12 ms·

Google Cars Drive Themselves, in Traffic

436 points by recampbell 16y ago

epochwolf 16y ago
I really hope that cars can become safely automated in my life time but I'm worried that people will start "jailbreaking" their cars so they can exceed the speed limit.
- dennisgorelik 16y ago
  If you are surfing Internet while riding your car -- you likely would not care much about exceeding speed limit.
  - alex_c 16y ago
    People will always push boundaries.
- DavidSJ 16y ago
  And wouldn't they get pulled over, just as they would if they broke the speed limit in a normal car?
- chc 16y ago
  I expect that once these cars become common enough for that to be a realistic problem, there will be some kind of certification devised and cars running uncertified software will be prohibited from public roads.
Udo 16y ago
Yes, they are coming: http://jalopnik.com/5572978/driverless-audi-tts-gets-new-colors-plans-for-pikes-peak http://jalopnik.com/5572978/driverless-audi-tts-gets-new-col... Seems like quite a few people are working on projects such as these. I heard some hairdo on TV the other day musing that they will reach general availability "as early as 2022". How do they even come up with those numbers?
- epochwolf 16y ago
  > How do they even come up with those numbers? They pull them out of their asses. :)
- Groxx 16y ago
  >Rather than cameras and lasers providing situational awareness and plotting course, the TTS uses high-resolution comparative GPS to follow a pre-plotted course at an accuracy up to 1 cm of deviation. Don't think I like the sound of that... >The only trouble with this set up is the car will be incapable of reacting to unexpected obstacles, say a boulder rolling onto the road or a spectator jumping out to get a picture. Careful spectators. Seems they agree.
gatsby 16y ago
"The only accident, engineers said, was when one Google car was rear-ended while stopped at a traffic light." Google robot > Humans
- gdl 16y ago
  Let us all pray that it doesn't agree with you.
  - mortenjorck 16y ago
    I Have No Pedal and I Must Brake
    - natrius 16y ago
      Speaking of being impressed by Google, I wouldn't have been able to decipher that reference a decade or so ago, but today, I can type "i have no * and i must *" into a text box, and the answer is presented to me. The future is pretty great.
deleted 16y ago
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rmorrison 16y ago
Ha, I saw these cars multiple times this past week in San Francisco, including turning from Broadway onto Columbus in heavy traffic. If that was done autonomously, then I'd be very impressed since I have trouble navigating through those intersections without hitting the many bold pedestrians.
- btilly 16y ago
  I'm be willing to bet money that most of the times when you saw them, the car was autonomous.
zacharypinter 16y ago
In the short term, I could easily see the value in a souped up cruise control for driving on interstates. combined with infrared/night vision, this could easily make nighttime driving safer. Also, this has great potential (though would probably generate a lot of controversy) for drunk driving. Imagine if your car had a safety mode that could watch out for potential accidents and prevent them even with a human driver. Amazing possibilities ahead.
- 124816 16y ago
  > Imagine if your car had a safety mode that could watch out for potential accidents and prevent them even with a human driver. Well, if my car would do that I'd certainly drive to the bar more often. I'd want the fully autonomous "drive me home, Jeeves" system though.
  - kijinbear 16y ago
    If these systems can be trained to learn your habits, you might be surprised to find your car driving you to that spot where you used to see the other girl...
- jfager 16y ago
  Some cars out today have automated emergency braking systems. There are also assisted cruise control systems that use a variety of techniques for maintaining a safe distance from the car ahead of you, even in low-visibility situations, and sensor systems that will alert you when you start to drift from your lane (or someone starts to drift into yours). Not to mention traction control systems that have been in cars for years...
- bapadna 16y ago
  My car automatically throws on the brakes if it thinks I'm about to hit something (tested accidentally, once, and it stopped me with about one car length to spare.), and my cruise control watches for cars in front of me, so it will go the speed I set, unless there's a slower car in front of me, in which case it leaves a safe distance. The future is now, man :-)
tbrownaw 16y ago
And in the event of an accident, who would be liable — the person behind the wheel or the maker of the software? The insurance company, just like today. Possibly paid for by the manufacturer and entirely included in the sales price, or possibly paid for by the driver/owner like today.
- alalonde 16y ago
  Either way, expect a discount, at least after the technology is proven. I know I'd rather insure a robot than an often sleepy, distracted, intoxicated human!
- borism 16y ago
  > The insurance company, just like today. Possibly paid for by the manufacturer and entirely included in the sales price, or possibly paid for by the driver/owner like today. duh, of course! The question is - at what premium? Because you know, actually it's customer in the end who pays the price.
  - olefoo 16y ago
    The first few years the premium would probably be much higher, especially since these would be luxury cars and you just know there would be attempts to fool the cars into compromising situations (or simply steal them). After the adoption curve hits the early majority the premium balance will shift the other direction (you'll pay more if your car doesn't have the safety feature of being able to drive itself). And at some point it will (assuming that automatic cars are in fact safer) become illegal to operate a vehicle manually on a public road unless it's an emergency. Also fully automated taxis start to look like a mass transit system, and if Zip car offered to pick you up at your house...
    - Someone 16y ago
      Looking ahead, I fear that insurance premiums would decline, provided that you run anti-virus software on your car at $$$ a month. Of course, there also will be a government required back door to stop cars that are being used in terrorist attacks.
MikeCapone 16y ago
That's very promising. Living in a pretty safe place (Canada), driving is probably the most dangerous thing that I regularly do. I'm very happy with the safety advances of the past decade (more airbags, electronic traction control, brake force distribution, better crumple zones, more high-strength materials, etc), but it's not quite "active" enough to make me feel truly safe (especially because it doesn't address human error). Truly looking forward to the commercialization of technology.
- nighthacker 16y ago
  Me too. I bet this could bring accident rates down substantially and maybe we will also get rid of those insidious traffic jams. But the best part: I'll have a ton of free time on my hands during transit!
dandelany 16y ago
Very cool, but I sometimes worry that the illusion of safety is more dangerous than the original danger itself. In Boulder, where I live, several crosswalks were identified as being particularly dangerous for pedestrians, and pedestrian crossing signs with big flashing lights were installed at these locations over the past 5 years. This spring, a report was released[1] that showed accidents at many of these crosswalks had actually increased since the lights were installed. "Taken together, the data suggests that approximately eight additional crossing accidents per year occur at these locations," says the report. There are lots of theories about why, but I think it boils down to one thing: when pedestrians can hit a button and light up these big signs which are supposed to make everyone stop, it makes them feel much safer, to the point that many people will hit the button and start walking almost immediately, without taking the time to make sure that all lanes of traffic are aware of their presence and stopping. The prospect of automated cars scares me because, obviously, they cannot be perfect, and they will not be able to identify every dangerous driving scenario. Of course, there is a manual override, but I fear that the car being right 99% of the time will lead to such a complacency in "drivers" that, in the 1% of cases where the car is wrong and about to hit something, we will not be able to stop in time. The more accurate the car is, the more safe we feel, and the less likely we are to monitor it as closely and notice when it is wrong. Anyway, I rather hope I'm wrong. I'd really like to drink my coffee and read during my commute as my car drives me to work. [1] http://www.dailycamera.com/boulder-county-news/ci_14859190 http://www.dailycamera.com/boulder-county-news/ci_14859190
- deleted 16y ago
