The Documents From Google's First DMV Test In Nevada 194
An anonymous reader writes "IEEE Spectrum contributor Mark Harris obtained a copy of the DMV test Google's autonomous car passed in Nevada in 2012 and associated documents. What has not been revealed until now, is that Google chose the test route; that it set limits on the road and weather conditions that the vehicle could encounter; and that its engineers had to take control of the car twice during the drive.
Who would have thought (Score:3)
I'm sure the editors are shocked and amazed that "Google chose the test route; that it set limits on the road and weather conditions that the vehicle could encounter; and that its engineers had to take control of the car twice during the drive."
Re:Who would have thought (Score:5, Informative)
Yeah, and it went into manual controlled mode when it recognized obstacles it couldn't handle:
A. A railroad crossing without signals
B. A roundabout
C. Construction work
D. "Some specific turns"
Obviously not ready for the real world yet.
Re:Who would have thought (Score:5, Insightful)
Ofcourse it is not 100% ready for the real world. It does not mean it should not be deployed though.
Not every technology and device that made it to market first worked with 100% accuracy the first time.
It just means that drivers should still be paying attention to the road at all times instead of being distracted behind the wheel. The faster it comes to market, the more quickly the improvements can be made to advance the technology.
- SK
Re:Who would have thought (Score:5, Interesting)
The only slight problem with that is that in order to react at all in time, you must be paying the same amount of attention as you would if there was no autonomous drive system at all. This is otherwise known as the human being in the loop. Removing the human from the loop in aircraft automation has been a source of unending problems, and only recently one could say that it's a reasonably well understood problem - if not quite solved just yet. Don't forget we're talking about trained professional pilots here.
So, when faced with a self-driving car, the relatively untrained non-professional driver will always be so far out of the loop, that there's no way for him to overtake control safely in real time.
Of course, the solution for that is simple: the car's control transfer must, by default, happen in a fail-safe state - with the car stopped, with emergency blinkers on, etc. Only if the control transfer is explicitly acknowledged in a preset time, would the fail-safe be bypassed.
Re:Who would have thought (Score:5, Interesting)
Commercial aviation is now safer than it ever was in the past.
Fully autonomous driving is doable IF it is only along routes that have been verified and to some extent instrumented. I predict we'll see a few Approved Routes initially, such as stretches of Interstate. Fairly soon, the approved routes will account for the majority of vehicle miles driven. Then there will be a long tail of routes and conditions that won't be automated anytime soon. Basically, just like cellphone coverage.
Re:Who would have thought (Score:4, Informative)
And let's just remember that planes don't actually fly themselves:
http://www.askthepilot.com/que... [askthepilot.com]
-Chris
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A growing problem with a LOT of airline pilots is they lack the basic skills to fly. And this is, unfortunate a product of the environment in which they fly - most countries either prohibit or massively regulate general aviation flight, resulting in the only flying most airline pilots get are from the simulators and the jetliner cockpits.
It's better in North America as many jet pilots do actually fly little light aviation aircraft (like ye ol
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Interstates are the perfect place for it: relatively few surprises and extremely boring for drivers. They're all "limited access highways", so you don't have to worry about pedestrian crossings or children running into the street.
If they just left it at that, I'd consider it an enormous advance over the present state of things.
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The only slight problem with that is that in order to react at all in time, you must be paying the same amount of attention as you would if there was no autonomous drive system at all.
I snipped the quote, but to the post as a whole...
Why? Based on other technologies we have, the autonomous system seems capable of stopping the car when it's confused. It doesn't just keep rolling at the unknown at full speed hoping you take over at the split-second that it leaves it's mapped world and enters the unknown.
Along the same lines, it doesn't seem difficult to take control of the system while it's actively driving. It's not hard to disengage cruise controls or stop a car using Park Assist or L
Re:Who would have thought (Score:5, Interesting)
Along the same lines, it doesn't seem difficult to take control of the system while it's actively driving. It's not hard to disengage cruise controls or stop a car using Park Assist or Lane Assist from turning into something not seen by the sensor system. Why is it hard for me to grab the wheel from the "hands" of the auto-pilot in the Google car?
