11 ms·

Google gets license to test drive autonomous cars on Nevada roads

197 points by aaronjg 14y ago

splatzone 14y ago
The license plate thing is interesting. Why is it necessary to explicitly distinguish it as an autonomous vehicle?
- unimpressive 14y ago
  So people know to be wary. Not everyone has as much faith in these things as the HN crowd.
  - stcredzero 14y ago
    I'd like to see the accidents/operation-mile figures. I think that will be instructive.
    - MaxGabriel 14y ago
      Mostly I've read 160k miles with one accident so far, a fender bender blamed on a human driver. http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2390602,00.asp http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2390602,00.asp "Sergey Brin, a Google co-founder who has taken the self-driving car and other special projects under his wing, has he wants the self-driving car to drive a million miles without an accident. The company has also patented a "landing strip" for the cars, able to orient it or transfer information to it via short-range wireless technologies."
      - learc83 14y ago
        >a fender bender blamed on a human driver Just to be clear, it was a human driver operating the Google car. The car wasn't operating autonomously at all when the accident occurred, so 0 accidents so far.
  - jfoutz 14y ago
    It's all in the black box. After an autonomous vehicle crash, all of the decision making state will be available so no autonomous car makes the same mistake ever again. Unlike teenagers, which can merely be encouraged to drive appropriately.
    - ghshephard 14y ago
      Even better - not only will the code/telemetry equipment that made that mistake be replaced, ideally the design/implementation procedures that resulted in that mistake in the first place will be reviewed. Given how frequently it will be used, I'd hope to see the same level of methodology we see with Space Control Software. See: http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/06/writestuff.html http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/06/writestuff.html for a nice article on this sort of software. I like the following comment: "Bill Pate, who's worked on the space flight software over the last 22 years, says the group understands the stakes: "If the software isn't perfect, some of the people we go to meetings with might die."
  - induscreep 14y ago
    Ever took a long haul flight? A robot was flying your airplane 10000 feet in the air (autopilot). Why wouldn't people accept something that drives on the ground, at much lower speeds?
- MaxGabriel 14y ago
  Sounds like its a warning for now (edit: I think that's implied by the switch from red to green), and maybe a degree of bragging when they're made for the public: “I felt using the infinity symbol was the best way to represent the ‘car of the future,’ ” said department Director Bruce Breslow. “The unique red plate will be easily recognized by the public and law enforcement and will be used only for licensed autonomous test vehicles. When there comes a time that vehicle manufactures market autonomous vehicles to the public, that infinity symbol will appear on a green license plate.” [1] I think there could be an element of marketing to it, too: Google labelled its self-driving cars to distinguish them from its StreetView cars, because people didn't notice the difference[2]. Moreover, they proudly label "Self-Driving Car" in big letters on their vehicles. [1] http://www.nevadanewsbureau.com/2012/05/07/nevada-dmv-issues-first-autonomous-vehicle-license-to-google/ http://www.nevadanewsbureau.com/2012/05/07/nevada-dmv-issues... [2] A Thrun Udacity lecture I think
  - EwanG 14y ago
    When the "auto" mobiles first came out, you had to have someone in front waving a flag to alert those on horses and in carriages that you were coming. I figure this is the modern day equivalent (and about as useful). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_flag_laws http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_flag_laws
ck2 14y ago
Police drones that can fly around your city for two days straight, self-driving cars that can crawl neighborhoods to take photos.... I am not sure I am ready or happy about this future. Maybe I am just old.
- emmett 14y ago
  No more drunk driving. Vastly more efficient shared transportation infrastructure. Greater freedom for people too old (or young) to drive themselves safely.
  - philwelch 14y ago
    That already exists; it's called public transit and every other civilized country in the world figured it out already.
    - axefrog 14y ago
      Your bus shows up on your doorstep on demand and will go wherever you want it to go? Your taxi will drive you for two hours to see your parents, then wait around for a few more hours to take you all to the beach and only charge you as though you're the car's owner?
      - lmm 14y ago
        I've seen it argued that in TCO terms the taxi (well, two taxis in that use case) is cheaper for that.
        axefrog 14y ago
        Perhaps, but add to that all of the incidental trips to the store, to visit a friend, to go to the bank and so forth and it probably starts to level out a bit.
      - philwelch 14y ago
