Posted on 02/09/2016 8:52:56 AM PST by PreciousLiberty
Elon Musk's Tesla recently became the latest big shot company to enter the self-driving car sweepstakes. Mr. Musk recently announced the hiring of software architecture veteran Jim Keller, who previously had played key roles at Apple and AMD, to lead its Autopilot Engineering team. Teslas move follows the recently announced partnership between General Motors and Lyft, in which the automaker is investing $500 million in the ridesharing company as part of a joint venture to develop self-driving cars.
And of course Google, Uber, Mercedes-Benz, Nissan, Apple, Audi, Bosch and Delphi Automotive (the big auto parts manufacturer) all have their own much-hyped development programs for autonomous vehicles in full swing. Forget cures for cancer, climate change or world peace, the media has made it clear that self-driving cars will be the Next Great Step in civilizations drive toward magnificence.
It's time to hit the brakes for a reality check.
Despite how much Uber CEO Travis Kalanick likes to crow about our "driverless future," outside of The Jetsons this one is...not...happening...soon. Besides the remaining technological challenges, the liability and regulatory issues involved in letting a 3,000-pound death machine steer itself with no human at the controls are huge.
(Excerpt) Read more at observer.com ...
I did not cite fault for accidents in any of my responses. I simply cited not being able to know every permutation of every variable as being a limitation of AI.
The robotic cars see in all directions at once, have reaction times much faster than humans, and do not get tired, distracted, or drunk.
So that's your reason for giving up your (and my) freedom???
Again, let's take away all firearms, ban McDonalds (makes people fat) and everything else that's potentially harmful because people are too stupid to make decisions for themselves.
Great logic you have there.
That's a very poor analogy. A pitching machine only throws one pitch at a time. Variables are constant.
Not the same with driving with tens of thousands of other people on the road at the same time.
Nobody is going to sit patiently behind the wheel while their rob car crawls along at the posted speed limit.
Drove one "back in the day" when they first came out. An excellent choice! They're a blast to drive. :-)
It's too bad the Pontiac Solstice GXP and the Saturn Skye twin turbo aren't made anymore. Just as much fun to drive(actually, more with their turbo'd 4 cylinders) and rockets on four wheels.
I intentionally used hyperbole. But let’s talk variables. My traction control system in my Scion FRS, when it senses a loss of traction, applies different - and constantly adjusted - braking pressure to each wheel, INDIVIDUALLY in a way, and withprecision, no human being could hope to match.
I.e. a computer can handle more variables, and do it more precisely, than a human. Driverless cars are an inevitability. And soon.
“Cars are already incorporating driverless features. Various types of traction control and automated brake control are standard on many vehicles. The new Bentley can park itself - both parallel and diagonal.”
Some form of autopilot has been around on Aircraft for over 100 years. Yes I said 100. We still don’t have paying passengers on pilotless planes.
“I think the first truly driverless vehicles will be UPS and FedEx delivery trucks. With a robotic arm that drops the package near your front door.”
Punks will quickly realize they need only stand in the road in front of it and then have friends stand behind it to trap the robot truck. It will then be stuck due to its own safety systems and free for the looting.
Besides the remaining technological challenges, the liability and regulatory issues involved in letting a 3,000-pound death machine steer itself with no human at the controls are huge.
...
From what I’ve seen around where I live, the machines can’t possibly do any worse than the humans.
Traction control is child’s play. As is parallel parking. Expect to see a lot more driver assistance features long before a truly driverless machine is viable.
I’m also in the vehicle computer industry. We work with the OEMs and Tier-1’s on IVI, ADAS and AV systems.
The biggest single hurdle, imo, is testing these systems. You can’t physically drive enough man hours to have coverage. You need to use other techniques to raise confidence to the levels necessary to sign off on it going to production (I assume you’re also using things like Matlab and Simulink?). I wouldn’t want to be that person, although I know some that are and will have to make such a decision at some point.
We’re also working on cyber security aspects. The whole Jeep thing has everyone (rightly) freaking out. We’re putting together best practices and architectures that will be far superior to what is being done to date. It is a cat-and-mouse game but automakers have been way too lazy (cheap) so far, which is changing (because of Jeep). By the time autonomous vehicles are hitting the road I think the hackability index will be very low. I’ve also been considering the benefits of virtualization for in-vehicle system security. ...but I must stop talking now, too many NDA’s ;)
I assume you’re in the Detroit area (?)
