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Transportation AI

Self-Driving Car Will Make Trip From San Francisco To New York City 132

An anonymous reader writes with news that Delphi Automotive is undertaking the longest test of a driverless car yet, from the Golden Gate Bridge to midtown Manhattan. "Lots of people decide, at one point or another, to drive across the US. College kids. Beat poets. Truckers. In American folklore, it doesn't get much more romantic than cruising down the highway, learning about life (or, you know, hauling shipping pallets). Now that trip is being taken on by a new kind of driver, one that won't appreciate natural beauty or the (temporary) joy that comes from a gas station chili dog: a robot. On March 22, an autonomous car will set out from the Golden Gate Bridge toward New York for a 3,500-mile drive that, if all goes according to plan, will push robo-cars much closer to reality. Audi's taken its self-driving car from Silicon Valley to Las Vegas, Google's racked up more than 700,000 autonomous miles, and Volvo's preparing to put regular people in its robot-controlled vehicles. But this will be one of the most ambitious tests yet for a technology that promises to change just about everything, and it's being done not by Google or Audi or Nissan, but by a company many people have never heard of: Delphi."
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Self-Driving Car Will Make Trip From San Francisco To New York City

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  • by Anonymous Coward

    Cross country in the USA is rather blah, compared to Citroen's drive from Paris to Beijing many moons ago.

  • Or will it? (Score:3, Funny)

    by istartedi ( 132515 ) on Saturday March 14, 2015 @10:22AM (#49256011) Journal

    Will it, or will it just go off for a few lube jobs and tell us it did that? When AI learns how to cook the books, then I'll be impressed... and scared.

  • Good luck to the Delphi team. Just imagine the possibilities.

    • Good luck to the Delphi team. Just imagine the possibilities.

      The article briefly mentions that there are humans inside [yes, I read it]. Until then, I was wondering how they planned to handle refueling (and maybe in the future, recharging). When they figure that one out, imagine what this kind of system will do to the trucking industry.

      • by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Saturday March 14, 2015 @10:49AM (#49256119) Homepage Journal

        I was wondering how they planned to handle refueling (and maybe in the future, recharging). When they figure that one out, imagine what this kind of system will do to the trucking industry.

        They don't even have to figure that one out. All they have to do is institute full service fueling to replace cardlock fuel stops. The trucks pull in, someone wanders over and fuels them, the trucks pull out again when they detect that the tank has been closed and the attendant has moved away. Extensive monitoring and high-resolution cameras will eliminate the need to have a human on board entirely.

        Presumably, a car with a telepresence robot in it (just enough to communicate with attendants, not to drive the car) could conceivably already cross the country simply by stopping at full-service stations, if not for the legal impediments.

        Besides commuting, OTR trucking really is the "killer app" for self-driving automobiles, and it's coming sooner than people think.

        • I've never seen a full-service gas station in my state, nor a neighboring state I sometimes visit. I might have a real problem if I had to depend on one for any reason. I've heard that some states have nothing but full-serice stations because of union clout, but I wouldn't want to count on that alone to move entire shipments across the country. Naturally, YMMV.

          Now if I exercise a little benefit of doubt and put a little thought into how your idea might work (see my above post [slashdot.org] on why stupid insecure peopl

          • by jpapon ( 1877296 ) on Saturday March 14, 2015 @11:37AM (#49256331) Journal

            This is consistent with the overall American trend of replacing solid blue-collar jobs with entry-level service type jobs.

            I fail to see how trucker is a "solid blue-collar job" while "gas station refueler" is somehow an "entry-level service type job". They're both pretty typical blue collar jobs.

            I would say adding a full-service attendant at every truck stop gas station is probably the least complicated and easiest-to-implement part of an automated nation-wide self-driving truck shipping system. You're really focusing on the simplest part of the problem.

            • by vovin ( 12759 )

              OTR trucking pays quite well as an independent you can gross ~400K/year.
              It is skilled .. you need a Class A license and know your trade.

              Gas station attended pays minimum wage, and robots don't tip.

          • This is consistent with the overall American trend of replacing solid blue-collar jobs with entry-level service type jobs. I wonder how long that hypothetical arrangement could last?

            Well eventually, as more and more blue collar jobs are replaced with entry level service jobs, nobody will be able to afford the goods and services produced, so the need for OTR trucking will go away, and the companies that make the products will go away, so the need for IT people like us will go away. Everybody wins!