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- Groxx 16y ago
  >they cannot be perfect Two things: 1) neither are people; far from it. (you already knew this though, so...) 2) I wholly agree... as long as other people are driving. Get rid of people's irrationality / drunken behavior on the road, and automated car driving becomes a much easier problem. A computer can take more into account than a human, and decide faster. The transition is almost guaranteed to occur at some point, unless we reach mass transit for everyone prior to that (and who drives those?). It has to start somewhere, and that start will probably be harder than at any other point along the road.
deleted 16y ago
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reader5000 16y ago
I had no idea the technology was this advanced. Last I heard was the DARPA challenge where they were still struggling to navigate traffic-free dirtroads. Google blows mind once again.
- drm237 16y ago
  I would imagine in some cases it's harder to navigate a poorly formed dirt road in the desert versus a paved road with lines, curbs, etc.
- equark 16y ago
  It's gone way beyond that. The Stanford team is now trying to race up Pike's Peak in an autonomous Audi, drifting around corners at full speed. They already are doing trials at 130mph, drifting, in the Nevada salt flats. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exdUD02JryI&feature=channel http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exdUD02JryI&feature=chann...
- _djo_ 16y ago
  DARPA had two follow-on challenges, a second Grand Challenge in 2005 that five vehicles successfully completed and the 2007 Urban Challenge in which vehicles had to autonomously navigate closed-off urban area, obey traffic rules, merge into traffic and avoid obstacles. So much of the groundwork for what Google is doing today was already in place three years ago thanks to DARPA. Google's contribution, as far as I can tell, has been to pour more funding into the project and contribute its extensive mapping data and its phenomenal capabilities in collecting and crunching huge datasets. When fully autonomous road transport does finally become a reality, it'll owe as much for its inception to DARPA, with its innovative X-Prize-style Grand Challenges, as it does to Google. And naturally to all the competing teams who over the course of three DARPA challenges drastically advanced the state of the art and overturned previous assumptions about what was believed possible. This is a fascinating example of academic research, innovative government funding and long-sighted private funding combining to create something really cool and useful. I hope this sort of thing will continue.
exit 16y ago
can anyone see this completely eliminating human taxi drivers within the next 10-15 years?
- gcb 16y ago
  only if they throw in a chat bot :)
  - gfodor 16y ago
    And they spray the inside of the car with that authentic cabbie "scent."
- mortenjorck 16y ago
  I've pretty much assumed this to be a given at some point in the next 75 years, but what's most interesting to me here is that rapid-iterating, money-is-no-object Google is doing this instead of a slow-moving auto giant or even an unpredictably-funded university program. Could Google shorten the timescale for this massive shift to just a decade or two instead of most of a century?
- points 16y ago
  no
mjfern 16y ago
The key question is why would Google produce this technology and enter the autonomous driving market? I think one of the key issues for Google, from a corporate strategy standpoint, is "freeing up people's time." Driving is one of last places where we spend significant time awake without being able to use the Internet and hence any of Google's services (except if you use a smartphone, which is now illegal in some states, and in any event isn't an ideal place to be clicking on ads). There is a safety issue here as well. Although using a smartphone while driving is illegal in some states, people are driving while using their smartphones with increasing frequency. We need our Internet "fix." I am sure this driving technology also taps into several of Google's key capabilities: e.g., programming expertise, its voice recognition technologies, search, and its mapping software (Google Maps and Navigation).
- waterlesscloud 16y ago
  If Google paid me to sit at home, I'd have a lot more free time than if my car drove itself.
  - mjfern 16y ago
    I assume this is sarcasm, but perhaps not. If Google is developing this automobile technology, perhaps it should enter and promote telecommuting technologies to reduce the amount of time that people are in their cars?
    - kissickas 16y ago
      They're already trying with at least Google Docs and Google Voice in Gmail.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- 124816 16y ago
  I think it's more likely that someone high enough up though it was "cool", decided how "cool" they thought it was (1M? 10M? 50M?) and then approved the project.
zumbojo 16y ago
Nova did an excellent (and surprisingly technical) episode [1] on the 2005 race mentioned in this piece, including Thrun's Stanford team. It was especially impressive as a triumph of Thurn's software-based approach over several of the other veteran teams that relied heavily on complex hardware (e.g., those teams used camera gimbals while Thrun's team just compensated for camera bumps using code). For those of you on Netflix, it's available as a streaming video [2], and I highly recommend it. [1] http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/darpa/ http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/darpa/ [2] http://www.netflix.com/WiMovie/The-Great-Robot-Race-Nova/70050544 http://www.netflix.com/WiMovie/The-Great-Robot-Race-Nova/700...
gojomo 16y ago
Finally! A giant step towards 'packet-switched' personal transport, using dynamically-routed, market-dispatched autonomous cars on standard roads. Cancel the bullet train, and instead plow all that money into rapidly deploying this.
- megablast 16y ago
  This is not a solution to much, apart from getting stupid people away from control of vehicles. We still need to move to mass transportation, to reduce pollution, decrease traffic, stop our reliance on fossil fuels, increase productivity, remove noise, free up space in cities, and lots of other reasons.
  - kjksf 16y ago
    While cars that drive themselves are not the final solution they could be a necessary stepping stone to mass transportation. Imagine a future where cars are not owned by individuals but are owned by few companies (or maybe even government, the way public transport is) and participate in what is essentially a global taxi network. Instead of using your own car you would just step out of your home, enter destination address into your phone and press a button. That would be sent to a server which given your location, position and destination of all existing cars in route would pick one that is the closest to you that has available seat and goes in that direction. That car would just pull up and you would be notified in real time how far it is from you. If a car is not available, it would be dispatched from the closest holding area. Think ZipCar except with cars that come to you, drive themselves and you can share with other people while it drives itself (or you can have it for yourself, if you prefer, except at a higher cost). This kind of a network would drastically reduce number of cars needed to drive people around and given global knowledge of where people are and where they want to go, it could plan the absolutely most efficient route. For popular routes (e.g. if it detects a pattern that a lot of people commute from San Francisco to Mountain View around 9 AM on Mondays through Fridays) it could deploy bigger cars (i.e. buses), further reducing traffic. When you think about it, it's not surprising that car companies will not work on a technology like that since it would drastically reduce demand for cars and if this comes anywhere close to reality, expect lots of legislative and political battles (after all, this will mean that Americans in Detroit will loose jobs).
eogas 16y ago
I wonder if this is legal. I mean, if one of these cars went haywire and mowed down a bunch of pedestrians before the "driver" was able to take control, I reckon Google would have some splainin to do. With autonomous vehicles coming closer and closer to a reality, it's somewhat alarming that there appears to be no legal body attempting to define some guidelines on this subject. At the rate our government works, we'll have fully functioning, marketable autonomous vehicles long before it's legal to use them.
- drm237 16y ago
  I would guess that the drivers behave just like they would normally. If the car hasn't started breaking by the time the driver would typically, he just does it himself.
- kijinbear 16y ago