Here's the best example I can think of -- let's say you are the understudy for a radio actor with narcolepsy. You both have the script, you the understudy are following along word for word as the actor is performing. Suddenly the actor falls asleep and the words stop. How many seconds pass before you pick up where he left off? You are as aware and able as you can possibly be without actually anticipating something you can't anticipate, and I believe it would still take me a few seconds to switch myself from simply paying attention to audibly reading words.
Second scenario is the same except that you are both in sound booths reading the words and the actor is the only one with a hot mic. I believe it would be faster for me to be reading aloud with the actor and trigger my mic to go live at the necessary time -- however in doing so I am saving no effort over doing all the reading myself in the first place, so the application to automated vehicles is somewhat limited.
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on the other hand, since nobody is reading anyway, we can say whatever we want. monkey butts!
Re:Who would have thought (Score:4, Informative)
You're making the assumption that any situation the car cannot handle is both an immediate danger, and a situation that can be handled perfectly by a human.
When I try to think of situations where an automated car would fail, most tend to be ones where a response of "come to a full stop, don't do anything until the human orients himself and takes charge" is a perfectly valid one. Traffic lights not working? Let the human figure it out. Bridge out ahead? Let the human figure it out. Conditions so bad you can't see the road markings? Let the human try to do better, and if he wants to sit on his ass until it clears, that's probably a good idea anyways.
Sure, there are situations where an AI might not be able to avoid an accident an alert human would. Let's say a trailer detaches from a truck in front of you, but not in your lane. As it skids, it suddenly tumbles into your lane. An automated car might have ignored it until it was too late, while an alert human would have slammed on the brakes as soon as they saw it.
But how many humans would have been that alert? Even if they weren't on a phone, or sipping their coffee, or fiddling with the radio, most drivers end up in a sort of trance, doing things automatically. I've seen people crash just because they weren't paying attention - not distracted by anything, just driving without conscious thought. Automated cars won't have that problem - they don't *get* bored. Even if they can't dodge a freak accident, they'll be avoiding plenty of routine accidents. Net gain for people who don't like car wrecks.
Re:Who would have thought (Score:5, Insightful)
The only slight problem with that is that in order to react at all in time, you must be paying the same amount of attention as you would if there was no autonomous drive system at all. This is otherwise known as the human being in the loop. Removing the human from the loop in aircraft automation has been a source of unending problems, and only recently one could say that it's a reasonably well understood problem - if not quite solved just yet. Don't forget we're talking about trained professional pilots here.
So, when faced with a self-driving car, the relatively untrained non-professional driver will always be so far out of the loop, that there's no way for him to overtake control safely in real time.
If you read the article, in the instances where the automation didn't know what to do, it pulled over and stopped:
Construction work, however, proved trickier. When faced with a partially blocked-off road, the car switched between autonomous and manual modes and then braked to a halt, requiring Urmson, the safety driver, to take control.
The driver doesn't need to react in time - the car does that. The driver merely needs to make the next decision to start moving again and guide the car to where it needs to go.
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If you have to be at full driver attentiveness at all times, what the heck is the point? A self-driving car should let you take a nap, read a book, or otherwise tune out from the road. Having to be a secondary driver ready to jump in could be even more stressful than just driving by yourself. And what if you have gone for a few months without touching the controls, can you be reasonable expected to be a competent driver if you only drive for 10 minutes a handful of times a year, and under conditions that
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Ofcourse it is not 100% ready for the real world. It does not mean it should not be deployed though
lol lol lol lol lol when an autonomous SUV hits you at 60 MPG it hits you with more energy than a stick of dynamite. Let's make sure it's ready before deploying it.