          • The only places I've seen full service gas stations in the last 20 years are Oregon, New Jersey, and somewhere in Ontario.

        • by Anonymous Coward

          Why should it be required to stop at a refueling station, if there's no meat-bag on board? I would presume automated refueling to be a relatively simple problem solve, in comparison to engineering an autonomous automobile. An autonomous cargo hauler could summon a roving (autonomous) tanker and refuel while in transit, much like in-flight refueling for military aircraft.

          • On road refueling? Oh please.
            You do realize that in-flight refueling requires multiple human operators.

            1 to fly the tanker
            1 to fly the boom
            1 to fly the A/C being refueled.

            With some tankers, you can combine the first two, but still, multiple humans involved.
        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by burtosis ( 1124179 )

          Extensive monitoring and high-resolution cameras will eliminate the need to have a human on board entirely.

          Besides commuting, OTR trucking really is the "killer app" for self-driving automobiles, and it's coming sooner than people think.

          HaHaHa. Yes you can watch the semi slam on the brakes for a piece of cardboard that gets blown by the wind and creates a multi car pileup. I'm not sure how that helps.
          I take it you have never worked on any computer vision papers or any teams that have tried vehicle automation? Because even autonomous freeway driving in the USA is far far far off - perhaps 30 years or more. When you see someone with algorithms that can actually do better than the bottom 5-10% of human drivers (under the same apples

          • by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Saturday March 14, 2015 @11:55AM (#49256415) Homepage Journal

            HaHaHa. Yes you can watch the semi slam on the brakes for a piece of cardboard that gets blown by the wind and creates a multi car pileup. I'm not sure how that helps.

            Existing automotive driving assistance systems are already immune to this problem. They use radar to tell the difference between a plastic bag or a piece of cardboard, and something with mass.

            Granted, a mylar balloon will probably produce the kind of results you're looking for, but there don't seem to be near as many of those on the highways as pieces of cardboard, so I can see why you didn't go for that example.

            • Not every system uses just radar. Lidar, computer vision, and sonic sensors would all register an object. The way the sensors are fused may in fact register the cardboard as an object. The fact is simple sensor fusion and khalman filtering isn't as simple as implementing a grad school project.
              • The fact is simple sensor fusion and khalman filtering isn't as simple as implementing a grad school project.

                Oh noes, it's hard.

                But wait, there's a whole lot of money in solving it...

                • There sure is. I have no doubt that sometime in the future, barring some kind of planetary catastrophe, it will be solved. The article is just a stunt and nothing more, id be much more impressed by a well cited DARPA urban challenge paper or any serious work than the article. 30-50 years out for true autonomous freeway driving in the USA is my guess - for both the legal and technical challenges.
          • by Dutch Gun ( 899105 ) on Saturday March 14, 2015 @12:51PM (#49256617)

            I take it you have never worked on any computer vision papers or any teams that have tried vehicle automation? Because even autonomous freeway driving in the USA is far far far off - perhaps 30 years or more.

            Cars with autonomous freeway driving will be out in just a couple of years [latimes.com], according to automotive manufacturers. Nearly all the major players are predicting fully autonomous cars will be a solved problem sometime between 2020 and 2025 [wikipedia.org].

            Keep in mind that cars can and will make use of a variety of sensors besides vision that are much easier and reliable to process. I'm betting the first generation of automated highway driving uses no vision systems at all... just radar, lidar, and sonar, plus GPS for nativation. More to the point, they can use ALL of them at once. Those are more than enough to handle highway driving. Cars today are already using some of these systems for their intelligent cruise control, auto-parking, and collision avoidance systems.

            Make no mistake... computers are going to be FAR better drivers than humans. No getting drowsy or falling asleep. No distractions by the passengers in the seat next to you or the rugrats in the back. No rear-ending cars while looking at your cellphone or putting on makeup or one of the ten thousand stupid things humans do every day behind the wheel. Fully autonomous cars can't come fast enough, and they'll likely be coming a hell of a lot faster than you think.

            • by burtosis ( 1124179 ) on Saturday March 14, 2015 @01:10PM (#49256693)

              Cars with autonomous freeway driving will be out in just a couple of years [latimes.com], according to automotive manufacturers. Nearly all the major players are predicting fully autonomous cars will be a solved problem sometime between 2020 and 2025 [wikipedia.org].

