Posted on 10/01/2016 11:35:32 AM PDT by nickcarraway
This might sound like a really terrible idea, but let’s give Nvidia the benefit of the doubt for now. They’re letting their AI-driven car learn solely by watching humans drive.
Nvidia calls their prototype vehicle BB8, and while that name might be more befitting, say, a Volkswagen Beetle, it’s actually a Lincoln MKZ. Apparently even AI drivers want to feel like Matthew McConaughey diving backward into a rooftop pool when they’re out cruising around.
While you can pick up a Lincoln that’s loaded with near-autonomous driving features, Nvidia shut them all down in their test vehicle. They wanted the car to use its neural network to figure out how to drive.
That meant observing human drivers on the road. Sounds like they’re setting the poor AI up to fail, right? Our streets are, after all, teeming with drivers who run red lights, stop in crosswalks, turn without signaling, go left of center, and text the entire time they’re driving.
Fortunately, Nvidia had a more sane plan in mind. They mounted cameras to other test vehicles and then took them out on the road. The video footage they recorded was then handed over to BB8 so that the AI could analyze it and figure out how to reproduce the behaviors it observed.
Neural action shot showing how BB8 analyzes its surroundings to figure out where to drive
The results are pretty impressive. Sure, BB8 mows down a traffic cone at the start of the video, but it handles plenty of real world situations — including driving on dirt roads and driving in the dark — with ease. Again, it’s doing this all without ever being explicitly told anything like how to identify the edge of the road or what another car looks like.
Self-nagging? Would it stop and ask for directions?
Not even close to every German has a vehicle genuinely capable of Autobahn speeds, either, but it doesn’t stop them from trying.
Sorry, not buying it. Self driving cars are the first step to a mass transit mandate.
Even on a per mile basis European drivers are less likely to be killed in a vehicle accident. They go through DRASTICALLY more training. America has let our driving culture turn into a desire to hand out licenses. When I was going through the learners permit process in NM I saw an old guy fail the vision test multiple times. Finally the tester sent him home, told him to come back first thing tomorrow when he was rested. And guess how he went home, having just proven he couldn’t see well enough to drive.
I’d like to see us MAKE people competent to drive. It’s really strange that with a culture that so very much defines itself around the car we put so little effort into actually making us good at USING them.
Buy what you want. Out here in reality self driving cars are yet another step in our long journey AWAY from mass transit.
That’s true—driving cars well over a sane speed (like VWs cruising over 100mph) was pretty common. They did move right when the Mercedes came over the horizon at 240K though. I get the same feeling whenever I see a Smart car at Highway speeds. Lol
With reunification, East Germans started killing themselves in cars at a skyrocketing rate their newly accessible cars and roadways. Inexperience and lower standards.
I understand that inexperienced or younger German drivers can’t have any blood alcohol at all.
I agree, but that comes back to making people take some responsibility, and that isn’t likely to happen. I can tell you how to improve accident rates by at least 30%. It’s really simple.
Outlaw cell phones.
If you mean “I drive myself” I agree.
Starting to move in that direction on cellphones. A big part of it really is governmental though. The state governments set the standards for training and testing, and they’re basically a joke. By and large no standard for training, sure if you want a high school diploma you probably have to take 9 weeks of driver’s ed, but it’s unnecessary for the actual license. And our tests are half-assed. What’s funny is that nobody seems to actually care, half the country knows we put under trained drivers on the road, the other half wouldn’t argue against it, and yet nobody’s that uptight about it. Meanwhile people demand peanut free zones at the ballpark.
Those Trabis were the bane of German drivers. I was there when the wall came down, and most Germans hated the Osties and their smoking death traps.
Drinking is not a right of passage like here. German kids get their stupid phase of drinking done long before they drive. They start in middle school at neighborhood bars. They drink after school and walk home—no big deal. Drunk driving is also not viewed as a revenue source—it is serious felony and you won’t be driving again, unless you are very wealthy.
Robocars will never be able to drive in in-climate weather or negotiate parking lots. What will happen is cars will become even more expensive and depreciate even faster because of a glorified cruise control system.
I mean you tell the car where you want to go and then are free to take a nap. Self driving cars are moving us in a direction you don’t actually need to know anything about a car to use it. They’ll turn your car into a cab that you own, get in, sit down, shout an address and relax. With these in place there’s even less reason for mass transit to exist. When people who can’t drive can still own their car and USE IT, who needs a buses or trains to even exist.
It’s not “a program” as such though. It is simulating the brains neuron functionality. Deep Neural Networks are very capable of learning difficult tasks. If the car makes a mistake it isn’t because of a bug (e.g. a line of code that didn’t check something it should), it is because the neural network had not been “trained” sufficiently. You then advance the training to include the use-case it failed at, reinforcing the right neural network paths, and get it do react as desired - then you can download the “update” to all vehicles.
Ultimately, the car will be a better driver than, at least, most. It is coming, almost every car company has plans to have them on the road in about 5 years.
Good luck with that, I’ll be long dead by then.
It’s all good until it starts watching Mr. Magoo cartoons.
Planning on dying in the next couple of years? It’s happening NOW. Self driving cars will be in mass production by 2020. Might take another 5 to 10 to get them down to economy cars, but this change isn’t the far future, it’s barely even the future it’s happening so quick.
You are dreaming
Nope. Paying attention. There’s a big chunk of cars on the market now that self park, and lane correct. Almost everything has GPS. Then there’s the Tesla autopilot. This is happening RIGHT NOW. You’re the guy in 1977 insisting the personal computer will never be a thing while folks buy TRS-80s. I’m not dreaming, you’re self blinding.
In the 50’s they predicted we would be flying our cars, see ya in 2020.
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