Posted on 03/16/2017 1:12:53 PM PDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
New research suggests that children born today will never drive a car. The auto industry's embrace of self-driving technology has been accelerating fast and those technological advances mean that by the time today's toddlers come of age, they'll likely never even have to get behind the wheel of a car, according to Henrik Christensen, the director of the University of San Diego’s Contextual Robotics Institute.
“My own prediction is that kids born today will never get to drive a car,” Christensen told the San Diego Union-Tribune in mid-December. “Autonomous, driverless cars are not 10, 15 years out. All the automotive companies—Daimler, GM, Ford—are saying that within five years they will have autonomous, driverless cars on the road.”
So what does that mean for our roads? Upgrades. And sooner rather than later.
“This transition is happening a lot quicker than we anticipated,” says Ronique Day, a government transportation analyst in Virginia, one of several states studying ways for roads and cars to communicate.
Other states across the country are following suit, installing digital signage above lanes that will aid in communication when self-driving cars become an everyday reality.
The signs are a first step toward what highway planners say is a future in which self-driving cars will travel on technology-aided roads lined with fiber optics, cameras and connected signaling devices that will help vehicles move as quickly as possible—and more safely.
Transit planners also say self-driving cars will unlock bigger benefits, including fewer accidents, faster trips and fuel savings.
While concrete and asphalt have long been the simplest solutions to easing congestion or meeting the need for extra road capacity, these technological advances have created new opportunities for addressing challenges. What that means is that we are going to have to figure out how to begin developing a smarter highway.
So far, the infrastructure behind these autonomous vehicles is lacking, having been built into just a few miles of highway in a handful of states.
How Will it be Done?
So how are states handling this? The first step will be deciding how to communicate with cars as an array of auto makers and tech companies independently have developed autonomous-driving technology. No common standard has been established for how a new generation of smartcars will receive information from smart roads—or how they will handle alerts once they get them.
Policymakers looking for blueprints on designing smart highways should look to the states that are currently piloting studies on their roadways like Virginia, California and Utah.
Utah is undertaking a test of the technology on a stretch of Salt Lake City’s Redwood Rd, a major north-south commuter route. Sensors on traffic lights connect to public buses and can adjust red and green signals to help buses stay on schedule.
But highway researchers say their biggest hurdle is ensuring they have technology that can work. CLICK HERE FOR MORE INFORMATION
Road connections to cars have mostly used dedicated short-range communications, or DSRC, a wireless link commonly used in transportation systems to manage stoplights and tolling. But researchers say the industry may settle on cellular-data systems used for smartphones or WiFi if the technology can handle information more rapidly and reliably.
Virginia has strapped one-foot-square DSRC devices on light poles and bridges on various roads, including Interstate 66 outside Washington, D.C. The gadgets watch the highway and allow workers at a central-control site to change recommended speeds lane-by-lane depending on traffic and communicate that to drivers with the signs mounted over the highway. They also send messages to state government road-maintenance vehicles about traffic flows and road conditions.
Those emergency messages will be communicated on electronic boards on many highways and would arrive through a smartphone-like app that displays alerts on drivers’ dashboards. The sensors can then monitor traffic flows and see that wheels are losing touch with the road as a rainstorm builds. The signs can lower the speed limit for the current situation and the road devices could alert cars miles away to slow down or even give them new routes to their destinations.
Planners say billions of federal dollars will likely be needed to wire the nation’s more than 4 million miles of paved roads and 250,000 intersections and with many states struggling to cover basic highway maintenance, this infrastructure seems far fetched.
Right now, it seems car manufacturers have put the cart before the horse in developing autonomous vehicles before the infrastructure to support it is ready. Still, we hope this means funding for this type of work and plenty of jobs for contractors in 2017 and beyond.
Ever since I was a boy... every trip I took to West Texas... I have dreamed of having a self driving car :)
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and I would dream of a chauffer and a limo.
We all see things so differently! that is why there are so many different stars in the sky. lol
Curmudgeon?
I am a civil engineer who deals with road construction and traffic issues on a daily basis.
I am also a car enthusiast, who takes them apart and puts them back together.
The company I work for has also been on the leading edge of LIDAR technology...which just two weeks ago pitched a large scale demonstration project of a real world application for mobile LIDAR. I have also used LIDAR on my own projects.