              Keep in mind that cars can and will make use of a variety of sensors besides vision that are much easier and reliable to process. I'm betting the first generation of automated highway driving uses no vision systems at all... just radar, lidar, and sonar, plus GPS for nativation. More to the point, they can use ALL of them at once. Those are more than enough to handle highway driving. Cars today are already using some of these systems for their intelligent cruise control, auto-parking, and collision avoidance systems.

              Make no mistake... computers are going to be FAR better drivers than humans. No getting drowsy or falling asleep. No distractions by the passengers in the seat next to you or the rugrats in the back. No rear-ending cars while looking at your cellphone or putting on makeup or one of the ten thousand stupid things humans do every day behind the wheel. Fully autonomous cars can't come fast enough, and they'll likely be coming a hell of a lot faster than you think.

              Funny because sensor fusion isn't so simple. It's a big step from auto following a car to actual autonomous driving on freeways in a more reliable way than even the worst human drivers. Comparing the state of the art today to sunny day freely moving traffic human drivers - we are no where near humans. Add heavy rain, dirty sensors, snow, road construction, etc and we will have need for humans to sit and nanny autonomous vehicles from the inside for a long time.
              Furthermore all this "solved problem in 10 years" smacks of the leading computer scientists in the 60s claiming they could beat the best human in 10 years. Then it was another 10. Granted it was only 4 times of saying 10 years so yes eventually. Further still there is the legal ramifications of when the first human fatality due to autonomous driving occurs - common sense and logic will take a back seat to "think of the children" in the USA and we both know it. We are more likely 30 years out than 5-10. However what chaps my hide is people saying this stunt of using a combination of cruise control, lane following, and car distance following is autonomous driving is like saying Siri is strong AI.

              • Have you seen videos of Google's car [youtube.com] deftly navigating it's way through city streets, pedestrians, bicycles (even recognizing hand signals), railroads, construction zones, and other such obstacles? They're not claiming it's perfect yet, but I think you're underestimating how close these companies are to a real, working solution.

                As far as legal issues... yeah, there will be lawsuits, but that's nothing new for the automotive industry. Self-driving is such a massively compelling feature, though, that it's a

                • Yes I have watched them. I also worked in a robotics lab for almost 8 years where tons of computer vision, lidar, radar, sonar, etc were used in various projects. I don't consider myself an expert in autonomous cars but ill wager i know a lot more than most fans of them.
                  we can wait and see but I'm only slightly hopeful of autonomous driving being accepted in the US before my license is revoked when I'm too senile to pilot a car manually.
                  • by Bigby ( 659157 )

                    I would agree with the prospect of "fully" autonomous driving being too far out to even hope for. However, I think we will have limited-access highway-only autonomy by 2020.

                    • I would agree with the prospect of "fully" autonomous driving being too far out to even hope for. However, I think we will have limited-access highway-only autonomy by 2020.

                      I would be happy if that happened. However we would already need to have been starting legislation in place years ago, and be installing extra sensors, signs, and lane markers now for things to get done in only 5 years. This is the government lol. I too think limited freeway driving will be first but I'm not hopeful 10 years is enough.

                  • These guys are way smarter than me. I mean I can write some perl scripts, but I have no idea how to tackle some of the "robot car" challenges.

                    For instance when to pull over... let's say there is a billboard with a picture of a police car with sirens flashing. Is that inconceivable? Would the robot car ever advance past it or just pull over? What if there are no safe places to pull over and an emergency vehicle needs to pass. Would the robot car know when it is appropriate to get itself stuck in a ditch

                • I have watched those videos. Remember that they are the highlight reels and not the bloopers.

                • by Euler ( 31942 )

                  Wow, you can see the pavement on the highway and it isn't full of craters. The surface streets had a nice grid-like orientation and stoplights in logical places.

                  Have you ever been upstate New York in winter, or Boston any time of year?

                  Maybe it can be deployed sooner in limited areas that are well-mapped and have predictable road conditions. You will absolutely need to keep daily updates of detours and changes to stoplights, etc.

                  I just wonder if any existing automotive companies will want the liability, or

            • Cars with autonomous freeway driving will be out in just a couple of years [latimes.com], according to automotive manufacturers. Nearly all the major players are predicting fully autonomous cars will be a solved problem sometime between 2020 and 2025 [wikipedia.org].

              Why is every cool technology always exactly ten years away?

              • Because the stuff we were looking forward to 10-20 years ago is now mundane. Hi-def Flat screen TVs? multi-core CPU? smartphones? LED light bulbs? Meh!

