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One thing I have never understood about the driverless vision is how it seems to ignore economically significant problems like (a) traffic congestion and (b) ex

One thing I have never understood about the driverless vision is how it seems to ignore economically significant problems like (a) traffic congestion and (b) extremely inefficient energy use in transportation, especially personal vehicles. Just looking at the first problem, a four lane highway is a four lane highway, regardless of how vehicles comport themselves. It seems more productive to solve congestion by getting at least some of the vehicles off the ground using emerging passenger drone technology. [0] That incidentally looks like an easier place to attack automation as there are fewer corner cases. Commercial aircraft achieved high levels of automated flight decades ago. [0] https://www.dezeen.com/2017/04/28/kitty-hawk-prototype-personal-aircraft-flies-over-water-transport-design-technology/ https://www.dezeen.com/2017/04/28/kitty-hawk-prototype-perso...

falcolas 8y ago
Automation for flight is easier because there is a central authority controlling all (major) flights. Airspace and behavior therein is very tightly regulated, and the automation has a lot of dependencies upon extra-vehicular infrastructure (navigation aids, approach radio beacons, etc). There's also relatively few planes in the air at any given time. Scaling that up would not be trivial. As for that Kittyhawk prototype - one prop failure at altitude and the pilot is dead. There's a reason they're testing over water at very low altitudes. Quadcopters have a very bad failure mode: they always crash. You want at least six motors, if not more, to avoid a crash every time a single motor fails. But, of course, more motors requires more battery power, which raises the weight, which makes it less maneuverable, and so forth. From a pure "worst case failure mode" ground traffic is a better first automation target for moving small quantities of people.
- hodgesrm 8y ago
  You are right that it's not an easy problem to solve but I think you would also agree the economic incentives are there and you don't necessarily have to have people in the vehicles to see improvements on the problems I cited above. Amazon's scheme for drone delivery seemed kind of crazy at first glance but it does have some sound economics behind it. Here's a reference that seems to have a reasonably balanced view: http://thedronegirl.com/2017/05/07/drone-delivery-economics-amazon-drones/ http://thedronegirl.com/2017/05/07/drone-delivery-economics-...
dragonwriter 8y ago
> One thing I have never understood about the driverless vision is how it seems to ignore economically significant problems like (a) traffic congestion Capacity is a function of maximum density at speed, which both consistency of behaviour and speed and accuracy of detection and reaction have a role in setting. Automated driving — if it is exclusive — addresses congestion (provided added “deadhead” runs don't offset max density gains), and that's always been part of the self-driving vision, even back when it was about “smart roads” and not smart cars on dumb roads. > (b) extremely inefficient energy use in transportation, especially personal vehicles. Self-driving might help address that, too, as it allows lower friction exchanges between local personal transport and higher capacity—and higher efficiency—shared long-range transport.
glenra 8y ago
> Just looking at the first problem, a four lane highway is a four lane highway, regardless of how vehicles comport themselves. Lanes are as wide as they are and following distances are as long as they are because people are terrible at driving. A mostly-driverless 4-lane highway could more than double capacity just by reducing following distances when computers rather than human beings are making the decision when to brake and how hard to brake. Humans also cause traffic jams by causing accidents or rubbernecking at accidents - that'll get better too.
- hodgesrm 8y ago
  This would need some modeling to prove that you actually get that level of efficiency. Autonomous vehicles have a brownfield problem in that they would have to share the road capacity with conventional vehicles for a fair distance into the future. That consideration alone would likely reduce the efficiency gain considerably. On the other hand if you could distribute traffic flow vertically the potential for scaling goes up considerably. It's a hard problem to solve (read: expensive) but building roads is not exactly cheap either. BTW I'm not against autonomous vehicles. It would be great if they worked. But I think we're more likely to see near-term investment payoffs using it for incremental safety improvements, something that already seems to be happening.
- chopin 8y ago
  The basic problem is that generally more capacity invites more traffic. This isn't solved with autonomous vehicles. As well I expect more empty traffic. Example: I currently drive to work 20km. As my wife needs occasionally as well, we have two. With an autonomous car we could forgo one and I send it back after I arrive at work. In the evening it'll pick me up again.
  - glenra 8y ago
    In cities a substantial fraction of traffic is people circling the block trying to find parking near their destination and some fraction of traffic holdups is from people stopping in a lane while waiting for somebody else to pull out of a parking space. These problems are substantially reduced with autonomous vehicles. Instead of slowly going around the block looking for a parking spot, you get out at your destination and the car drives away to some place where parking is cheap and a spot is known to be available. (When you need to leave, you tell the car via an app and it comes back to get you.) Self-driving cars can park far more densely without fear of being blocked in and can park inconveniently far away while still being reasonably available. Thus cities will need less on-street or near-street parking and can reclaim a lot of that space for traffic or transit or bikes or people or commerce. If your wife only occasionally needs a car, couldn't she call a local on-demand one - an automated uber? That seems cheaper than paying to send an empty car on two daily 20km trips...
tonyedgecombe 8y ago
I wouldn't be surprised to see it make congestion worse, that one hour journey to work that was unacceptable before might become bearable if you can read a book or surf the web during your trip.