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Ofcourse it is not 100% ready for the real world. It does not mean it should not be deployed though
lol lol lol lol lol when an autonomous SUV hits you at 60 MPG it hits you with more energy than a stick of dynamite. Let's make sure it's ready before deploying it.
When an SUV hits 60 MPG I'll still not buy one of those ridiculous ego mobiles.
SUVs only exist because American males felt emasculated when they had families and had to drive around in minivans, branding them as lifeless slaves to their spawn and spouse. So fuck safety, fuck fuel economy, fuck design, hell, fuck every color except black. If we pretend these things are cool people will pay $$$$$$ for them despite the fact that they're worse than the minivans they're replacing in nearly every way.
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Ofcourse it is not 100% ready for the real world. It does not mean it should not be deployed though.
Not every technology and device that made it to market first worked with 100% accuracy the first time.
It just means that drivers should still be paying attention to the road at all times instead of being distracted behind the wheel. The faster it comes to market, the more quickly the improvements can be made to advance the technology.
- SK
But it does mean that it should not have fucking passed.
I don't know how the heathens in Nevada do it, but in any sane state if another person has to take control of the vehicle during the test, you automatically fail.
If the driver is the autopilot, then the engineer taking control should cause the autopilot to automatically fail.
Re:Who would have thought (Score:5, Insightful)
Ofcourse it is not 100% ready for the real world. It does not mean it should not be deployed though.
We need the power they said, it will be fine they said, don't worry they said.
The citizens of Chernobyl
Interesting analogy, since the Chernobyl accident was not caused by the power plant's automated systems, but by human beings that overrode the safety systems designed to prevent just such an accident. Interestingly, the Three Mile Island accident occurred for essentially the same reasons: humans prevented the automatic systems from functioning correctly to prevent an accident.
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Yeah, and it went into manual controlled mode when it recognized obstacles it couldn't handle:
B. A roundabout
Yeah .. but I found the reasoning of the roundabout issue to be particularly lame:
It also noted: “[Roundabouts are] particularly challenging, where many drivers don’t know the proper rules in the first place.” In an e-mail to colleagues at the DMV, Breslow wrote, “We can’t fail an applicant for not being able to navigate a traffic circle if they say that there [sic] vehicle can’t yet do it.”
Really? Whats so hard about a roundabout that Google's famed engineers couldn't program the requirements into the car? Isn't the point of these autonomous cars that they drive better than people and can deal with people driving around with them?
Re:Who would have thought (Score:5, Insightful)
Why does version 2.0 of your application still not have all its features?
Because code takes time. And you can't just manpower your way through it.
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Why does version 2.0 of your application still not have all its features?
Because code takes time. And you can't just manpower your way through it.
A roundabout is simply nothing more than a right hand turn at a yield sign, followed by an exit ramp. If your application can't handle that, then why the hell is it on the road in the first place? And what connection does this have to what *other* drivers do?
Re:Who would have thought (Score:4, Insightful)
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Oh, if it's so simple, why didn't you just write the code?
(Because the systems involved in the car's core design are complex? oooooooooooh)
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Oh, if it's so simple, why didn't you just write the code?
Why should I? Google already has written the right turn and merge right code.
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Huh? Here are the actual rules for roundabouts in NYS:
If you are going one exit (ie a right turn), you start in the right lane of the approach road, go in the outer circle of the roundabout, and exit in the right lane of the exit road.
If you are going two exits (ie straight thru), you start in either lane of the approach road. If you start in the right lane you stay in the outer ring and exit right. If you start in the left lane you cross the outer ring, travel in the inner ring, and cross the outer ring
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No. The racetrack is all lanes. First and last apex's are on the outside, middle apex halfway through (assuming symmetrical) on the inside. Duh.
Re:Who would have thought (Score:5, Insightful)
Why does version 2.0 of your application still not have all its features?
Because code takes time. And you can't just manpower your way through it.
