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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
by andreyf 16y ago
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.
Even if you have near perfect data about where the other cars are there's always uncertainty about other objects on the road: tree branches, deer, a child running after her puppy. I'd speculate that it's better to rely on a vision system that can recognize those as well as cars well enough to be safe instead of treating different classes of objects differently.
- Groxx 16y agoTrue, but once you know what other cars are doing, and get data from cars ahead, you should be able to identify things like that before you even encounter them. A tree falling on a car while it's driving: relatively unavoidable. Cars hitting that car: far less likely with computers. They don't get "shocked", or hit the wrong pedal, and have faster reaction times. And pile-ups due to an accident are often far more deadly than the accident itself, especially in busy areas where automated driving could make its biggest improvement in safety. Deer / kids / unexpected obstacles: can be detected prior to them even entering the road by cars ahead, and flagged for caution for cars behind. IR cameras will spot living things for you, motion / blockage detection will spot things near / in the road. Once such a thing is flagged, it's reasonable to assume that other cars would leave more room between each other and around the obstacle, and probably slow down. All things which people should do, but only actually do rarely, and never collaboratively except at extreme cost and increased risk over something organized.
- rue 16y ago> They don't get "shocked", or hit the wrong pedal, and have faster reaction times. Yes they do. You could perhaps argue they do so less.
- Groxx 16y agoOK, kernel panics aside. Unless they're using a random number generator seeded with outside data, all computer operation can be called deterministic and 100% predictable. Because it's 100% repeatable given identical preconditions. People? Not so / not currently doable. If the wrong operation for a situation were performed, it'd be due to a higher-level decision going wrong, not the command. Meanwhile, people can "hit the brakes" (high-level command) and instead slam the accelerator (command not carried out). And fully believe they hit the brakes, and that the car accelerated uncontrollably.
- rue 16y agoEven discounting buggy software; think hardware, wiring. It is quite possible that a malfunction will take place (they do, constantly). I could go for "fully computerised traffic would be significantly safer than human traffic", but absolutes about the former being unfailing are just silly.
- stretchwithme 16y agoI think we'll need multiple processors thinking independently and reaching consensus before the gas pedal is pushed and letting any single processor hit the brakes (and disengage the gas, of course). Also good would be to allow other cars to request that a car stop, perhaps even communicating with the traffic control network to make it stop. And of course, there will be the Android app the pedestrian can use as a last resort to avoid beng run over that stops any cars heading for the phone. :-)
- rue 16y agoReminds me of a 0.1-version of this application that I heard about some years ago: some guy saw a fairly fast-moving heading toward a red light with pedestrians crossing with the driver looking down at something. Guesstimating the car was about to be too close to stop in time, the guy threw his cell at the car and got the driver's attention.
- 16y ago
- Groxx 16y agoFor many of those below, a rebuttal, and some more meta discussion: I have made no claims that computers can make flawless decisions. I make no claims they can detect / avoid everything avoidable. I don't know where you're getting the idea that I've said this, unless you're dragging in past battles with other people - everywhere I've claimed computers would do better I've included qualifiers like "likely". The point I was trying to make is that the instructions of a computer, barring external phenomena which cannot be accounted for, are fully deterministic and accurate. If the high-level decisions are made incorrectly, then the end result will be incorrect, but all down the path everything will be accurately performed. Not so with humans (just look at someone with epilepsy, or at your own memory), or at least not in the minds of some people, which is the only reason I include it. And, if nothing else, we're far further from accurately simulating an entire human body / neural net than from simulating another computer.
- toast76 16y agoPedestrian collision avoidance technology is already available in the Volvo S60.