        emmett was talking about efficiency, safety, and the ability to travel without having to drive. You're talking about convenience, which is an advantage to cars (self-driving or not) but self-driving cars still can't deliver on efficiency, are still less safe than most forms of public transit, and have greater expense.
tadfisher 14y ago
OT: What is Ars doing on this page that breaks the Back button?
- jeffool 14y ago
  Working fine for me on Chrome?
jes5199 14y ago
I think this is one of those technologies that will go from "science fiction" to "everyone uses one every day" very, very quickly. Until a few months ago, I had no idea that the technology was as far along as it is; it seems like they've cracked the hard problems already. That means it's a social problem now - and there's reason to believe that the biggest motivator in adoption of automobile technology (and related public policy) is the insurance industry. As soon as these cars are statistically safer than human drivers (and my expectation is that they may already be safer - humans are crap at driving) then there will be strong incentives to get them to the public.
- veb 14y ago
  Random question, but if every car was driven by a robot, would that mean we could start building cars that don't have to follow safety as much? Like, could I have a wooden box and shove some wheels on it and let that drive me around? I know there'll still be accidents, but interesting thought nevertheless. If they keep making cars the way we are making the hybirds (http://www.greencarcongress.com/2011/06/lowcvp-20110608.html http://www.greencarcongress.com/2011/06/lowcvp-20110608.html) then how will we get to the future? It would be pretty awesome to use whatever materials that are lying around to make a car/transport device.
  - Tuna-Fish 14y ago
    While robotic cars have very little reason to crash into each other, there will still always be some non-robotic things on the roads -- wildlife and drunken pedestrians for one. But while some cutback in safety features would be possible, I honestly think that the society will take the other option. Robots have no trouble making driving reasonably safe at much faster speeds than humans can. The advantages to society for raising normal road speeds past 200mph vastly eclipse that of reducing the cost of manufacturing the cars. So I think the future will perhaps see even sturdier cars than today, just to be able to survive hitting a deer (or even a cat) at high speed.
    - ericd 14y ago
      Keep in mind that the reason for 55mph speed limits is not about safety so much as it is about energy efficiency (set during the oil crises of the 70s, never raised again in many places). Going faster increases energy loss due to drag with the cube of the speed, so I don't think we're going to see 200 MPH speed limits until we get something much more energy efficient. This could make some of the political problems with upping the speed limit that much go away, though.
calebmpeterson 14y ago
As the only adult in my household capable of driving (due to my wife's vision limitations), I'm quite excited by this - and so is my wife.
DanielBMarkham 14y ago
To me, there are only a few "out there" technologies that have a chance to change everything. 3-D printing is at the top of my list, but that's going to be a while before it really takes off. The others are robotics (also taking a while) and self-driving cars. If Google can work through not only the technical but the social and legal problems associated with fully auto-drive cars, it could literally change the world overnight. Instead of driving cars being a time sink, it could change into something along the lines of being in a room that goes places. You could sleep, read, play games, or otherwise occupy your time. It would literally give the nation tens of billions of hours in added productivity time. It could make the elderly more independent, eliminate drunk-driving, and a lot more. Very cool stuff.
- heretohelp 14y ago
  Drunk-driving alone costs our country immeasurably in terms of human and economic cost. Eliminating the vast majority of infractions would be a real contribution to humanity.
  - sk5t 14y ago
    Also, I approve of a future where ordinary people can travel without fear of fabricated botherment by the police. Driving a car has got to be the number one excuse for the USA's police to pull over and antagonize folks on the thinnest imaginable (or no) probable cause.
    - lukeholder 14y ago
      the scary part will be when they can remotely order a car off the road through remote control with no cause.
      - aggie 14y ago
        While I agree there will likely be remote disabling procedures for emergency/law enforcement reasons, I don't see where you get the "no cause" piece of your slippery slope. It seems it would be much easier to unjustly pull someone over with current human-operated cars; with automated cars, reasons such as "they were weaving" or other gray area justifications will no longer be available to LEOs.
darylteo 14y ago
I like this... but I like driving too :(
- ShabbyDoo 14y ago
  No one is saying you can't drive, yet. Presuming that computers eventually are better than people at driving, can we as a society continue to allow humans to self-control death machines in close proximity to each other?
  - jeffool 14y ago
    I can easily see "car parks" just like national parks where people can drive in a range of conditions for the fun of it. That said, I can't see a US society where this is "the only option" for many decades.
