Singapore Launches World's First 'Self-driving' Taxi Service (theguardian.com) 60
Days before ride-hailing service Uber debuts its self-driving car in Pittsburgh, a company in Singapore has beaten Uber to the race. The Guardian reports: The world's first "self-driving" taxi service has been launched in Singapore -- albeit with a human backup driver and co-pilot on board for the time being. Members of the public selected to take part in the trial would be able to hail a free ride through their smartphones, said nuTonomy, an autonomous vehicle software startup. The cars -- modified Renault Zoe and Mitsubishi i-MiEV electrics -- had a driver in the front prepared to take back the wheel and a researcher in the back watching the car's computers, the company said. Each was fitted with Lidar, a laser-based detection system like radar. An Associated Press reporter taking a ride on Wednesday observed that the safety driver had to step on the brakes once, when a car was obstructing the test car's lane and another vehicle, which appeared to be parked, suddenly began moving in the oncoming lane. The service would start with six cars, growing to a dozen by the end of the year, said nuTonomy, adding that it aimed to have a fully self-driving taxi fleet in Singapore by 2018.
Self-driving with 2 drivers? (Score:2, Funny)
The next self-driving car where they replace 1 driver with 2 drivers.
I believe the self-driving cars follows Moore's law. Double the number of drivers every 18 months!
Please state the street and number. (Score:1)
I'm not familiar with that address.
Would you please repeat the destination?
I'm not familiar with that address.
Would you please repeat the destination?
I'm not familiar with that address.
Would you please repeat the destination?
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Until they want to go to a new building which isn't on the map.
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What do you want?
But self driving car are never going to happen... (Score:5, Insightful)
I like how everyday we have some more clues that self driving cars are a real thing and that the next generation will find driving as awkward as the millennials find corded phone awkward.
I like it because it reminds me that technical and scientific progress cannot be stopped by morons just saying "it'll never happen". That a positive thing. We will still continue to have technical advancement despite the nonconstructive skeptics (kudos to constructive skeptics though, who make things progress by spotting what needs to be improved).
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But... reasons!
Can't versus shouldn't (Score:3)
I like it because it reminds me that technical and scientific progress cannot be stopped by morons just saying "it'll never happen".
That's quite a different breed of moron from the ones who say "it should not happen". Think stuff like stem cell research, teaching evolution, etc.
There also is a difference between saying something wont happen soon or won't happen in a particular way versus saying it won't happen at all. For example renewable energy very clearly won't replace most fossil fuels for the next several decades at least. That's a very different statement from saying it "cannot" replace fossil fuels and different still from sa
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Was the guy who got his head sheared off a skeptic?
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I like how everyday we have some more clues that self driving cars are a real thing and that the next generation will find driving as awkward as the millennials find corded phone awkward.
I like how "self-driving" continues to be defined down so that the empty-headed futurists can keep banging their drum.
Millenials? They will continue to build lives that don't need cars, period, self-driving or not. What will be awkward is baby-boomers and Gen-Xers trying to sell their house in the car-centric 'burbs.
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Funny. My wife & I (retired boomers) bought old house in the city earlier this year... It needs work, but we're fixing it up. We can walk to the hardware store, to grocery stores, to pubs. I mention the pubs because they are full of young people, and young people, with all their energy and enthusiasm, are fun to be around.
Sometimes we don't drive our car for weeks at a time. Yeah, we still need it for certain kinds of shopping. We're hoping that by the time we're too infirm to drive or to walk as
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Millenials? They will continue to build lives that don't need cars, period, self-driving or not.
What is a life that don't need car? You never get out of the city? Never visit relatives? Never explore your surroundings?
I'm curious, because I can't think about a life without a car. It would be, for me, like being in a prison.
And I'm not a mass transit hater, I take the subway every work day, and sometimes on the weekends when it makes more sense.
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You are totally fucking blind to all of the challenges that need to be overcome. The clues we see every day demonstrate how far off we are.
I'm not saying "it'll never happen". It will. It just won't happen in the time-frame you're hallucinating.
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Yes, they do. There's still a chance that the outcome of this experiment will be "tough shit, doesn't work well enough (yet)".
Just for the record, I'm not one of the people who predict it won't happen.
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>
I like it because it reminds me that technical and scientific progress cannot be stopped by morons just saying "it'll never happen".
I've been active in these debates for a while and I've never seen any reasonable argument that says it will "never" happen. Only that the 'optimistic' predictions of robot cars for all by 2018, 2020, 2025 or whatever are naive.
We know automation works, and those of us who work in it everyday know it's capability. We also know it's limitations, and for an uncontrolled environment such as a public road there is much more than a couple of years worth effort before this is commonplace.
