10 ms·
Google demos driverless cars
- zitterbewegung 16y agoI would really like this on top gear and compare it to the other drivers on their closed course. I wonder how well it would do in their celebrity challenge that they do every episode?
- MikeHo 16y agoThat Prius corners pretty mean ...
- sharmajai 16y agoAhh so the all the recalled priuses were actually alpha versions of google's self driving cars. I see.
- sharmajai 16y agoOk, I get it there is no place for humor here. Xkcd can do it, I can't. Well I have a great respect for google as a company, that's the company I have always dreamt of working for, and my real feelings about this are that I feel great respect and a tad bit of jealousy for our real life iron men larry and sergey who backed by their enormously successful businesses can work on their world changing toys.
- KeithMajhor 16y agoThis is unrelated to the parent and I don't know where else to ask... What is the karma threshold on down-voting?
- staunch 16y agoIf tuned to a single track it should be completely unbeatable, right?
- zitterbewegung 16y agoNot necessarily there might be latency concerns or even other unknown factors that would hinder it. Also what if its wet or other weather concerns? I don't work on the project so I wouldn't know what exactly would be involved.
- josh33 16y agoI do! Oh wait, and then I woke up.
- ghshephard 16y agoIf that were the case, then Shelly, the car racing up Pikes Peak would have been able to beat the human time of 11:21, instead of it's recorded time of 27 minutes.
- jamesjyu 16y agoSounds like the Watson for cars. It'll happen.
- bpeters 16y agoI don't know if Jeremy Clarkson would let a Prius back on the show...
- jedc 16y agoI believe there are other models involved in the program; not just Prius-es.
- jedc 16y agoLooked up the NYTimes article... it's also installed on an Audi TT.
- laut 16y agoWhy not? He has had them on the show before. There would have to be a reason for it to be on again though. The driverless lap has already been done. The Google Prius would just be slower.
- stevenrace 16y agoIt's worth noting that Stanford and Audi (an extension of the VW/Stanford work with DARPA) - will be competing in the upcoming Pikes Peak challenge. For those unaware, it's a balls out race up a mountain road. Asphalt, dirt, weather changes, and sheer dropoffs. So far they've demo'd the car drifting and powersliding into parking spots: Stanfords Audi (3min): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2UaYIHiiOA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2UaYIHiiOA As mentioned above, BMW did just that a while ago (2min): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50rbUfTYykc http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50rbUfTYykc Lastly (I can't view the video), Google mentioned a while back they've already put over 50,000 miles on their fleet.
- hkuo 16y agoThey already did it a few years ago in a self-driving BMW. Enjoy. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRF_KaWzxq4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRF_KaWzxq4
- moblivu 16y agoIf applied correctly this could solved a lot of traffic problem. I still don't understand why cars don't have a retractable bar under them. So you normally drive everywhere, but big roads like highways are in fact rails where your car gets on.
- alttab 16y agoThat idea sounds too simple to be true, but I'd file that under "crazy enough to work"
- moblivu 16y agoThe craziest ideas are the best ;) and what's crazier: a car on rails or a self driving Prius from a search and advertising company ?
- alttab 16y agoAfter looking at google maps/earth, especially street view, I would say they used driving data from that to feed the car driving learning mechanism.
- moblivu 16y agoYeah, you blend your maps data with a bunch of sensors together and you have a self driving car. It's just a matter of speed and the other drivers + knowing where your going.
- sorbus 16y agoPossibly because the necessary switching apparatus would be a nightmare with modern technology, and would have been entirely unworkable even 20 years ago. That said, it's a really good idea, and one which I would like to see attempted - or at least a good explanation of why it would be completely crazy on a technological level.
- laut 16y agoDo you mean something like this? http://www.ruf.dk/ http://www.ruf.dk/ It hasn't caught on. And I don't see the advantages that might be there outweighing the disadvantages.
- endtime 16y agoTight turns look cool, but they're not especially useful. When they can demonstrate robust resilience to pedestrians, consistently don't think a bird or pebble flying in front of the car is another car, etc., then we'll have something to celebrate. I'm not saying they're not a lot of the way there already - they probably are - I'm just saying that that's the demo video that would be really exciting.
- laut 16y agoLooks like what BMW had on Top Gear some a few years ago. Just faster. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0AYCUSAMF9U http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0AYCUSAMF9U A bonus video about what is more environmentally friendly and economical - a Prius or a BMW M3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKTOyiKLARk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKTOyiKLARk
- khafra 16y agoNote that, witty and knowledgeable as he is, Clarkson isn't exactly the most reliable and unbiased source on the merits of cars he dislikes. Disclaimer: I have an M3, not a Prius. But I average 27mpg.
- mdonahoe 16y agoUnless all cars are driven by machine, the driverless car won't make a huge difference in our lives. You can already experience the magic of not having to drive by paying someone else to do it for you. The real gains of automation occur when a machine doing the job can do it faster than a human. Computers calculate and communicate faster than people, and factories/robots build stuff faster. A machine driving a car has to obey the rules of the road and react to other human drivers. This puts a hard limit on their potential. Now once all cars are driven by machine, we will see amazing changes. No traffic lights for starters.