          • Are autonomous vehicles limited by visual spectrum? I was under the impression they used a combination of visual spectrum, active radar, infrared, sonar, and lasers (amongst other, I would guess).

            • Are autonomous vehicles limited by visual spectrum? I was under the impression they used a combination of visual spectrum, active radar, infrared, sonar, and lasers (amongst other, I would guess).

              Yes the major players use multiple types of sensors. The data is "fused" from them to create a virtual world representation (essentially) of the real world. You additionally merge error through mathematical techniques like Kalman filtering. However this is not straight forward. When sensors give conflicting results, or sensors become dirty, or faulty it becomes a very very hard problem. The hardest problems are extracting and fusing the data in reliable ways taking sensor problems into account and crea

        • by Anonymous Coward

          Since the truck is automated, why do we need an attendant at all? We can make a simple fueling interface that is completely new that both the fueling station and the truck have, that is not just completely automated, but provides security and vandal resistance. For example, a hardened steel shutter that won't open on the truck unless the fueling station passes the right authentication handshake... to prevent siphoning, and similar on the station to prevent someone from trying to enter the facility. Done

          • by Anonymous Coward

            More importantly, no need to worry about breaks and lunches. Also no pesky 12 hour 2nd lunch rule, yada yada.

          • Actually, I'm a bit surprised that we don't already have something like this, as there really isn't any reason why such a system couldn't be used by human-operated trucks too.

      • So basically all the fun of a road trip, but nobody gets stuck driving. I'm down.

      • by Kjella ( 173770 )

        The article briefly mentions that there are humans inside [yes, I read it]. Until then, I was wondering how they planned to handle refueling (and maybe in the future, recharging). When they figure that one out, imagine what this kind of system will do to the trucking industry.

        When they figure what out? All you need is $5 of electronics to open the fuel tank and a robot arm to hit a stationary, active target that can light itself up like a Christmas tree and say here I am. A month sounds like a long time to solve this problem, more the kind you have a prototype made over the weekend. A year max to create an integrated solution of how to find gas stations & gas prices, locate a pump, two way authentication so nobody can pour sugar in the tank, payment and so on. The only reaso

    • by computers that can't parse the scenery, use faulty maps, don't have the sense to know what things can't be crashed into, don't know what's live and what's dead, don't have the brain to make sense of unusual road conditions like oil slicks...

      Oh yes, I can imagine the endless clusterf*** that is this totally unnecessary technology being pushed by unforgivable egotists onto idiots.

      I just hope that when the first Google car murder happens, the lawsuit cuts the company down enough to hurt hurt hurt and they a

  • by Anonymous Coward

    CMU Graduate students achieved this more than a decade ago. Wasn't highly publicized, but their PhD thesis work was autonomous driving and they achieved autonomous highway driving from East Coast to West Coast fully autonomous.

  • A car with nobody in pulls up to a gas station...

    • ... and then nobody fills it up.

      • by sjames ( 1099 )

        A couple hours later an autonomous army vehicle arrives and shoots up the diner until the humans inside get the message and start filling tanks.

  • "When it’s not on the highway, one of the humans inside will take the wheel." Driving on highways is about as straight forward as driving gets. While neat, this doesn't seem as ambitions as autonomously driving through a city full of obstacles.
    • by mrvan ( 973822 )

      Highway driving is also the most boring part of driving, and on longer trips often the largest part. City and local driving is kind of fun, you have to pay attention and hopefully you get some nice scenery and usually takes at most 30 minutes. Highways are just boring and can easily take 10+ hours. Fully automated highway driving (even requiring me to stay behind the wheel but letting me read, work or sleep until/unless an alarm goes off) would certainly be a killer feature.

      I guess adaptive cruise control p

      • City driving sucks. I hate stop-and-go.

      • This handover from computer to human is what bugs me.

        How to do this reliably?

        Point in case: just yesterday I missed my bus stop on a routine commute, simply because I was too distracted by a stupid phone game. This is comparable to automated drives, as I do a stretch of city transport by hand (home to bus stop), there hop on the bus (human driven but from the passenger pov it could as well be a robot), take back control when I reach the exit point: press the button to get off and do the last bit of transit

        • by sjames ( 1099 )

          First it rattles the windows with an excessively loud radio, then it goes goes into lowrider mode to shake you awake. If that fails, it calls 911 and reports your death.

      • I have adaptive cruise control and a lot of other technologies that projects like this use (lane assist, blind spot warning backup camera/radar etc) and I can honestly say it has made me a much worse/lazy driver. I find myself constantly relying on these solely instead of a check on my natural abilities. This is with me consciously knowing relying on them is a really bad thing.

