Ford's BlueCruise Self-Driving Tech Did a 110,000-Mile Road Trip (engadget.com) 75
Ford has revealed that it spent last year conducting the "mother of all road trips" for its upcoming BlueCruise system, sending five Mustang Mach-E crossovers and five F-150 trucks on a collective 110,000-mile journey across the US and Canada. Engadget reports: The aim, to no one's surprise, was to gauge how BlueCruise handled in a wide range of realistic road and traffic conditions. Ford had already racked up 500,000 miles of development testing, but these were shorter, narrowly-focused dry runs. The road trips helped Ford look for changes in everything from road signs to weather while traveling cross-country.
BlueCruise will reach 2021 Mustang Mach-E and F-150 models later in the second half of the year through a software update, although you'll need the Co-Pilot360 Active 2.0 Prep Package. Like Super Cruise, it relies on looking for "prequalified" highway sections and verifies that you're paying attention to the road. You really can take your hands off the wheel, but you'll have to be ready to intervene when you either leave the BlueCruise-ready area or face an unexpected issue on the road.
BlueCruise will reach 2021 Mustang Mach-E and F-150 models later in the second half of the year through a software update, although you'll need the Co-Pilot360 Active 2.0 Prep Package. Like Super Cruise, it relies on looking for "prequalified" highway sections and verifies that you're paying attention to the road. You really can take your hands off the wheel, but you'll have to be ready to intervene when you either leave the BlueCruise-ready area or face an unexpected issue on the road.
Meanwhile (Score:2)
I haven't checked for a while, but hasn't Tesla logged something like 22 billion (yes B) real-life road miles into its test data base?
Regardless, good to see another major auto maker make an effort to convince everyone they invented this market.
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Totally different, Tesla are automating cars to drive around suburban areas. Automating trucks across long straight highways, much much easier.
Automated trucks is more likely to be an everyday thing before automated suburban vehicles. With automated trucks they will be automating trips between cities, with the trucks delivering their cargo at depots outside suburban areas and then regular manned trucks will be used to freight the cargo within the city through metropolitan streets, where all the complexiti
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I could see long-haul trucking disappearing from this. The trucks drive themselves from regional node to node, then the cargo goes into a human-driven truck for the last 10 or 50 miles. Makes you wonder why not just use trains though... self-driving is a lot easier when you're on rails.
The long-haul trucker, last remaining descendant of the cowboy... is disappearing. I wonder if there's been a country song about this yet.
Re: Meanwhile (Score:3)
rails require infrastructure and scheduling. The infrastructure for long haul in the US is already well developed. In many other countries, your solution is probably better.
The environmental impact of roads is significant and I think rails are generally a better environmental solution but the scheduling adds a layer of complexity that could probably reduce the effectivity of things like next day deliveries. There may also be capacity concerns.
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Self driving trucks might be a good way to make rail viable for more routes now. The issue was always that the container had to be loaded onto a truck, taken to the rail hub, loaded onto the train, taken to the other hub, and then loaded back onto the truck. Oh, and you need a container rather than just loading up the truck directly.
With self driving vehicles all of that could be automated and optimized. Like package delivery is getting to be.
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The issue [with rail] was always that the container had to be loaded onto a truck, taken to the rail hub, loaded onto the train...
Road transport has hubs too. Anyway, at one time every factory had a rail siding where stuff was loaded straight onto the train. For bulk stuff, and docks, that is often still the case, even in the UK where road transport is massively subsidised by the tax on private cars.
Re: Meanwhile (Score:2)
Still doesn't solve the issue of building an adequate rail system in the US. I know Biden plans to throw some money at this but it just seems more like jump starting an industry which has largely failed.
Your points are fairly valid though, once the infrastructure of the steel on the ground is there, I think more could be done to automate the process and make it cheaper but the thread already outlined last mile is the most difficult for self driving, so it just doesn't seem feasible yet. Maybe Amazon could
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Actually this is a common misconception. The freight rail in the USA is actually pretty good, relatively *better* than in Europe. For more stuff is delivered by truck in Europe than you might think. Passenger rail is far far in the opposite direction though.
Self-driving trucks should be very helpful to rail freight, for the basic reason that a self-driving truck can wait in line for hours or days to get the container loaded or unloaded onto a train (human drivers are expensive even when not moving, they get
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Self driving trains might make trains more viable too. Instead of waiting until you have a hundred cars ready to go you could go right down to individual self-powered carriages if you wanted.
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And then slap tires on them that can go up and down, and they can drive to the rail, take the rail, hop off as close to their destination as possible, and drive on roads the rest of the way there.
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Yeah. I always thought the pickups with the retractable train wheels the rail guys drove around were awesome. I always wondered why they didn't do that for whole train cars. I guess the railway people have always thought it was insane to pay some guy to drive around each and every car.