  - bad_user 14y ago
    We should also ban knives too and let robots do all the cooking. Also, the presumption that computers can get better at driving is wishful thinking. Good enough definitely, more efficient probably, but better? I don't think so. From a technical perspective, the human brain is the best pattern matching processor in existence and when driving it's the edge cases that cause accidents ... a deer or child stepping in front of your car, bad weather conditions leading to muddy roads or glazed frost, potholes, traffic congestions, human-powered vehicles (like bikes) and the list goes on, with the number of variables and possible outcomes possible being really big. And for instance a processor can't know your safety priorities. Say a child steps in front of your speeding car, would your risk pulling the wheel and going off-road to avoid the hit? I would. But what if your own son is in the backseat? Then I would hit the breaks and hope for the best. But what if you're going 90 miles on the highway and a cat steps in front of your car? Personally, I wouldn't even hit the breaks, even though I love cats, because sudden breaking on the highway is very dangerous.
- rscale 14y ago
  In an age of autonomous cars, driving won't die. It will become a sport akin to equestrianism.
nextparadigms 14y ago
Google should work with Tesla Motors to implement it in one of their models at least. I figure people who are the early adopters for all-electric vehicles might be early adopters for self-driving cars, too.
- rscale 14y ago
  Also, a fleet of self-driving Model S's would make a fantastic taxi service.
steve8918 14y ago
I saw a Google Self-Driving car on 280 in the Bay Area about a month ago with 2 people in it. I guess they already have the license for California? As a side note, I (illegally) took a video of it with my iPhone as I passed by it, but when I tried uploading it to Facebook it was denied twice because I used a copyrighted song as the background (Cars by Devo and then an obscure version of Crosstown Traffic by Living Color, which I thought would have passed the algos but I guess not).
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- tzs 14y ago
  > As a side note, I (illegally) took a video of it with my iPhone as I passed by it, but when I tried uploading it to Facebook it was denied twice because I used a copyrighted song as the background (Cars by Devo and then an obscure version of Crosstown Traffic by Living Color, which I thought would have passed the algos but I guess not) Videos of interesting real-world events, such as a chance encounter with the Google car, are almost never improved by the addition of music, so I'd say just go ahead and upload without music. Also, isn't Cars by Gary Numan?
- lucian1900 14y ago
  How is capturing video in a public place illegal?
  - eavc 14y ago
    I assumed it was taken while the poster was driving.
rodh257 14y ago
It's good that Nevada is facilitating this, I'm expecting that industry lobby groups that will be affected by this (truck drivers, taxis, car companies without this technology, insurance companies perhaps) will throw everything they have at shutting this down so it's good to see that at least local governments are open to the idea. It means that it stays in the USA rather than Google launching it in a country more open to the idea.
- eavc 14y ago
  What I love about Nevada doing it is the tie-in with tourism. If it becomes a staple of that city, you expose people from all over the country to it in relatively short order.
egypturnash 14y ago
Man I can't wait for this to become mature enough that cars can drive themselves without anyone "behind the wheel". I've never learnt to drive, and I would get a Zipcar membership the DAY that happened.
mkramlich 14y ago
this plus the recent Planetary Resources launch, plus the upcoming SpaceX rendezvous with the ISS are all pretty exciting milestones. some folks out there are pushing the human race forward. not just making trivial fadish photo sharing websites, etc.
- sage_joch 14y ago
  In defense of the people making photo sharing websites, they are doing leaps and bounds more than the vast majority of the population.
mkramlich 14y ago
One negative about the self-driving car approach which is inherent to the approach is that most of the hard problems it has to solve come about from the fact that the driving environment is so chaotic, open and uncontrolled. Weather. Pedestrians. Jaywalkers. Animals. Kids. Shopping carts. Bad objects on the road. Other vehicles, many of which are human-driven. Or perhaps automated as well, but malfunctioning. The obvious alternative approach is to create a transport system where the environment is more uniform, controlled, closed, stable. For example, a system of underground tunnels or above-ground tubes. With some kind of train or individual cabins that can move within it. Like subways but more advanced, efficient and end-to-end. Imagine a single common inter-locked system that everyone could use to do both their local daily commutes, and long distance travel, and round trips to orbital stations (via rides in carrier ships like Virgin Galactic is planning, or something like a space elevator.) There is one particular project like this that I've heard of, that has these qualities, called Evacuated Tube Transport. I like the idea of it. It sounds elegant and efficient and scalable. But has some challenges of its own. (Last mile access, industry pushback, safety/failsafe in the face of emergency situations, etc.) There's a specific company called ET3 which is supposedly trying to flesh out and build an implementation of it.