- mdonahoe 16y agoIt would be sweet to see a time where only a majority of the cars on the road are driven by machine. I imagine them driving in packs, and leaving lots of buffer space between them and the lone human driver.
- Cossolus 16y agoYes, these secondary affects are interesting to think about. Also, if people don't have to drive 95% of the time, people will forget how to drive, and will probably be unable to instantly switch into 'operator' mode when/if the car decides to transfer back into manual mode. For this reason, I don't see the technology being successful until it can drive reliably enough that it never has to switch back into manual mode. Can you imagine reading a book, watching a movie, eating (or whatever) in your car and suddenly the situation gets so hairy that the car switches back into manual? I don't think that would work out, especially if the last time you had taken the wheel was 5 years ago.
- waterlesscloud 16y agoRush hour in major cities would be an entirely different experience with automated cars. In my observation, the vast majority of congestion is caused by drivers either overcompensating for changes in conditions (ie slowing down even more than the car in front of you slowed down) or otherwise reacting slowly. I believe highways could handle considerably more traffic if all the traffic were automated. I think it's possible to see significant gains if only some of the cars were automated, actually.
- maeon3 16y agoDriverless cars are not going anywhere until they can prove themselves 20% superior than the average driver in ALL the following conditions: Dealing with Rain (visibility and deep water on the road), Hard to see tire eating potholes causing damage, Ice and snow (on road and caking on instruments), Snow accumulation ruts, causing car to move unexpectedly, Evasive driving - cutting across a lawn, (avoiding the pool and coming to rest over the garden gnomes), hurricane winds, hailstorms, ambiguous and contradictory road signs, unmarked roads, interstate highway pileups, white-out snow conditions. I'm pretty sure your going to need pretty strong AI for all this to happen. By then we shouldn't be needing to go to work because everyone on earth can go on vacation and the machines will do everything that needs to be done. AND all this equipment has to be less expensive then hiring someone to drive around on your behalf. Naysaying aside, self driving cars will cause a revolution in how cars are used, the concept of "owning a car" will disappear and then single passenger cars will fill the roads instead of 4 door seudans/SUV's.
- michaelbuckbee 16y agoI think your 20% figure might be low, but that doesn't mean that we won't see specific applications for autonomous cars earlier. Autonomy is going to creep into autos slowly, things like: anti-lock brakes, adaptive cruise control and collision avoidance are all small pieces of an "autonomous" automobile.
- zachrose 16y agoA car dealer at the Ford dealership told me Ford is demoing cars that parallel park themselves.
- nzmsv 16y agoLexus has had automatic parallel parking for a few years now. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligent_Parking_Assist_System http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligent_Parking_Assist_Syst...
- sorbus 16y ago
- Groxx 16y agoNot exactly real-world conditions, but a nice demo nonetheless. Maybe this is how they've been able to Street View so much of the world? I wonder how long until we see the iDrive. I'd love to not-drive myself everywhere, it's a massive time-sink IMO, I could be doing better things in the same time period. I understand some people enjoy it, but I don't.
- Lewisham 16y agoAFAIK, these cars are still being manned by the engineers, they're not used in any official capacity. I have seen one on the 101. They are very weird looking things when you look in and see that the "driver" is on a laptop. It's pretty freaky.
- alexsb92 16y agoIf you don't enjoy driving, there are alternatives such as public transportation for short surfaces, and trains/airplanes for longer. And I don't mean this in a bad way, I'm just saying.
- Groxx 16y agoIt would take me several hours to get to or from work on the bus, and trains around me are both far away and quite expensive. Heck, it sometimes took the buses two hours to get me to school 3 miles away, when they're supposed to be coming by every 30 minutes. I would if I could. Honestly. I want to get rid of my car. It's just not possible here, currently, while still being able to do anything necessary.
- CWuestefeld 16y agoIt seems like folks in cities, and some foreign countries, don't understand how much different the transportation situation is out in rural America. Getting to mass transit is frequently no easier than getting to your actual destination directly, even for non-trivial trips.
- orangecat 16y agoIf Google plays their cards right over the next several years, this could easily produce more revenue for them than ads do.
- InclinedPlane 16y agoThis. This is why it's smart to be a technology company first. It worked like crazy for Bell Labs for generations.
- edge17 16y agoAgreed. Amazon's done amazing things where their competitors have... well, filed for bankruptcy.
- InclinedPlane 16y agoAlso a good example. 37Signals has great advice here: sell your byproducts. Amazon was forced to invest heavily in scaling dynamic websites as a byproduct of running a high-volume retail store, it invented a lot of internal tools to support that some of which they've adapted and spun-off into standalone products like AWS, EC2, S3, etc. In the process they've helped leverage themselves into more of a technology company than merely a web-store.
- ippisl 16y agoThere are quite a few teams working on driveless cars. for example six won the last DARPA challenge , a european funded vehicle won did a 8000 miles trip from italy to china , israel is using similar technologies for military purposes, and GM and folksvagen is working on systems. from the other side , google's total investment in the project is a yearly $15 million ,which is not unsourmountable. I don't have a very deep knowledge about this , but my guess is that the big competitive barriers here are gaining enough real life experience , legal and regulatory barriers , and branding. The companies that would make most the money from this technology would have those strengths. this looks more like a big car company than google.