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Containers are better. The suspension, wheels, and engine (or batteries) of a truck take up a lot of space, height especially. The train will work much better only carrying the container. Also the containers are used on ships, they also don't carry entire trucks for exactly the same reason.
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Why not just use trains? Capacity, competition, flexibility.
Trains have a fixed capacity, there are only so many trains you can put down a rail line, whereas with trucking its more flexible, you can use all the capacity on the roads during the night not used by human travellers. Plus I imagine they would be thinking of systems that co-ordinate these trucks, you could form virtual trains to minimise drag and save energy. With all the systems linked, a truck travelling at the rear of a column would know the
Re: Meanwhile (Score:2)
In some countries they have trucks that are called trains with 3 trailers attached. depending on how this was done, you could maybe find a similar solution.
Re: Meanwhile (Score:2)
In parts of the US, towing 3 trailers is legal on highways. On much of the East coast the limit is 1 or 2.
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note, though, that the size limit for triple trailers is generally smaller than for doubles or singles.
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It is almost always a catastrophic mistake to just hit the brakes in a trailer accident. That will cause the trailer to jackknife and then there is no control at all over a load that commonly may exceed 60,000 lbs. The correct course of action is always to worry first about keeping the trailer straight and then stoppi
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Yeah until the first really bad accident. The problem is that the correct way to drive a rig when it has been upset by a maneuver or a shifting load is by taking actions that can kill people.
So it's okay for a human driver to have a really bad accident and/or avoid one "by taking actions that can kill people"?
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This points out a serious question though: Is there a software company that is willing to program in an action that will directly take a life so as to avoid the much more dangerous consequences of not taking the actions that wo
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If you're asking something like "Does self-driving AI factor in the trolley problem [wikipedia.org]", then yes that's definitely been brought up in self-driving AI circles before.
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It is almost always a catastrophic mistake to just hit the brakes in a trailer accident. That will cause the trailer to jackknife and then there is no control at all over a load that commonly may exceed 60,000 lbs. The correct course of action is always to worry first about keeping the trailer straight and then stopping.
Agree 100%, that's exactly the sort of thing that computers are best at doing. Look at how many lives ABS brakes and traction control have saved.
The sooner we get all those humans off the road, the less avoidable accidents we'll have.
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A self driving truck could also independently operate the trailer brakes far more effectively than a human could.
Another way of solving a wobbling trailer, besides speeding up and pulling the trailer straight, is breaking the trailer, and pulling the cab straight. The only reason I can think of that this is not done is because humans are inadequately equipped to operate two independent braking systems in an emergency. This would be possible if trucks were self driving.
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Air brakes are a required system for semi trailers because any sort of fault causes them to lock up which is way better than the complete failure that comes with any failure of a hydraulic brake system. Adding to this i
Re: Meanwhile (Score:2)
Truck tires are not magic, if the truck has to do more than side swipe a car control is no longer an option.
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Every time I hear a trucker talk about how dangerous trucks are, I think they should be banned from the roads.
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The problem is that people in vehicles around trucks don't treat them like they are dangerous. The willingness to drive in truck's blind spots, cut off, or even brake check a semi is amazing. But as it has been for all of time: Abject stupidity is dangerous and often fatal. It is just amazing that more people don't win their nomination to the Darwin Awards.
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An excellent reason to automate them, and have them run on rails whenever possible. Purge another of the necessarily evils.
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The computer driver will be far better than a human at everything you describe.
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This documentary shows that this was accomplished decades ago.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
PS: Damn, Google's URLs are annoying.
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What makes you think Tesla isn't automating trucks along straight highways too? Tesla has their semi in the works. I am sure part of their big sales pitch to customers is that their trucks are ready to be self-driving ....l once the tech is done and laws allow it.
People argue about Tesla's self-driving claims but nobody really talks about the laws needing to adapt. These companies can come up with the best self-driving AI but it won't mean much until laws allow for it.
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Tesla is automating cars to drive around suburban areas. Automating trucks across long straight highways is much much easier.
Ummm, of the two companies, Tesla is the one actually about to sell a Semi Truck. Ford is demoing their F-150 and Mustang. Two "Suburban" vehicles. They literally called one of their products the "Suburban"tm.
And Tesla has stated that Autopilot is intended to be an integral product of Tesla Semi.
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If only number of miles and number of hours of testing data was a relevant measurement...
The more important metric is "number of meaningfully unique scenarios", and just throwing more miles at vehicles doesn't give you that.
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In other words, you want to assume a priori that Ford will make better use of a data set than Tesla.
Also, the data set that Ford collects on a controlled track has more "meaningful unique scenarios" than Telsa's which is collected in shadow mode in the real world.
Not very convincing.