SudarshanP 14y ago
Orthogonal to this trend, is a probable reduction in how much we actually travel every day. Would it make sense if a kid was dropped to a very nearby school, where learning happens by interacting with teachers in close proximity as well other teachers on another continent(not just cheaper ones). It may even be a micro school where just 25 students from the neighborhood attend and have a weekly meetup on a large campus. As technology improves, that actual benefit of being at particular spot diminishes. Of course some professions like nursing/sales may need direct presence every day. For many others occasional meetups would more than suffice. Would we not drive a lot lesser if technology allows us a lot more seamless communication?
Schwolop 14y ago
Since a lot of the discussions here are about the benefits of autonomous cars compared to other solutions, I'd like to point out an excellent Quora question on the matter: http://www.quora.com/Transportation/Why-do-we-want-self-driving-cars-rather-than-better-mass-transit http://www.quora.com/Transportation/Why-do-we-want-self-driv... I am a roboticist who works on autonomous vehicles for mining applications, and I've always thought the two least obvious advantages are that a) autonomous vehicles will increase the utility of a single vehicle to the point that owning multiple vehicles becomes less necessary, and b) autonomous vehicles will increase the utility of road networks such that their existing capacity will be sufficient for far longer than expected under manned vehicle assumptions.
bbotond 14y ago
I'm surprised no-one talks about the psychological and social implications of (serious or lethal) accidents caused by autonomous cars. However rare, I think these will set back their adoption by years because people will be too scared to sit in a machine that makes decisions on its own. Decisions that, when wrong, can kill them and they can do nothing about it.
jwr 14y ago
Why does Google do it? I can't understand what business purpose it could possibly serve for Google. And if it is just a side R&D project, how come the shareholders do not revolt?
- jeffool 14y ago
  Off the top of my head, they're probably the most widely known brand in both consumer maps and local search. While "not-driving" people will often be online, and I imagine often searching for places to go. Also, there's the "Bell Labs" of it. How do you know what you can do unless you push boundaries into new places, which necessitate new ideas? The idea that companies should stick to what they know and that shareholders should expect nothing else of them, is to me akin to the idea companies should be expected to fight progression/expansion for fear of losing the market they have. Look at the RIAA. Imagine if they had more than a legal arm, but a research group. What if they had been looking into audio compression and transfer? They may have founded the first successful online music store, and before Napster. The industry could have its own iTunes, instead now they try to herd snakes back into a pen that can't contain them, with lawsuits. That, to me, is irresponsibility. In pushing for new fields, Google pushes for new markets. And in being the popular party doing so, they're seen as "first" in many people's eyes.
- VMG 14y ago
  Google is an AI company
- patrickk 14y ago
  They could licence the tech for serious $$$ to the car makers. They could beam 50" google ads into millions of commuters eyeballs on a screen where the windscreen was. I'm willing to bet that they have the machine learning and AI capabilities in-house that car makers could only dream about, so it makes sense that google does this (See the Udacity course on the self driving car by Sebastian Thrun). Asking why the shareholders don't revolt is extremely short-term thinking. Googles rate of growth from their core search business is already slowing, this would be an exciting way to speed it up again.
- Lendal 14y ago
dutchbrit 14y ago
I already imagine a scene where the 2 people, that are suppose to sit in the car, are having a coffee break, and the car starts driving off without them :)
dutchbrit 14y ago
This reminds me, even though the technology isn't as cool as Google's cars, of the Phileas Bus in The Netherlands, which also drives by itself, which I sit in daily - see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phileas_(public_transport) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phileas_(public_transport)
pbw 14y ago
The google car is great, but I wonder when will they be able to drive with the visible spectrum only, like humans do. No radar, laser range finder, GPS, or pre-mapping the roads. Just the view through the windshield on an unknown road, we can all do that. I would say keep all the other devices if they improve safety, but to really be a human-level driver I think you need to be able to do without them in a pinch.
LilValleyBigEgo 14y ago
Title should be "Google gets license to not test drive...".

