooth halt.
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Autonomous cars will more than likely drive at exactly the speed limit.
Most cars already have an automated system to control speed. It is called "cruise control". It does not cause cars to drive exactly the speed limit. Instead, it does what a human tells it to do, including exceeding the limit.
Re:At what speed? (Score:5, Insightful)
Alternatively... you could just drive within the speed limit?
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Both your spedometer and the radar guns have margins of error and the cops simply aren't going to bother with a ticket that could be easily argued away and margins of error. Less the 5 mph over is simply never going to happen unless there are significantly extenuating circumstances. Certainly not as a primary offense.
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Haha. Seriously, good one. NOBODY drives the posted limit on interstates. Try it sometime and you'll be passed left and right. 5-9 mph over is likely the reasonable average.
Actually, I drive at the posted speed limit on interstates. And no, I don't find myself passed left and right all the time. Stop trying to justify your speeding.
Re:At what speed? (Score:4, Insightful)
Try it sometime and you'll be passed left and right.
So?
It sounds like autonomous cars are safer because they're not so concerned with "winning."
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Better yet, if all (or even most) cars become autonomous, then you stop getting sudden breaking scenarios, and stop getting caterpillar traffic jams. The fuel saving in not decelerating and accelerating there alone is huge.
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Re:At what speed? (Score:5, Insightful)
The biggest incorrect assumption here is that going 10% faster will get you there 10% sooner. Not only is the maths wrong, but it ignores that the actual result is that it gets you to the back of the queue at the traffic lights 10% sooner, and through the lights at the exact same time. Even on a freeway generally all it does is gets you to the back of the queue of slow moving cars slightly sooner, whereupon you get out of the queue at basically the exact same time.
Re:At what speed? (Score:4, Informative)
If you lane change rapidly so that you can go fast it may cause other drivers to brake suddenly. That can create a "traffic wave jam" that persists till the rush hour is over or till the "traffic wave" moves to a light/empty traffic are before then.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_wave [wikipedia.org]
That said you don't have to speed to cause other drivers to brake suddenly.
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Yup, I agree. I can drive the speed limit to work and get there in 30 minutes, or speed and get there in 25. To really cut a lot of time off, you have to speed A LOT. I'd rather snooze for 30 than get there 5 minutes earlier.
I really want driverless cars. Enforcement will outright go away when nothing ever speeds. Speed limits will also go up, so you won't be complaining that you speed and do 74, you'll just be legally doing 75 or more.
Yup, and it doesn't matter. (Score:4, Insightful)
We'll soon reach a point where autonomous vehicles are orders of magnitude less likely than human-driven vehicles to have an accident. It won't matter, though; people would rather face a daily one-in-a-million chance of dying due to their own mistake than a daily one-in-a-billion chance of dying due to a machine failure.
Autonomous vehicles will still take over in the end. It's just that this particular rational motive to make it happen won't be contributing very much. So, it'll take longer than it should, and more people will die.
Re:Yup, and it doesn't matter. (Score:4, Insightful)
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It won't go away, but it might end up being like riding. It used to be a common skill, necessary for daily life in many cases. Now it is an expensive hobby, and an extremely rare skill. When my son is 16, I'd much rather he get into a Google car that drives for him than drive. By the time he is an adult and able to buy a car for himself, that pattern will be set and he'll probably be looking for thrills elsewhere.
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I agree. I love driving and enjoy my advanced footwork skills and I regret the evolution but it will proceed despite people regretting it.
Re:Yup, and it doesn't matter. (Score:5, Interesting)
Overwhelmingly, they choose to be driven. They choose to fly private jets. If you could afford it, you would do the same thing most of the time, because most of the time getting there is just a task, not a joy.
It will be the same with regular people. Imagine what society looks like when there are zero deaths due to drunk driving, distracted driving, and falling asleep at the wheel. Imagine how much lower car insurance premiums are when the risk of an at fault accident is nearly zero. People will still buy cars, because they will want one customized to them, but imagine all the things that can change when a human pilot no longer has to be accommodated: cars set up so that parents and children can face each other and play games together while traveling, lay-flat seats for overnight driving. You can leave Washington after work on Friday and eat lunch in New Orleans.
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We like to be ABLE to drive. We don't like to HAVE to drive.
I'll be fine with limiting my driving to some self driving counties or some weekend race track options if I don't have to
1. drive my work commute
2. sit in traffic
3. worry about my family getting in an accident
4. worry about parking
5. own a car
6. maintain a car
7. assume liability for a car and/or car accident
8. destroy the environment
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Outside of young adults with sports cars, few people like to drive. Most drivers, myself included, would love to never need to drive again. In fact, some people even suffer public transit because of their dislike of driving (or inability to drive).