  According to the article, Google's lawyers decided it was OK, because a human was sitting in the driver's seat ready to override the system at any time. I guess it's a little bit like student drivers being supervised by experienced drivers, but who knows what a random cop would think?
  - ajju 16y ago
    Actually the article says the legal counsel for the California DMV 'decided' it was o.k., which is even better!
  - eogas 16y ago
    I guess that will teach me to comment before reading the entire article. Anyway, I would expect that this issue will be looked into a bit deeper once companies start producing autonomous cars.
- modeless 16y ago
  Well, cruise control is legal, and since there's a trained professional behind the wheel at all times accepting liability there's no legal issue. The real issue comes when you want to let the car drive itself alone...
swah 16y ago
It is impressive how Google just goes to new areas with success all the time.
- barrkel 16y ago
  Actually, most of the time we hear about their failures (Wave, Buzz, etc.); but this is to be expected if they are as fearful of opportunity costs as they're reputed to be.
27182818284 16y ago
a novel solution to ending drunk driving
K3G 16y ago
It will take a decrease in sensor costs for this to become commercially viable. The "device" on top of the car is a Velodyne LIDAR system, which if I recall correctly, costs around $75k. Using a sensor that costs more than the vehicle it controls makes selling this difficult, to say the least.
- bruceboughton 16y ago
  You could say this about any new technology. Mass demand will solve this problem.
  - akgerber 16y ago
    Aren't car companies essentially all about wringing huge efficiencies out of mass production? Compare an automotive product to something requiring a similar manufacturing technique with more niche demand and there's usually a huge price difference.
- yellowbkpk 16y ago
  If Google sees the cost as a problem they'll buy Velodyne and sell the LIDAR for $500 so that adoption leaps forward (just like the Nexus One). Or they'll develop their own and sell it through a third party.
ScottBurson 16y ago
From TFA: “The technology is ahead of the law in many areas,” said Bernard Lu, senior staff counsel for the California Department of Motor Vehicles. “If you look at the vehicle code, there are dozens of laws pertaining to the driver of a vehicle, and they all presume to have a human being operating the vehicle.” The Google researchers said they had carefully examined California’s motor vehicle regulations and determined that because a human driver can override any error, the experimental cars are legal. Mr. Lu agreed.
- ScottBurson 16y ago
  Gack -- that was supposed to go under eogas' item.
olalonde 16y ago
Great news for terrorists. Now all they have to do is bomb Google's data centers and kill everyone on the roads :)
- ajju 16y ago
  I am pretty sure the default response to a lack of connection is going to be revert to manual mode with loud siren, not zig-zag like crazy in traffic.
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
- armandososa 16y ago
  There you have the argument for Die Hard 11, vengeance with a diaper.
- metamemetics 16y ago
  Google-skynet is distributed across multiple data-centers, I'm sure.
  - olalonde 16y ago
    Hence the plural form.
jackowayed 16y ago
In Google's blog post, they said that they think automated cars will "significantly reduce car usage". I have no idea what they're basing that claim on. Automated cars eliminate many of the costs of driving--lost time, frustration, etc. When you decrease the cost of an activity, people are going to do it more, not less. In fact, if you ask people that can afford cars but commute by train why they do it, many will say that it's because they can work on the train and not have to deal with driving in traffic. Those people would definitely consider switching from the train to automated cars.
- jfager 16y ago
  Because an automated system would be less prone to congestion, and the average time for travel would go way down. You'd have to do the math to find the break-even point, but I'd imagine that you could add many more cars into an optimally flowing traffic system and still end up with less total running time.
  - stcredzero 16y ago
    If that's the case, then people will just end up using the roadways even more. "Hey, traffic's not as bad as it used to be since the Google auto-drivers smoothed out the traffic. Let's go to the store at 5:00 today!" Congestion will again increase to the same point of suckage as before, but then, only non-human drivers will be qualified to be on freeways.
    - jfager 16y ago
      Like I said, you'd have to do the math. It's very possible that's true. But it's not a certainty. People have a limit on how much they want to drive regardless of how easy it is. After all, the store itself will still suck when everyone decides to go at 5. I'm in NYC, I could hop on the subway any time I want without any hassle at all, but it's not like I do just because the option's there. Transportation is a means much more than an end for most people.
      - 16y ago
deleted 16y ago
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- aristidb 16y ago
  Of course you can hack a human driver without a gun. Just distract him with, say, a bright light, or a member of the opposite sex.
adammichaelc 16y ago
Single page: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/10/science/10google.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/10/science/10google.html?_r=1...
blakeweb 16y ago
If you're interested in more, Brad Templeton has been singing the praises of a future with robot cars, and how to get there, for many years, both in all the futurism un-conferences I've visited in the bay area, and on his very thorough website: http://www.templetons.com/brad/robocars/ http://www.templetons.com/brad/robocars/
Ygor 16y ago
It is clear that one day automated cars will make less mistakes than human drivers, and that such systems can reduce the amount of traffic accidents. There is one big problem - convincing some people this is true, and that cars will make mistakes, but far less mistakes than humans. The problem is there are many people that fail to see it that way. More than once I was in a situation of explaining the concept of automated cars to others, and always the opposing arguments go something like: "But, can you be absolutely certain that there isn't going to be one single case where a car makes a mistake and kills someone". No, I cannot, and I will not. And, of course, once the self-driving cars become a reality, such cases will happen. And than there will be an article in some scandal-seeking newspaper how an automated car killed the father of two, and how this is a what happens when you let science control your life and when you let all those over-educated people do what they want... Or something along that lines... Frustrating.
diegob 16y ago
Think of the millions of hours spent behind the wheel today, which could be spent on Google instead. Maybe this is what they're "driving at."
fizx 16y ago
The thing that excites me about this isn't the driving, it's the parking. Living in SF, it would be AMAZING to be able to pull up to whereever you were going, get out, and tell your car to go find it's own parking spot. Then, when it's time to leave, click that button on the key fob, and the car is waiting outside in five minutes.
akadien 16y ago
This will never take off because Google or carmakers can not assume more liability for accidents than hundreds of millions of drivers can. Technically, cool. From a practical legal perspective, a non-starter.
tectonic 16y ago
Has anyone else read Daemon?
points 16y ago
Personally I love driving. I hate being a passenger. I can see this being useful for some people, but not useful for me.
- points 16y ago
  WTF Downmodded? Jeez whatever
DanielBMarkham 16y ago
This is such good news -- probably some of the best tech news so far this year -- that I keep looking for problems. It's too good. So, although I'm hugely supportive of this, and I think it's possible to have fully autonomous vehicles within a decade, I want to see it. In production. Then I'll believe. Up until that point it's like one of those science stories where it works in the lab but nobody has any idea whether or not it will work with humans. There is a long, long way to go from the mechanics of AI and auto-driving and the real thing happening. It's not just the technology. There are about 17 large groups of people and organizations that need to be re-aligned before this would ever fly, even if it were perfect. This could easily end up like pot legalization, where it's obvious for years that the current laws are idiotic but it takes an entire lifetime to get the politicians on the same page as the public. I'd love to go all blue-sky on this, going on and on about the massive changes true auto-drive would entail. But instead I'm opting to be very cautious about separating press releases from real products and benefits. (Still, it's awesomely cool)
