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Autonomous cars are coming and it's going to be glorious

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BoberFett said:
What?

This accident was caused entirely by a human. Had it been a human driven car instead of the Google car, the accident would still have happened.
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Autonomous cars would be leeching on the navigation of some of the human drivers mixed in, though. I'm not sure an autonomous car could actually navigate from unpaved road to a highway full of autonomous cars in a construction zone back to a destination of unpaved road without doing awkward dumb shit without humans to follow to set the 'flow'.

It would be irritating to the human drivers mixed in, all these dumb autonomous cars following them. I'm not touching you I'm not touching you I'm not touching you. Oh wait you left, now I don't know where I'm going. I think human drivers mixed in with autonomous would probably abuse the crash avoidance and purposefully cut off autonomous cars to save time. Stuff like that. It brings all the security issues of technology abuse with all the real life physics of car crashes. Fun. Sign me up. What if someone were jamming the sonar/radar that cars use for crash avoidance. Would it cause the entire highway to come to a screeching halt?
 
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BoberFett said:
As a motorcyclist, think about how amazing autocars would be. No chance of some dumbshit broadsiding you by blowing a stop sign. Most motorcycle accidents are caused by alcohol and/or stupid cagers. Motorcycling would be far safer with most cards on the road being autonomous.
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Agreed. As long as the sensors are sensitive enough to pick up bikes, which should be no problem, it will be glorious.

OverVolt said:
Autonomous cars would be leeching on the navigation of some of the human drivers mixed in, though. I'm not sure an autonomous car could actually navigate from unpaved road to a highway full of autonomous cars in a construction zone back to a destination of unpaved road without doing awkward dumb shit without humans to follow to set the 'flow'.

It would be irritating to the human drivers mixed in, all these dumb autonomous cars following them. I'm not touching you I'm not touching you I'm not touching you. Oh wait you left, now I don't know where I'm going. I think human drivers mixed in with autonomous would probably abuse the crash avoidance and purposefully cut off autonomous cars to save time. Stuff like that. It brings all the security issues of technology abuse with all the real life physics of car crashes. Fun. Sign me up. What if someone were jamming the sonar/radar that cars use for crash avoidance. Would it cause the entire highway to come to a screeching halt?
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Now I see how the police are going to make up for all that lost revenue - monitoring all those autonomous cars' cameras to automatically detect and ticket human drivers.

As far as jamming, I'm going to assume that there will be two different sensor systems per car for safety, so one would have to jam, say, radar and lidar, or lidar and imaging. Probably easier to jam or spoof any smart info flowing from a central controller like overpowering an airport beacon with false altitude info to crash a plane. That would definitely slow down a busy highway, but since autonomous cars would have to be fully autonomous for rural areas and poor areas like Detroit, that wouldn't bring crashes to a halt, just slow traffic.
 
OverVolt said:
Autonomous cars would be leeching on the navigation of some of the human drivers mixed in, though. I'm not sure an autonomous car could actually navigate from unpaved road to a highway full of autonomous cars in a construction zone back to a destination of unpaved road without doing awkward dumb shit without humans to follow to set the 'flow'.

It would be irritating to the human drivers mixed in, all these dumb autonomous cars following them. I'm not touching you I'm not touching you I'm not touching you. Oh wait you left, now I don't know where I'm going. I think human drivers mixed in with autonomous would probably abuse the crash avoidance and purposefully cut off autonomous cars to save time. Stuff like that. It brings all the security issues of technology abuse with all the real life physics of car crashes. Fun. Sign me up. What if someone were jamming the sonar/radar that cars use for crash avoidance. Would it cause the entire highway to come to a screeching halt?
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What in the holy hell are you talking about? Why are the autocars in your world all playing follow the leader? Do you know ANYTHING about what's being developed?
 
BoberFett said:
What in the holy hell are you talking about? Why are the autocars in your world all playing follow the leader? Do you know ANYTHING about what's being developed?
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Hmm do you? Someone was posting about having a server at intersections to negotiate traffic flow so that cars never have to stop and can pass through with tight tolerances.

Meanwhile in the real world the city gives zero fucks about traffic flow and the city lights don't even have metal detectors and they all run on timers like its the 1950s. And in the country they don't even have traffic lights in 2015.