A bigger problem for autonomous vehicles may be price. When can they do it all for $1000 on a low end car?
Re:Yup, and it doesn't matter. (Score:5, Interesting)
Except, if you've read any of the news for the last few years, it IS changing. Young people aren't entering into the automobile culture the way their parents did. They are favoring bicycles, walking, public transit, and other non-car ways to get around. It's something the big car mfgs are worried about a lot because their customer base is rapidly aging.
http://www.digitaltrends.com/cars/5-reasons-young-people-are-not-buying-cars-or-getting-their-drivers-license/
And as a cyclist, I trust the self-driving cars *much* more than human piloted cars. I see drivers texting while driving every day, and I'm confident that a self-driving car will never be reading a break-up text from its boyfriend and plow into me while txting a reply.
Re:Yup, and it doesn't matter. (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, we're going to have this discussion again. Okay, I'll play. You see drivers texting and putting on make-up. I see cyclists riding in the pedestrian crosswalk, riding against the flow of traffic, maneuvering around slowing/stopped vehicles, and they never EVER use hand signals to indicate a turn or stop. And most of them don't use required safety equipment, let alone the recommended ones.
In aviation, more maneuverable aircraft yield right-of-way to less maneuverable aircraft. Though not actually codified, this is generally true in automotive. No one argues with the 18-wheeler. Then it breaks down when cyclists expect everyone to move for them (and this is the exact argument another gentlemen here was making the other day when claiming it's the driver's responsibility to adjust *their* behavior to accommodate cyclists).
Maybe motorcycles and bicycles should also be automated. I mean, fair is fair.
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"We'll soon reach a point where autonomous vehicles are orders of magnitude less likely than human-driven vehicles to have an accident."
No, we will not. You're too ignorant to think of the other thousands of extraneous factors that can make things go wrong outside of both human and computer control. Like metal fatigue causing physical wear and tear on brakes, rotors, axles, etc.
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I also think that autonomous vehicles will be much safer than human-driven vehicles. We can keep making them better based on experience while on the other hand we would keep adding new inexperienced human drivers. I'm sure that we can correct any problems that we may find with early autonomous vehicles. I doubt that we'll ever be able to correct human distraction, emotional reactions, bad judgement and general stupidity.
Do you have any stats on the percentage of accidents caused by physical wear and tear o
Who controls the software that produces the data? (Score:2)
Is it Google? Is it the consumer?
They are right that the data will have a lot of power over you in these situations...
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No way the consumer can control the data. If he could alter it, he could claim innocence while he is liable. So the "carputer" (it's an ugly name so somebody is going to use it eventually) will be closed source or DRM. It's great for public transport, but not for something you want to call My car.
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It doesn't have to be closed source, or DRM, which i think is not the term you want anyway. Having some kind of non-repudiation would be nice, but still not completely required. Just take speeding tickets now. The cop catches you on radar speeding and does what? Writes it on a piece of paper. Could he be lying? Absolutely! It's still accepted as evidence.
I wonder when... (Score:3)
...in the future you are being looked at as being crazy if you tell other people that you are still driving yourself.
"Seriously, how can you live with that - risking the life of others. Robot-Cars are much safer."
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I suspect that that will be driven (or not) by insurance; an insurance policy that allows for non-emergency personal driving might become prohibitively expensive.
In the very early days of automobiles, it was assumed that the market would always be small because only professionals (chauffeurs) would learn how to drive, and only the wealthy could afford chauffeurs.
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Why would emergency personnel be allowed to drive?
By the time you get to 90% autonomous vehicles on the road it starts to make sense to just ban non-autonomous ones, because the autonomous one can then use the space much more efficiently, travelling faster, and closer together (but communicating with each other to not collide). Even an emergency vehicle in this situation will 1) get there faster if driven autonomously, 2) be safer than if not driven autonomously.
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Sounds Good (Score:3)
if {collision}
then {arbitrary braking profile}
else {real data}
Re:Sounds Good (Score:5, Funny)
if {collision}
then {arbitrary braking profile}
else {real data}
Burma-shave
Not that Google cares (Score:3)
Or imprison you, as the case may be.
Perfect Synergy (Score:5, Interesting)
Thanks to our dear friends at the NSA, law enforcement will soon have the ability to override the destination selection of autonomous cars and have any driver/passenger they wish promptly delivered to a convenient jail or donut shop.
