HankLloydRight
No Roads
This is the Achilles heel of autonomous driving. It will never be 100%, always requiring a human to watch for, and react to events not predicable by AD.
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Self-Driving Car: Is it a big deal?
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This is the Achilles heel of autonomous driving. It will never be 100%, always requiring a human to watch for, and react to events not predicable by AD.
callmesam
Member
But for Tesla that 90% is supposed to happen on highways for autopilot between on-ramp and off-ramp.
While that may sound nice, I don't see that happening. Can an autonomous car sense drunk drivers going the opposite way that may suddenly veer over the median and into your lane? Can it sense someone that's about to cut you off? Further, does it realize that sometimes the answer is to speed up instead of braking to avoid an accident? I don't know, maybe it can accomplish all of those things better than I can. But I doubt it. I never see myself taking my eyes off the road to watch a movie and trusting a computer to make those decisions for me.
Agreed.
That is not the plan for the Google cars. The plan is for them to not even have human controls. I think a 90% car could be dangerous and a 98% car even more so, because people will be distracted or drunk or watching a movie at the very time when they are required to navigate a tricky situation. A 100% car (think of it like an automated taxi rather than a normal car) would be very useful.
HankLloydRight
No Roads
But a 100% car, in that kind of configuration would require dedicated roads and lanes where all the cars are at 100% automated, so there can be no surprises or unexpected events occurring from other human drivers. Think a car-train, where several cars are all traveling together, at very high, constant, speed, in one lane. That's pretty easy to automate and has been done for years. The problem is getting that into production cars and having states or municipalities cordon off another highway lane just for these cars. That's not going to happen just because the technology is already available.
Mycroft
Life happens
I agree completely X-RAY. Autonomous vehicles are INEVITABLE. They will be far safer, cheaper, and easier than current modes. Just imagine the increase in technological unemployment.
Who will lose their jobs? Taxi drivers, truck drivers, delivery drivers, security guards, etc. etc. etc. Hundreds of thousands will go the way of the travel agent, bookkeepers, bank tellers, etc. Technological improvement cannot be prevented, the question is if we can handle the repercussions. The Luddites were peanuts compared to the avalanche coming our way. It's coming whether we like it or not.
TheTalkingMule
Distributed Energy Enthusiast
Travel agents are making a comeback, but that's beside the point.
I'd be happy with being able to sleep while highway driving and everyone having cars that can park themselves. Imagine how much that changes the landscape of city living. No more streets lined with cars, you would simply have large underground and above ground publicly owned parking garages every few blocks that your car could be "sent" to. The street could be opened up for real bike lanes and better public transportation.
This is why I always tell people to stop worrying about parking concerns at zoning meetings. There's pretty much no chance that parking issues will exist in 30 years. Self driving cars and 100% renewable/nearly-free energy are a 95% lock to be the norm within three decades.
I'd be happy with being able to sleep while highway driving and everyone having cars that can park themselves. Imagine how much that changes the landscape of city living. No more streets lined with cars, you would simply have large underground and above ground publicly owned parking garages every few blocks that your car could be "sent" to. The street could be opened up for real bike lanes and better public transportation.
This is why I always tell people to stop worrying about parking concerns at zoning meetings. There's pretty much no chance that parking issues will exist in 30 years. Self driving cars and 100% renewable/nearly-free energy are a 95% lock to be the norm within three decades.
People do all of those things while driving now, even with full manual control. Autonomous will only make that much safer.
Everyone on here seems to assume that they are paying 100% attention to driving while droning along on I5. That's not what I see most people doing.
Everyone on here seems to assume that they are paying 100% attention to driving while droning along on I5. That's not what I see most people doing.
Like you, I love to drive. But there's no way I can say I enjoy every millisecond of driving. Not when I have a 30-mile each-way commute 4 times a week that frequently deals with piled up traffic.
When the road is open, I want to drive. When it's stop and go, I would just as soon let the computer figure it out and do some deep-breathing exercises to lower my stress levels.
Humans can do unpredictable things, but in a car there's only so much unpredictability to deal with. Don't hit other cars, don't be hit by other cars, don't crash into objects, try not to scare people. The real wrinkle is pedestrians, cyclists and other animals which may have to be identified as a risk while static. I don't see cars, especially on restricted highways as a big problem.
This has been an interesting philosophical discussion, but the truth of the science is that machines:
1) Can have a 360 degree feild of at all times
2) Can make electronic adjustments in nanoseonds, not milliseconds (or more realistically seconds) like humans do
3) Can ACTUALLY multitask, unlike human that convince themselves they can drive and talk, text, eat, apply makeup, reach for something on the passenger seat that requires the driver lower their head below the dash board etc.
Machines also don't do drugs (intentionally, or just that little bit of cough medicine for your cold that made you drozy), get diabetic sugar crisis, stokes, heart attacks, seizures while driving, or an assorted other reasons that humans are dangerous behind the wheel, even a responsible expert driver can have a medical crisis while driving.
I am not advocating that we should elliminate human driven cars, just that when true self driving cars are out there, there will be no denying what is safer.
And, the Google car has no steering wheel or brakes, but did actually have folks like myself that are not ABLE to drive for medical reasons (old folks, epileptics, blind people, etc) being independent. That makes me want to speed this along as an OPTION for folks.
Also, anyone out there that has aging parents or grandparents should be grateful for this possibility as well. Just think how hard it will be to "take away your parents keys" knowing they would be stuck at home alone, but also knowing if you don't they could kill themselves or someone else, so they get moved to an "independent living" home, just so they can be around people, get someone to dye their hair and give them a free door to door service to the doctor or a shopping mall.