msg 16y ago
Where they'll get their foot in the door is closed campuses. I bet the military could run this on the base and keep the liability issues in the family. Similarly, perhaps a large corporation would license it. Or even better, airports.
palish 16y ago
I'm surprised nobody has mentioned one of the biggest issues with general acceptance of this system: Police will be able to force anyone to pull over anywhere, at any time, and for any or no reason. Even though they can do that now, people still decide to pull over. They are not forced to. And what if there becomes a database that police forces compile, showing the history of movements of everyone? That database could potentially be leaked. I think the privacy implications of this should get at least some thought.
- philwelch 16y ago
  I don't know how many episodes of World's Wildest Police Videos you've seen, but police can already force you to pull over anywhere, at any time, and for any or no reason. Spike strips, PIT maneuvers, etc. Letting them pull you over with a remote command would be a huge improvement--high speed chases are unsafe for all involved and (due to frustration and adrenalin) increase the risk of police brutality. Of course, with computer-controlled cars, you can eliminate traffic infractions and hence most if any need for police to pull you over anyway.
- Cushman 16y ago
  Doubt it. When this system becomes commonplace, the most common traffic violation will be operating a vehicle in manual-only mode.
gcb 16y ago
So, why is google driving cars? what about if GM announced a search engine? Everyone would have their opinion then.
Eliezer 16y ago
"Google is an AI company, they just don't advertise the fact."
- 8ren 16y ago
  http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=324640 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=324640 - the only hit for that quote. I totally agree, BTW.
  - Eliezer 16y ago
    I know I'm not the one who said that.
    - deleted 16y ago
      [deleted]
8ren 16y ago
I think we all see where Google is headed with this: free self-driving cars in return for advertising, like http://www.kahdo.com.au/kahdo.htm http://www.kahdo.com.au/kahdo.htm Driver, there's items you like on sale at that store. Driver, I think we should stop and check it out. Driver, we are stopping. Dear, I don't feel safe having Lisa drive with that new Mark boy. You can just tell he dials aggressive. But seriously, from a marketing perspective, I think the low-hanging fruit here is highway driving. It's a small, logical and therefore adoptable step up from cruise control, just with a little auto-steering (they already have auto-braking IIRC), and perhaps some networking for predicting lights, congestion and co-ordinating with other (online) cars. Start with an "online-only" lane.
jacquesm 16y ago
Timely, I wrote about some German research project that has a car doing a trip in normal traffic in a big city: http://jacquesmattheij.com/Autonomous+driving+cars+one+big+step+closer+to+reality http://jacquesmattheij.com/Autonomous+driving+cars+one+big+s... The google car seems very much reliant on its gps data, in the article there is this passage: "He did [interrupt auto mode] so twice, once when a bicyclist ran a red light and again when a car in front stopped and began to back into a parking space. But the car seemed likely to have prevented an accident itself." Seemed likely is not really good enough though, you have to be sure enough not to interrupt the auto-driving at all for this to be usable. The biggest problem with auto-driving cars that have a human supervisor is that there is nothing more dangerous than having to be alert for a long time when nothing happens. Invariably you will be distracted when something does over the course of tens of thousands of miles. Regular traffic is one thing on mapped streets is one thing, but that 100's of thousands of emergency situations that a normal career on the road throws at you over a lifetime contains quite a few where I really wonder how a 'robot' driver would deal with them. I'm all for 'automated drivers', but I'd like the researchers to be sitting in the passenger seat and to have their kids playing around the car (or come out on their tri-cycle from between two parked cars) while they drive it to prove that it is safe. Overrode but the car would have probably done it is not good enough yet, even though the achievement is very impressive this is not as close as it seems. Computer programs are great at dealing with everything that you can think of beforehand, it's the exceptions and the response to those exceptions that matters in an application like this. I also wonder how they'd deal with liability issues if their driver was not actually paying attention to traffic and the software made a mistake and caused an accident.
mike-cardwell 16y ago
I'd expect a situation to arise where cars are allowed to go into automatic driving mode on motorways/freeways but not in cities. Gradually more and more roads would become available for automatic driving as more and more cars get the automatic driving capability. I don't think people will ever be ready for an instant complete switch over. I'd expect it to be a gradual switchover which takes years.
rdzah 16y ago
Code + howto on github, anyone?
eli_s 16y ago
It will take only a few of these: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNi17YLnZpg http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNi17YLnZpg (volvo crash avoidance failure) to shake people's confidence in these systems.
mcantor 16y ago
Have they tested it in the rain? Have they tested it in the snow? Have they tested it driving on ice? Does it know when its fuel gets low? Can it tell when a head gasket blows and the engine is overheating? Have they driven it on the highway? Have they driven it on the countryside? How does it treat cyclists? How does it treat pedestrians? How does it treat deer, squirrels, birds and other fauna on the road? How does it respond to aggressive drivers? Can it park? Can it parallel park? Does it know not to block the box? Does it know what to do when a traffic light is out? Does it know to pull over when emergency vehicles need to pass by? Does it know how to merge? Does it know how to avoid hanging out in other cars' blind spots? Does it know that eighteen-wheelers have large blind spots ("If you can't see me, I can't see you")? Does it know what to do when four cars come to a four-way stop intersection simultaneously? (Does anyone?) Can it find parking? Can it pick a parking spot that's far enough away from driveways and fire hydrants? How much of the logic is dependent on the car it's installed for? How much work is involved in installing it to a new car? What does it do if it gets boxed in by FBI agents on the highway? What does it do if debris knocks out the camera? What does it do the if car in front of it starts fish-tailing on ice?
- sliverstorm 16y ago
  > Can it tell when a head gasket blows and the engine is overheating? Sorry, how do YOU know when your head gasket has blown and the car is overheating? What's that, your first indicator is the electronic temperature sensor on your dashboard!? My, there certainly is no way a computer could detect that. If you are about to say, you detect it through loss of power, steam from the engine bay, coolant in the oil... I got news for you, you just detected it slower than a computer would have. A properly designed automatic driving system would monitor the vitals of the engine, and pull over in the event something goes critical, much the same way your PC shuts off when the CPU hits some predetermined temperature. Even better, if all cars were automatically driven, it would communicate this abnormality with the other cars on the road. It would be able to determine that this is unusual (it's not just a hot day), and it would also be able to co-operate with the other cars on the road to pull over safely as fast as possible. The things you list are not "this is why automatic driving is impossible". They are just "here's special cases we have to make sure to catch". In the case engineers miss a case, good feedback control systems can often cope for the unexpected event, and in the event they can't, there's always manual control. Hell, let's be honest here- most drivers would not detect a blown head gasket until the car simply stopped functioning, and the engine was completely destroyed anyway. There's tons of case where humans perform terribly, including some on your list. Accidents are caused all the time by people braking for squirrels when they shouldn't.
sliverstorm 16y ago
I am very happy to be an engineer. I would be very uncomfortable turning the world over to robots if I was some other kind of job, but as I am an engineer I will hopefully be the one MAKING those robots, which is the only end of the stick I want to be on when robots reach the critical point in taking care of us.