A roundabout is simply nothing more than a right hand turn at a yield sign, followed by an exit ramp. If your application can't handle that, then why the hell is it on the road in the first place? And what connection does this have to what *other* drivers do?
I have seen perfectly sober drivers go the wrong way on a roundabout. Self driving cars in a beta if not alpha program having to contend with asinine drivers like that would understandably need human intervention remember this is not a finished product, not even a release candidate, it is a limited alpha release it will be improved by the time it gets to market.
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I have seen perfectly sober drivers go the wrong way on a roundabout.
So have I, and in splitting my time between countries that drive on the left and on the right I had to seriously question if the car that was coming at me was because it was my fault or his fault - which is not a good feeling when you just rented a fully restored '67 mustang convertible for the weekend
Self driving cars in a beta if not alpha program having to contend with asinine drivers like that would understandably need human intervention remember this is not a finished product, not even a release candidate, it is a limited alpha release it will be improved by the time it gets to market.
However, the cause of how people came to drive at an autonomous car is irrelevant, whether it be in a roundabout or just driving down the wrong side of the street - only the response is relevant and that shoul
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I also wonder if this test included turning from and into one way streets.
Recently I actually turned into the wrong way while making a left from a one way to a 2 way street.
O_O
Not cool. That's very easy to do when you're circling a block looking for parking with one ways and two ways all mixed up.
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Not if it's a two-lane roundabout.
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Not if it's a two-lane roundabout.
Which just means an extra lane change left and right. Your google car can change lanes can't it?
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Do actually know how to use a roundabout? There are NO 'lane changes' involved. You should not 'change lanes' in a roundabout, ever. There are lane CROSSINGS in a roundabout, essentially a right turn from the left lane while the right lane continues straight. Not something sane people have a lot of experience doing.
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Do actually know how to use a roundabout?
Yes ..and on both left and right side driving countries.
There are NO 'lane changes' involved.
The lane crossing in a roundabout is just a special case of lane changing in which time spent within the lane is minimized as you merge into or out of the roundabout. The fundamentals and topology are still the same.
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If you are at a normal intersection (not a roundabout), and you cross the intersection, have you 'changed lanes'? Any sane person would say no.
Even the markings in the roundabout show you are wrong. There is not just 'left lane' and 'right lane', there are 'crossing lanes'. Yes, when you are in the inner ring and need to exit you make a lane change, into the crossing lane, not the outer ring. The major difference being a portion of the crossing lane is shared with the outer ring, but not going in the sa
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If you are at a normal intersection (not a roundabout), and you cross the intersection, have you 'changed lanes'? Any sane person would say no.
I was equating a roundabout to turning right, not crossing an intersection.
Regardless what you call them a roundabout have multiple lanes of traffic. I have driven on roundabouts in the UK that are a good 1/4 mile in diameter with significant distances between on/off ramps. Do you consider that those roundabouts do not have a left and right lane?
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Or a roundabout that has two lanes in one direction and one in the other. E.g. two lanes east/west and one lane north/south.
Yes we have some of those in BC.
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So why do so many drivers get confused with the give way rules at roundabouts? especially when they have multiple lanes.
You just need to follow the same rules you apply to other situations.
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So why do so many drivers get confused with the give way rules at roundabouts? especially when they have multiple lanes.
Because they're idiots and can't think outside of their small world view?
But those drivers don't just simply appear when in roundabouts, they are idiots all of the time, on all of the roads. How is the poor google car going to deal with people who have the right of way, yet stop and wave you through, even though you are the person facing the sign and they are facing nothing but open road?
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Facial recognition.
If the other driver looks like a retard, follow a different set of rules.
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A roundabout is simply nothing more than a right hand turn at a yield sign, followed by an exit ramp. If your application can't handle that, then why the hell is it on the road in the first place?
Oh, yeah, sure.
http://transportblog.co.nz/wp-... [transportblog.co.nz]
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A roundabout is simply nothing more than a right hand turn at a yield sign, followed by an exit ramp. If your application can't handle that, then why the hell is it on the road in the first place?