197 points by aaronjg 14y ago

splatzone 14y ago

The license plate thing is interesting. Why is it necessary to explicitly distinguish it as an autonomous vehicle?

unimpressive 14y ago
So people know to be wary. Not everyone has as much faith in these things as the HN crowd.
- stcredzero 14y ago
  I'd like to see the accidents/operation-mile figures. I think that will be instructive.
  - MaxGabriel 14y ago
    Mostly I've read 160k miles with one accident so far, a fender bender blamed on a human driver. http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2390602,00.asp http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2390602,00.asp "Sergey Brin, a Google co-founder who has taken the self-driving car and other special projects under his wing, has he wants the self-driving car to drive a million miles without an accident. The company has also patented a "landing strip" for the cars, able to orient it or transfer information to it via short-range wireless technologies."
    - learc83 14y ago
      >a fender bender blamed on a human driver Just to be clear, it was a human driver operating the Google car. The car wasn't operating autonomously at all when the accident occurred, so 0 accidents so far.
- jfoutz 14y ago
  It's all in the black box. After an autonomous vehicle crash, all of the decision making state will be available so no autonomous car makes the same mistake ever again. Unlike teenagers, which can merely be encouraged to drive appropriately.
  - ghshephard 14y ago
    Even better - not only will the code/telemetry equipment that made that mistake be replaced, ideally the design/implementation procedures that resulted in that mistake in the first place will be reviewed. Given how frequently it will be used, I'd hope to see the same level of methodology we see with Space Control Software. See: http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/06/writestuff.html http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/06/writestuff.html for a nice article on this sort of software. I like the following comment: "Bill Pate, who's worked on the space flight software over the last 22 years, says the group understands the stakes: "If the software isn't perfect, some of the people we go to meetings with might die."
- induscreep 14y ago
  Ever took a long haul flight? A robot was flying your airplane 10000 feet in the air (autopilot). Why wouldn't people accept something that drives on the ground, at much lower speeds?
MaxGabriel 14y ago
Sounds like its a warning for now (edit: I think that's implied by the switch from red to green), and maybe a degree of bragging when they're made for the public: “I felt using the infinity symbol was the best way to represent the ‘car of the future,’ ” said department Director Bruce Breslow. “The unique red plate will be easily recognized by the public and law enforcement and will be used only for licensed autonomous test vehicles. When there comes a time that vehicle manufactures market autonomous vehicles to the public, that infinity symbol will appear on a green license plate.” [1] I think there could be an element of marketing to it, too: Google labelled its self-driving cars to distinguish them from its StreetView cars, because people didn't notice the difference[2]. Moreover, they proudly label "Self-Driving Car" in big letters on their vehicles. [1] http://www.nevadanewsbureau.com/2012/05/07/nevada-dmv-issues-first-autonomous-vehicle-license-to-google/ http://www.nevadanewsbureau.com/2012/05/07/nevada-dmv-issues... [2] A Thrun Udacity lecture I think
- EwanG 14y ago
  When the "auto" mobiles first came out, you had to have someone in front waving a flag to alert those on horses and in carriages that you were coming. I figure this is the modern day equivalent (and about as useful). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_flag_laws http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_flag_laws

ck2 14y ago

Police drones that can fly around your city for two days straight, self-driving cars that can crawl neighborhoods to take photos.... I am not sure I am ready or happy about this future. Maybe I am just old.

emmett 14y ago
No more drunk driving. Vastly more efficient shared transportation infrastructure. Greater freedom for people too old (or young) to drive themselves safely.
- philwelch 14y ago
  That already exists; it's called public transit and every other civilized country in the world figured it out already.
  - axefrog 14y ago
    Your bus shows up on your doorstep on demand and will go wherever you want it to go? Your taxi will drive you for two hours to see your parents, then wait around for a few more hours to take you all to the beach and only charge you as though you're the car's owner?
    - lmm 14y ago
      I've seen it argued that in TCO terms the taxi (well, two taxis in that use case) is cheaper for that.
      - axefrog 14y ago
        Perhaps, but add to that all of the incidental trips to the store, to visit a friend, to go to the bank and so forth and it probably starts to level out a bit.
    - philwelch 14y ago
      emmett was talking about efficiency, safety, and the ability to travel without having to drive. You're talking about convenience, which is an advantage to cars (self-driving or not) but self-driving cars still can't deliver on efficiency, are still less safe than most forms of public transit, and have greater expense.