There are parts of our road infrastructure that haven't been updated in 70 years and you guys want racks of servers at intersections. Lol.

And yes one google car among a sea of manually driven cars is leeching on the human derived traffic patterns. Can the google car drive on a gravel road?

http://www.technologyreview.com/news/530276/hidden-obstacles-for-googles-self-driving-cars/

Would you buy a self-driving car that couldn’t drive itself in 99 percent of the country? Or that knew nearly nothing about parking, couldn’t be taken out in snow or heavy rain, and would drive straight over a gaping pothole?

If your answer is yes, then check out the Google Self-Driving Car, model year 2014.
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Like I was saying about contructions zones where the traffic flow changes daily on an 8 lane highway at 55mph

Google’s cars can detect and respond to stop signs that aren’t on its map, a feature that was introduced to deal with temporary signs used at construction sites. But in a complex situation like at an unmapped four-way stop the car might fall back to slow, extra cautious driving to avoid making a mistake. Google says that its cars can identify almost all unmapped stop signs, and would remain safe if they miss a sign because the vehicles are always looking out for traffic, pedestrians and other obstacles.
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OverVolt said:
Hmm do you? Someone was posting about having a server at intersections to negotiate traffic flow so that cars never have to stop and can pass through with tight tolerances.

Meanwhile in the real world the city gives zero fucks about traffic flow and the city lights don't even have metal detectors and they all run on timers like its the 1950s. And in the country they don't even have traffic lights in 2015.

There are parts of our road infrastructure that haven't been updated in 70 years and you guys want racks of servers at intersections. Lol.

And yes one google car among a sea of manually driven cars is leeching on the human derived traffic patterns. Can the google car drive on a gravel road?

Like I was saying about contructions zones where the traffic flow changes daily on an 8 lane highway at 55mph
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You need to get out of San Frinsanity, dude. Cities in Tennessee have had traffic sensors and smart light control for a couple decades. And out in the country you don't need traffic lights, because there isn't that much traffic and what there is tends to have courtesy and common sense.

One other thing about maps: I guarantee that when autonomous cars become legal, they will all be updating map and traffic pattern information constantly.
 
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Its probably been mentioned before, but everything I have read points to the requirement of a licensed, legal, and insured driver be in the drivers seat even when a car is operating autonomously.

For liability and insurance purposes alone, I imagine it will be decades after the first autonomous vehicles reach the market that it will be legal to have only non licensed occupants such as a child in a vehicle.

Someone must be able to take over a self driving vehicle immediately should something happen that is outside the autonomous driving software's parameters. And that of course means a licensed, sober, and insured driver right behind the wheel.

I only point this out because so many of the scenarios people bring up that self driving vehicles will allow for assume that a licensed legal driver sitting behind the wheel will not be required. An example would be having your autonomous vehicle run little Timmy over to Jimmy's on the other side of town for a birthday party. Or the independence autonomous vehicles could provide to those with disabilities.

Anyone else read any conjecture on how liability and laws governing autonomous vehicles might shake out?
 
davmat787 said:
Its probably been mentioned before, but everything I have read points to the requirement of a licensed, legal, and insured driver be in the drivers seat even when a car is operating autonomously.

For liability and insurance purposes alone, I imagine it will be decades after the first autonomous vehicles reach the market that it will be legal to have only non licensed occupants such as a child in a vehicle.

Someone must be able to take over a self driving vehicle immediately should something happen that is outside the autonomous driving software's parameters. And that of course means a licensed, sober, and insured driver right behind the wheel.

I only point this out because so many of the scenarios people bring up that self driving vehicles will allow for assume that a licensed legal driver sitting behind the wheel will not be required. An example would be having your autonomous vehicle run little Timmy over to Jimmy's on the other side of town for a birthday party. Or the independence autonomous vehicles could provide to those with disabilities.

Anyone else read any conjecture on how liability and laws governing autonomous vehicles might shake out?
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Requiring a licensed driver to be on board will be a transitioning requirement. Eventually driver-less cars won't be required to have drivers, just as the average elevator doesn't have an elevator operator.

After all, what about current situations where something happens when a person is driving a car, that is outside the parameters of the individual's driving skills, such as ice, heavy rain, fatigue, or drunkenness?

A backup driver may/will be a temporary thing.