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I wasn't defending Ford - I was just saying that Teslsa's billion miles gives me no more confidence than Ford's 100k miles. Neither give me much absolute confidence.
My lack of confidence isn't in the form of "I don't believe the reduction in hazard" because that's easily demonstrable. My lack of confidence stems from the fact that we have created things that seem to work but because they are opaque there is no predictive power in them; we just don't have the framework to know, given past performance of an
That's nice, but Tesla has way more data (Score:2)
Although that road trip will probably yield a lot of helpful data, it pales to many, many people helping provide hardware beta feedback for Tesla's self driving tech in conditions all over the place. Tesla just is so well positioned from a self-driving training standpoint, they are going to be miles ahead (ha!) of any other company for overall robustness, for some time to come.
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The All-In Generation. (Score:3)
"You really can take your hands off the wheel, but you'll have to be ready to intervene when you either leave the BlueCruise-ready area or face an unexpected issue on the road."
Intervene?
You mean the GenZ'er is still gonna have to interrupt their streaming bingefest and be responsible for remembering how to drive?
C'mon Ford. You better learn how to Whole-Ass this effort, not Half-Ass it. I hear the competition is working on a NetflixNChill mode. With reclining rear seats.
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Yeah. Self driving is when I can sleep and liability is on the manufacturer and I have no means of actively intervening in the mechanical controls (only destination, play, pause, etc.).
Wake me up when we get there.
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There is an IR camera that monitors the driver's eyes to make sure they are looking at the road and not at their phone. It can see through sunglasses.
I experienced Nissan's system a while back. It's weird at first but you quickly get used to it, and the eye tracking tech seems to work.
Re: The All-In Generation. (Score:2)
Exactly. Advertising "effective eye tracking" as a *feature* is like advertising "stronger DRM for enhanced protection of copyrighted content." It has about as much consumer appeal as herpes. Ford isn't advertising to consumers, it's advertising to government regulators.
That said, Tesla should probably do more to keep drivers aware that blindly trusting Autopilot on non-limited-access divided highways with non-grade-separated cross traffic & high-speed traffic (like US-27, US-1, Florida SR 820, etc) isn
Highway Only? (Score:2, Interesting)
Tesla’s Autopilot (literally) saves me on country roads. I essentially stay on the same road for ~15 miles in my commute, and staying reliably awake can be a challenge in the evening. I cannot imagine losing that. I trust it more there than on the highway personally— autopilot scares me a bit with narrow shoulders and a k-rail.
Re:Highway Only? (Score:5, Insightful)
Have you considered giving up your license or pulling over and taking a break?
You do realize driving tired is more dangerous than drunk, particularly because people refuse to be convinced that it's dangerous and slows your reaction time, and so do it anyway...
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I might be exagerating a bit, but it is a valid question. I would not own a car (today) or live where I do if it was not for driver assistance features. I would not drive 100+ miles in a day without driver assistance features or good breaks. I don’t actually enjoy driving. My specific situation is essentially driving home from work and being tired for the last 10 minutes of a 60 minute trip. If it was up to me, I would always be off the road by 3PM.
All that said, aside from tapping someone’
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You do realize driving tired is more dangerous than drunk
This!
I'll have to admit to having driven my car after having had at least one glass too many - so, impaired, but not out cold. On the rare occasions this happened, I did not have any trouble getting home safely.
A couple years back, I went for an observation night an hour's drive away after having had another astrophotography session the night before, i.e. not much sleep. The session was fun, we had some public, and after the public was gone I used the opportunity (hey, the sky was way darker there than what
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If you can't properly monitor autopilot due to tiredness you shouldn't rely on it. One day Tesla might push out a software update that changes its behaviour and it can no longer cope with those roads, and you will crash.
That's exactly what killed Walter Huang. His Model X had done that route hundreds of times before without issue, but one day decided to drive at full speed into a barrier.
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He was probably distracted by a video game [washingtonpost.com] too.
It's not like you are describing, Tesla did something unusual on the stretch where it had earned the trust of the driver.
This is astonishing! (Score:1)
The most astounding thing about the whole exercise is that anything built by Ford would last for 110,000 miles.
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No, the most astounding thing is that they didn't think better of the name.
My only question is whether they mean dark blue ("greek") or light blue ("69")
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The most astounding thing about the whole exercise is that anything built by Ford would last for 110,000 miles.
RTFA. It was not a single vehicle, it was spread between no less than 10 of them. IDK what state the vehicles were in afterwards.