tadfisher 14y ago

OT: What is Ars doing on this page that breaks the Back button?

jeffool 14y ago
Working fine for me on Chrome?

jes5199 14y ago

I think this is one of those technologies that will go from "science fiction" to "everyone uses one every day" very, very quickly. Until a few months ago, I had no idea that the technology was as far along as it is; it seems like they've cracked the hard problems already. That means it's a social problem now - and there's reason to believe that the biggest motivator in adoption of automobile technology (and related public policy) is the insurance industry. As soon as these cars are statistically safer than human drivers (and my expectation is that they may already be safer - humans are crap at driving) then there will be strong incentives to get them to the public.

veb 14y ago
Random question, but if every car was driven by a robot, would that mean we could start building cars that don't have to follow safety as much? Like, could I have a wooden box and shove some wheels on it and let that drive me around? I know there'll still be accidents, but interesting thought nevertheless. If they keep making cars the way we are making the hybirds (http://www.greencarcongress.com/2011/06/lowcvp-20110608.html http://www.greencarcongress.com/2011/06/lowcvp-20110608.html) then how will we get to the future? It would be pretty awesome to use whatever materials that are lying around to make a car/transport device.
- Tuna-Fish 14y ago
  While robotic cars have very little reason to crash into each other, there will still always be some non-robotic things on the roads -- wildlife and drunken pedestrians for one. But while some cutback in safety features would be possible, I honestly think that the society will take the other option. Robots have no trouble making driving reasonably safe at much faster speeds than humans can. The advantages to society for raising normal road speeds past 200mph vastly eclipse that of reducing the cost of manufacturing the cars. So I think the future will perhaps see even sturdier cars than today, just to be able to survive hitting a deer (or even a cat) at high speed.
  - ericd 14y ago
    Keep in mind that the reason for 55mph speed limits is not about safety so much as it is about energy efficiency (set during the oil crises of the 70s, never raised again in many places). Going faster increases energy loss due to drag with the cube of the speed, so I don't think we're going to see 200 MPH speed limits until we get something much more energy efficient. This could make some of the political problems with upping the speed limit that much go away, though.

calebmpeterson 14y ago

As the only adult in my household capable of driving (due to my wife's vision limitations), I'm quite excited by this - and so is my wife.

DanielBMarkham 14y ago

To me, there are only a few "out there" technologies that have a chance to change everything. 3-D printing is at the top of my list, but that's going to be a while before it really takes off. The others are robotics (also taking a while) and self-driving cars. If Google can work through not only the technical but the social and legal problems associated with fully auto-drive cars, it could literally change the world overnight. Instead of driving cars being a time sink, it could change into something along the lines of being in a room that goes places. You could sleep, read, play games, or otherwise occupy your time. It would literally give the nation tens of billions of hours in added productivity time. It could make the elderly more independent, eliminate drunk-driving, and a lot more. Very cool stuff.

heretohelp 14y ago
Drunk-driving alone costs our country immeasurably in terms of human and economic cost. Eliminating the vast majority of infractions would be a real contribution to humanity.
- sk5t 14y ago
  Also, I approve of a future where ordinary people can travel without fear of fabricated botherment by the police. Driving a car has got to be the number one excuse for the USA's police to pull over and antagonize folks on the thinnest imaginable (or no) probable cause.
  - lukeholder 14y ago
    the scary part will be when they can remotely order a car off the road through remote control with no cause.
    - aggie 14y ago
      While I agree there will likely be remote disabling procedures for emergency/law enforcement reasons, I don't see where you get the "no cause" piece of your slippery slope. It seems it would be much easier to unjustly pull someone over with current human-operated cars; with automated cars, reasons such as "they were weaving" or other gray area justifications will no longer be available to LEOs.

