Autonomous Vehicles

[vfx]

A town for testing driverless vehicles
http://realestate.msn.com/why-does-a-tech-company-want-to-build-ghost-town-in-new-mexico

 

[vfx]

Soon to be legal in Nevada

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-02-21/how-to-get-a-permit-for-your-driverless-car#r=related-rail

An application costs only $100, but companies have to put up a cash bond of anywhere from $1 million to $3 million, depending on how many cars they want to put on the road. There will be no “Student Driver” banner to let others know no one’s behind the wheel. The big clue will be the license plate, which will be dark red. Instead of the Nevada sunset over a snow-covered mountain, the logo will be one Breslow designed himself.

 

[Doug_G]

Can't wait for the court case on the first DUI charge...

 

[vfx]

Can't wait for the court case on the first DUI charge...

Driving User Interface?

 

[doug]

Google's Self-Driving Cars: 300,000 Miles Logged, Not a Single Accident Under Computer Control - Rebecca J. Rosen - The Atlantic

For comparison, in the United States in 2009 there were 10.8 million traffic collisions, according to the Census Bureau. That same year, American cars logged some 2.954 trillion miles, for a collision rate of about .366 per 100,000 vehicle miles traveled. Now, you can't directly compare the two figures. Google's cars have been tested in pretty hospitable conditions, not facing, for example, the rigors of a New England winter. And, as Google engineer Chris Urmson, writes, they still "need to master snow-covered roadways, interpret temporary construction signals and handle other tricky situations that many drivers encounter." Additionally, the cars are still driving with "occasional" human control. But at the very least, the Google cars are slowly building a pretty good-looking driving record.

 

[jerry33]

The really interesting part in this is that no one is expecting the major automobile manufacturers to advance technology. Tesla and Google are examples.

 

[Mycroft]

Seattle Times: Self-driving cars: Are humans headed for obsolescence?

Leonard Pitts Jr. was going to rant against driverless cars and the loss of the human touch in our technology-driven lives. But how do you rant against fewer traffic jams, greater mobility, less pollution and more safety?

I think that as early as 5 years from now, there will be at least one lane on a freeway somewhere that will be autonomous only. 10-20 years will see the first autonomous-only freeway. Safety will be the driving force. In 20-30 years, all freeways will be autonomous-only.

 

[VolkerP]

In 20-30 years, all freeways will be autonomous-only.

Enjoy driving until then. Hurry up, finalize your reservation! And don't be cheap on the performance option - driving it yourself will become liable to prosecution.

 

[vfx]

Google's Trillion-Dollar Driverless Car

3 Parts:

Fasten Your Seatbelts: Google’s Driverless Car Is Worth Trillions

Google’s Trillion-Dollar Driverless Car — Part 2: The Ripple Effects

Google’s Trillion-Dollar Driverless Car — Part 3: Sooner Than You Think

Chunka Mui - Devils Advocate - Forbes

 

[JRod0802]

Google's Trillion-Dollar Driverless Car

3 Parts:

Fasten Your Seatbelts: Google’s Driverless Car Is Worth Trillions

Google’s Trillion-Dollar Driverless Car — Part 2: The Ripple Effects

Google’s Trillion-Dollar Driverless Car — Part 3: Sooner Than You Think

Chunka Mui - Devils Advocate - Forbes

Those were very good articles. I look forward to parts 4, 5, and 6.

 

[cwerdna]

auto-pilots in airplanes, and auto-pilots in cars are not comparable!

no flying pedestrians or bicycles on an airplanes's way

Exactly! Not even close.

There are much stricter rules for flying. Besides the above, planes are spaced much further apart. The autopilot doesn't need to look for parallel lines that represent roads and distinguish them from the parallel lines of a pole or a tree. Planes don't need to look out for and recognize speed limit signs, traffic signs and traffic lights. The list goes on and on. Way before the DARPA Grand Challenge, I remember hearing about autonomous vehicle programs where the vehicles got stuck trying to climb trees because they thought its parallel lines were a better candidate for a road (which I believe had a curve in it, near the tree).

For anyone w/a computer science background or one who has worked w/vision in computers, autonomous cars present many very difficult problems to be solved and amazingly, they were pretty much solved.

How Google's Self-Driving Car Works - IEEE Spectrum that was posted earlier was excellent.

For those who haven't watched it, The Great Robot Race - YouTube from 2009 was excellent. More info at NOVA | The Great Robot Race | PBS.

This covered the DARPA Grand Challenge - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, which was the predecessor to the event that involved driving in an urban environment and having to worry about traffic rules, other vehicles and pedestrians.

 

[AnOutsider]

cross posting:

Elon Musk, the California billionaire who leads Tesla Motors Inc. (TSLA), said the electric-car maker is considering adding driverless technology to its vehicles and discussing the prospects for such systems with Google Inc. (GOOG)

Musk, 41, said technologies that can take over for drivers are a logical step in the evolution of cars. He has talked with Google about the self-driving technology it’s been developing, though he prefers to think of applications that are more like an airplane’s autopilot system.

Tesla CEO Talking With Google About ‘Autopilot’ Systems - Bloomberg

More interesting still:

“We’ve had some technical discussions with Google” about its Light Detection and Ranging, or Lidar, laser tracking system, Musk said last week, noting that it’s an expensive approach that may not prove feasible, Musk said.

“I think Tesla will most likely develop its own autopilot system for the car, as I think it should be camera-based, not Lidar-based,” Musk said yesterday in an e-mail. “However, it is also possible that we do something jointly with Google.”

 

[vfx]

Major announcement in the space

http://www.nbcnews.com/business/nissan-pledge-car-drives-itself-2020-8C11015079

 

[Eumox]

http://allthingsd.com/20130918/elon-musk-is-building-a-self-driving-tesla/
2016 already?

 

[Discoducky]

I'm all for driverless cars as it has potential to greatly increase safety....but I wonder if this might be the first example of Elon spending time/money on something that is not directly linkable to 'sustainable transportation'.

 

[doug]

I see these cars around Mountain View quite often.

 

[gg_got_a_tesla]

Here's the full blog post from Google (with the video from above):

Official Google Blog: The latest chapter for the self-driving car: mastering city street driving

 

[RubberToe]

California DMV approves testing rules for autonomous vehicles. They go into effect on September 16th, 2014:
California approves self-driving cars by 2015 - CNET

And here is a link to the actual regulations:
DMV Adopts Autonomous Vehicle Testing Rules


Per the article, rules for the general public's use of autonomous vehicles will be in place by January 1st, 2015. Kind of now has me wondering if Tesla at some point will apply to start testing autonomous cars in California?

RT

 

[GSP]

Google autonomous cars with 25 mph max speed and without driver controls, "imported from Detroit" to Silicon Valley:

Google's self-driving prototype to be built in Allen Park, report says | The Detroit News

GSP

 

[tlo]

A startup called Cruise is taking preorders (for early 2015) for a device that enables autonomous highway driving on an Audi.

A Little Startup Called Cruise From The Socialcam, Twitch Founders Is Tackling Self-Driving Cars Too | TechCrunch