7 ms·

RCA engineers envisioned automated electronic highways by 1975

42 points by helloworld 10y ago

ocdtrekkie 10y ago
I remember growing up believing flying cars were just around the corner. As today's children get their driver's licenses a decade from now, they'll think about when they grew up believing self-driving cars were just around the corner.
- ingenter 10y ago
  There is a significant difference between self-driving cars in 1960, flying cars and self-driving cars today. Flying cars are doable, and there are several prototypes of a flying car. However, flying cars aren't safe and aren't cost-effective. Self-driving cars in 1960 require a significant infrastructure to operate, and can't operate with human drivers. (Edit: Not to mention they don't exist) Self-driving cars today work, and are cost-effective, and it's likely that they will be safer and create a much better traffic ecosystem than humans ever will.
  - Hydraulix989 10y ago
    "Self-driving cars today work, and are cost-effective, and it's likely that they will be safer and create a much better traffic ecosystem than humans ever will." Self-driving cars ONLY work on the immaculate freeways of California that they are almost always (unfairly) tested on. Any precipitation renders the LADAR sensors all but useless, and many everyday driving scenarios like "left turn onto traffic" and "no lane markers" are still are far from being solved yet. Any real improvements in the technology will be the result of fundamentally different techniques than what the state-of-the-art is currently using (since this is Hacker News: state-of-the-art really is just an "ad hoc" pipeline that looks for things like "lane markers" using things like Canny edges along with a PID controller for the steering wheel actuator, with some other "cheats" like an over-reliance on human-compiled map data provided "a priori"). An end-to-end deep learning approach seems promising, but the current results aren't even usable at this point. Five years from now, every car (even my Jetta, not just luxury cars) will have the equivalent of what Tesla's "auto pilot" looks like now, but a human in the front seat will still very much be a necessity.
    - gfodor 10y ago
      You're making a lot of claims here about the current state of the art of self driving tech. Presumably google has the best right now, so you must be talking about them. Do you have insider information or are you just guessing? Because it seems to me that the google self driving cars are capable of doing much more than working on "the immaculate freeways of California." edit: Also to be clear the driver assist features seen on cars like the model s are not what most people are referring to when they talk about self driving cars here.
      - Hydraulix989 10y ago
        "Do you have insider information or are you just guessing?" That's a loaded question. I don't feel comfortable sharing my credentials here (even though they would very much lend credibility to what I am saying), but I can also assure you that I am not divulging any insider information. However, I claim that my argument still stands without the support of "insider information" -- given that self-driving vehicle research's domain is primarily academia; all of Sebastian Thrun's work (THE founder of the Google self-driving car project and Google X itself), for example, is more or less out in the wild (even if behind walled garden academic journals). "Presumably google has the best right now, so you must be talking about them." That's quite an assumption.
      - Hydraulix989 10y ago