darylteo 14y ago

I like this... but I like driving too :(

ShabbyDoo 14y ago
No one is saying you can't drive, yet. Presuming that computers eventually are better than people at driving, can we as a society continue to allow humans to self-control death machines in close proximity to each other?
- jeffool 14y ago
  I can easily see "car parks" just like national parks where people can drive in a range of conditions for the fun of it. That said, I can't see a US society where this is "the only option" for many decades.
- bad_user 14y ago
  We should also ban knives too and let robots do all the cooking. Also, the presumption that computers can get better at driving is wishful thinking. Good enough definitely, more efficient probably, but better? I don't think so. From a technical perspective, the human brain is the best pattern matching processor in existence and when driving it's the edge cases that cause accidents ... a deer or child stepping in front of your car, bad weather conditions leading to muddy roads or glazed frost, potholes, traffic congestions, human-powered vehicles (like bikes) and the list goes on, with the number of variables and possible outcomes possible being really big. And for instance a processor can't know your safety priorities. Say a child steps in front of your speeding car, would your risk pulling the wheel and going off-road to avoid the hit? I would. But what if your own son is in the backseat? Then I would hit the breaks and hope for the best. But what if you're going 90 miles on the highway and a cat steps in front of your car? Personally, I wouldn't even hit the breaks, even though I love cats, because sudden breaking on the highway is very dangerous.
rscale 14y ago
In an age of autonomous cars, driving won't die. It will become a sport akin to equestrianism.

nextparadigms 14y ago

Google should work with Tesla Motors to implement it in one of their models at least. I figure people who are the early adopters for all-electric vehicles might be early adopters for self-driving cars, too.

rscale 14y ago
Also, a fleet of self-driving Model S's would make a fantastic taxi service.

steve8918 14y ago

I saw a Google Self-Driving car on 280 in the Bay Area about a month ago with 2 people in it. I guess they already have the license for California? As a side note, I (illegally) took a video of it with my iPhone as I passed by it, but when I tried uploading it to Facebook it was denied twice because I used a copyrighted song as the background (Cars by Devo and then an obscure version of Crosstown Traffic by Living Color, which I thought would have passed the algos but I guess not).

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
tzs 14y ago
> As a side note, I (illegally) took a video of it with my iPhone as I passed by it, but when I tried uploading it to Facebook it was denied twice because I used a copyrighted song as the background (Cars by Devo and then an obscure version of Crosstown Traffic by Living Color, which I thought would have passed the algos but I guess not) Videos of interesting real-world events, such as a chance encounter with the Google car, are almost never improved by the addition of music, so I'd say just go ahead and upload without music. Also, isn't Cars by Gary Numan?
lucian1900 14y ago
How is capturing video in a public place illegal?
- eavc 14y ago
  I assumed it was taken while the poster was driving.

rodh257 14y ago

It's good that Nevada is facilitating this, I'm expecting that industry lobby groups that will be affected by this (truck drivers, taxis, car companies without this technology, insurance companies perhaps) will throw everything they have at shutting this down so it's good to see that at least local governments are open to the idea. It means that it stays in the USA rather than Google launching it in a country more open to the idea.

eavc 14y ago
What I love about Nevada doing it is the tie-in with tourism. If it becomes a staple of that city, you expose people from all over the country to it in relatively short order.

egypturnash 14y ago

Man I can't wait for this to become mature enough that cars can drive themselves without anyone "behind the wheel". I've never learnt to drive, and I would get a Zipcar membership the DAY that happened.

mkramlich 14y ago

this plus the recent Planetary Resources launch, plus the upcoming SpaceX rendezvous with the ISS are all pretty exciting milestones. some folks out there are pushing the human race forward. not just making trivial fadish photo sharing websites, etc.

sage_joch 14y ago
In defense of the people making photo sharing websites, they are doing leaps and bounds more than the vast majority of the population.

mkramlich 14y ago

One negative about the self-driving car approach which is inherent to the approach is that most of the hard problems it has to solve come about from the fact that the driving environment is so chaotic, open and uncontrolled. Weather. Pedestrians. Jaywalkers. Animals. Kids. Shopping carts. Bad objects on the road. Other vehicles, many of which are human-driven. Or perhaps automated as well, but malfunctioning. The obvious alternative approach is to create a transport system where the environment is more uniform, controlled, closed, stable. For example, a system of underground tunnels or above-ground tubes. With some kind of train or individual cabins that can move within it. Like subways but more advanced, efficient and end-to-end. Imagine a single common inter-locked system that everyone could use to do both their local daily commutes, and long distance travel, and round trips to orbital stations (via rides in carrier ships like Virgin Galactic is planning, or something like a space elevator.) There is one particular project like this that I've heard of, that has these qualities, called Evacuated Tube Transport. I like the idea of it. It sounds elegant and efficient and scalable. But has some challenges of its own. (Last mile access, industry pushback, safety/failsafe in the face of emergency situations, etc.) There's a specific company called ET3 which is supposedly trying to flesh out and build an implementation of it.