Liability?

If I had to guess, eventually human driver insurance will be much higher than computer-automated car insurance. And eventually owning a car will be like owning a horse or a carriage. Pointless and expensive, unless you're running a taxi business. And it can't come soon enough.
 
It's really hard to say how it will shape things up. Technology moves fast and driving a car might be a simple task under typical conditions but there is alot to be considered. Commercial Jets have been automated for a good while now but there are circumstances in which the pilot needs to operate the plane, so I suspect that completely driver-less cars are a good 20 years away or more.


But I do agree that individual car ownership will most likely be a thing of the past.
 
nickqt said:
Requiring a licensed driver to be on board will be a transitioning requirement. Eventually driver-less cars won't be required to have drivers, just as the average elevator doesn't have an elevator operator.

After all, what about current situations where something happens when a person is driving a car, that is outside the parameters of the individual's driving skills, such as ice, heavy rain, fatigue, or drunkenness?

A backup driver may/will be a temporary thing.

Liability?

If I had to guess, eventually human driver insurance will be much higher than computer-automated car insurance. And eventually owning a car will be like owning a horse or a carriage. Pointless and expensive, unless you're running a taxi business. And it can't come soon enough.
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You are so far ahead of yourself. The google car would plunge headfirst into a flash flood ATM. This forum is a bit weird. Its full of technology fans but at this point nobody here is actually that good at understanding technology. Its odd.

The current method that google is using that requires them to map out the route ahead of time would be a complete disaster in areas under constant construction that change daily. It would be entirely incapable of coping with the coned-off merges of late night highway construction. It would go into ultra-safe mode when in reality it needs to floor it when safe because there is no merge area. Probably requiring a human driver to slam on their brakes for it.
 
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If anything 'self driving' cars will probably start off as more of a glorified cruise control. It'll be good for long highway trips on interstates and U.S. highways in fair weather and will probably be able to navigate simple lane changes, stop at red lights, and adjust for slower moving traffic. But the driver will probably have to take the wheel as he approaches his/her exit.

We'll see how that goes over, at which point we can start talking about being able to have your car drive your incapacitated fat and lazy ass all over town just like in WALL-E.
 
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88keys said:
If anything 'self driving' cars will probably start off as more of a glorified cruise control. It'll be good for long highway trips on interstates and U.S. highways in fair weather and will probably be able to navigate simple lane changes, stop at red lights, and adjust for slower moving traffic. But the driver will probably have to take the wheel as he approaches his/her exit.
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Agreed. Hopefully it would chill out highway traffic.
 
88keys said:
If anything 'self driving' cars will probably start off as more of a glorified cruise control. It'll be good for long highway trips on interstates and U.S. highways in fair weather and will probably be able to navigate simple lane changes, stop at red lights, and adjust for slower moving traffic. But the driver will probably have to take the wheel as he approaches his/her exit.

We'll see how that goes over, at which point we can start talking about being able to have your car drive your incapacitated fat and lazy ass all over town just like in WALL-E.
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I suspect you are correct. It's one thing for Google to claim it's car will have no manual steering, quite another to carry passengers under that design. I expect that autonomous cars will begin as an extension of the automatic parking amalgamated with automatic navigation, always with a human ready to take over if/when the automation gets in trouble.
 
werepossum said:
I suspect you are correct. It's one thing for Google to claim it's car will have no manual steering, quite another to carry passengers under that design. I expect that autonomous cars will begin as an extension of the automatic parking amalgamated with automatic navigation, always with a human ready to take over if/when the automation gets in trouble.
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Maybe their angle is local freight service or deliveries, in which case concerns about passengers would be moot. Not only could you replace FedEx trucks, but even when you went to the supermarket you could just have your purchases loaded onto an autonomous truck which would then drive itself to your home.
 
davmat787 said:
Its probably been mentioned before, but everything I have read points to the requirement of a licensed, legal, and insured driver be in the drivers seat even when a car is operating autonomously.

For liability and insurance purposes alone, I imagine it will be decades after the first autonomous vehicles reach the market that it will be legal to have only non licensed occupants such as a child in a vehicle.

Someone must be able to take over a self driving vehicle immediately should something happen that is outside the autonomous driving software's parameters. And that of course means a licensed, sober, and insured driver right behind the wheel.