Self driving cars are coming, and like all new technology, there will be proper applications. As the technology becomes cheaper it will be more widely accepted, and more people will choose to utilize them.
Laws work themselves out locally, based on local politics, whether the laws "make sense or not", but technology gets adopted based on cost and usefulness.
1) Can have a 360 degree feild of at all times
2) Can make electronic adjustments in nanoseonds, not milliseconds (or more realistically seconds) like humans do
3) Can ACTUALLY multitask, unlike human that convince themselves they can drive and talk, text, eat, apply makeup, reach for something on the passenger seat that requires the driver lower their head below the dash board etc.
Machines also don't do drugs (intentionally, or just that little bit of cough medicine for your cold that made you drozy), get diabetic sugar crisis, stokes, heart attacks, seizures while driving, or an assorted other reasons that humans are dangerous behind the wheel, even a responsible expert driver can have a medical crisis while driving.
I am not advocating that we should elliminate human driven cars, just that when true self driving cars are out there, there will be no denying what is safer.
And, the Google car has no steering wheel or brakes, but did actually have folks like myself that are not ABLE to drive for medical reasons (old folks, epileptics, blind people, etc) being independent. That makes me want to speed this along as an OPTION for folks.
Also, anyone out there that has aging parents or grandparents should be grateful for this possibility as well. Just think how hard it will be to "take away your parents keys" knowing they would be stuck at home alone, but also knowing if you don't they could kill themselves or someone else, so they get moved to an "independent living" home, just so they can be around people, get someone to dye their hair and give them a free door to door service to the doctor or a shopping mall.
Self driving cars are coming, and like all new technology, there will be proper applications. As the technology becomes cheaper it will be more widely accepted, and more people will choose to utilize them.
Laws work themselves out locally, based on local politics, whether the laws "make sense or not", but technology gets adopted based on cost and usefulness.
Yup that is why I thought this discussion was going so far off topic, into emotions and politics. Everyone was arguing all or nothing.
We currently have human neurosurgeons, and robotic surgeons. if I ever need brain surgery, I want the decision for the actual procedure in that situation to be based in science and safety, not emotions and politics. Whether the final "driver" in that surgery is human, machine, or combo of both.
We currently have human neurosurgeons, and robotic surgeons. if I ever need brain surgery, I want the decision for the actual procedure in that situation to be based in science and safety, not emotions and politics. Whether the final "driver" in that surgery is human, machine, or combo of both.
So do humans. At least with machines you can turn them off (so far). With humans, it's a whole thing with lawyers and stuff.
Premptive calm the hell down: It was a joke.
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dhanson865
Well-Known Member
after all the pages I just read about autonomous driving I don't think any of you mentioned this video
Infiniti Q50 Active Lane Control - Selfdriving Car - YouTube
"one idiot was dumb enough to climb out of the driver's seat while his car cruised down the highway. The car in question is a new Infiniti Q50, which has Active Lane Control and adaptive cruise control. Both of which essentially turn the Q50 into an autonomous vehicle while at highway speeds"
Obviously at least one car does this without having you keep your hand on the wheel. It'd be nice if they would add a weight sensor to the driver seat and have the vehicle come to a controlled stop if you left the drivers seat, though I can imagine that being a pain if the sensor malfunctioned on you while you were actually in the seat I suppose there could be a prompt on the MFD with a choice to acknowledge by button or stalk on the steering wheel assembly.
I remember elon being asked what he thought about googles driverless setup. He said radar was too costly and it was the wrong way to go.
So I was surprised when I saw a cnn interview yesterday where elon was asked how he would achieve autonomous driving and he said "with radar and ultrasonic sensors"
So I was surprised when I saw a cnn interview yesterday where elon was asked how he would achieve autonomous driving and he said "with radar and ultrasonic sensors"
stopcrazypp
Well-Known Member
None of the lane keeping functions out there need your hand on the wheel as long as the lane is straight enough (although many automatically disable after detecting hands off for a certain amount of time). All the systems so far can make tiny adjustments (the kind where manually you would only move the steering wheel a tiny degree; older systems use the brakes to do so, newer ones actually use steering). Where Tesla will probably depart from this (as well as Cadillac's "Super Cruise") is that it will be able to handle actual curves.
Here's an article that reviews the Q50's system. It says that although the car doesn't detect your hands are off the wheel and turn off (unlike the RL's system), it wasn't able to maintain the lane when there was a curve:
http://www.techhive.com/article/206...eer-for-long-stretches-without-your-help.html
I believe Elon was referring to Google's use of LIDAR Lidar - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia which uses a laser rather than the radio waves that RADAR uses Radar - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
They do. But they can also have multiple redundant systems. A self driving car should be built with redundant hardware and software.
The software should be made to use multiple sensory inputs, but to assume that some of them can be wrong, if it can't get enough data that provides a consistent view of the environment to perform, it reduces speed until it is safe or comes to a stop.
Separate software systems could work independently and if they don't agree on how to drive the car then the car also does its best to come to a safe and controlled stop.
A lot of "engineering" failures are just choices made by bean counters on how reliable to make something.
The engineers know how well the system will work, and and an actuary tells the bean counters how much it will cost when it doesn't, and the bean counters decide.
How safe and reliable the car will be will be a choice, not a technical limitation.
Our liability laws fail us in that the bean counters who make the decisions can get paid huge amounts of money until the risk is realized, then they golden parachute out of the company - keeping their ill-gotten gains - as it gets sued into oblivion.
Trev Page
Member
Yes, that is correct. He said LIDAR was too expensive. Radar and cameras is more than adequate for this task. I'm sure Google chose LIDAR at the time for development but most of the tech is in the software not the hardware required. Software is very adaptable to whatever it available for mass production.
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