6 ms·

Right now, our roads are only designed to be human-readable. But what if machines become the dominant drivers? We need to make the roads machine readable: Road

Right now, our roads are only designed to be human-readable. But what if machines become the dominant drivers? We need to make the roads machine readable: Road signs redesigned 'QR Code' style, maybe even some kind of wireless broadcast system to communicate traffic light changes.

treis 5y ago
From anywhere to anywhere is also an unnecessarily lofty goal. Bringing me to the front of a store in a strip mall is nice, but dropping me off at the street is good enough. Even doing enough streets in a city to pickup/dropoff within 1/4 mile would be revolutionary.
KaoruAoiShiho 5y ago
We can... but it's not needed at the rate things are going. AI will be able to understand almost everything humans can and it's way cheaper to not have to rebuild things for machines.
aetherson 5y ago
I don't think that reading the signs and the traffic lights is the significant challenge here.
arijun 5y ago
I work in the area. I would say the static stuff that’s hard is stuff that’s also hard for human drivers, like poor lane markers or ambiguous signage. So I’m not sure that QR codes will help—-just fix the signage.
- sharken 5y ago
  That makes a lot of sense, on a highway with three lanes, I'm always making sure to not merge to the middle lane, if there is a car on the opposite lane, to name another situation. The hard question which really has nothing to do with the tech, is what we do if a self driving car kills a person. Made worse if the accident could be avoided by the majority of human drivers.
  - trhway 5y ago
    >The hard question which really has nothing to do with the tech, is what we do if a self driving car kills a person. Made worse if the accident could be avoided by the majority of human drivers. we have already had exactly such a case - Uber. Even though Uber was totally negligent, nothing happened to them, beside probably some settlement behind the scene. In part they were able to wiggle it by showing a bad dynamic range video (which is completely different from how human eyes see in such situation) there the victim appears as if out of nowhere. I think that case just sets the pattern that the autonomous vehicles will not be judged according to human driver standard.
    - UncleEntity 5y ago
      Nah, they just threw the safety driver under the bus…apparently being charged with (negligent?) homicide. Buying a governor really payed off for them it turned out.
      - sharken 5y ago
        Quite right, the Uber case is here: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-54175359 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-54175359 So what happens with the human driver (you) if the same accident happens ? If the Uber case sets the standard, then negligent homicide is a likely charge. The sentence for that in the US is "A minimum of 4 years in prison and up to a maximum of 8 years in prison" according to this link: https://www.feldmanroyle.com/homicide/negligent-homicide/ https://www.feldmanroyle.com/homicide/negligent-homicide/ You better hope you can explain it was a bug in the software in this situation.
acdha 5y ago
That’s really expensive on top of the inherent inefficiency of cars: you’re paying a ton of money for something which uses a lot of energy and pollution (yes, even BEVs) to carry slightly over one person on average. Rebuilding the road system won’t change that or make climate change go away, especially since you’d need a lengthy transition period. What might make sense is limited deployment in areas where the problem can be constrained: dedicated bus routes, truck convoy lanes on an interstate, etc. For the rest of it we should be focusing on how to get people out of cars since even BEVs pollute far more than buses, rail, bicycles, or walking.
- bluetonium 5y ago
  I've always wondered whether it would be possible to have some kind of compartmentalized bus. Some kind of compromise between asking people to cram themselves like sardines against a bunch of strangers, while still allowing people to sit next to their family members and friends. It's convenient to say a desire to not jam up close to strangers implicates its holder in some terrible character flaw of not caring for ones fellow human. But if you really want to get more people on buses it's a desire we'll have to accommodate and contend with.
  - prova_modena 5y ago
    You're describing a system that is operating beyond capacity. There's no special fix required other than increasing capacity, by adding more buses to existing routes or new routes. There may be political issues with allocating funding or getting authorities to acknowledge/address lack of capacity. But it's not something that requires redesigning the bus.
- mike_d 5y ago
  Energy consumption is a factor of distance. "Get people out of cars" in inherently implying removing the fundamental right to freedom of movement and living a better life. Cars have done more to equalize rural populations and give them a quality of life closer to city dwellers than any other modern invention maybe short of publicly funded water and power infrastructure. I'd highly encourage you to move to the middle of the country and live a 30 minute drive outside of town (because that is all you can afford). You'll quickly realize that super bad evil cars are the means by which a good percentage of the population has access to fresh food, medical care, and other basic needs.
DasIch 5y ago
Machine readable roads already exist. They are called train tracks and are already used by autonomous trains. They also allow for far more energy and space efficient transport with better throughput than cars.
rcxdude 5y ago
Reading signs is the really, really easy part. If your vision system can't read and recognise the signs and signals reliably, it's not even beginning to solve the other problems. Trying to adapt the roads to make this part easier is a terrible return on investment. 99% of what you could do to make roads easier to use for self-driving cars is basic maintenance: making sure the signs, markings, and signals remain clearly visible, which also helps improve the performance of human drivers.
- 8note 5y ago
  Hmm. Reading signs automatically could be added to human driven cars, I think. Eg. Putting the current speed limit on the speedometer
  - sega_sai 5y ago
    That already exists. I.e. I know for sure in the UK some Toyotas have it (even pretty cheap ones).
ysavir 5y ago
What if we put some metal railings on the ground and had the cars follow them?
ulnarkressty 5y ago
I remember watching a documentary on Discovery in the early 90s where they showed a motorcade of 10 Audis closely following each other using radar and some magnetic markers embedded in the road surface. They could maneuver within inches of one another, stop on a dime etc. I wonder how much embedding such passive markers into the new roads would have cost compared to the amount of money pumped into autonomous driving companies so far.

treis 5y ago

From anywhere to anywhere is also an unnecessarily lofty goal. Bringing me to the front of a store in a strip mall is nice, but dropping me off at the street is good enough. Even doing enough streets in a city to pickup/dropoff within 1/4 mile would be revolutionary.