I love technology!
more complete spying... (Score:2)
more so, they will know exactly where everyone is intending to go, the second they get in their car.
that's why Google's pursuing this tech. they know what we're searching for online. now they will know where we are going in real life.
your dash becomes the perfect targeted ad platform.
Liability (Score:2, Insightful)
I commented about insurance and liability a couple days ago when another autonomous vehicle story was posted. This answered my question:
a new dashboard display that his group has developed to help people understand what an autonomous car is doing and when they might want to take over
Well there you have it. As long as a human has the ability to take over, and it's a decision they have to make, then the liability goes from Google to the person sitting in the driver's seat. Subtle but clear as day. Google wants to transfer liability off of their system onto a person in the vehicle. I can see it in court now "Our dashboard clearly indicated to the dri
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a new dashboard display that his group has developed to help people understand what an autonomous car is doing and when they might want to take over
How come you left out the next two words "the world"?
Innocent until prooven guilty (Score:2)
"we actually have the data. The guy around us wasn't paying enough attention. The data will set you free.'"
The old argument we collect all your data and IF you are acused of a crime we can set you free if we have ALL YOUR DATA, but with the data
we can adjust the payment for your insurance even if you have no accident.
This circumvents and undermines the common principles of law: You don't have to proof that you are innocent, an acuser must proof that you are guilty.
These are many steps that will eliminate th
Driverless Cars Are Further Away Than You Think (Score:2)
Driverless Cars Are Further Away Than You Think [technologyreview.com]: "Most daunting, however, are the remaining computer science and artificial-intelligence challenges. Automated driving will at first be limited to relatively simple situations, mainly highway driving, because the technology still can't respond to uncertainties posed by oncoming traffic, rotaries, and pedestrians. And drivers will also almost certainly be expected to assume some sort of supervisory role, requiring them to be ready to retake control as soon as t
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Which would mean they're not yet suited for the two things I would like to have them for:
- taking me home when I've(we've) drunk more alcohol than allowed for driving
- dropping me off in the city and being able to find a parking spot by itself or just drive around till I call it up again.
Grumble Grumble iGoogle, Google Reader, Desktop... (Score:3)
Good, good ... (Score:4, Informative)
Now go and take this out into New York City on 5th avenue at 5pm ET rush hour during the work week.
No, seriously, I want to see how well this car performs in a city where the posted 40mph speed limit oin the Staten Island Expressway is ignored by the vast majority of cops and motorists, the normal speed is about 70mph or so, and people will rear end you out of spite if you go too slow for them.
Then get me the data on how much less it costs to run this car.
Data will get you jailed (Score:4, Interesting)
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I figure there needs to be something similar to the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program [hrsa.gov]: here, something that makes society safer overall (vaccines) is promoted by reducing the risk of an individual harm (a rare side effect). This says: "Pay in and help make society safer, and if it individually harms you, we've got your back."
So, why not something for driverless cars? You opt into a driverless car with the societal benefit of reduced accidents, and if your driverless car harms you individually (ph
Confusing summary (Score:2)
Taking over during emergency... (Score:5, Insightful)
So when you're driving today you're in a state of being aware of the situation and are engaged with the surroundings.
If you're letting the car drive, I highly doubt you're paying that much attention. Why wouldn't I let the car drive and I read, do email, surf the web or turn around and talk to the passengers in the rear seats.
In the event where you need to take an emergency action, it's much easy in the first case to go to heightened state than in the second one. Atleast in the first one you aren't completely surprised by the events you're facing before you.
Think of the case of a gravel truck that has a loose load. If I know there's a truck in front of me, I'm not 100% surprised if some gravel comes out, whereby if i'm reading/emailing and I'm forced to take over to avoid gravel, it's more of a surprise and I'm forced to figure quite a bit more out about the situation before I can act. One could also panic because of the amount of elevated emotion or adrenaline dump that would be taking place since you'd go from "reading iPad" to "dodging gravel".
Re:Taking over during emergency... (Score:5, Interesting)
Think of the case of a gravel truck that has a loose load.
The good driver would apply the brakes, gas and turn the wheel to make sure the gravel passes harmlessly over or under the car.
The better driver would remember that there was still traffic to the sides and behind him and, rather than hoping they all have better reflexes than he does in dealing with his own sudden braking/accelerating/steering, lets the rock chip the windshield, which is later replaced on-site within 30 minutes, with costs covered entirely by his insurer.
The best driver notes the standardized "STAY BACK" sign on the back of the dump truck and actually stays back.
Guess which one the autonomous system does!