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Must be Apple Maps (Score:1)
Not ready for prime time.... (Score:2)
When you can enter the vehicle and order it to go to my local supermarket or drugstore or big box store and it will take me with minimal interaction to my desired destination it's not ready for prime time. Until I can get in the car in the AM and order it to take me to my workplace, presuming it's not my home, or the reverse it's not ready for prime time. I don't often get into a car and ask it to drive me to Disney World from Seattle or the equivalent, which seems to be what this offering is tooled up to d
The whole basis is flawed. (Score:5, Insightful)
- What EXACTLY is known to be required to keep a human alert and focused? It is very simply that the human must be actively engaged in some task that requires focus. Anything that removes a person from having to actively having to interact with their surroundings is simply a way of making them disengaged, bored, and inattentive. People being human will always find something else to focus on when there is nothing demanding their focus.
For safety you need to keep a driver from becoming task saturated but on the opposite end of that scale you must make sure that they are engaged to the task to keep their focus actively on that task. Otherwise you might as well be singing a lullaby in their ear.
Until they come up with a 100% AI driving system that never needs human interaction the whole concept of the autopilot for a car ignores human nature and is dangerous at its core. (And they are still quite a ways from making an AI that can drive through a snow storm. As bad as people can be it is still amazing the range of what a person can deal with.)
Re: The whole basis is flawed. (Score:2)
Apparently, you don't live in a suburb of a big city where millions of people have daily commutes that consist of 0.5 to 3 miles on a local road, 10-30 miles on a freeway, and another 0.25 to 2 miles at the other end.
Even IF your car can only drive itself on the freeway (staying in your lane, keeping up with traffic, and avoiding collisions) & requires you to manage lane-changes & interchanges where you change roads yourself, that's still IMMENSELY useful.
This isn't some weird, niche use case... thi
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If you aren't able to keep track of things like staying in your lane and reacting to traffic I would suggest you are too busy or are just incompetent to drive a car.
That is EXACTLY what driving is. It is like saying you "are walking" but it is too much effort to not pay attention to keep from walking into or through people. (Kinda sounds like someone walking and texting...)
What I am actually hearing is that paying attention to the surroundi
Re: The whole basis is flawed. (Score:2)
And what, exactly, is so bad about taking advantage of technology to ENABLE drivers to be disengaged and inattentive... at least, under certain well-defined conditions (like on a freeway)?
The fact is, many drivers on freeways are at least semi-disengaged NOW. That's the brutal reality. Autopilot systems like Tesla's are just honest about it, and try to find real solutions that actually improve overall safety rather than engage in public safety theatre and pretend to believe a delusional lie?
Tesla's Autopilo
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What EXACTLY is known to be required to keep a human alert and focused? It is very simply that the human must be actively engaged in some task that requires focus. Anything that removes a person from having to actively having to interact with their surroundings is simply a way of making them disengaged, bored, and inattentive.
I see you haven't actually used any of these systems.
What I find about driving my car (a Tesla, with Tesla's "AutoPilot") is that the driver assistance features enable me to be more focused on the stuff that matters by relieving me of having to pay attention to the trivial stuff, like maintaining my speed and following distance, lanekeeping and navigation. Maintaining consistent, appropriate speed and lanekeeping in particular are things that experienced drivers feel are automatic, subconscious tasks that
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What EXACTLY is known to be required to keep a human alert and focused?
In the case of Ford BlueCruise and GM SuperCruise (same thing different branding) or Comma AI. There is a camera pointed at the driver that tracks your eyes. So as long as you aren't asleep with your eyes open and your head pointing forward it will know for sure you're at least looking at the road. Which is more than can be said for cars without autonomy.
In the case of Tesla they use pressure on the steering wheel to ensure you're at least holding the steering wheel.
The safety data we have from Tesla isn'
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Ice and snow? (Score:2)
No Point (Score:4, Funny)
In fact it makes the mental callenge worse. Not only are you still meant to pay full attention - ie still make decisions as if you were driving yourself, you must then make a second decision whether to intervene or not. This second decision could be harder than the first.
Just imagine it : a stationary truck is ahead. Says to myself :
"It's going faster than I would at this point
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What you're describing here is exactly how the typical driver will approach one of these early "self driving" systems. But at least in the case of Tesla? Their latest work on a full self-driving beta is being very carefully deployed to only a small number of vehicle owners who they believe displayed driving habits indicating they could use it safely and constructively.
When you watch the YouTube videos from the people who have it, you can see they tend to be in the small minority of "tech savvy" individuals
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So what? (Score:2)
Freeway driving is easy. How many miles did they drive in cities?
So, in other words: it still sucks (Score:1)
For the millionth time: NO THANKS, I'll drive myself. I wouldn't pay a single penny for this, in fact I'd rip it out the vehicle, warranty or no.
Ford Bricks (Score:2)
Minimum Viable Product (Score:1)
The thing with any sort of Minimum Viable Product is that it has to make people's lives easier, cheaper etc. And if I still have to watch the road, like when driving a car, in case of unexpected events, you've done nothing for me.
The Minimum Viable self-driving car is the one where you can get in and mix martinis for your fellow travellers.