I only point this out because so many of the scenarios people bring up that self driving vehicles will allow for assume that a licensed legal driver sitting behind the wheel will not be required. An example would be having your autonomous vehicle run little Timmy over to Jimmy's on the other side of town for a birthday party. Or the independence autonomous vehicles could provide to those with disabilities.

Anyone else read any conjecture on how liability and laws governing autonomous vehicles might shake out?
Click to expand...

One thing that no one has mentioned, mechanically and electrically an autonomous car has to be functioning 100% for liability reasons if not for design purposes,

can't have a dashboard lit like a Christmas tree (abs, traction control, air bag, check engine light, stabilitrak, etc.) like people do today because they don't want to or can't afford to fix it. $$$$$$

Imagine the car defaulting into some limp home mode so you can pull over everytime their is a glitch.
 
glenn1 said:
Maybe their angle is local freight service or deliveries, in which case concerns about passengers would be moot. Not only could you replace FedEx trucks, but even when you went to the supermarket you could just have your purchases loaded onto an autonomous truck which would then drive itself to your home.
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You know that we share the road with delivery trucks right? An autonomous vehicle that weighs 8,000 pounds had better have it's shit together.
 
I can't wait. Nothing but good could come from this. Hopefully all the luddites die off before this matures to market.

We could reduce the number of traffic cops to make up for the loss in ticket revenue.
 
Dannar26 said:
I can't wait. Nothing but good could come from this. Hopefully all the luddites die off before this matures to market.

We could reduce the number of traffic cops to make up for the loss in ticket revenue.
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Pilots still have to take manual control... don't hold your breath. Its funny you have it planned out to the extent that you're worried about cops writing tickets when there are intersections without traffic lights and bridges that are 20 years past their life expectancy. You're the one living in a fantasy land, not the luddites.
 
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OverVolt said:
http://www.slate.com/articles/techn...driving_car_it_may_never_actually_happen.html

So when do I get to enjoy you all putting your feet in your mouths?
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And you'll never carry a tiny laser emitter on a keychain, nor will you have a computer that doesn't require several dozen kilowatts and a 2-ton AC to keep it from overheating, nor will humans ever make it to Earth orbit.

Early aircraft could barely go a few dozen yards. Now we can fly to other continents in metal or even carbon fiber vehicles that travel 35,000 feet above the ground.



To be able to handle the everyday stresses and strains of the real driving world, the Google car will require a computer with a level of intelligence that machines won't have for many years, if ever.
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The human brain is a squishy computer made of organic cells.
Current computer technology isn't sufficiently compact or efficient to make anything like a human brain, but that doesn't mean it'll never happen.
 
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nickqt said:
Requiring a licensed driver to be on board will be a transitioning requirement. Eventually driver-less cars won't be required to have drivers, just as the average elevator doesn't have an elevator operator.
Click to expand...

I agree, remember that Google didn't even have a steering wheel in their most recent autocar until California told them they had to have one to be street legal. The only controls in the car was a start and emergency stop button.

OverVolt said:
You are so far ahead of yourself. The google car would plunge headfirst into a flash flood ATM. This forum is a bit weird. Its full of technology fans but at this point nobody here is actually that good at understanding technology. Its odd.

The current method that google is using that requires them to map out the route ahead of time would be a complete disaster in areas under constant construction that change daily. It would be entirely incapable of coping with the coned-off merges of late night highway construction. It would go into ultra-safe mode when in reality it needs to floor it when safe because there is no merge area. Probably requiring a human driver to slam on their brakes for it.
Click to expand...

I don't know what you are thinking. The google navigator on my phone already dynamically routes around road construction, tells me to get in the left lane to avoid road hazards, and calculates on the fly faster routes based on real time traffic and road condition reports. In the recent floods here in Dallas it was able to successfully find a route to work that did not include any flooded roads.

88keys said:
If anything 'self driving' cars will probably start off as more of a glorified cruise control. It'll be good for long highway trips on interstates and U.S. highways in fair weather and will probably be able to navigate simple lane changes, stop at red lights, and adjust for slower moving traffic. But the driver will probably have to take the wheel as he approaches his/her exit.
Click to expand...

That is almost here, Elon Musk recently announced that The 2016 Tesla Models S and will have that feature.
 
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