Oh, yeah, sure.
http://transportblog.co.nz/wp-... [transportblog.co.nz]
What is the point of this? Is it that its a left turn and left merge? Or that there are multiple lanes?
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Why does version 2.0 of your application still not have all its features?
Because code takes time. And you can't just manpower your way through it.
Version X of my program has all of its features. Version X.Y may have more features, but version X has precisely every feature version X has. Version X.Y is a different program.
If you'd like to buy an upgrade license to version X.Y, please click below.
Note: Starting 3 months after you order your licenses, we will be rebranding Product Z to better serve our customers. Product Z will be known as Product W. Your Product Z licenses will carry over to Product W as follows:
Product Z - Product W Home
Product Z
Re:Who would have thought (Score:5, Insightful)
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Part of driving is dealing with a certain percentage of drivers who either don't know or simply fail to follow the 'rules'.
That comment applies to all driving and not just roundabouts. The car successfully dealt with a cyclist who wandered into the cars path, so it should be able to deal with other cars that do wrong things - if it can't then get it the hell off the road.
But, I can see why roundabouts, particularly multi-lane ones, would be difficult to program the algorithms for. Part of effective roundabout driving is a bit more anticipatory than many other driving tasks.
All I see at a roundabout is turn right on yield and merge right to exit ramp. There is nothing particularly hard about that, even with multiple lanes. I'm sure that fundamental to the google car is an algorithm that says (very simplified) "Analyze the obje
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How many places, other than roundabouts, is it legal (or wise) to start in the left lane, and CROSS (not merge into) the right lane to get off at your exit? But that is exactly what you are supposed to do in a roundabout.
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How many places, other than roundabouts, is it legal (or wise) to start in the left lane, and CROSS (not merge into) the right lane to get off at your exit? But that is exactly what you are supposed to do in a roundabout.
Do you mean like traveling in the left hand lane of a freeway and wanting to get off on an exit ramp on the right hand side without colliding with anyone? I'd say that that is a pretty basic function to master. It may seem like its different, but it is effectively the same topology, just with different scale factors - and to a computer, once you have mastered the topology, the scale should be irrelevant.
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Where do you drive that is acceptable to do that (drive in the left lane and cross the right lane to exit)? I sure hope Googles cars are smarter than that.
If you are in the left lane on a freeway, and your exit is coming up on the right, you are supposed to merge into the right lane, then onto the slowdown lane and onto the ramp. You sure as hell aren't supposed to shoot directly across the right lane at a 45 degree angle and out the exit, bypassing the slowdown lane altogether, which is what you do in a
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He's likely from Oregon. That's SOP up there. Along with Left turns from the right lane.
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Where do you drive that is acceptable to do that (drive in the left lane and cross the right lane to exit)?
As I said .. the topology (and I mean topology in its purest sense) is *exactly* the same for both roundabouts and freeway exits, the only difference is the scales of elements *within* that topology, such as how far from the exit you should consider moving from left to right hand lanes, and perhaps the "attraction" factor you should have for a particular lane. The fact that one object curves and that one is straight is irrelevant.
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No, they are not the same at all, and your insistance that they are says to me you don't know how to use a roundabout.
The only thing you have right is that curved or straight does not matter.
On a freeway, your major direction of travel is ALWAYS parallel with the travel lanes, even when getting ready to exit. In a roundabout, it is not. You do not 'change lanes' in a roundabout, even temporarily. You cross lanes.
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No, they are not the same at all, and your insistance that they are says to me you don't know how to use a roundabout.
The only thing you have right is that curved or straight does not matter.
On a freeway, your major direction of travel is ALWAYS parallel with the travel lanes, even when getting ready to exit. In a roundabout, it is not. You do not 'change lanes' in a roundabout, even temporarily. You cross lanes.
When you change lanes on a freeway you are driving at an angle to the direction of travel - albeit very small.
