Self-driving cars--seriously?

[Malcolm McLeod]

A light switch automates lighting a candle. Hydraulics on a track hoe is just an automatic shovel. A tractor is an automated horse and plow. Typesetting and printing presses for books, magazines, and newspapers - more automation. A pump on a water supply line - more automation. The fill valve on a toilet tank - more automation. The toilet's flush valve - just an automated honey bucket. A band-saw..... well, everybody knows what that is.

And I do truly value my freedom. I could have the freedom to strike a match, shovel, starve, remain ignorant. Or, I can enjoy the freedom of progress.

Does anyone really think that automation is introduced for the benefit of ordinary people? ....
Does anyone actually value freedom?)

So, Yes and yes.

Is this sentiment just anti-automobile-automation? Or, do you chose to live in the stone age (excepting of course your electricity, your PC, and your ISP)?

[Wayne Lomman]

Good, there are still some who value freedom. It even allows you the freedom to interpret that differently to me. Does it allow you to call me a tin foil hat wearer and belonging in the stone age? Yes it even allows that. Does it allow me to reject the usefulness of a driverless car because it is laughably irrelevant in my beautiful, remote rural landscape? Yes it does. Perhaps driverless cars make sense in a controlled urban environment. If so, good. I wish you all well. Cheers

[Curt Harms]

.................................................. .......
I am devastated that gps doesn't work....!

I'll bet GPS/Glonass/Galileo works just fine. Road and address databases on the other hand ......................

[Brian Elfert]

I want to know how a self driving vehicle works off the beaten path. What happens when I don't have a street address or GPS coordinates to plug in for my off the beaten path driving? How is the car going to know which fork to take on the goat path to my destination? How will the car know on some roads that you can't drive down the middle of the dirt path or the vehicle will high center and get stuck?

These are all real world scenarios at a Boy Scout camp I am going to in just over a week. I spend a week every year driving all over the camp helping get the camp ready to open for the summer.

[Keith Outten]

I just have to ask.

If your self driving car is capable of going from point "A" to point "B" and back automatically could you send your truck to the store or a friends home and have it pickup materials or people? Possibly take your son to the baseball game and bring him back home.

[Pat Barry]

I want to know how a self driving vehicle works off the beaten path. What happens when I don't have a street address or GPS coordinates to plug in for my off the beaten path driving? How is the car going to know which fork to take on the goat path to my destination? How will the car know on some roads that you can't drive down the middle of the dirt path or the vehicle will high center and get stuck?

These are all real world scenarios at a Boy Scout camp I am going to in just over a week. I spend a week every year driving all over the camp helping get the camp ready to open for the summer.

I suppose first off, someone needs to know where you want to go and that there is a road going there. After that it won't be too hard because eventually all the cars we are discussing will have GPS and be totally interconnected. Kind of like the BORG from Star Trek

[Malcolm McLeod]

... every 4th car I see has been recalled. ...

I've had 3 recalls in ~6-8 yr memory: 1 to inspect for cracks on the 'B' pillar; 2 to inspect that the floor mats don't impede use of the brake. Not all recalls are for catastrophic, head-line grabbing issues - - but they still get lumped into the total.

I want to know how a self driving vehicle works off the beaten path. What happens when I don't have a street address or GPS coordinates to plug in for my off the beaten path driving? How is the car going to know which fork to take on the goat path to my destination? How will the car know on some roads that you can't drive down the middle of the dirt path or the vehicle will high center and get stuck?...

With the right inputs (sensors ::3D cameras, laser range finders, proximity sensors, etc.) and the right software, you can make a vehicle that is capable of making the same dirt path decisions as a human - just faster. The Mars rovers are using much of this today.

I just have to ask.

If your self driving car is capable of going from point "A" to point "B" and back automatically could you send your truck to the store or a friends home and have it pickup materials or people? Possibly take your son to the baseball game and bring him back home.

That is one of the principal concepts I have seen referenced as driving the automation initiatives: you could put your child in a car and it takes them to school (no teenage side-trips, no distracted driving); send the car to the grocery store (Kroger already has the option for online ordering, they pick and bag it, you just pull into the p/u lane and your order is brought to the car, swipe your card, and go). BORG could be simple - order online and provide a p/u vehicle license # and time, BORG picks the materials, charges your acct, and loads them. They snap a pic of the order in the vehicle, send it to you as a 'shipment' notice, and you que the vehicle to return to your chosen location.

And ponder this: What percentage of our infrastructure is devoted to parking a car, that by definition isn't being used? What percentage of the time that you own (or make payments on) your vehicle is it actually in use (i.e. moving)? What is the cost of the dedicated creature comforts and human cockpit in a vehicle? (Comfy seats, carpet, radio, AC/heat, room to stretch, glass, mirrors.) What would a dedicated 'errand' vehicle without these creature comforts cost - if you only paid for the time it was actually being used for your task?

Want a look at the future of transport? Look what the military is doing with drones and fighters. Human limit is ~9-10 G's sustained in a turn; even the old F-16 is mechanically sound to about 16 G's. Ditch the pilot and it will out-turn nearly anything - and keep the pilot safe in a rear area. Now you can get rid of all the life support systems and GUIs that the pilot requires. ...They have the budget now, but soon the technology will be widely available. Ground troops? Look at what is happening with automated ammo carriers and MedEvac systems.

...Future's so bright, gotta wear shades.

Wayne, please note my earlier post asked if you 'chose', but did not state 'you belong'. I am merely curious where you chose to draw your line in the sand opposing modernity, and certainly meant no offense.

[Steve Demuth]

Me, I drive 114 miles every day and can't wait to be able to sleep, or read, or work on my way to work/home.