In other words, I have a basic understanding of how this stuff works. How much the equipment costs. Weather limitations, recalibration requirements, data usage, computing requirements, durability, air conditioning requirements.
And, I know how roads are built, how they are funded how they are repaired...and how that is funded...and basically how problematic it would be to keep roads suitable for self driving cars.
You can call me a curmudgeon...but perhaps you are buying into the hype too much.
I ask you once again...since you stated “this IS happening”, then give just one example. And when you can’t find one, perhaps instead of calling me names, consider what it means when you can’t - this IS NOT happening.
That’s really sad, because I count driving a motor vehicle among the very few activities that I have really enjoyed in life
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Agreed.
And the only way to carry this on is to have wonderful custom car shops making affordably and fun cars. Great cars to drive. Interesting powerful cars to drive.
And I am sure traditional accountants couldn’t believe that individuals or businesses would trust their accounting needs to a computer.
I like driving...
I also like riding horses...
But I have no interest in riding a horse next to the freeway. THAT’s what it is going to be like. If you are not driving a robocar... you will eventually feel the same as the person riding their horse off to the side of the freeway.
That part of the article confused the heck out of me. What they're describing here isn't even new. It's actually a step back to the days before satellite-based global positioning technology replaced fiber-optic infrastructure as the preferred mode of communication for these "next generation" road/vehicle systems.
Yeah curmudgeon, because you’re also pointlessly rude about the whole thing, with lots of chest thumping, lots of condescension. and a lot of not bothering to open your eyes to the bigger picture.
LIDAR isn’t the answer most of the companies are working on. With good reason, and you listed many of them out. It’s simply the wrong solution to the problem.
I gave you an example, and you insulted it because you don’t want to understand it. The simple fact is you’re in 2005 looking at a Blackberry and insisting smartphones aren’t going to happen. Self driving cars aren’t at iPhone yet, but it’s coming, we can tell, because it IS happening. Not your goalposts, but we’ve discussed this before, I know your goalposts, they move. Because you’re a curmudgeon and can’t stand the idea that reality is proving you wrong.
I have long thought that Google’s self driving car experiment has been a similar step back.
Why?
Well, before a Google self driving car makes a trip, a fleet of cars drive the route and make LIDAR scans, and a squad of people process the data...ultimately creating a 3 dimensional map, which goes in the Google car. This is how the Google car knows to expect a stop sign, or traffic signal (it does not make that recognition real time).
That 3-D map is no different than the 1960’s ‘circuits under the pavement’ concept...just a little more elaborate ‘track’ to keep the car on.
Accounting is a perfect business activity for a computer.
There are almost no limitations on improvements in business or personal activities that are conducted in a controlled indoor environment. It's all just a matter of taking an existing technology and making it faster, smarter, etc.
Are you still going to be a passionate advocate of "robocars" when you find out that they won't be moving any faster than 25 miles per hour?
We get to enjoy these at Laguna Seca every year!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WrSDAnnMLi4&nohtml5=False
One of my neighbors has two of them!
“I gave you an example, and you insulted it because you don’t want to understand it”
No, my FRiend, I think it is you who does not understand it. A human driver got the truck from the warehouse to the interstate. Do you understand how underwhelming that is? How 1960 that is?
https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=vUpeAAAAIBAJ&sjid=3WANAAAAIBAJ&pg=6885,3667738
Seriously, what can that truck do that the ‘smart auto’ of 1960 couldn’t?
BTW, my goalposts never move. Its always the same. In order for a car to be considered ‘autonomous’, I merely insist that it be autonomous. I’m a stickler like that.
Part of your problem is you couldn’t even be bothered to understand the exchange. He said this would go the way of the flying car and there was no money in it. That’s a popular retort but lacks facts. The two big ones being that nobody seriously attempted to develop the flying car while at this point basically everybody is attempting to develop the self driving car, and there’s a ton of money to be made.
This revolution IS happening:
https://www.trucks.com/category/tech/autonomous-vehicles/
No you’re moving the goalposts. You just did it again. Because you refuse to understand incrementalism. Even if a vehicle only autonomously drove part of the journey it STILL DROVE ITSELF. You have forgotten how most people are taught to drive, usually with somebody else driving us to the place where we practiced. By your standards none of us drove until after we got our licenses, including our driving test, which just goes to show how wrong your standard is.