        "Also to be clear the driver assist features seen on cars like the model s are not what most people are referring to when they talk about self driving cars here." Just saw your edit/addition, so I'm going to add more as well: When did I even conflate them -- even if the state of the art is actually "driver assist" as you've described? Google’s self-driving cars aren’t “fully autonomous”. Without human drivers, they’d lose control approximately every 1,500 miles, according to Google’s own reports. Can you guess how many driverless miles their "self-driving cars" have driven? Hint: It's zero. If you're curious, here is an example of a much more grounded academic talk (read: not a TED talk) from 2015 by a renowned (in the autonomous vehicle research community) Boston (not California) researcher who worked with Thrun that corroborates the issues I've mentioned earlier: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5CZmlaMNCs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5CZmlaMNCs
  - ocdtrekkie 10y ago
    No, they don't work and aren't cost effective. But they sure are marketed well.
    - Hydraulix989 10y ago
      If you noticed, one thing I didn't dispute at all was the "cost effective" part -- LADAR sensors are becoming cheaper and cheaper every year. I remember back in 2008, they were prohibitively expensive (around the same price as a Model S is now). Now, you can get ones anywhere from $200-$5000. That's why I am sticking with my 5 year prediction for an auto pilot Jetta.
nxzero 10y ago
Back then, as now, the big issue is that driverless vehicles have to deal with human drivers. Remove humans from the road, and the challenge gets exponentially easier.
- revelation 10y ago
  First we remove human drivers. Then we add electronic signalling systems, to make the driverless vehicles work in all environmental conditions. Then we add central control. Then we add X. Then we add Y. Finally, we have reinvented the railroad. Amazing. I feel like the fact that we don't have automated railroads (in practice) should tell us something about the viability of the self-driving car. The problem for autonomous rail isn't even technical anymore, it's regulatory.
  - CamperBob2 10y ago
    You forgot the part about spending trillions of dollars on dedicated tracks that connect everyone's home, workplace, and shopping and entertainment destinations. Fortunately, we already have those tracks; they're called "roads." Your incredulity at the fact that trains still have human operators involved in any capacity at all, on the other hand, is spot-on. I'm with you 100% there. Every time somebody wrecks a train because they were asleep or distracted or texting or otherwise had better things to do, there is always a giant thread on HN full of postings from train experts explaining why the world would end if humans weren't involved in fixed rail operations. It is indeed ridiculous that the same arguments -- whether they're valid or not -- never seem to apply to autonomous road vehicles.
    - rusted_planet 10y ago
      I just don't understand, if the vehicle is totally autonomous how is it going to get down my friends mile long driveway that is little more than two gravel tracks with grass in the middle and find a place on his grass to park while missing all the ruts. I hear all this talk about better infrastructure, however what about the places in the middle of nowhere. I see more of the Tesla, with self drive being in the future. Kind of like the movie demolition man.
Animats 10y ago
The General Motors Firebird III had this in 1958.[1] It used wire-guided lane-keeping. They expected lots of support from the road system. In 1956, GM made a promotional film for self-driving cars.[2] It's a musical. There's also GM's "Design for Dreaming".[3] The modern version of such ads, from Volvo.[4] [1] https://youtu.be/xKOdux6Gjno?t=720 https://youtu.be/xKOdux6Gjno?t=720 [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2iRDYnzwtk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2iRDYnzwtk [3] https://archive.org/details/Designfo1956 https://archive.org/details/Designfo1956 [4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJwKuWz_lkE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJwKuWz_lkE
IshKebab 10y ago
I envision brain-machine interfaces by 2025. So what?