Defensive Driving (Score:2)
It's a hard thing to teach though. When I did driver's Ed as a kid they tried to hammer it into us so hard it just came off as a joke ("Blood on the Highway!"). For me, I'm more than a little neurotic, so it came natural
John Henry was a Steel Drivin' Man (Score:2)
Time for a contest [wikipedia.org]
Comment removed (Score:3)
They are solving the wrong problem. (Score:2, Funny)
I don't want a driverless car.
I want an automatic chef cook. Because when I go home from work, I still have to sit in the car for 1 hour, and I still have to prepare my food for 45 minutes.
Now, without a driverless car, but having a chef cook, I'd have to sit in the car for 1 hour, and have a meal waiting for me. A net reduction of 45 minutes.
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This already exists. On the way out of work, call a restaurant on the way home. Say "I want to place an order for carry out".
Many places walk it out to your car.
Expensive, but adds almost no time to the commute, and no cooking.
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Try it in Britain (Score:5, Insightful)
For example, many roads in tows date back to roman times, and are too narrow for two-lane traffic. You need to look far ahead and work out when exactly you need to duck into a gap behind a parked car to let oncoming traffic through, and when to go for it when you have right of way so as not to block traffic in either direction. And if a block does occur, will it mount the pavement (sidewalk) to free things up, or know when it's time to back up and give in?
The UK has very few towns laid out in a grid, and most roads are twisty, and narrow, other than motorways. Can a driverless car cope with such terrain? If Google really want to prove their technology is better than a human, let them bring their cars over to the UK. If they work here, I'll be impressed.
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For example, many roads in tows date back to roman times, and are too narrow for two-lane traffic. You need to look far ahead and work out when exactly you need to duck into a gap behind a parked car to let oncoming traffic through, and when to go for it when you have right of way so as not to block traffic in either direction.
Not just Roman roads. Any road through a general urbam residential area (e.g. London Zone 2-6 off the main high street or A roads) is like that. Wide enough easily for 3 cars side by
A few points on self-driving cars (Score:5, Informative)
Having worked on self-driving cars (2005 Grand Challenge), a few points:
The comment about minimizing "near-collision states" is significant. A near-collision state is one where a reasonable variance of the behavior of another vehicle could cause a collision. It's about predicting other-vehicle behavior. That's an important area to study. Aviation people put a lot of effort into minimizing near-misses, and it pays off.
Incidentally, Tesla's announcement that they're starting work on an "autopilot" is them playing catch-up. Audi, BMW, Cadillac, and Ford are already demoing automatic driving systems. It looks like Cadillac will be the first to ship hands-off highway driving, in 2015. All these early systems are highway driving only, although Cadillac includes stop-and-go driving in traffic jams. That's likely to be a very popular feature.
On the sensor side, more progress is needed, and it's coming. That rotating LIDAR contraption on top of Google's self-driving cars is from Velodyne. [velodynelidar.com] It's 64 LIDAR units on a spinning turntable. That's a research device, not a production one. There are better ways to do LIDAR [advancedsc...ncepts.com], but the cost needs to come down. The approaches used in the Kinect and the XBox One will not work outdoors in bright sunlight. Outdoor LIDAR systems work fine, but they're pulsed, not continuous. For a nanosecond, at one frequency (color) they far outshine the sun. But the total energy per pulse is low, so they're eye-safe. Currently, such devices are very expensive, but that's not for any good reason. It's because some exotic ICs have to be made in tiny quantities.
Radars are getting better, too. A decade ago, in the Grand Challenge, we had to use Eaton VORAD radars, which operate at 24GHz. These could reliably range cars, trucks, and larger bicycles, but not people at long range, or signposts. (Such radars return range, azimuth, and range rate; this isn't a speed gun. I used to have one of these looking out my window at at an intersection, with a display plotting the traffic.) Today's automotive radars are running at 77GHz, with plans to move to 79GHz. There's an effort to standardize on 79GHz internationally. Tripling the frequency, plus applying more compute power to the processing, means that most objects a car might hit are detectable. These radars are getting cheap and small, so a car will have enough of them to provide full-circle data. Long range is needed mostly in front; on the side and in back, much lower power can be used.
A key issue is a high viewpoint. This isn't just about obstacle detection. You also need to profile the road. This was a big deal for the off-road DARPA Grand Challenge, but even on paved roads you need to be able to detect junk on the pavement and potholes. Google has their sensor on top of the roof. This will probably be unacceptable in a production car. I'd go for flash LIDARs at the top corners of the front windows. One possibility is a narrow strip just above the windshield, to contain all the sensors. This is one way to combine vehicle aesthetics and field of view.
