5 ms·

Mapping the Road Ahead for Autonomous Cars

23 points by ryandvm 15y ago

dmm 15y ago
What's the point of autonomous driving if someone still has to pay attention? So it's expected that a driver pay full attention to the road while simultaneously doing nothing? That sounds unrealistic. I would think a person's attention would drift after ten minutes or so.
- ryandvm 15y ago
  Because they only ostensibly have to be paying attention. The reality is that they'll probably be eating, texting, fumbling with CDs, rubber-necking, etc. This is where partially-autonomous cars really pay off.
  - vibrunazo 15y ago
    I would guess less "CDs" and more "consuming web content" :-) But other than that I agree. Moreover, partially-autonomous cars will be a stepping stone to adapt people's culture to accept fully autonomous cars easier. Just as we have "park assist" today, that will evolve into more driving assistance before autonomy.
dualogy 15y ago
Dang, this will be the end for plausible car-based games, from NFS to GTA. :/
- vibrunazo 15y ago
  Or it could be the rise of augmented reality car games where you run over virtual pedestrians while driving.
- bh42222 15y ago
  Yep, actually driving the car yourself becomes a purely vanity activity. Except when you build shelves in your garage rather than buying cheap ones at the store, you could actually build better shelves than reasonable money can buy. But it's hard to imagine even the most talented and dedicated hobby driver outracing a computer. Future car games will have to be set either in the past (horses are very important if cars have not been invented yet) or in some kind of special human drivers only scenario. We still have equestrian events in the Olympics, so F1 as a human drivers only future equivalent of antiquated transportation based competition?
krschultz 15y ago
I'm a big proponent of autonomous cars (did a lot of work on it in college, follow it closely now). I don't think all cars need to be autonomous, but I think overall it will make the roads a lot safer once the thing is worked out. The car will never get sleepy. It will never get drunk. It will never be talking on a cell phone. It will never be road raging. The road block I see the most is the weather. In my experience designing cars, the cameras are falliable but the lasers are not. We trusted the lasers absolutely but the cameras were a lot less certain. That's fine for object avoidance on dry roads (or even wet roads with consistent slip), but on snow you really want to be driving based on the road surface itself. Is it loose snow? Ice? Packed snow? Slush? Is there a hump of slush between lanes? Is that a pothole or a bit of black ice? Can I get some pavement under me or not? I find it hard to believe that a camera will be able to distinguish all that perfectly (texture, snow depth, snow type, etc). I think they will punt and make the car just drive 15mph, but that is unacceptable for me. I have AWD & snow tires and routinely do 45-50 mph in snow. But there are other times in the exact same car that anything over 20 is unsafe. It is entirely dependent on the judgement of the snow surface that I don't think a computer will be able to do for a long time. That's just my nit pick, but it is part of the larger problem. It is going to be super difficult to convince people to actually allow it. Most people are afraid of computers and don't trust them.
zmj 15y ago
This is not a good article. The panelists discuss problems that Google has already solved - pedestrians, literal interpretations of traffic laws, etc.
- lotu 15y ago
  Last I heard these were still issues. Do you have a source about what Google has done because I'm rather interested to know more.
maeon3 15y ago
Autonomous cars will cause traffic jams to worsen as the burden of driving becomes much less. More people will be playing xbox gladly sitting in traffic in a town with 50 million other people in a 50 mile radius. if we could get rid of traffic lights, that would be another story.
bh42222 15y ago
Autonomous cars don't drink, or text, or sleep, or get distracted, etc. Any politician against autonomous cars should be attacked for being for more death on the roads thanks to alcohol, texting, sleep deprivation, old age, etc. Call them pro-murder in an attack ad during an election and we'll have legal autonomous cars everywhere in no time. Speaking of autonomous cars don't drink and drive, why isn't MAD lobbying for autonomous cars as hard as they can? And where are the insurance companies on this? Don't the see dollar signs when the think of just how much mass autonomous car use could reduce accidents and injuries?