42 points by helloworld 10y ago

I remember growing up believing flying cars were just around the corner. As today's children get their driver's licenses a decade from now, they'll think about when they grew up believing self-driving cars were just around the corner.

ingenter 10y ago
There is a significant difference between self-driving cars in 1960, flying cars and self-driving cars today. Flying cars are doable, and there are several prototypes of a flying car. However, flying cars aren't safe and aren't cost-effective. Self-driving cars in 1960 require a significant infrastructure to operate, and can't operate with human drivers. (Edit: Not to mention they don't exist) Self-driving cars today work, and are cost-effective, and it's likely that they will be safer and create a much better traffic ecosystem than humans ever will.
- Hydraulix989 10y ago
  "Self-driving cars today work, and are cost-effective, and it's likely that they will be safer and create a much better traffic ecosystem than humans ever will." Self-driving cars ONLY work on the immaculate freeways of California that they are almost always (unfairly) tested on. Any precipitation renders the LADAR sensors all but useless, and many everyday driving scenarios like "left turn onto traffic" and "no lane markers" are still are far from being solved yet. Any real improvements in the technology will be the result of fundamentally different techniques than what the state-of-the-art is currently using (since this is Hacker News: state-of-the-art really is just an "ad hoc" pipeline that looks for things like "lane markers" using things like Canny edges along with a PID controller for the steering wheel actuator, with some other "cheats" like an over-reliance on human-compiled map data provided "a priori"). An end-to-end deep learning approach seems promising, but the current results aren't even usable at this point. Five years from now, every car (even my Jetta, not just luxury cars) will have the equivalent of what Tesla's "auto pilot" looks like now, but a human in the front seat will still very much be a necessity.
  - gfodor 10y ago
    You're making a lot of claims here about the current state of the art of self driving tech. Presumably google has the best right now, so you must be talking about them. Do you have insider information or are you just guessing? Because it seems to me that the google self driving cars are capable of doing much more than working on "the immaculate freeways of California." edit: Also to be clear the driver assist features seen on cars like the model s are not what most people are referring to when they talk about self driving cars here.
    - Hydraulix989 10y ago
      "Do you have insider information or are you just guessing?" That's a loaded question. I don't feel comfortable sharing my credentials here (even though they would very much lend credibility to what I am saying), but I can also assure you that I am not divulging any insider information. However, I claim that my argument still stands without the support of "insider information" -- given that self-driving vehicle research's domain is primarily academia; all of Sebastian Thrun's work (THE founder of the Google self-driving car project and Google X itself), for example, is more or less out in the wild (even if behind walled garden academic journals). "Presumably google has the best right now, so you must be talking about them." That's quite an assumption.
    - Hydraulix989 10y ago
      "Also to be clear the driver assist features seen on cars like the model s are not what most people are referring to when they talk about self driving cars here." Just saw your edit/addition, so I'm going to add more as well: When did I even conflate them -- even if the state of the art is actually "driver assist" as you've described? Google’s self-driving cars aren’t “fully autonomous”. Without human drivers, they’d lose control approximately every 1,500 miles, according to Google’s own reports. Can you guess how many driverless miles their "self-driving cars" have driven? Hint: It's zero. If you're curious, here is an example of a much more grounded academic talk (read: not a TED talk) from 2015 by a renowned (in the autonomous vehicle research community) Boston (not California) researcher who worked with Thrun that corroborates the issues I've mentioned earlier: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5CZmlaMNCs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5CZmlaMNCs
- ocdtrekkie 10y ago
  No, they don't work and aren't cost effective. But they sure are marketed well.
  - Hydraulix989 10y ago
    If you noticed, one thing I didn't dispute at all was the "cost effective" part -- LADAR sensors are becoming cheaper and cheaper every year. I remember back in 2008, they were prohibitively expensive (around the same price as a Model S is now). Now, you can get ones anywhere from $200-$5000. That's why I am sticking with my 5 year prediction for an auto pilot Jetta.

nxzero 10y ago

Back then, as now, the big issue is that driverless vehicles have to deal with human drivers. Remove humans from the road, and the challenge gets exponentially easier.

revelation 10y ago
First we remove human drivers. Then we add electronic signalling systems, to make the driverless vehicles work in all environmental conditions. Then we add central control. Then we add X. Then we add Y. Finally, we have reinvented the railroad. Amazing. I feel like the fact that we don't have automated railroads (in practice) should tell us something about the viability of the self-driving car. The problem for autonomous rail isn't even technical anymore, it's regulatory.
- CamperBob2 10y ago
  You forgot the part about spending trillions of dollars on dedicated tracks that connect everyone's home, workplace, and shopping and entertainment destinations. Fortunately, we already have those tracks; they're called "roads." Your incredulity at the fact that trains still have human operators involved in any capacity at all, on the other hand, is spot-on. I'm with you 100% there. Every time somebody wrecks a train because they were asleep or distracted or texting or otherwise had better things to do, there is always a giant thread on HN full of postings from train experts explaining why the world would end if humans weren't involved in fixed rail operations. It is indeed ridiculous that the same arguments -- whether they're valid or not -- never seem to apply to autonomous road vehicles.
  - rusted_planet 10y ago
    I just don't understand, if the vehicle is totally autonomous how is it going to get down my friends mile long driveway that is little more than two gravel tracks with grass in the middle and find a place on his grass to park while missing all the ruts. I hear all this talk about better infrastructure, however what about the places in the middle of nowhere. I see more of the Tesla, with self drive being in the future. Kind of like the movie demolition man.

Animats 10y ago

The General Motors Firebird III had this in 1958.[1] It used wire-guided lane-keeping. They expected lots of support from the road system. In 1956, GM made a promotional film for self-driving cars.[2] It's a musical. There's also GM's "Design for Dreaming".[3] The modern version of such ads, from Volvo.[4] [1] https://youtu.be/xKOdux6Gjno?t=720 https://youtu.be/xKOdux6Gjno?t=720 [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2iRDYnzwtk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2iRDYnzwtk [3] https://archive.org/details/Designfo1956 https://archive.org/details/Designfo1956 [4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJwKuWz_lkE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJwKuWz_lkE

IshKebab 10y ago

I envision brain-machine interfaces by 2025. So what?