- gChinkin 16y agoSo what OS does it run?
- exit 16y agoi wonder what proportion of the labor market this will affect. basically anyone using cars for delivery? no more taxi drivers, take-out delivery, postal delivery, etc.
- Evgeny 16y agoThere's still a problem to solve though: who's going to accept payments, process credit cards, verify signatures etc.
- bryanh 16y agoJust like there needs to be people who do that at Amazon, Zappos, etc... </sarcasm> Honestly, a taxi with only a Google maps interface and a credit card swiper would be interesting.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- vnchr 16y agoNo more tipping!
- windsurfer 16y agoHow do vending machines work currently? :)
- SoftwareMaven 16y agoThat is currently the most annoying part of taking a taxi when travelling. Why taxi companies are still using technology from 15 years ago for processing credit cards (assuming they even accept them) is beyond me. If dumping the driver makes it easier for me to swipe, the sooner the better.
- Jach 16y agoIf anyone can make this work out to be used by the public, Google can. They seem to be fairly good at pissing off established business. (Though they're still learning as Android shows.) Demos are great, just reinforces that Google is really an AI Company. Where my pessimism lies for this reaching the public even if it's technically sound is that there are a lot of established multi-billion dollar businesses to contend with. Insurance is a big one, traffic tickets are another.
- lojack 16y agoI don't think insurance and traffic tickets are nearly as big of a roadblock as safety regulations for selling a computer that creates 2,000lb projectiles with humans inside.
- stellar678 16y agoWouldn't it be fairly simple to run tests for awhile and give the thumbs up if the average, shall we say, carnage rate is lower than with human drivers? Seems like it would be a no-brainer. And when there are inevitably problems (or even deaths) caused by the AI systems, it's not like car companies don't currently have liability for malfunctions in their designs. Seems it would be the same...
- HeyLaughingBoy 16y agoYou obviously don't work in a highly regulated industry :-) Things that seem like "no brainers" to software developers are absolute show stoppers to regulatory bureaucracies like the Department of Transportation. It's not impossible and it will certainly happen eventually, but it will take years of proposals and studies for a new set of regulations to evolve that these cars will have to follow. Liability is a separate issue that the car companies are used to dealing with. Changing minds at the US DOT (for example) will be a lot harder.
- electrum 16y agoInsurance is easy: Google provides the insurance. Looking at the market share and market caps of Progressive and Allstate, which together have an 18% market share, Google is larger than the entire US auto insurance industry.
- rfolstad 16y agoIs it feasible to see free google taxi cabs in major cities that display ads give you internet and keep street view up to date in the next few years?
- younata 16y agoI, for one, want to stop and thank google for making html5 videos from youtube embeddable.
- jrockway 16y agoThe iPhone has been able to drive cars since version 3.0.1. Google should really be focusing on making lists more springy at their ends instead of this sort of trivial thing.
- nolok 16y agoIs this a serious post ? How does an iphone "drive" a car ? If you think GPS and turn by turn instructions is the same thing has actually controlling the car on a road, you couldn't possibily be more wrong ... Your second point is strange too, do you actually think that a big tech company like google should not try to research new stuff outside of its comfort zone ? Or because one of their product is imperfect, they shouldn't work on another even if they have the ressources ? I hope this was a joke that I didn't get ...
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- iron_ball 16y agoIt was sarcasm. The point was that the iOS vs. Android wars pale in comparison to potentially world-changing research like this.
- kiba 16y agoThe ubiquitous spread of smartphones throughout the world is not world changing? We're talking about platforms that struggle for mastery over an emerging market that will be bigger than the PC revolution.
- izendejas 16y ago"Android vs. iOS wars" refers to all the senseless flame wars that often get more attention here at HN. That's not to imply smartphones aren't world-changing devices.
- adrianN 16y ago
- freshfey 16y ago"Remember the times where we used to drive our cars?" That looks really cool although I'm also interested in how it works. Any infos there?
- chopsueyar 16y agoI want to see how it handles a blowout...in the rain.
- jonknee 16y agoI would imagine way better than a human. Computers don't get scared.
- angkec 16y agoInstead of scared, they crash :)
- jonknee 16y agoThe biggest danger is an overreaction, which a computer is much less likely to do (if programmed correctly of course). Newer luxury cars already save you from yourself when you try and overcorrect, so I suspect this is already a solved problem.
- mayank 16y agoThis is amazing. I remember an old CMU paper from 1996 about AI driven cars being one of the reasons I decided to go to grad school. It's a classic IMO, and a very accessible introduction to the whole problem: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.15.4667 http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.15.4... (click the cached pdf icon in the top right corner). I imagine the solutions have moved on since then though. Anyone care to hack up a little frontside car camera and steering position sensors?
- tocomment 16y agoDoes anyone know about the algorithms behind this? Are they still using Neural networks? I just can't fathom how a computer can know how to drive.