++++

If I could get a self driving car that worked only on the open highway and only in decent conditions, but which really required no human attendance in those situations, I'd spring for it tomorrow. That would give me back 6+ hours / week now spent doing essentially nothing.

[Steve Demuth]

Exactly. Ten years ago computer vision was a dream. Today we have systems in the lab where I work that outperform the best radiologists and pathologists in specific diagnostic tasks. In ten more years if you have a CT scan read and it is not checked by computer you'll have grounds for a malpractice suit.

We passed a very important inflection point in what machines can do in the last ten to fifteen years. Many things that common sense tells you require a human are going to be done by machine as a result.

[Steve Demuth]

I don't know if voice recognition works with the Tasmanian language. Seriously, I have never seen or used a voice recognition system that can be said to actually work properly, I suppose I should try the one in my car but I can't be bothered dealing with it.

Physicians where I work dictate thousands of medical records through voice recognition every day. Accuracy is very good. I use it to write emails, and get way better results than with typing on thus damned iPad.

[Wayne Lomman]

Gps works globally as a system I am sure but it is not applied to remote areas as a map. Simple supply and demand economics. You may not know that Australia is not much different in area to USA but has less than 10% of the population. This translates into vast areas of land with almost no people. I recently worked on the Nullarbor Plain where where I knew for an absolute certainty that there was no other human being within the surrounding 650 square kilometres. It was hundreds of kilometres to the nearest visible signs of human impact other than the track I used. I live in Tasmania where to the west is remote and rugged terrain all the way to the Southern Ocean. There are no gps maps for this. Gps location, yes. I use it when required and as emergency support, but I don't need it as such. I happen to work with high technology equipment located in remote areas from time to time. No-one is going to automate any vehicle I use because I am - by fate or whatever - someone that does not fit the mold. Its cheaper not to bother.
I look at urban and interstate highway landscapes mostly from the outside and cannot imagine living in such a rigorously controlled environment that it would be better to have a driverless car. One size does not fit all. Cheers

[Brian Elfert]

I suppose first off, someone needs to know where you want to go and that there is a road going there. After that it won't be too hard because eventually all the cars we are discussing will have GPS and be totally interconnected. Kind of like the BORG from Star Trek

GPS does zero good if the roads you are traveling on are not any map. Some of the roads at the Scout camp are not on any published map of the camp on purpose. They are places that they don't want the Scouts and leaders visiting by car, but the staff and volunteers doing work at camp need to drive off the beaten path. The camp itself has a street address, but nothing within the camp has a street address.

I am not against this technology by any means. I just think there are a lot of fringe areas that may not be accounted for in early versions of these vehicles. Is an autonomous car at some point just going to stop and refuse to go on because the car doesn't know how to get there even though the human passenger knows the route? What happens when I need to go off the road a ways to get tools and materials up to a building? Will the vehicle know that it can't take the shortest path because there are native grasses that can't be driven over? Can an autonomous vehicle back up or go forward a few feet so the human passengers don't have to step out into mud or a puddle?

[Bob Turkovich]

Per gps.gov, smartphone GPS systems only have an accuracy of 16 feet (and that's with ideal conditions). Signal blockage, weather conditions, satellite geometry, etc. can all have a negative effect.

Accuracy can be improved down to a few centimeters with dual-frequency receivers or augmented systems. Most automotive GPS systems have neither.

Now add to that the potential of mapping errors and the fact that there are multiple services that provide the maps. Two weeks ago I was on I-70 between Kansas City and St. Louis. For about a 2 mile distance, the GPS in my 2017MY vehicle showed that I was driving on a line about 100 yards parallel to I-70. I'm assuming that was a mapping error.

Google (and others) have been using LIDAR systems to improve positional accuracy (It's that big swivel device you'll see on the roof of the self-driving prototypes). It takes an instantaneous 3D map of the vehicles surroundings and compares it to stored data to help pinpoint location. The problem is it doesn't work in snow and heavy rain and gets confused if there is a change in the surroundings (e.g., building construction or demolition). The good news is that the major supplier of the 3D LIDAR sensor just lowered their pricing for a unit from $85000 down to $9000. (There are at least four additional (but less costly) sensors required.)

Im my pre-retirement days, I was somewhat involved in electronic throttle control system implementation. The fail-safe requirements (for both hardware and software) were enormous. I'm sure assisted steering and braking were the same. Fortunately, they were independent from each other.

For a truly self-driving vehicle you have to get all three (plus the positional systems) talking to each other. The potential for mistakes goes up significantly.

I think the days of an affordable, mass-produced, "take-me-anywhere while I sleep" vehicle are quite a few years away.

[Frank Drew]

For me this is another example of the imposition of control. Organisations and governments rely on control of the masses to bolster their power and driverless cars are a means of exercising this control.

Oh, please.

Finally, can someone please tell me what is going to happen to the spare people that all the artificial intelligence is steadily replacing and how are all these fancy gadgets going to be purchased when the people have no jobs and therefore no income? Cheers

I think this is a more legitimate concern; much of the modern economy will simply need fewer workers -- manufacturing will more and more rely on autonomous machinery (robots).

[Chris Parks]

All this technology is in early days and it can't be used universally yet due to lack of infrastructure to support it. I have been using GPS for a lot of years to log data on race cars and the early stuff was just woeful to the point where we initially abandoned it altogether. The biggest issue for places like where Wayne lives is the satellite coverage is marginal, simply put there are not enough satellites at any one time to give accurate reliable positional information and in Australia at the southern end of satellite coverage it is a common problem and Tasmania suffers the worst. It will happen but for some areas of the globe that is a long way off.