436 points by recampbell 16y ago

I really hope that cars can become safely automated in my life time but I'm worried that people will start "jailbreaking" their cars so they can exceed the speed limit.

dennisgorelik 16y ago
If you are surfing Internet while riding your car -- you likely would not care much about exceeding speed limit.
- alex_c 16y ago
  People will always push boundaries.
DavidSJ 16y ago
And wouldn't they get pulled over, just as they would if they broke the speed limit in a normal car?
chc 16y ago
I expect that once these cars become common enough for that to be a realistic problem, there will be some kind of certification devised and cars running uncertified software will be prohibited from public roads.

Udo 16y ago

Yes, they are coming: http://jalopnik.com/5572978/driverless-audi-tts-gets-new-colors-plans-for-pikes-peak http://jalopnik.com/5572978/driverless-audi-tts-gets-new-col... Seems like quite a few people are working on projects such as these. I heard some hairdo on TV the other day musing that they will reach general availability "as early as 2022". How do they even come up with those numbers?

epochwolf 16y ago
> How do they even come up with those numbers? They pull them out of their asses. :)
Groxx 16y ago
>Rather than cameras and lasers providing situational awareness and plotting course, the TTS uses high-resolution comparative GPS to follow a pre-plotted course at an accuracy up to 1 cm of deviation. Don't think I like the sound of that... >The only trouble with this set up is the car will be incapable of reacting to unexpected obstacles, say a boulder rolling onto the road or a spectator jumping out to get a picture. Careful spectators. Seems they agree.

gatsby 16y ago

"The only accident, engineers said, was when one Google car was rear-ended while stopped at a traffic light." Google robot > Humans

gdl 16y ago
Let us all pray that it doesn't agree with you.
- mortenjorck 16y ago
  I Have No Pedal and I Must Brake
  - natrius 16y ago
    Speaking of being impressed by Google, I wouldn't have been able to decipher that reference a decade or so ago, but today, I can type "i have no * and i must *" into a text box, and the answer is presented to me. The future is pretty great.

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

rmorrison 16y ago

Ha, I saw these cars multiple times this past week in San Francisco, including turning from Broadway onto Columbus in heavy traffic. If that was done autonomously, then I'd be very impressed since I have trouble navigating through those intersections without hitting the many bold pedestrians.

btilly 16y ago
I'm be willing to bet money that most of the times when you saw them, the car was autonomous.

zacharypinter 16y ago

In the short term, I could easily see the value in a souped up cruise control for driving on interstates. combined with infrared/night vision, this could easily make nighttime driving safer. Also, this has great potential (though would probably generate a lot of controversy) for drunk driving. Imagine if your car had a safety mode that could watch out for potential accidents and prevent them even with a human driver. Amazing possibilities ahead.

124816 16y ago
> Imagine if your car had a safety mode that could watch out for potential accidents and prevent them even with a human driver. Well, if my car would do that I'd certainly drive to the bar more often. I'd want the fully autonomous "drive me home, Jeeves" system though.
- kijinbear 16y ago
  If these systems can be trained to learn your habits, you might be surprised to find your car driving you to that spot where you used to see the other girl...
jfager 16y ago
Some cars out today have automated emergency braking systems. There are also assisted cruise control systems that use a variety of techniques for maintaining a safe distance from the car ahead of you, even in low-visibility situations, and sensor systems that will alert you when you start to drift from your lane (or someone starts to drift into yours). Not to mention traction control systems that have been in cars for years...
bapadna 16y ago
My car automatically throws on the brakes if it thinks I'm about to hit something (tested accidentally, once, and it stopped me with about one car length to spare.), and my cruise control watches for cars in front of me, so it will go the speed I set, unless there's a slower car in front of me, in which case it leaves a safe distance. The future is now, man :-)

tbrownaw 16y ago

And in the event of an accident, who would be liable — the person behind the wheel or the maker of the software? The insurance company, just like today. Possibly paid for by the manufacturer and entirely included in the sales price, or possibly paid for by the driver/owner like today.

alalonde 16y ago
Either way, expect a discount, at least after the technology is proven. I know I'd rather insure a robot than an often sleepy, distracted, intoxicated human!
borism 16y ago
> The insurance company, just like today. Possibly paid for by the manufacturer and entirely included in the sales price, or possibly paid for by the driver/owner like today. duh, of course! The question is - at what premium? Because you know, actually it's customer in the end who pays the price.
- olefoo 16y ago
  The first few years the premium would probably be much higher, especially since these would be luxury cars and you just know there would be attempts to fool the cars into compromising situations (or simply steal them). After the adoption curve hits the early majority the premium balance will shift the other direction (you'll pay more if your car doesn't have the safety feature of being able to drive itself). And at some point it will (assuming that automatic cars are in fact safer) become illegal to operate a vehicle manually on a public road unless it's an emergency. Also fully automated taxis start to look like a mass transit system, and if Zip car offered to pick you up at your house...
  - Someone 16y ago
    Looking ahead, I fear that insurance premiums would decline, provided that you run anti-virus software on your car at $$$ a month. Of course, there also will be a government required back door to stop cars that are being used in terrorist attacks.

MikeCapone 16y ago

That's very promising. Living in a pretty safe place (Canada), driving is probably the most dangerous thing that I regularly do. I'm very happy with the safety advances of the past decade (more airbags, electronic traction control, brake force distribution, better crumple zones, more high-strength materials, etc), but it's not quite "active" enough to make me feel truly safe (especially because it doesn't address human error). Truly looking forward to the commercialization of technology.

nighthacker 16y ago
Me too. I bet this could bring accident rates down substantially and maybe we will also get rid of those insidious traffic jams. But the best part: I'll have a ton of free time on my hands during transit!

dandelany 16y ago

Very cool, but I sometimes worry that the illusion of safety is more dangerous than the original danger itself. In Boulder, where I live, several crosswalks were identified as being particularly dangerous for pedestrians, and pedestrian crossing signs with big flashing lights were installed at these locations over the past 5 years. This spring, a report was released[1] that showed accidents at many of these crosswalks had actually increased since the lights were installed. "Taken together, the data suggests that approximately eight additional crossing accidents per year occur at these locations," says the report. There are lots of theories about why, but I think it boils down to one thing: when pedestrians can hit a button and light up these big signs which are supposed to make everyone stop, it makes them feel much safer, to the point that many people will hit the button and start walking almost immediately, without taking the time to make sure that all lanes of traffic are aware of their presence and stopping. The prospect of automated cars scares me because, obviously, they cannot be perfect, and they will not be able to identify every dangerous driving scenario. Of course, there is a manual override, but I fear that the car being right 99% of the time will lead to such a complacency in "drivers" that, in the 1% of cases where the car is wrong and about to hit something, we will not be able to stop in time. The more accurate the car is, the more safe we feel, and the less likely we are to monitor it as closely and notice when it is wrong. Anyway, I rather hope I'm wrong. I'd really like to drink my coffee and read during my commute as my car drives me to work. [1] http://www.dailycamera.com/boulder-county-news/ci_14859190 http://www.dailycamera.com/boulder-county-news/ci_14859190

deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
Groxx 16y ago
>they cannot be perfect Two things: 1) neither are people; far from it. (you already knew this though, so...) 2) I wholly agree... as long as other people are driving. Get rid of people's irrationality / drunken behavior on the road, and automated car driving becomes a much easier problem. A computer can take more into account than a human, and decide faster. The transition is almost guaranteed to occur at some point, unless we reach mass transit for everyone prior to that (and who drives those?). It has to start somewhere, and that start will probably be harder than at any other point along the road.

