14 ms·

How Google's Self-Driving Car Works

138 points by ma2rten 15y ago

islon 15y ago
I want to believe this is the future. Maybe not from Google, maybe from other companies, but self-driving cars are an amazing idea. Put a 100mph giant piece of metal in the hands of humans, on the other side, is not a smart idea...
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
div 15y ago
Once legislation is updated to allow self-driving cars in most parts of the world, I wonder how profitable self-driving cars could be for Google. About 77 million cars were produced in 2010. With the appropriate licensing, a percentage of that could make a very nice profit. I should buy some Google stock :)
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- dangrossman 15y ago
  I don't see what Google's role is going to be, aside from pushing forward legislation for unknown reasons. The auto manufacturers don't need them for the technology and research... they've all had access to that for just as long. We'd have self-driving cars today if the public (and regulators) were ready for it. But they're not and aren't going to be overnight; what makes more sense is to gradually introduce the features a little at a time so that the move to complete autonomy is a small step instead of a leap. First, automatic parking. Then, collision detection warnings. Next, lane assist that steers you back into the lane when you drift. In the next few years, you'll start seeing "smart cruise control" that will drive for you on well-marked roads in mapped areas. "Cadillac To Release Self-Driving Cars By 2015" http://www.inquisitr.com/227496/cadillac-to-release-self-driving-cars-by-2015-video/ http://www.inquisitr.com/227496/cadillac-to-release-self-dri... Maybe 10-15 years from now we'll be at the complete autonomy point.
  - Qworg 15y ago
    According to Urmson, Google doesn't want to be in the car business - just the software business.
  - huherto 15y ago
    I don''t know. It is my impression that traditional companies are not able to produce complex software. I guess there are many paradigms that you have to break to become a software company. It seems to me that is the reason why cell phone companies ended up buying their O.S. from google.
    - jacquesm 15y ago
      > It is my impression that traditional companies are not able to produce complex software. What gave you that impression? What do you define as a non-traditional company?
      - div 15y ago
        I think OP defines non-traditional in this instance as software companies. While I believe there's room for other companies to develop self-driving navigation systems, I think the Android example is pretty apt. It's interesting to think about when self-driving cars will actually be in stores. By then, all navigation systems will meet strict safety guidelines and some standardised tests. If all self-drivers are equally safe, the AI's driving style will become a differentiating factor. It seems to me like Google has an advantage in this type of development, although the future can certainly prove me wrong.
      - chc 15y ago
        I think what he means is that car companies are good at making cars, but they're not as good at making the kind of AI you need for a fully autonomous car.
    - MaysonL 15y ago
      Spend some time studying what current auto engines are, and how much software they embody. I'm not sure how much of it has been developed by the auto companies themselves, but there's quite a lot of it, and it's pretty robust: how ofter has your car OS crashed lately?
- stellar678 15y ago
  If autonomous cars become significantly safer in terms of the number of accidents, you could make a strong argument for lighter and lower-density of structural materials, less passenger safety features, just significantly simpler cars. Of course that would depend on getting all the cars on the road to be self-driving - you don't want your crashless 500 pound Google car getting smashed by a behemoth human-driven Smart Car. But if you significantly reduced the materials cost in the car, that opens a big margin for Google to trade in.
sambeau 15y ago
I wonder if they will eventually license the self-driving software in an Android-like model?
- Estragon 15y ago
  Pretty unlikely, at least in the medium term. What's the business strategy which would motivate that?
- Qworg 15y ago
  Doubtful. Most of these companies want to own the tech. I'm actually concerned they won't be able to sell it if they tried - Chrysler is actively developing a self-driving system that they hope to deploy in 2 years.