This IS happening. We don’t yet have 100% fully autonomous parking space to parking space. But we DO have vehicles that drive parts, even most, of their own journeys, and the technology just keeps getting bigger. That first link I gave you did prove my point, but you don’t want it, so you moved the posts. But all that proves is that you’re in denial.
Get a business loan and purchase a lot of 20. Start an online monthly paid service for those not wanting to buy where they are able to pay for monthly packages and get x amount of time ordering up car. Once they reserve a block of time to do shopping go to movie or anything of that sort. Again business ops are endless
As I mentioned before, I am a civil engineer. I often get...frustrated...at work, because everybody dives in and tackles the easiest part of a problem first. And honestly, 90% of the time, money, and effort on a project is spent on the last really hard 5% of the project.
That is where driverless car research is right now - the easy stuff. The really easy stuff - highway driving, just like GM did in 1960. I guarantee you - the last 5% of this problem will prove quite difficult.
So this is where we get to my not being ‘bothered to understand the exchange’. The OP, the premise of this ENTIRE thread is an absolute piece of NONSENSE article that states kids born today will NEVER DRIVE. I understand that very well - now do you?
Now, in light of what I’ve just explained about the hardest part of the design still ahead of the companies pursuing this - does any sane person seriously believe the article in the OP is true? In my state, kids as young as 14 can have a restricted license, but I’ll be conservative and use 16 as a benchmark. Do you REALLY think that 16 years from now, there will only be self driving cars? That is the ‘exchange’ being discussed here - and I understand it quite well.
And please explain how I moved my goalpost, without ever changing my original question? All I have ever asked is for one example of a car that can traverse city streets, driverless. I have never changed that request - and you have never been able to produce even one example (for the obvious reason there is no example).
Now sometimes I can’t help myself, but I’m just not a fan of unsubstantiated claims on the interwebs:
“LIDAR isn’t the answer most of the companies are working on.”
Do you have a source for that statement?
And who are these ‘companies’?
Uber: Giant rotating LIDAR head on roof, plus 4 supplemental units at corners of vehicle
Google: Giant rotating LIDAR head on roof
Otto: LIDAR
So I have to ask exactly who are these companies who are building autonomous vehicles without LIDAR?
Recap:
Static Goalpost question #1: Give an example of a driverless car in use today, to back up your unsubstantiated assertion.
Static Goalpost Question #2: Back up the assertion that ‘companies’ aren’t using LIDAR (even though all the big players are using LIDAR)
lol
if they are not better in every way... they wont be adopted, it’s that simple.
But I am telling you, in a freeway environment with the proper software controlling ALL the cars, it wont even be close.
The robocars will be zipping by at 100+ miles an hour while you are sitting at a dead stop in traffic on the feeder along with the rest of the holdouts. Heck a horse will be an upgrade for you at that point.
With proper programing a robocar could be safer than any human driven car could ever be.
It could react faster, see in every direction at once, know what around the turn before the car even gets there. Heck with the proper programming a robocar could out-drive an Indy race car driver easy.
So let's go back to the topic and ask ourselves ...
Why would we assume that young people today -- who are less interested in owning a car than their parents were -- are going to be willing to pay thousands of dollars more for a car just because it's "automated?"
That's exactly my point.
As a rental agent? seriously? Do you honestly think you are going to be able to purchase these things?
big money there babe.
I don’t think so.
The elite tech world wants cars to be like computers. They own the software.
And my point is that they will be so much better it wont even be close (especially in certain situations like the freeway).
I am picturing an interlinked system which controls all cars simultaneously within a region in a controlled environment like the freeway.
The cars would not be controlled independently, they would be managed my a master traffic control AI. An AI could merge cars on and off the freeway at 100+ mph without having to slow anyone down.
All cars would respond simultaneously and perfectly in emergency situations since all cars on the road would interconnected.
Your tire explodes unexpectedly....
The computer instantaneously (before the tire has even fully deflated) detects the problem and starts corrective emergency actions while simultaneously and instantly adjusting the speed and path of all cars around you. And all this happens faster than a human can even react to the original tire blow out.
Think of an airbag and how fast it reacts... that’s how fast all this would happen and happen simultaneously to ALL the cars in the vicinity.
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