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

reader5000 16y ago

I had no idea the technology was this advanced. Last I heard was the DARPA challenge where they were still struggling to navigate traffic-free dirtroads. Google blows mind once again.

drm237 16y ago
I would imagine in some cases it's harder to navigate a poorly formed dirt road in the desert versus a paved road with lines, curbs, etc.
equark 16y ago
It's gone way beyond that. The Stanford team is now trying to race up Pike's Peak in an autonomous Audi, drifting around corners at full speed. They already are doing trials at 130mph, drifting, in the Nevada salt flats. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exdUD02JryI&feature=channel http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exdUD02JryI&feature=chann...
_djo_ 16y ago
DARPA had two follow-on challenges, a second Grand Challenge in 2005 that five vehicles successfully completed and the 2007 Urban Challenge in which vehicles had to autonomously navigate closed-off urban area, obey traffic rules, merge into traffic and avoid obstacles. So much of the groundwork for what Google is doing today was already in place three years ago thanks to DARPA. Google's contribution, as far as I can tell, has been to pour more funding into the project and contribute its extensive mapping data and its phenomenal capabilities in collecting and crunching huge datasets. When fully autonomous road transport does finally become a reality, it'll owe as much for its inception to DARPA, with its innovative X-Prize-style Grand Challenges, as it does to Google. And naturally to all the competing teams who over the course of three DARPA challenges drastically advanced the state of the art and overturned previous assumptions about what was believed possible. This is a fascinating example of academic research, innovative government funding and long-sighted private funding combining to create something really cool and useful. I hope this sort of thing will continue.

exit 16y ago

can anyone see this completely eliminating human taxi drivers within the next 10-15 years?

gcb 16y ago
only if they throw in a chat bot :)
- gfodor 16y ago
  And they spray the inside of the car with that authentic cabbie "scent."
mortenjorck 16y ago
I've pretty much assumed this to be a given at some point in the next 75 years, but what's most interesting to me here is that rapid-iterating, money-is-no-object Google is doing this instead of a slow-moving auto giant or even an unpredictably-funded university program. Could Google shorten the timescale for this massive shift to just a decade or two instead of most of a century?
points 16y ago
no

mjfern 16y ago

The key question is why would Google produce this technology and enter the autonomous driving market? I think one of the key issues for Google, from a corporate strategy standpoint, is "freeing up people's time." Driving is one of last places where we spend significant time awake without being able to use the Internet and hence any of Google's services (except if you use a smartphone, which is now illegal in some states, and in any event isn't an ideal place to be clicking on ads). There is a safety issue here as well. Although using a smartphone while driving is illegal in some states, people are driving while using their smartphones with increasing frequency. We need our Internet "fix." I am sure this driving technology also taps into several of Google's key capabilities: e.g., programming expertise, its voice recognition technologies, search, and its mapping software (Google Maps and Navigation).

waterlesscloud 16y ago
If Google paid me to sit at home, I'd have a lot more free time than if my car drove itself.
- mjfern 16y ago
  I assume this is sarcasm, but perhaps not. If Google is developing this automobile technology, perhaps it should enter and promote telecommuting technologies to reduce the amount of time that people are in their cars?
  - kissickas 16y ago
    They're already trying with at least Google Docs and Google Voice in Gmail.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
124816 16y ago
I think it's more likely that someone high enough up though it was "cool", decided how "cool" they thought it was (1M? 10M? 50M?) and then approved the project.

zumbojo 16y ago

Nova did an excellent (and surprisingly technical) episode [1] on the 2005 race mentioned in this piece, including Thrun's Stanford team. It was especially impressive as a triumph of Thurn's software-based approach over several of the other veteran teams that relied heavily on complex hardware (e.g., those teams used camera gimbals while Thrun's team just compensated for camera bumps using code). For those of you on Netflix, it's available as a streaming video [2], and I highly recommend it. [1] http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/darpa/ http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/darpa/ [2] http://www.netflix.com/WiMovie/The-Great-Robot-Race-Nova/70050544 http://www.netflix.com/WiMovie/The-Great-Robot-Race-Nova/700...

gojomo 16y ago

Finally! A giant step towards 'packet-switched' personal transport, using dynamically-routed, market-dispatched autonomous cars on standard roads. Cancel the bullet train, and instead plow all that money into rapidly deploying this.

megablast 16y ago
This is not a solution to much, apart from getting stupid people away from control of vehicles. We still need to move to mass transportation, to reduce pollution, decrease traffic, stop our reliance on fossil fuels, increase productivity, remove noise, free up space in cities, and lots of other reasons.
- kjksf 16y ago
  While cars that drive themselves are not the final solution they could be a necessary stepping stone to mass transportation. Imagine a future where cars are not owned by individuals but are owned by few companies (or maybe even government, the way public transport is) and participate in what is essentially a global taxi network. Instead of using your own car you would just step out of your home, enter destination address into your phone and press a button. That would be sent to a server which given your location, position and destination of all existing cars in route would pick one that is the closest to you that has available seat and goes in that direction. That car would just pull up and you would be notified in real time how far it is from you. If a car is not available, it would be dispatched from the closest holding area. Think ZipCar except with cars that come to you, drive themselves and you can share with other people while it drives itself (or you can have it for yourself, if you prefer, except at a higher cost). This kind of a network would drastically reduce number of cars needed to drive people around and given global knowledge of where people are and where they want to go, it could plan the absolutely most efficient route. For popular routes (e.g. if it detects a pattern that a lot of people commute from San Francisco to Mountain View around 9 AM on Mondays through Fridays) it could deploy bigger cars (i.e. buses), further reducing traffic. When you think about it, it's not surprising that car companies will not work on a technology like that since it would drastically reduce demand for cars and if this comes anywhere close to reality, expect lots of legislative and political battles (after all, this will mean that Americans in Detroit will loose jobs).

eogas 16y ago

I wonder if this is legal. I mean, if one of these cars went haywire and mowed down a bunch of pedestrians before the "driver" was able to take control, I reckon Google would have some splainin to do. With autonomous vehicles coming closer and closer to a reality, it's somewhat alarming that there appears to be no legal body attempting to define some guidelines on this subject. At the rate our government works, we'll have fully functioning, marketable autonomous vehicles long before it's legal to use them.

drm237 16y ago
I would guess that the drivers behave just like they would normally. If the car hasn't started breaking by the time the driver would typically, he just does it himself.
kijinbear 16y ago
According to the article, Google's lawyers decided it was OK, because a human was sitting in the driver's seat ready to override the system at any time. I guess it's a little bit like student drivers being supervised by experienced drivers, but who knows what a random cop would think?
- ajju 16y ago
  Actually the article says the legal counsel for the California DMV 'decided' it was o.k., which is even better!
- eogas 16y ago
  I guess that will teach me to comment before reading the entire article. Anyway, I would expect that this issue will be looked into a bit deeper once companies start producing autonomous cars.
modeless 16y ago
Well, cruise control is legal, and since there's a trained professional behind the wheel at all times accepting liability there's no legal issue. The real issue comes when you want to let the car drive itself alone...

swah 16y ago

It is impressive how Google just goes to new areas with success all the time.

barrkel 16y ago
Actually, most of the time we hear about their failures (Wave, Buzz, etc.); but this is to be expected if they are as fearful of opportunity costs as they're reputed to be.