        My anecdote may not apply to all but it certainly concerns me to the point of wanting to not use it. It reminds me of people in O

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • by burtosis ( 1124179 ) on Saturday March 14, 2015 @10:51AM (#49256129)
    The car has a driver. It's nothing more than a slightly longer pre-mapped pre-planned trip with every last detail painstakingly manually entered. The vehicle cannot handle road construction, traffic problems, snow, simple decisions as to what is safer - like running over a blowing plastic bag or slamming on the brakes.
    I'm all for progress but this is just one more sensational click bait hype article. It's getting almost as bad as solar cell efficiency articles, which if you took them at face value we would be sitting at around one gazillion percent by now.
    • Actually, the smarter self driving cars CAN handle various obstacles such as road construction and lane closures. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

      • If you are talking about the google car video 2:30 into the video - yes cars can just barely - and unsafely - navigate through construction at like 5mph. Google is NOT claiming they can reliably handle construction. Please point me to a statement otherwise. Furthermore in that same video the car is meandering like a texting schoolgirl in its lane - dosen't inspire confidence in me at all. Get that laser rangefinder on top of the car dirty, such as dust from rain and road spray, then tell me how it work
  • by Anonymous Coward

    TFA says, "When it’s not on the highway, one of the humans inside will take the wheel".

    So it's self driving except for when it's not. Which is another way of saying it isn't a self driving car. It could not drive me from my house down to the local market.

    Also, jeez, how is Delphi "a company many people have never heard of"? It's HUGE. Employs 160,000 people. That's 3X as many as Google employs. Anyone who hasn't heard of Delphi must be living under a rock.

    • by Imrik ( 148191 )

      Delphi is huge as a company, but it doesn't have much consumer presence compared to Google and the car manufacturers. Also, being based in the UK it isn't as well known in the US.

  • This is a company that used to be a part of GM and when GM spun it off into its own business they used it as a way to jettison all of the most useless members of upper management. These folks ran the company into the ground in a very short amount of time and then went through the longest bankruptcy in US history.

    There have been a number of really cool products that they were developing that they inexplicably shelved, so I won't be surprised at all if they get this working really well and then decide to pack

  • by wvmarle ( 1070040 ) on Saturday March 14, 2015 @11:09AM (#49256211)

    More impressive would be for the car to drive from one end of New York to the other. During the day, avoiding highways, dealing with really chaotic traffic on narrow, poorly marked roads full of distractions and ambiguities.

    Highways are simple. Traffic flows in one direction only, clearly marked and wide roads, no intersections, all roughly the same speed. No surprises. It's where by far the fewest accidents happen for human driven cars, even though it's boring and probably the part where human drivers pay least attention. Doing an hour of highways, ten hours of highways, 100 hours of highways - it's just more of the same. Now it's cross country, tomorrow it'll be cross country and back. And back again. As long as the fuel will last.

    • Mod parent up. It's simply another slightly longer preplanned pre-mapped mountain of manually entered data test. The technology cant even do as well as a below average human in perfect sunny day few cars on the road freeway traffic. In a city it would rack up fatalities like a mountain dewed up teenager playing gtaV.
      • The most interesting thing to me will be the ability to handle a traffic jam situation where the car needs to get to an offramp but no one will honor the signal and let them in which is the case in most metro areas. You *have* to be a jerk to get things done sometimes.

    • Yeah, I don't get all the "fully autonomous cars will be here soon" posts. Sure, I can see cars that can handle themselves on the freeway, given clear weather and no construction. We're almost there anyway with the adaptive cruise control and lane keeping systems on cars you can buy today. But we're a long way from cars that can handle construction zones, two lane highways and rural roads, poorly maintained roads, gravel roads, bad weather, and the like. If I was a professional driver I wouldn't be worr

  • who gets the ticket?

  • Yes, Delphi, an basically unknown in the self-driving world, is trying to make a big splash by doing something that appears monumental while perhaps not actually making much of a leap forward in the technology. But out in most of America, self-driving cars are still pretty controversial. Accomplishments like this, assuming they pull it off, can make huge political advances.

    And I don't know about you, but I'll be mighty frustrated if, when the technology arrives, we're stuck waiting on the legal system.