SudarshanP 14y ago

Orthogonal to this trend, is a probable reduction in how much we actually travel every day. Would it make sense if a kid was dropped to a very nearby school, where learning happens by interacting with teachers in close proximity as well other teachers on another continent(not just cheaper ones). It may even be a micro school where just 25 students from the neighborhood attend and have a weekly meetup on a large campus. As technology improves, that actual benefit of being at particular spot diminishes. Of course some professions like nursing/sales may need direct presence every day. For many others occasional meetups would more than suffice. Would we not drive a lot lesser if technology allows us a lot more seamless communication?

Schwolop 14y ago

Since a lot of the discussions here are about the benefits of autonomous cars compared to other solutions, I'd like to point out an excellent Quora question on the matter: http://www.quora.com/Transportation/Why-do-we-want-self-driving-cars-rather-than-better-mass-transit http://www.quora.com/Transportation/Why-do-we-want-self-driv... I am a roboticist who works on autonomous vehicles for mining applications, and I've always thought the two least obvious advantages are that a) autonomous vehicles will increase the utility of a single vehicle to the point that owning multiple vehicles becomes less necessary, and b) autonomous vehicles will increase the utility of road networks such that their existing capacity will be sufficient for far longer than expected under manned vehicle assumptions.

bbotond 14y ago

I'm surprised no-one talks about the psychological and social implications of (serious or lethal) accidents caused by autonomous cars. However rare, I think these will set back their adoption by years because people will be too scared to sit in a machine that makes decisions on its own. Decisions that, when wrong, can kill them and they can do nothing about it.

jwr 14y ago

Why does Google do it? I can't understand what business purpose it could possibly serve for Google. And if it is just a side R&D project, how come the shareholders do not revolt?

jeffool 14y ago
Off the top of my head, they're probably the most widely known brand in both consumer maps and local search. While "not-driving" people will often be online, and I imagine often searching for places to go. Also, there's the "Bell Labs" of it. How do you know what you can do unless you push boundaries into new places, which necessitate new ideas? The idea that companies should stick to what they know and that shareholders should expect nothing else of them, is to me akin to the idea companies should be expected to fight progression/expansion for fear of losing the market they have. Look at the RIAA. Imagine if they had more than a legal arm, but a research group. What if they had been looking into audio compression and transfer? They may have founded the first successful online music store, and before Napster. The industry could have its own iTunes, instead now they try to herd snakes back into a pen that can't contain them, with lawsuits. That, to me, is irresponsibility. In pushing for new fields, Google pushes for new markets. And in being the popular party doing so, they're seen as "first" in many people's eyes.
VMG 14y ago
Google is an AI company
patrickk 14y ago
They could licence the tech for serious $$$ to the car makers. They could beam 50" google ads into millions of commuters eyeballs on a screen where the windscreen was. I'm willing to bet that they have the machine learning and AI capabilities in-house that car makers could only dream about, so it makes sense that google does this (See the Udacity course on the self driving car by Sebastian Thrun). Asking why the shareholders don't revolt is extremely short-term thinking. Googles rate of growth from their core search business is already slowing, this would be an exciting way to speed it up again.
Lendal 14y ago

dutchbrit 14y ago

I already imagine a scene where the 2 people, that are suppose to sit in the car, are having a coffee break, and the car starts driving off without them :)

dutchbrit 14y ago

This reminds me, even though the technology isn't as cool as Google's cars, of the Phileas Bus in The Netherlands, which also drives by itself, which I sit in daily - see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phileas_(public_transport) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phileas_(public_transport)

pbw 14y ago

The google car is great, but I wonder when will they be able to drive with the visible spectrum only, like humans do. No radar, laser range finder, GPS, or pre-mapping the roads. Just the view through the windshield on an unknown road, we can all do that. I would say keep all the other devices if they improve safety, but to really be a human-level driver I think you need to be able to do without them in a pinch.

LilValleyBigEgo 14y ago

Title should be "Google gets license to not test drive...".