  - jsnell 15y ago
    Really? I'm no expert, but this seems like a market where it'd be natural for there to be only a few major players, rather than every manufacturer having their proprietary implementations. Why would you build an in-house system rather than buy one? Generally because buying is more expensive in the long run, because you can build a better one, or because keeping the expertise in-house allows for more chances of integration. The expense idea makes no sense. This is software we're talking about, so the marginal cost is always going to be 0. It's also software that's likely going to have to through very expensive certification procedures to be allowed on the roads (or to be allowed by insurance companies). How could it possibly be economical for a manufacturer with 2% market share to do this on their own? So could a smallish manufacturer at least build a better one, if not cheaper? It's hard to see why you'd expect that. Maybe if 20 of them tried, a couple of them would end up with a better technology than what could be bought. But even if that's true, it's not going to brighten the day of the remaining 18 manufacturers who ended up with substandard software. There's one obvious exception (regional differences - maybe Japanese drivers have very different preferences from German ones, or something). Are there any integration benefits from making the software for self driving cars in-house? I can't think of any, but I'm not too familiar with the automotive industry. Maybe there's something obvious I'm missing. Of course there's no guarantee that even if the future ends up as one of a few major in-house systems and a couple of successful publicly available ones, Google's solution would be one of the successful ones. Still seems like it's worth a shot.
yread 15y ago
I wonder how long will it take till the price of something like this gets to reasonable levels. The lidar and other sensors probably won't get cheap anytime soon. Imagine the costs of Google having to drive through all the places first, mapping them. Then the massive insurance until its proven that self-driving cars are safer (and then it will probably get expensive again after a first accident) Perhaps it would make sense for government to step in like it did with electrical cars. Edit: It seems the LIDAR they use costs 75000$. :-/ http://eole.ecam.be/claroline/backends/download.php?url=L0dvb2dsZV9jYXItc3VtbWFyeS5wZGY%3D&cidReset=true&cidReq=AN52 http://eole.ecam.be/claroline/backends/download.php?url=L0dv...
- patrickk 15y ago
  The cost of the hardware, sensors and mapping is expensive (initially) if you are talking about adding the hardware to a vehicle that one person or family will own. If you are talking about adding it to each vehicle in an autonomous taxi fleet, it suddenly makes a lot more sense and economies of scale kick in quickly. You are replacing a taxi drivers wages with sensors and mapping essentially. Not to mention extremely-well paid surgeons who clean up after drunk driving accidents, theatre nurses, insurance costs, cost of mechanics.....this technology has so many implications it's hard to visualise them all initially. It's going to be extremely disruptive to some industries, and a boon to others (e.g. where I live, rural pubs are in trouble. This could change all that - "get driven home at 200mph in perfect safety after a night getting smashed!" etc.)
- Dn_Ab 15y ago
  Some people have noted that personal ownership of a self driving car is non-optimal in terms of effective use of this tech. But you make an excellent indirect connection. Since these things would be be most effective with a lot of usage, electrical cars or some other renewable energy source would be ideal for the environment.
- tocomment 15y ago
  Isn't the kinnect an example of very inexpensive LIDAR? (I may be wrong)
ctdonath 15y ago
Everything Google does feeds back, somehow, to data mining. How does self-driving cars fit in to Google's plans? ETA: Downvoted for asking a serious question? WTH?
- draz 15y ago
  I dont work for Google, so I dont know. I'd imagine some projects aren't all about the strategic long term "money plan," rather that strategic long term "people plan." This is a cool project, and Google might just want to give talented people an outlet for their creativity. They work on this fun-project (and are having a good time so they don't want to leave Google), and they also work on another project that actually brings in money. Moreover, a project like signals prestige to outsiders (which attracts more talented people). Plain and simple
- Game_Ender 15y ago
  What do you think a bunch of people in self driving cars with smartphones or personal wifi hotspots are going to do? Surf the internet, and therefore use more of Google's products. It's similar to Chrome or Android in that it enables more people to use Google's core services which they make money off of.
  - Qworg 15y ago
    Well, the car itself becomes a device, right? - Active internal displays that push ads based on detailed mapping information. - Delivering you to a particular location after you look it up on Google. What's the Price per Delivery (PPD) on AdWords?
  - ctdonath 15y ago
    Sensible answer, tnx. Anyone play with the numbers? average web use vs. average AdWords profit vs. typical commute?