falcolas 8y ago

Automation for flight is easier because there is a central authority controlling all (major) flights. Airspace and behavior therein is very tightly regulated, and the automation has a lot of dependencies upon extra-vehicular infrastructure (navigation aids, approach radio beacons, etc). There's also relatively few planes in the air at any given time. Scaling that up would not be trivial. As for that Kittyhawk prototype - one prop failure at altitude and the pilot is dead. There's a reason they're testing over water at very low altitudes. Quadcopters have a very bad failure mode: they always crash. You want at least six motors, if not more, to avoid a crash every time a single motor fails. But, of course, more motors requires more battery power, which raises the weight, which makes it less maneuverable, and so forth. From a pure "worst case failure mode" ground traffic is a better first automation target for moving small quantities of people.

hodgesrm 8y ago
You are right that it's not an easy problem to solve but I think you would also agree the economic incentives are there and you don't necessarily have to have people in the vehicles to see improvements on the problems I cited above. Amazon's scheme for drone delivery seemed kind of crazy at first glance but it does have some sound economics behind it. Here's a reference that seems to have a reasonably balanced view: http://thedronegirl.com/2017/05/07/drone-delivery-economics-amazon-drones/ http://thedronegirl.com/2017/05/07/drone-delivery-economics-...

dragonwriter 8y ago

> One thing I have never understood about the driverless vision is how it seems to ignore economically significant problems like (a) traffic congestion Capacity is a function of maximum density at speed, which both consistency of behaviour and speed and accuracy of detection and reaction have a role in setting. Automated driving — if it is exclusive — addresses congestion (provided added “deadhead” runs don't offset max density gains), and that's always been part of the self-driving vision, even back when it was about “smart roads” and not smart cars on dumb roads. > (b) extremely inefficient energy use in transportation, especially personal vehicles. Self-driving might help address that, too, as it allows lower friction exchanges between local personal transport and higher capacity—and higher efficiency—shared long-range transport.

glenra 8y ago

> Just looking at the first problem, a four lane highway is a four lane highway, regardless of how vehicles comport themselves. Lanes are as wide as they are and following distances are as long as they are because people are terrible at driving. A mostly-driverless 4-lane highway could more than double capacity just by reducing following distances when computers rather than human beings are making the decision when to brake and how hard to brake. Humans also cause traffic jams by causing accidents or rubbernecking at accidents - that'll get better too.

hodgesrm 8y ago
This would need some modeling to prove that you actually get that level of efficiency. Autonomous vehicles have a brownfield problem in that they would have to share the road capacity with conventional vehicles for a fair distance into the future. That consideration alone would likely reduce the efficiency gain considerably. On the other hand if you could distribute traffic flow vertically the potential for scaling goes up considerably. It's a hard problem to solve (read: expensive) but building roads is not exactly cheap either. BTW I'm not against autonomous vehicles. It would be great if they worked. But I think we're more likely to see near-term investment payoffs using it for incremental safety improvements, something that already seems to be happening.
chopin 8y ago
The basic problem is that generally more capacity invites more traffic. This isn't solved with autonomous vehicles. As well I expect more empty traffic. Example: I currently drive to work 20km. As my wife needs occasionally as well, we have two. With an autonomous car we could forgo one and I send it back after I arrive at work. In the evening it'll pick me up again.
- glenra 8y ago
  In cities a substantial fraction of traffic is people circling the block trying to find parking near their destination and some fraction of traffic holdups is from people stopping in a lane while waiting for somebody else to pull out of a parking space. These problems are substantially reduced with autonomous vehicles. Instead of slowly going around the block looking for a parking spot, you get out at your destination and the car drives away to some place where parking is cheap and a spot is known to be available. (When you need to leave, you tell the car via an app and it comes back to get you.) Self-driving cars can park far more densely without fear of being blocked in and can park inconveniently far away while still being reasonably available. Thus cities will need less on-street or near-street parking and can reclaim a lot of that space for traffic or transit or bikes or people or commerce. If your wife only occasionally needs a car, couldn't she call a local on-demand one - an automated uber? That seems cheaper than paying to send an empty car on two daily 20km trips...

tonyedgecombe 8y ago

I wouldn't be surprised to see it make congestion worse, that one hour journey to work that was unacceptable before might become bearable if you can read a book or surf the web during your trip.