  • by burtosis ( 1124179 ) on Saturday March 14, 2015 @11:47AM (#49256369)
    Let's call it for what it is - cruise control plus lane following plus automatic braking to prevent running into vehicles in front of them. It does not turn, it does not make smart safety decisions, it cannot handle simple variations in real conditions. It's as close to being an autonomous car as Siri is to being strong AI.
  • no it won't. (Score:4, Informative)

    by YesIAmAScript ( 886271 ) on Saturday March 14, 2015 @11:48AM (#49256371)

    Delphi already said the car will only self-drive portions of the trip. Long portions of the trip, but only some portions nonetheless.

    "When it’s not on the highway, one of the humans inside will take the wheel."

    • So this is a long distance test of simple lane following.

    • by RyoShin ( 610051 )

      While it's true that this isn't a test of a fully self-driving car, solid, long distance driving is going to be the "kickstarter" for getting full self-driving automobiles into people's homes. Families are going to love setting out on the highway, setting the car to "maintain", and then everyone (driver included!) can just sleep or play games or whatever. Car alerts when it's running low on gas, there's a potential problem, or you're coming to a more congested area that requires human take-over.

      But then the

  • by Capt.Albatross ( 1301561 ) on Saturday March 14, 2015 @11:50AM (#49256375)

    Just for a moment, I wished the the squeegee guys were back. I would like to see an interaction between a squeegee guy and this car at the exit of the Lincoln tunnel.

  • I've seen the movie.

  • Cops (Score:5, Interesting)

    by John Jorsett ( 171560 ) on Saturday March 14, 2015 @01:21PM (#49256737)
    Something I've lately been wondering: has anyone yet figured out how to get a robot vehicle to recognize when a cop is behind them with flashing lights and to pull over? Or, if an emergency vehicle is approaching with siren blaring, do likewise? Seems like that would be a good way to hijack the load of a robot truck.
    • Good point.

      Not stopping for a police officer who has spotted your autonomous car, and is confused, resentful, and god-fearin' might get you free air-conditioning via several dozen bullet holes.
    • If they can figure out all of the other objects I would assume sensing white/red/blue flashing lights and pulling over wouldn't be an issue.

      The legal aspect of this is kind of cool when you think about it. If you are being pulled over for a BS reason (lane drift/illegal lane change/following to close/etc) you have a mountain of data to bring to court to refute the claim.

    • by RyoShin ( 610051 )

      I imagine there will be some sort of two-factor authentication. The car can recognize the lights or, more reliably, a standardized signal from the police vehicle. It begins to pull over and, while it does so, contacts a standard system to verify that the copy signalling is a legitimate one. If not recognized as a police vehicle, or the police car sends a "move past" signal, it would just move over/slow down to allow the emergency vehicle to pass.

      There are layers involved, of course, and wouldn't be fool-pro

  • Ergo, it'll never make it through New Jersey unless it's on manual 90+% of the time.

  • by paiute ( 550198 ) on Saturday March 14, 2015 @02:42PM (#49257059)
    Will this car pick me up if I put my thumbdrive out?
  • I'm not dissing what these guys are doing; it's good to demonstrate the increasing capabilities of self-driving cars. But I don't think it's very accurate to call this the "most ambitious" test, because long-distance driving, especially on highways like the US interstate system, is about the easiest form of driving there is to automate. I'm much more impressed with the ability of Google's self-driving cars to negotiate crowded city streets safely.

  • "Killer App"

    They'll kill people, animals, cause accidents, destroy property, and with luck, destroy the profits of the companies evil enough to push dumber than ant brains on us as drivers. Also, one can hope, they'll end the careers of every politician who was stupid enough to allow this.

    Get your protest signs ready.

    • by neminem ( 561346 )

      > "They'll kill people, animals, cause accidents, destroy property"
      Yes, they probably will. But the question is, will they kill fewer people and animals, cause fewer accidents, and destroy less property than the absolutely enormous number of people and animals killed, accidents caused, and property destroyed by *humans* driving cars? I expect by the time self-driving cars go mainstream, the answer will be a monumental yes, in which case, that's still a win for humans and the planet.

  • This vehicle may drive parts of the way but it will not drive all the way. There will be times when the driver, who has to be there by law, will take over. Autonomous cars have yet to be able to navigate parking lots. There may not even be a string of states where autonomous cars can legally drive?

  • I guess if you are not 'in the know' about the automobile industry you might have missed, "one of the largest suppliers of audio systems, modules, and components to auto manufacturers and replacement parts to the after market worldwide..." and a driving force behind automated supply chain management.

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