Cameras are useful, but computer vision is still kind of dumb. Distance from stereo only works at short ranges, and range rate info from cameras is poor. Digital cameras are so cheap now, so it's tempting to think they can do the whole job. Not yet. Computer vision isn't good enough. Tesla is probably putting too much hope into camera processing. You need cameras to recognize signs, traffic lights, and such. Also, you need multiple sensors because not all objects are visible on all sensors. Radars can't see insulators. Cameras can't see objects with little contrast against the background. LIDARs can't see some materials, such as the charcoal fabric used on many office chairs. Sensor fusion is essential.
Enough for now. This looks quite do-able.
Re:Autopilots (Score:5, Informative)
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"the expected cost" (Score:3)
You complain about "the expected cost".
Did you ever think about that EVERYTHING anyone earns anywhere is a "cost" for somebody else? Nature and economies are circular systems.
You WANT "costs" to be high - that means incomes are high. Of course, you don't want ANY costs to be high - battle tanks, mines, bridges to nowhere, poison gas, etc. are costs that are bad to have. Paying people to do nothing, by the way, is not on that category - these days A LOT of people would be much better paid to do nothing becau
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An autonomous car will be even better than you in that situation, *if* it's programmed for it. Not only can it always be looking behind (and sideways, forward etc) it can gauge the oncoming car's closing speed, deceleration etc and figure out how far to move forward.
The lesson learned from the example is they need to add some rules that it's ok to enter an intersection through a red light or stop sign if it means avoiding getting rear ended.
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And risk getting T-boned? You can only move a few feet forward in an intersection. If the guy behind you isn't paying attention and going full speed, you are still getting rear-ended. Having moved a few feet forward may cause your car to be pushed further into the intersection with cross-traffic.
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An autonomous car will be even better than you in that situation, *if* it's programmed for it.
One of the beauties of autonomous cars is that they can be programmed from simulations. Not only that, if these auto-cars have black boxes, then data from accidents can be analyzed and used to update other cars.
Re:What is the use of being better Driver? (Score:5, Informative)
Get it into production, allow for Moore's law, and these could be competitively priced in a very few years.
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So let me get this straight... prototypes and first-run units are expensive? Go figure.
I guess we should just give up on the whole thing now, because of course prices will never come down once the technology matures and production increases.
Accounting 101 (Score:2)
So, what is the use of being better Driver while it is too much costly so that it can not be used by many people even if the Government allows self-driving cars in future?
The cost of ANYTHING is high at first. The main reason for this is fixed costs [wikipedia.org] which are very high on a per unit basis if you haven't produced a lot of units. You need to scale up production to bring the costs down since that allows you to spread the fixed costs over more units. Since we are still in the R&D phase with this technology there is no point in mass producing anything in order to lower the costs. Furthermore as the technology develops we discover cheaper ways to accomplish what was previo
Re:On the desert roads of Nevada, maybe (Score:5, Funny)
Solution: robot children and pedestrians. Anyway, wearable computing will make the garments aware of the surroundings. Trying to cross the road? Your pants know better!
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you are so funny - you think drivers (or you for that matter) are some magical being that can predict actions?
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Yes there is and it's already on high-end non-robotic cars. There are IR sensors that can see deer/bicycles/pedestrians even if your headlights don't pick it up yet at night or if they are (partially) hidden behind a car. Also, a robotic car can respond in a matter of microseconds, the human brain easily takes up a second to respond in these situations.
Re:On the desert roads of Nevada, maybe (Score:4, Insightful)
There is no tech yet that can anticipate a child about to kick a ball out onto a road, or to see that a pedestrian is about to walk out in front of you without looking first.
Do you really think you 300ms senses are better at detecting 'random_object_in_car_path()' and doing a 'controlled_break( distance( random_object_in_car_path() ) / car_speed() );' than a laser detection system operating at sub-millisecond speeds?
Re: On the desert roads of Nevada, maybe (Score:2)
I'm pretty sure that the cars are constantly watching in front, back and both sides (too lazy to double check). They have been tested accident free (or at least fault free) in San Francisco, and successfully navigated Lombard Street. There is also driverless technology to allow them to see traffic (possibly just driverless traffic) around blind corners, obscured by buildings.
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No, but the cameras could be equipped to look into the IR spectrum and see a child (or dog or other such heat profile) and attempt to determine whether its moving into the street or not.
Can never predict 100% of everything of course and even if you predict it you might be too late to prevent it but the computer's got far far more sensory input (potentially) available and is significantly faster at making mathematical calculations such as "trajectory of that IR blob that's behind the vehicle." than any human