But dream the dream if i
Luddites, beware! (Score:3)
Sheesh. And here I thought it would take 5 years for self-driving vehicles to become common.
By my previous estimate, around 5 million jobs in the US alone could be replaced or severely curtailed by self-driving vehicles (about 3.5 million jobs are driving tractor-trailers). I now think that's a low estimate, considering delivery vehicles, taxis, US mail, school busses, and so on.
The first self-driving tractor trailer [cnn.com] hit the road about 18 months ago. Yes, they probably won't work in snow. Yes, they probably won't work in some situations, such as finding and backing into the loading dock. You'll still need humans for those situations.
But for the vast majority of cases, they will work for the long-haul across the US. (If you've ever driven across the US at night, you know that the highways are a never-ending chain of tractor trailers in the right-hand lane.) They don't need down time, they don't get tired, they don't get distracted, they can work 24/7. They can learn from each others' mistakes. They don't need salary or benefits.
This is demonstrably better from a safety and cost point of view, and it takes away a lot of tedious work from humans--giving them more free time--but it'll wreck our current economic system.
We currently have about 170 million workers, and sitting at about 10% unemployment [gallup.com]. This one technological advance could push that up to 15%. Economically speaking, 10% unemployment is the beginning of the "this is bad, we should do something" level. We only recently dropped below that number from the great(-est) depression.
(How we deal with illegal immigrants is another big chunk of potential workers that could affect unemployment. Not to make this a partisan argument, but if we *do* have amnesty, it should be done in a layered, progressive fashion with an eye on unemployment so as not to tank the economy. Refugees are too few in number to affect unemployment.)
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Have no fear young Okian Warrior, despite what the news grabbing headlines is feeding you self-driving vehicles are still decades away from replacing anyone's jobs. What you are seeing is very much still in its infancy.
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"They don't need down time, they don't get tired, they don't get distracted, they can work 24/7. They can learn from each others' mistakes. They don't need salary or benefits."
Wow, its almost like a train, but significantly less energy efficient.. Too bad. There's always going to be the need for last-mile-type trucks, but I feel like a big economic or resource shock will push people to nail the logistics necessary for fast-load/unload train based options to happen. And then maybe the US will follow around 1
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But for the vast majority of cases, they will work for the long-haul across the US. (If you've ever driven across the US at night, you know that the highways are a never-ending chain of tractor trailers in the right-hand lane.) They don't need down time, they don't get tired, they don't get distracted, they can work 24/7. They can learn from each others' mistakes. They don't need salary or benefits.
What I don't get is we've already had this solution for years, automated trains do exactly the same thing right now. If we're not using them, why are automated trucks somehow different?
Finally! (Score:2)
Once this is popular in more countries we will be rid of the problems we often have with human drivers.
No more grand tours taking you via the longest route at a special tariff. No rude comments or "chitchat" because they are bored. No phone conversations or unwanted sexual attention.
I just hope they won't run into too many teething issues to put people off for another few years...
Democracy [Re:Finally!] (Score:3)
Don't get your hopes up: bots can be programmed to stiff ya and be annoying also. Instead of chit-chat, you'll get pop-up ads. Right now there's too much press and scrutiny, but in the future when it becomes routine, tricks and slack will slide in.
On a different note, Singapore has an advantage over the USA for roll-out in that they are not a democracy* and have fewer checks and balances: if something goes wrong, the gov't can tell the victims and lawyers to STFU and everyone is used to that.
* The USA argua
Taxis moving goalposts (Score:2)
Here we go....now that it's clear (as it has always been if you look) that "self-driving cars" are mostly hype we will start to see companies moving goalposts to claim they have done it.
Uber is doing this in Pittsburg.
This tech has amazing capabilities but it's not ever going to be able to do what they are claiming.
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The amazing part for me is the LIDAR processor and how it works with steering, speed, and geospacial positioning.
Interesting: the SR 71 navigated by the stars, it used a super-sensitive camera that could see the stars in daylight through the blue scattering effect in the atmosphere.
Re:Taxis moving goalposts (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah! If they don't go from standard taxis immediately to un-manned cars and firing their drivers in a weekend, then how can we possibly take them seriously?
long haul trucking is boring but you will love it (Score:2)
sarcasm aside, the answer is using our critical thinking skills and technical knowledge
see, /. is still a place where tech people, the people who *actually* understand how this big new tech works, come to comment
AI-cars can't see in the weather. Even light rain. That's just the vision aspect...it might as well be a warp drive...we just don't have anywhe
Lawyers are salivating (Score:1)
Eventually we will have the opportunity to observe collisions between self-driving vehicles using different implementations from different suppliers. The determination of liability will be interesting, worrying, disgusting, and expensive.
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