27182818284 16y ago

a novel solution to ending drunk driving

K3G 16y ago

It will take a decrease in sensor costs for this to become commercially viable. The "device" on top of the car is a Velodyne LIDAR system, which if I recall correctly, costs around $75k. Using a sensor that costs more than the vehicle it controls makes selling this difficult, to say the least.

bruceboughton 16y ago
You could say this about any new technology. Mass demand will solve this problem.
- akgerber 16y ago
  Aren't car companies essentially all about wringing huge efficiencies out of mass production? Compare an automotive product to something requiring a similar manufacturing technique with more niche demand and there's usually a huge price difference.
yellowbkpk 16y ago
If Google sees the cost as a problem they'll buy Velodyne and sell the LIDAR for $500 so that adoption leaps forward (just like the Nexus One). Or they'll develop their own and sell it through a third party.

ScottBurson 16y ago

From TFA: “The technology is ahead of the law in many areas,” said Bernard Lu, senior staff counsel for the California Department of Motor Vehicles. “If you look at the vehicle code, there are dozens of laws pertaining to the driver of a vehicle, and they all presume to have a human being operating the vehicle.” The Google researchers said they had carefully examined California’s motor vehicle regulations and determined that because a human driver can override any error, the experimental cars are legal. Mr. Lu agreed.

ScottBurson 16y ago
Gack -- that was supposed to go under eogas' item.

olalonde 16y ago

Great news for terrorists. Now all they have to do is bomb Google's data centers and kill everyone on the roads :)

ajju 16y ago
I am pretty sure the default response to a lack of connection is going to be revert to manual mode with loud siren, not zig-zag like crazy in traffic.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
armandososa 16y ago
There you have the argument for Die Hard 11, vengeance with a diaper.
metamemetics 16y ago
Google-skynet is distributed across multiple data-centers, I'm sure.
- olalonde 16y ago
  Hence the plural form.

jackowayed 16y ago

In Google's blog post, they said that they think automated cars will "significantly reduce car usage". I have no idea what they're basing that claim on. Automated cars eliminate many of the costs of driving--lost time, frustration, etc. When you decrease the cost of an activity, people are going to do it more, not less. In fact, if you ask people that can afford cars but commute by train why they do it, many will say that it's because they can work on the train and not have to deal with driving in traffic. Those people would definitely consider switching from the train to automated cars.

jfager 16y ago
Because an automated system would be less prone to congestion, and the average time for travel would go way down. You'd have to do the math to find the break-even point, but I'd imagine that you could add many more cars into an optimally flowing traffic system and still end up with less total running time.
- stcredzero 16y ago
  If that's the case, then people will just end up using the roadways even more. "Hey, traffic's not as bad as it used to be since the Google auto-drivers smoothed out the traffic. Let's go to the store at 5:00 today!" Congestion will again increase to the same point of suckage as before, but then, only non-human drivers will be qualified to be on freeways.
  - jfager 16y ago
    Like I said, you'd have to do the math. It's very possible that's true. But it's not a certainty. People have a limit on how much they want to drive regardless of how easy it is. After all, the store itself will still suck when everyone decides to go at 5. I'm in NYC, I could hop on the subway any time I want without any hassle at all, but it's not like I do just because the option's there. Transportation is a means much more than an end for most people.
    - 16y ago

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

aristidb 16y ago
Of course you can hack a human driver without a gun. Just distract him with, say, a bright light, or a member of the opposite sex.

adammichaelc 16y ago

Single page: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/10/science/10google.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/10/science/10google.html?_r=1...

blakeweb 16y ago

If you're interested in more, Brad Templeton has been singing the praises of a future with robot cars, and how to get there, for many years, both in all the futurism un-conferences I've visited in the bay area, and on his very thorough website: http://www.templetons.com/brad/robocars/ http://www.templetons.com/brad/robocars/

Ygor 16y ago

It is clear that one day automated cars will make less mistakes than human drivers, and that such systems can reduce the amount of traffic accidents. There is one big problem - convincing some people this is true, and that cars will make mistakes, but far less mistakes than humans. The problem is there are many people that fail to see it that way. More than once I was in a situation of explaining the concept of automated cars to others, and always the opposing arguments go something like: "But, can you be absolutely certain that there isn't going to be one single case where a car makes a mistake and kills someone". No, I cannot, and I will not. And, of course, once the self-driving cars become a reality, such cases will happen. And than there will be an article in some scandal-seeking newspaper how an automated car killed the father of two, and how this is a what happens when you let science control your life and when you let all those over-educated people do what they want... Or something along that lines... Frustrating.

diegob 16y ago

Think of the millions of hours spent behind the wheel today, which could be spent on Google instead. Maybe this is what they're "driving at."

fizx 16y ago

The thing that excites me about this isn't the driving, it's the parking. Living in SF, it would be AMAZING to be able to pull up to whereever you were going, get out, and tell your car to go find it's own parking spot. Then, when it's time to leave, click that button on the key fob, and the car is waiting outside in five minutes.

akadien 16y ago

This will never take off because Google or carmakers can not assume more liability for accidents than hundreds of millions of drivers can. Technically, cool. From a practical legal perspective, a non-starter.

tectonic 16y ago

Has anyone else read Daemon?

points 16y ago

Personally I love driving. I hate being a passenger. I can see this being useful for some people, but not useful for me.

points 16y ago
WTF Downmodded? Jeez whatever

DanielBMarkham 16y ago

This is such good news -- probably some of the best tech news so far this year -- that I keep looking for problems. It's too good. So, although I'm hugely supportive of this, and I think it's possible to have fully autonomous vehicles within a decade, I want to see it. In production. Then I'll believe. Up until that point it's like one of those science stories where it works in the lab but nobody has any idea whether or not it will work with humans. There is a long, long way to go from the mechanics of AI and auto-driving and the real thing happening. It's not just the technology. There are about 17 large groups of people and organizations that need to be re-aligned before this would ever fly, even if it were perfect. This could easily end up like pot legalization, where it's obvious for years that the current laws are idiotic but it takes an entire lifetime to get the politicians on the same page as the public. I'd love to go all blue-sky on this, going on and on about the massive changes true auto-drive would entail. But instead I'm opting to be very cautious about separating press releases from real products and benefits. (Still, it's awesomely cool)

msg 16y ago

Where they'll get their foot in the door is closed campuses. I bet the military could run this on the base and keep the liability issues in the family. Similarly, perhaps a large corporation would license it. Or even better, airports.