KaoruAoiShiho 5y ago

We can... but it's not needed at the rate things are going. AI will be able to understand almost everything humans can and it's way cheaper to not have to rebuild things for machines.

aetherson 5y ago

I don't think that reading the signs and the traffic lights is the significant challenge here.

arijun 5y ago

I work in the area. I would say the static stuff that’s hard is stuff that’s also hard for human drivers, like poor lane markers or ambiguous signage. So I’m not sure that QR codes will help—-just fix the signage.

sharken 5y ago
That makes a lot of sense, on a highway with three lanes, I'm always making sure to not merge to the middle lane, if there is a car on the opposite lane, to name another situation. The hard question which really has nothing to do with the tech, is what we do if a self driving car kills a person. Made worse if the accident could be avoided by the majority of human drivers.
- trhway 5y ago
  >The hard question which really has nothing to do with the tech, is what we do if a self driving car kills a person. Made worse if the accident could be avoided by the majority of human drivers. we have already had exactly such a case - Uber. Even though Uber was totally negligent, nothing happened to them, beside probably some settlement behind the scene. In part they were able to wiggle it by showing a bad dynamic range video (which is completely different from how human eyes see in such situation) there the victim appears as if out of nowhere. I think that case just sets the pattern that the autonomous vehicles will not be judged according to human driver standard.
  - UncleEntity 5y ago
    Nah, they just threw the safety driver under the bus…apparently being charged with (negligent?) homicide. Buying a governor really payed off for them it turned out.
    - sharken 5y ago
      Quite right, the Uber case is here: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-54175359 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-54175359 So what happens with the human driver (you) if the same accident happens ? If the Uber case sets the standard, then negligent homicide is a likely charge. The sentence for that in the US is "A minimum of 4 years in prison and up to a maximum of 8 years in prison" according to this link: https://www.feldmanroyle.com/homicide/negligent-homicide/ https://www.feldmanroyle.com/homicide/negligent-homicide/ You better hope you can explain it was a bug in the software in this situation.

acdha 5y ago

That’s really expensive on top of the inherent inefficiency of cars: you’re paying a ton of money for something which uses a lot of energy and pollution (yes, even BEVs) to carry slightly over one person on average. Rebuilding the road system won’t change that or make climate change go away, especially since you’d need a lengthy transition period. What might make sense is limited deployment in areas where the problem can be constrained: dedicated bus routes, truck convoy lanes on an interstate, etc. For the rest of it we should be focusing on how to get people out of cars since even BEVs pollute far more than buses, rail, bicycles, or walking.

bluetonium 5y ago
I've always wondered whether it would be possible to have some kind of compartmentalized bus. Some kind of compromise between asking people to cram themselves like sardines against a bunch of strangers, while still allowing people to sit next to their family members and friends. It's convenient to say a desire to not jam up close to strangers implicates its holder in some terrible character flaw of not caring for ones fellow human. But if you really want to get more people on buses it's a desire we'll have to accommodate and contend with.
- prova_modena 5y ago
  You're describing a system that is operating beyond capacity. There's no special fix required other than increasing capacity, by adding more buses to existing routes or new routes. There may be political issues with allocating funding or getting authorities to acknowledge/address lack of capacity. But it's not something that requires redesigning the bus.
mike_d 5y ago
Energy consumption is a factor of distance. "Get people out of cars" in inherently implying removing the fundamental right to freedom of movement and living a better life. Cars have done more to equalize rural populations and give them a quality of life closer to city dwellers than any other modern invention maybe short of publicly funded water and power infrastructure. I'd highly encourage you to move to the middle of the country and live a 30 minute drive outside of town (because that is all you can afford). You'll quickly realize that super bad evil cars are the means by which a good percentage of the population has access to fresh food, medical care, and other basic needs.

DasIch 5y ago

Machine readable roads already exist. They are called train tracks and are already used by autonomous trains. They also allow for far more energy and space efficient transport with better throughput than cars.

rcxdude 5y ago

Reading signs is the really, really easy part. If your vision system can't read and recognise the signs and signals reliably, it's not even beginning to solve the other problems. Trying to adapt the roads to make this part easier is a terrible return on investment. 99% of what you could do to make roads easier to use for self-driving cars is basic maintenance: making sure the signs, markings, and signals remain clearly visible, which also helps improve the performance of human drivers.

8note 5y ago
Hmm. Reading signs automatically could be added to human driven cars, I think. Eg. Putting the current speed limit on the speedometer
- sega_sai 5y ago
  That already exists. I.e. I know for sure in the UK some Toyotas have it (even pretty cheap ones).

ysavir 5y ago

What if we put some metal railings on the ground and had the cars follow them?

ulnarkressty 5y ago

I remember watching a documentary on Discovery in the early 90s where they showed a motorcade of 10 Audis closely following each other using radar and some magnetic markers embedded in the road surface. They could maneuver within inches of one another, stop on a dime etc. I wonder how much embedding such passive markers into the new roads would have cost compared to the amount of money pumped into autonomous driving companies so far.