4 ms·

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

by 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
      "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." We could do that in 1985. We used to test our DARPA Grand Challenge vehicle (a Polaris Ranger ATV) at a horse ranch, and watched it climb dirt hills with ruts and avoid ditches. You profile the terrain ahead with a LIDAR and choose a driveable path. You can detect potholes, dropoffs, and ruts. You build a height field from the sensor data and run a planner. The hard part is out-driving the LIDAR range and going faster. You can't profile terrain more than tens of meters away; you're looking at the ground at an oblique angle and can't see holes and drop-offs. We didn't have an answer for that. Stanford's team did; when the near part of the road profiled OK, and the far part of the road looked like the near part of the road, they'd assume the far road was drivable and speed up. We overdesigned the off-road capability and went too slow. But we didn't crash. The vehicle was eventually donated to UC Santa Cruz, where it was used for various projects for years. The remaining hard problems all involve other road users.
    - CamperBob2 10y ago
      Considering that we can do this stuff on freaking Mars, I think we can handle your friend's driveway.
  - wtbob 10y ago
    > 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. I figure it's probably a low-rent version of the reason that the Space Shuttle had to be landed by people: just like astronauts wanted to feel useful, so too do the rail engineers.
    - daveguy 10y ago
      > I figure it's probably a low-rent version of the reason that the Space Shuttle had to be landed by people: just like astronauts wanted to feel useful, so too do the rail engineers. I assure you that is not the reason the Space Shuttle, Trains or Planes require a human operator. It is the same reason cars do -- automated control is not sufficient that anyone is willing to put lives at risk to the automation. Especially when something abnormal could happen (most likely in a landing).
      - kalleboo 10y ago
        Well there are plenty of driverless trains and I've never heard of anyone avoiding them https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_automated_urban_metro_subway_systems#Grade_of_Automation_4_Systems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_automated_urban_metro_... Although they're still generally all self-contained systems either underground or grade-separated (SkyTrains)
        daveguy 10y ago
        That's a good point. When you have full control of design from the ground up it is reasonable to automate. I meant trains on existing complex tracks that were not designed from the ground up for automation. There are not trains navigating legacy systems, because that requires more uncertainty handling than our current automation is capable of. When the track and switching system and track vicinity are all controlled and designed for automation then it is a significantly less complex problem with respect to automation.
dominotw 10y ago
> Remove humans from the road, and the challenge gets exponentially easier. we can solve that with expanding seclusion zones ?
sevenless 10y ago
I've read that bicycles might be even more challenging for autonomous vehicles than other human drivers.
- toufka 10y ago
  Easy. Bike roads. Separate roads for bikes. Layout is much less than for cars, can overlap with pedestrians for last mile, and takes up signifigantly less space and can be used duel purpose with other slow vehicles.
  - jacalata 10y ago
    Ah, so self driving cars will be a thing as soon as we completely duplicate the road network. That sounds pretty realistic actually.
    - rusted_planet 10y ago
      I don't know a lot about the topic, how well do the current autonomous vehicles handle roads not currently on GPS , I.e private drives and such. I now understand it can handle the terrain, thanks for the explanation that is pretty neat they could do it thirty years ago, just curious when I tell it to go to a house in the middle of a 20 acre property with multiple private roads, and I use the term road lightly, if it is actively going to search for a path or if it will have to have manual intervention. I have seen google cars handle well mapped streets, just curious.
  - sevenless 10y ago
    It's also possible that cyclists can adapt to sharing roads with robots. Perhaps by RFID-tagging their bikes, or wearing something LIDAR-visible. At least the autonomous vehicles aren't deliberately hostile, and conflicts between cyclists and drivers over road rules designed around cars, not bikes, might be restructured. The knock-on effects are more interesting, in some ways. A nation where shared, autonomous vehicles are normal would likely have a totally different set of considerations in urban planning. Cars and spontaneous roadtrains can take the place of light rail and urban transport. Inner-city parking might disappear, and commutes could be much longer. You can imagine two effects: suburbs could really spread out for those who want space and don't mind a couple of hours each way reading the newspaper or snoozing, and cities can concentrate and build way up as you no longer have to build parking space into apartments. A more densely populated city with fewer dedicated drivers might have more political reasons to become bike-friendly.
sandworm101 10y ago
The humans are the issue today because they are still the dominant force on the roads. When these autonomous cars start seeing other autonomous cars, then it gets interesting. Android and Apple cellphones don't play nice together. I wonder what happens when the Google car looks to overtake the Apple car. Will people pay more for a more aggressive car, for one that perhaps gets you there that little bit faster by jumping stop signs and squeezing through smaller gaps in traffic. Will the Apple car refuse to let the Google car merge? These things will find new enemies.

