Hi.
I am a control systems engineer. Joshua Brown's death was tragic. Here is a quick solution for preventing further accidents like this. I hope it gets some traction.
There is a fantastic product opportunity here. I wouldn't be surprised if someone has either already done it or has it in the works. It would be a natural extension to the product line of Tom-Tom or Garman or Apple or Samsung. That is: a simple device that you throw into your glovebox pretty much like a mobile phone that calculates your vehicle's current GPS coordinates, speed and heading and transmits it on a wireless net to the surrounding vehicles. A simple calculation would then be able to predict a collision. The cheap model would just sound an alarm. The more expensive model would be integrated into the vehicles braking system. This would have saved the life of Joshua Brown. If that truck was carrying such a device even if it wasn't connected to the truck's brakes the Tesla vehicle would have been able to "see" that truck and apply its brakes. If this warning device cost less than 100 dollars it would be an affordable and really cool thing to have in your car to make sure all these driverless vehicles avoided you. You could even throw in a chat function (supported by a cell phone app) so the kids in the back seat could talk to the kids in the surrounding cars. The mind boggles at the possibilities. You could even have an IFF-like squawk transmitting your philosophy of life: "MGB fast mover - death or glory - outa-my-way I waste nerds" ... This would immediately cause your Tesla control system two double the following distance.
I just bought some Netgear to extend my wireless net. It extends the two and five gigahertz bands, has four ethernet LAN ports and one USB 3.0 port. It cost AUD124.00. Most insurance companies would probably be overjoyed to discount you this much on your car insurance policy if your vehicle carries one of these devices. Alternatively Elon Musk should manufacture something like this and give it away. That might silence all his critics.
Does anyone on this list know him? How can we patch this idea through?
It may even be possible to integrate such a function into a mass-market cellphone as an extension of the Wi-Fi hotspot/Bluetooth functionality. Though I suspect wireless net range may be a problem.
There seems to be confusion about what to do with these AI fuelled applications, from a safety perspective that is. There are solutions though. Back in the seventies I was working on systems fitted with what we called "abort programming". The current tech speech is "the kill switch"
(
the thing Elon Musk wants to invent for out-of-control AI - remember the famous line from 2001 a Space Odyssey?
Dave Bowman: Open the pod bay doors, HAL.
HAL: I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that.
)
Well, the standard solution is: as a completely separate exercise, you task a team to figure out unsafe states of the object under control and develop a simple device that can disable ("kill") the complex automation system if it starts doing dangerous things. The key is that this device must be simple and therefore less prone to failure. This is a proven architectural solution so we DO know what to do. In fact the device I have described above could perform this function. It would also use diverse technology which is another very well established solution.
I could see the bumper stickers now, "Relax. My car is kill-switch-safe"
There is also a role for government here. Government could legislate to make carrying a kill switch compulsory.
Cheers
Les
I am a control systems engineer. Joshua Brown's death was tragic. Here is a quick solution for preventing further accidents like this. I hope it gets some traction.
There is a fantastic product opportunity here. I wouldn't be surprised if someone has either already done it or has it in the works. It would be a natural extension to the product line of Tom-Tom or Garman or Apple or Samsung. That is: a simple device that you throw into your glovebox pretty much like a mobile phone that calculates your vehicle's current GPS coordinates, speed and heading and transmits it on a wireless net to the surrounding vehicles. A simple calculation would then be able to predict a collision. The cheap model would just sound an alarm. The more expensive model would be integrated into the vehicles braking system. This would have saved the life of Joshua Brown. If that truck was carrying such a device even if it wasn't connected to the truck's brakes the Tesla vehicle would have been able to "see" that truck and apply its brakes. If this warning device cost less than 100 dollars it would be an affordable and really cool thing to have in your car to make sure all these driverless vehicles avoided you. You could even throw in a chat function (supported by a cell phone app) so the kids in the back seat could talk to the kids in the surrounding cars. The mind boggles at the possibilities. You could even have an IFF-like squawk transmitting your philosophy of life: "MGB fast mover - death or glory - outa-my-way I waste nerds" ... This would immediately cause your Tesla control system two double the following distance.
I just bought some Netgear to extend my wireless net. It extends the two and five gigahertz bands, has four ethernet LAN ports and one USB 3.0 port. It cost AUD124.00. Most insurance companies would probably be overjoyed to discount you this much on your car insurance policy if your vehicle carries one of these devices. Alternatively Elon Musk should manufacture something like this and give it away. That might silence all his critics.
Does anyone on this list know him? How can we patch this idea through?
It may even be possible to integrate such a function into a mass-market cellphone as an extension of the Wi-Fi hotspot/Bluetooth functionality. Though I suspect wireless net range may be a problem.
There seems to be confusion about what to do with these AI fuelled applications, from a safety perspective that is. There are solutions though. Back in the seventies I was working on systems fitted with what we called "abort programming". The current tech speech is "the kill switch"
(
the thing Elon Musk wants to invent for out-of-control AI - remember the famous line from 2001 a Space Odyssey?
Dave Bowman: Open the pod bay doors, HAL.
HAL: I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that.
)
Well, the standard solution is: as a completely separate exercise, you task a team to figure out unsafe states of the object under control and develop a simple device that can disable ("kill") the complex automation system if it starts doing dangerous things. The key is that this device must be simple and therefore less prone to failure. This is a proven architectural solution so we DO know what to do. In fact the device I have described above could perform this function. It would also use diverse technology which is another very well established solution.
I could see the bumper stickers now, "Relax. My car is kill-switch-safe"
There is also a role for government here. Government could legislate to make carrying a kill switch compulsory.
Cheers
Les