palish 16y ago

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned one of the biggest issues with general acceptance of this system: Police will be able to force anyone to pull over anywhere, at any time, and for any or no reason. Even though they can do that now, people still decide to pull over. They are not forced to. And what if there becomes a database that police forces compile, showing the history of movements of everyone? That database could potentially be leaked. I think the privacy implications of this should get at least some thought.

philwelch 16y ago
I don't know how many episodes of World's Wildest Police Videos you've seen, but police can already force you to pull over anywhere, at any time, and for any or no reason. Spike strips, PIT maneuvers, etc. Letting them pull you over with a remote command would be a huge improvement--high speed chases are unsafe for all involved and (due to frustration and adrenalin) increase the risk of police brutality. Of course, with computer-controlled cars, you can eliminate traffic infractions and hence most if any need for police to pull you over anyway.
Cushman 16y ago
Doubt it. When this system becomes commonplace, the most common traffic violation will be operating a vehicle in manual-only mode.

gcb 16y ago

So, why is google driving cars? what about if GM announced a search engine? Everyone would have their opinion then.

Eliezer 16y ago

"Google is an AI company, they just don't advertise the fact."

8ren 16y ago
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=324640 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=324640 - the only hit for that quote. I totally agree, BTW.
- Eliezer 16y ago
  I know I'm not the one who said that.
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]

8ren 16y ago

I think we all see where Google is headed with this: free self-driving cars in return for advertising, like http://www.kahdo.com.au/kahdo.htm http://www.kahdo.com.au/kahdo.htm Driver, there's items you like on sale at that store. Driver, I think we should stop and check it out. Driver, we are stopping. Dear, I don't feel safe having Lisa drive with that new Mark boy. You can just tell he dials aggressive. But seriously, from a marketing perspective, I think the low-hanging fruit here is highway driving. It's a small, logical and therefore adoptable step up from cruise control, just with a little auto-steering (they already have auto-braking IIRC), and perhaps some networking for predicting lights, congestion and co-ordinating with other (online) cars. Start with an "online-only" lane.

jacquesm 16y ago

Timely, I wrote about some German research project that has a car doing a trip in normal traffic in a big city: http://jacquesmattheij.com/Autonomous+driving+cars+one+big+step+closer+to+reality http://jacquesmattheij.com/Autonomous+driving+cars+one+big+s... The google car seems very much reliant on its gps data, in the article there is this passage: "He did [interrupt auto mode] so twice, once when a bicyclist ran a red light and again when a car in front stopped and began to back into a parking space. But the car seemed likely to have prevented an accident itself." Seemed likely is not really good enough though, you have to be sure enough not to interrupt the auto-driving at all for this to be usable. The biggest problem with auto-driving cars that have a human supervisor is that there is nothing more dangerous than having to be alert for a long time when nothing happens. Invariably you will be distracted when something does over the course of tens of thousands of miles. Regular traffic is one thing on mapped streets is one thing, but that 100's of thousands of emergency situations that a normal career on the road throws at you over a lifetime contains quite a few where I really wonder how a 'robot' driver would deal with them. I'm all for 'automated drivers', but I'd like the researchers to be sitting in the passenger seat and to have their kids playing around the car (or come out on their tri-cycle from between two parked cars) while they drive it to prove that it is safe. Overrode but the car would have probably done it is not good enough yet, even though the achievement is very impressive this is not as close as it seems. Computer programs are great at dealing with everything that you can think of beforehand, it's the exceptions and the response to those exceptions that matters in an application like this. I also wonder how they'd deal with liability issues if their driver was not actually paying attention to traffic and the software made a mistake and caused an accident.

mike-cardwell 16y ago

I'd expect a situation to arise where cars are allowed to go into automatic driving mode on motorways/freeways but not in cities. Gradually more and more roads would become available for automatic driving as more and more cars get the automatic driving capability. I don't think people will ever be ready for an instant complete switch over. I'd expect it to be a gradual switchover which takes years.

rdzah 16y ago

Code + howto on github, anyone?

eli_s 16y ago

It will take only a few of these: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNi17YLnZpg http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNi17YLnZpg (volvo crash avoidance failure) to shake people's confidence in these systems.

mcantor 16y ago

Have they tested it in the rain? Have they tested it in the snow? Have they tested it driving on ice? Does it know when its fuel gets low? Can it tell when a head gasket blows and the engine is overheating? Have they driven it on the highway? Have they driven it on the countryside? How does it treat cyclists? How does it treat pedestrians? How does it treat deer, squirrels, birds and other fauna on the road? How does it respond to aggressive drivers? Can it park? Can it parallel park? Does it know not to block the box? Does it know what to do when a traffic light is out? Does it know to pull over when emergency vehicles need to pass by? Does it know how to merge? Does it know how to avoid hanging out in other cars' blind spots? Does it know that eighteen-wheelers have large blind spots ("If you can't see me, I can't see you")? Does it know what to do when four cars come to a four-way stop intersection simultaneously? (Does anyone?) Can it find parking? Can it pick a parking spot that's far enough away from driveways and fire hydrants? How much of the logic is dependent on the car it's installed for? How much work is involved in installing it to a new car? What does it do if it gets boxed in by FBI agents on the highway? What does it do if debris knocks out the camera? What does it do the if car in front of it starts fish-tailing on ice?

sliverstorm 16y ago
> Can it tell when a head gasket blows and the engine is overheating? Sorry, how do YOU know when your head gasket has blown and the car is overheating? What's that, your first indicator is the electronic temperature sensor on your dashboard!? My, there certainly is no way a computer could detect that. If you are about to say, you detect it through loss of power, steam from the engine bay, coolant in the oil... I got news for you, you just detected it slower than a computer would have. A properly designed automatic driving system would monitor the vitals of the engine, and pull over in the event something goes critical, much the same way your PC shuts off when the CPU hits some predetermined temperature. Even better, if all cars were automatically driven, it would communicate this abnormality with the other cars on the road. It would be able to determine that this is unusual (it's not just a hot day), and it would also be able to co-operate with the other cars on the road to pull over safely as fast as possible. The things you list are not "this is why automatic driving is impossible". They are just "here's special cases we have to make sure to catch". In the case engineers miss a case, good feedback control systems can often cope for the unexpected event, and in the event they can't, there's always manual control. Hell, let's be honest here- most drivers would not detect a blown head gasket until the car simply stopped functioning, and the engine was completely destroyed anyway. There's tons of case where humans perform terribly, including some on your list. Accidents are caused all the time by people braking for squirrels when they shouldn't.

sliverstorm 16y ago

I am very happy to be an engineer. I would be very uncomfortable turning the world over to robots if I was some other kind of job, but as I am an engineer I will hopefully be the one MAKING those robots, which is the only end of the stick I want to be on when robots reach the critical point in taking care of us.