Actually cars now are more reliable than they’ve ever been. The modern car can do 100,000 easy with no major breakage. And they’re pretty cheap, especially when you factor in the 100,000, I just bought a brand new car for 16G a couple months ago, with an extra 2 all maintenance is on the company. For the next 10 years the only thing I have to pay for to keep the car running is gas, tires, and batteries. 1.8 thousand dollars a year for total coverage, and I EXPECT the car to outlive that warranty. Take away all the tech and highly useful stuff on them and they become a lot more fragile and prone to breaking. Also more prone to getting into accidents. More lethal when you get into the accident.
They’re only hightech nightmare for luddites. For everybody else cars are better now than ever.
The modern car is a maintenance night mare. A transmission job is 3k to 4K, I've never had one go past 150K miles. Emissions anyone? EGR valve for my Camry 400 bucks!!!!!
I just can’t wait for my care to have a radar system and guidance system along with the hi tech communications system and emission system. Have we lost out minds people? What are we doing?
I would want to see a driverless car that can distinguish between a 1/2 inch deep puddle and an 8 inch deep pothole filled with water.
I would want to see a driverless car that could prioritize threats so as to choose the least damaging of two or more possible bad outcomes.
I would want to see a driverless car that would be willing to violate traffic laws in an emergency situation to avoid a collision.
I’ll give it up, because it won’t happen. The whole “government will decide where you can go” thing is pure pathetic luddite paranoia. Not one single company that’s working on self driving cars is even contemplating any level of centralizes control, they’re all working on basically following YOUR instructions to the GPS. Basically driving exactly like today, you get in, plug your destination into the GPS, only instead you steering the car to follow the GPS the car follows the GPS by itself. Really, given how reliant people are now on their GPS if some central control wanted to change you destination they could do it already, most folks wouldn’t even notice until they parked their car and were at the gym instead of McDs.
After five years of depreciation cars will be thrown away. One failure of any system will be more expensive to fix than the car is worth. As soon as the bumper to bumper warranty expires the car will be untouchable. This is going to end the auto age. It will not be scarce fuel but an over engineered POS that the average man cannot afford.
Traction control is a TOOL. Used by a HUMAN to drive a car.
I have traction control, AWD, selectable 4WD (high and low), anti-lock brakes, airbags, speed sensitive steering and more "safety features" on my vehicle all designed to keep me safe while driving, or in the event of an accident.
All are TOOLS that I control while driving. If I drive safely for conditions, does my traction control kick on? Nope. What about my ABS? Nope. My air bags never go off either since I've not had an accident.
Someone posted above that Google self-driving vehicles have logged over 1,000,000 miles without a single accident. That's not true. They've been involved in accidents.
I on the other hand am coming up on 54 years old and have also logged over 1,000,000 miles since I started driving at age 14 (I lived in Iowa) and have not had a single accident either.
I suspect I'm not the only one with a track record that good here on FR. So from my perspective, are self driving cars really safer? No. They're certainly not worth giving up my FREEDOM OF CHOICE for either.
No more so than giving up my guns because hey, almost as many people die in car accidents as do via guns every year.
I don't see anyone who's arguing to give up driving to also give up their guns. I wonder why that is? Seems to me some people are being VERY inconsistent in what they profess to be Conservative principles on other issues but seem so willing to give them up for self driving cars.
Things that make you go "Hmmmmm."
There’s no rub, the AI doesn’t have to know much at all. At it’s gotta figure out is direction of travel and speed of the other vehicles. It doesn’t need to figure out why the driver of the vehicle is running the stop sign, it just notices that the vehicle is moving therefore your vehicle shouldn’t. And it will notice that faster than us, stop faster than us, and maintain better control of the vehicle through the stop better than us.
That’s the real rub, some people just don’t like the idea of the car being better at driving than us. The funny part of that being that it’s American, some of the worst drivers on the planet, making the most noise.
Well now, since we're into name calling, I have one for you: OBAMACARE.
Wasn't that long ago that some people were saying the Government wouldn't choose who would live or die, yet Obamacare has well known and publicized death panels and "guidance" towards "end of life care."
We won't even get into the misuse of Drones by the Federal Government, invasive snooping technologies used by the Government while monitoring telecommunications, wireless technologies, the Internet, misuse of Big Data/personal data collection by the Feds against each and every one of us, the erosion of the First, Second and Fourth Amendments and this list can go on, and on, and on.
But hey, I'm a luddite, right?!
Sure they will. People on public transit already do that. Catch up on your reading, get a jump on work. People will totally just hang while the car does the hard part.
No it isn’t. Sure if something break it’s expensive to fix, but it doesn’t break. That’s the trade off. Do you want a transmission that will break every 3 or 4 years but costs less than $1000 to fix, or a transmission that probably won’t break while you own the car but if it does will cost $4000 to fix? You want the later, because on average it’s cheaper. Plus of course there’s the maintenance plan. If my transmission breaks it will cost me $0 to fix, because it’s covered.
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