When you cross lanes in a roundabout you are driving at an angle to the direction of travel - but at a much larger angle than in the freeway case.
In both case you are driving at an angle to the direction of travel. The topology is the same .. only the size of the angle differs.
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And just how to you propose to 'predict' where the other cars are going? That is the whole problem. If you are 'turning left' you are SUPPOSED to be in the left lane the whole time, but many people don't do that. They are driving in the right lane, and stay in the right (outer) lane until they exit, no matter how far they go around. If you are turning right, you are SUPPOSED to start in the right lane and stay there, but many people use the inner ring as just another opportunity to pass, especially if t
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And just how to you propose to 'predict' where the other cars are going?
Are you saying that spinning laser pointer thingy on the roof of the google car is just there for show? That one that tracks the objects in the vicinity of the car, that is held up high so it can get a good view of its surroundings?
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The hard part is that the car must absolutely be able to read the horizontal markings on the pavement. This is not a trivial problem at all, since those markings are often of poor legibility in ideal circumstances even to a human, never mind a machine. I'm talking about the U.S., Western Europe is probably much better in that respect.
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The hard part is that the car must absolutely be able to read the horizontal markings on the pavement.
And how is that different from any other form of driving? Why is it only in a roundabout that you are concerned about the car needing to read markings on the road?
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"Whats so hard about a roundabout that Google's famed engineers couldn't program the requirements into the car?"
Nothing. It isn't the roundabout that is likely the issue, it is the other drivers doing stupid shit because they don't know how to handle the roundabout. There is no instructions on roundabout protocols, people are just expected to "know" them. AND they don't and guess wrong all the time. In our city, they are mostly wrong all the time. You can't program a car to do what is right, when everyone e
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Here's the first result to a .gov page on "how to use a roundabout"
http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/safety... [wa.gov]
Looks like instructions to me.
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I know the rules for a roundabout. That is not the problem. The problem is that no driver is required to know the rules of the roundabout. It is NOT required. Additionally you have people like my wife who thinks they know the rules, but give wrong instructions ... AND won't believe me when I correct her .. who won't read the rules for herself.
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Many locales have different roundabout rules.
Many locales have different rules in for driving in general. Such as passing on the right. A fully fledged autonomous car will have to take all of those differences into account. But this was a limited test in a limited locale for which google pre-mapped the route, and probably tuned the car so that it would behave accordingly to the situations it encountered.
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I dunno.
Train tracks seems like a normalish navigation hazard. "Look and listen for train" should be as doable as "look for pedestrians".
Just less common.
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'Look for pedestrians' is going to be the last, hardest part of automating a car. Because you have to infer their presence. Toolbox next to a car? What constitutes a tool vs road debris? Toys on the street? Same question.
They will be automatically rolling down highways for decades before they can handle a 25mph residential street.
Then the kids will start fucking with car AIs. It will be good for laughs all around when teenagers learn that 'pulling an invisible rope' on the shoulder will cause panic sto
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no one knows how to handle roundabouts.
and the general rule for construction work always seems to be "ignore the signs, and hope you dont hit anyone".
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On my drive to work this morning my car had to be put in manual control as well.
Obviously traditional cars are not ready for the real world either.
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Oh, believe me, I'm not an anti-automated vehicle person yet.
But at some point, we're going to have to acknowledge that people will want use them as completely automated.
Self park? Driving drunk people home? Picking your kids(or more reasonably, teens) up? Dropping you off at the airport? Actually sleeping on long drives? Replacing expensive semi-truck drivers?
There's so many applications that totally automated vehicles. And like it or not, some people are going to assume they work for these.
I dont know why this is a bad thing (Score:3, Insightful)
All of the recent articles about autonomous cars seem to be trying to make people think they're terrible will never work and are a disaster waiting to happen.