23 points by ryandvm 15y ago

dmm 15y ago

What's the point of autonomous driving if someone still has to pay attention? So it's expected that a driver pay full attention to the road while simultaneously doing nothing? That sounds unrealistic. I would think a person's attention would drift after ten minutes or so.

ryandvm 15y ago
Because they only ostensibly have to be paying attention. The reality is that they'll probably be eating, texting, fumbling with CDs, rubber-necking, etc. This is where partially-autonomous cars really pay off.
- vibrunazo 15y ago
  I would guess less "CDs" and more "consuming web content" :-) But other than that I agree. Moreover, partially-autonomous cars will be a stepping stone to adapt people's culture to accept fully autonomous cars easier. Just as we have "park assist" today, that will evolve into more driving assistance before autonomy.

dualogy 15y ago

Dang, this will be the end for plausible car-based games, from NFS to GTA. :/

vibrunazo 15y ago
Or it could be the rise of augmented reality car games where you run over virtual pedestrians while driving.
bh42222 15y ago
Yep, actually driving the car yourself becomes a purely vanity activity. Except when you build shelves in your garage rather than buying cheap ones at the store, you could actually build better shelves than reasonable money can buy. But it's hard to imagine even the most talented and dedicated hobby driver outracing a computer. Future car games will have to be set either in the past (horses are very important if cars have not been invented yet) or in some kind of special human drivers only scenario. We still have equestrian events in the Olympics, so F1 as a human drivers only future equivalent of antiquated transportation based competition?

krschultz 15y ago

I'm a big proponent of autonomous cars (did a lot of work on it in college, follow it closely now). I don't think all cars need to be autonomous, but I think overall it will make the roads a lot safer once the thing is worked out. The car will never get sleepy. It will never get drunk. It will never be talking on a cell phone. It will never be road raging. The road block I see the most is the weather. In my experience designing cars, the cameras are falliable but the lasers are not. We trusted the lasers absolutely but the cameras were a lot less certain. That's fine for object avoidance on dry roads (or even wet roads with consistent slip), but on snow you really want to be driving based on the road surface itself. Is it loose snow? Ice? Packed snow? Slush? Is there a hump of slush between lanes? Is that a pothole or a bit of black ice? Can I get some pavement under me or not? I find it hard to believe that a camera will be able to distinguish all that perfectly (texture, snow depth, snow type, etc). I think they will punt and make the car just drive 15mph, but that is unacceptable for me. I have AWD & snow tires and routinely do 45-50 mph in snow. But there are other times in the exact same car that anything over 20 is unsafe. It is entirely dependent on the judgement of the snow surface that I don't think a computer will be able to do for a long time. That's just my nit pick, but it is part of the larger problem. It is going to be super difficult to convince people to actually allow it. Most people are afraid of computers and don't trust them.

zmj 15y ago

This is not a good article. The panelists discuss problems that Google has already solved - pedestrians, literal interpretations of traffic laws, etc.

lotu 15y ago
Last I heard these were still issues. Do you have a source about what Google has done because I'm rather interested to know more.

maeon3 15y ago

Autonomous cars will cause traffic jams to worsen as the burden of driving becomes much less. More people will be playing xbox gladly sitting in traffic in a town with 50 million other people in a 50 mile radius. if we could get rid of traffic lights, that would be another story.

bh42222 15y ago

Autonomous cars don't drink, or text, or sleep, or get distracted, etc. Any politician against autonomous cars should be attacked for being for more death on the roads thanks to alcohol, texting, sleep deprivation, old age, etc. Call them pro-murder in an attack ad during an election and we'll have legal autonomous cars everywhere in no time. Speaking of autonomous cars don't drink and drive, why isn't MAD lobbying for autonomous cars as hard as they can? And where are the insurance companies on this? Don't the see dollar signs when the think of just how much mass autonomous car use could reduce accidents and injuries?