by 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
    "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." We could do that in 1985. We used to test our DARPA Grand Challenge vehicle (a Polaris Ranger ATV) at a horse ranch, and watched it climb dirt hills with ruts and avoid ditches. You profile the terrain ahead with a LIDAR and choose a driveable path. You can detect potholes, dropoffs, and ruts. You build a height field from the sensor data and run a planner. The hard part is out-driving the LIDAR range and going faster. You can't profile terrain more than tens of meters away; you're looking at the ground at an oblique angle and can't see holes and drop-offs. We didn't have an answer for that. Stanford's team did; when the near part of the road profiled OK, and the far part of the road looked like the near part of the road, they'd assume the far road was drivable and speed up. We overdesigned the off-road capability and went too slow. But we didn't crash. The vehicle was eventually donated to UC Santa Cruz, where it was used for various projects for years. The remaining hard problems all involve other road users.
  - CamperBob2 10y ago
    Considering that we can do this stuff on freaking Mars, I think we can handle your friend's driveway.
- wtbob 10y ago
  > 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. I figure it's probably a low-rent version of the reason that the Space Shuttle had to be landed by people: just like astronauts wanted to feel useful, so too do the rail engineers.
  - daveguy 10y ago
    > I figure it's probably a low-rent version of the reason that the Space Shuttle had to be landed by people: just like astronauts wanted to feel useful, so too do the rail engineers. I assure you that is not the reason the Space Shuttle, Trains or Planes require a human operator. It is the same reason cars do -- automated control is not sufficient that anyone is willing to put lives at risk to the automation. Especially when something abnormal could happen (most likely in a landing).
    - kalleboo 10y ago
      Well there are plenty of driverless trains and I've never heard of anyone avoiding them https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_automated_urban_metro_subway_systems#Grade_of_Automation_4_Systems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_automated_urban_metro_... Although they're still generally all self-contained systems either underground or grade-separated (SkyTrains)
      - daveguy 10y ago
        That's a good point. When you have full control of design from the ground up it is reasonable to automate. I meant trains on existing complex tracks that were not designed from the ground up for automation. There are not trains navigating legacy systems, because that requires more uncertainty handling than our current automation is capable of. When the track and switching system and track vicinity are all controlled and designed for automation then it is a significantly less complex problem with respect to automation.

dominotw 10y ago

> Remove humans from the road, and the challenge gets exponentially easier. we can solve that with expanding seclusion zones ?

sevenless 10y ago

I've read that bicycles might be even more challenging for autonomous vehicles than other human drivers.

toufka 10y ago
Easy. Bike roads. Separate roads for bikes. Layout is much less than for cars, can overlap with pedestrians for last mile, and takes up signifigantly less space and can be used duel purpose with other slow vehicles.
- jacalata 10y ago
  Ah, so self driving cars will be a thing as soon as we completely duplicate the road network. That sounds pretty realistic actually.
  - rusted_planet 10y ago
    I don't know a lot about the topic, how well do the current autonomous vehicles handle roads not currently on GPS , I.e private drives and such. I now understand it can handle the terrain, thanks for the explanation that is pretty neat they could do it thirty years ago, just curious when I tell it to go to a house in the middle of a 20 acre property with multiple private roads, and I use the term road lightly, if it is actively going to search for a path or if it will have to have manual intervention. I have seen google cars handle well mapped streets, just curious.
- sevenless 10y ago
  It's also possible that cyclists can adapt to sharing roads with robots. Perhaps by RFID-tagging their bikes, or wearing something LIDAR-visible. At least the autonomous vehicles aren't deliberately hostile, and conflicts between cyclists and drivers over road rules designed around cars, not bikes, might be restructured. The knock-on effects are more interesting, in some ways. A nation where shared, autonomous vehicles are normal would likely have a totally different set of considerations in urban planning. Cars and spontaneous roadtrains can take the place of light rail and urban transport. Inner-city parking might disappear, and commutes could be much longer. You can imagine two effects: suburbs could really spread out for those who want space and don't mind a couple of hours each way reading the newspaper or snoozing, and cities can concentrate and build way up as you no longer have to build parking space into apartments. A more densely populated city with fewer dedicated drivers might have more political reasons to become bike-friendly.

sandworm101 10y ago

The humans are the issue today because they are still the dominant force on the roads. When these autonomous cars start seeing other autonomous cars, then it gets interesting. Android and Apple cellphones don't play nice together. I wonder what happens when the Google car looks to overtake the Apple car. Will people pay more for a more aggressive car, for one that perhaps gets you there that little bit faster by jumping stop signs and squeezing through smaller gaps in traffic. Will the Apple car refuse to let the Google car merge? These things will find new enemies.