All of these tests and such aren't being done so they can release an autonomous car tomorrow, its an ongoing process and will take time. I don't blame google for not wanting to publish all the details about it, its a research project and the media seems to have an agenda to make autonomous cars into the boogeyman
Re:I dont know why this is a bad thing (Score:4, Insightful)
Somehow people think that if there's one flaw then the whole project should be scrapped. They also think that it should be at an insanely advanced stage before it's ready for use. They want to skip the decades of development that happen from real world experience and go straight to some futuristic magical car-pod.
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Exactly, to a scientist / researcher / engineer etc a failed test is not doomsday, as long as it gives them more information to continue solving the problem its just a lesser form of success
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They are just a counter balance to the excessive hype that comes from Google and its fanboys.
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No, not so much. The recent articles are more in response to the numerous [Google press release based] articles with headlines like "Autonomous car drives 10,000 miles safely!
Re:I dont know why this is a bad thing (Score:4, Insightful)
No, they want to go way past 2014 to a magical time in which no smartphone every experiences glitches, bugs, and has infinite battery life thanks to magic fairy dust.
It's called testing (Score:3)
The conditions are controlled and constant in order to test the system's response, to ready the system for variable conditions with solid behavior data.
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In Google's Defense... (Score:5, Informative)
So the two times that the Google engineer took over were for the two things that Google said they felt it was unsafe for the car to handle - a railroad track without a signal, and a roundabout.
Re:In Google's Defense... (Score:5, Interesting)
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"Roundabouts are] particularly challenging, where many drivers don't know the proper rules in the first place."
Only in the US. Elsewhere drivers have figured this out.
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Excuse me? I see drivers failing to correctly navigate a roundabout all the time.
I don't live in the US.
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I also think you have to consider Google's risk/reward here. They wanted to pass the test and most of all they did not want to get involved in any accidents, even one where the car was driving technically correct but "unhuman" as that would be used in no small about of FUD. They passed, they got their license to drive, they got the PR and the news that they couldn't drive a roundabout two years ago is nothing compared to the bad PR they'd get for crashing in a roundabout.
And the railroad thing was just poli
Meh (Score:2)
Prior art (Score:5, Funny)
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At some point I moved to Europe.
This exchange really took place:
Mom: (looking at my speedometer) "Stop going so fast!"
Me: "Mom the speed limit is 130"
Mom: "That's unsafe! Go 60"
Me: "It's KPH not MPH. 100 KPH == 60 MPH"
Mom: "Well it doesn't matter. 120 just sounds too fast. Go 60"
hype origin (Score:2)
This shows that the claims of Google have been overhyped, but while I have no reason to trust Google, I have to wonder if the fault is Google or the people who pretend to be journalists.
What Revision? (Score:3)
I am curious as to how the license works. Is it for a specific revision of software, or does Google have free reign to make large changes to the software without re-testing?
It seems to me that as more of these vehicles hit the road, even in test mode, there should be tight control over how big of a change can be Beta tested on live streets without a re-qualification.
Re: (Score:3)
Agreed, nut I'd really see an advantage of having a "hybrid" driving car. Imagine a long trip which starts in a city and then you have to drive through a long straight highway stretch which involves little to do. You could let your car drive in autonomous mode while you relax and look around, and take control back towards the end of the trip.
Re: (Score:2)
doh, typo. nut = but
Re: (Score:2)
A hybrid could sill be useful as a cruise control that handles steering.
Re: (Score:2)
Why wouldn't that be entirely acceptable? A construction zone means that traffic can come to complete standstill at any time, even on the freeway. Having autonomous cars momentarily stop and switch to manual control shouldn't be any more of a problem than other impediments due to construction.
Re: (Score:2)
> google got to cherrypick a desolate strip of highway
They drove down the Las Vegas strip. In May.
Pretty much the opposite of "desolate strip of highway".
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I guess so.
Car: "Warning: 500-foot cliff detected. Switching to manual mode in 3...2...1..."
Human: "AAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa......"
TEST PASSED!