  - rhino42 15y ago
    Also, publicity... Never discount publicity
- 15y ago
omegant 15y ago
It is normal for pedestrians to look for eye contact in order to know if a driver will yield the right of way or simply will accelerate and pass (in light less crosswalks). In dense pedestrian cities (I am from Spain) it is very usual to have some guessing and false start stop between the pedestrian and the driver, nobody seems to know who is going to yield finally. I wonder if this is been thought and how you'll signal the car's intention to a pedestrian?, maybe a forward braking light?. It could be that automatic cars will be much better yielders than a human driver.
- adamjernst 15y ago
  I too thought of a forward braking light. When self-driving cars become common enough, people would learn to interpret it.
- VBprogrammer 15y ago
  My experience in Spain is that drivers won't yield unless the alternative is hitting you! In that regard not much will change with self driving cars.
  - excuse-me 15y ago
    That is one concern - will there local versions of this car as there are with google search? I really would prefer to face the google.Canadian version rather the google.Paris or google.Rome tuned examples
- pilgrim689 15y ago
  It makes sense for the self-driving car to yield to pedestrians all the time. So if you see that there is no driver, you assume it will stop until you are out of its way. There will be no more awkward social guessing games!
  - omegant 15y ago
    There is a second part on it. How will cars behave when they are driving along a crowded street in a place where people crosses anywhere and changing directions and intentions very fast. I don't think there will be dangers to pedestrian. But it's going to be a tought problem avoiding false emergency breaking. Once more you have to rely on visual contact to know what are the real intentions of people. Crossing, waiting for the car to pass, simply unaware of the car coming, going to pick something that fell at the border of the street but no intention to cross. Not an easy task! Also it is strange they are not working on a kind of transponder, that could be used between nearby cars to coordinate maneuvers(maybe I missed it on this article, but I think I read about somebody was developing it) . It will be usefull once robocars are more common.
pbw 15y ago
The technology is impressive, but humans drive okay without LIDAR, radar, or GPS. Maybe some day self-driving cars can drive using only two small visible-light sensors located above and behind the steering wheel. It might just be an AI challenge to operate that way, and commercial systems will always employ advanced sensors for better safety. But I don't think true parity has been reached until they can drive like we do.
- Qworg 15y ago
  The problem is not the AI (driving is relatively simple), but the sensors. Cameras are bad vs. our eyes.
  - xxbondsxx 15y ago
    Artificial Intelligence is a broad category -- it's not just the driving decisions to be made but also the particle filtering, car localization, policy search, object tracking, kalman filter, etc etc. The fact that the car can intelligently drive around bikers on the side of the road (and wait for an appropriate time to do so) is a significant AI challenge if it's actually broken down. It involves everything from raw noisy sensor readings to high level policy search. Sure our eyes have great resolution and batteries-included depth perception, but they can't see around 360 degrees around the car at 15 fps. Pros & cons
    - Qworg 15y ago
      I wouldn't rate particle filtering, localization, object tracking and filtering in AI. They are enablers, but not the intelligence. Policy search is AI. =) Eyes not only have great resolution and depth perception, but are attached to an amazing pattern processing machine that looks forward in time to estimate the next set of perceptions. They're also very environment-invariant - sun, snow, heavy rain, fog, etc would screw a camera, but human eyes can handle it relatively gracefully.
- jonknee 15y ago
  But people aren't very good at driving, it would be silly to try and handicap computers with the features we evolved. Every new car made already has lots of advanced technology to make up for our two eyes.
daenz 15y ago
> With its full 360° horizontal field of view by 26.8° vertical field of view, 5-15 Hz user-selectable frame rate and over 1.3 million points per second output rate, the HDL-64E provides all the distancing sensing data you'll ever need. That's pretty interesting. I would have thought that they needed data at a faster rate than 15fps.
- JackC 15y ago
  That is interesting! Looking into it, the estimated response time to an unexpected event for an average human driver is 1.9 seconds (i.e. time to notice, look, evaluate, decide, react).[1] Of that, 50 ms or 1/20th of a second goes to just processing the visual chemical stimulus into a usable signal.[Awesome Dinosaur Comics link] So if the robocar is getting a frame every 66 ms, that's probably not a significant factor making it better or worse than a human driver -- it's certainly not the key factor to optimize. On the plus side, the robocar is constantly looking in all directions rather than having to refocus on unexpected events, and can send signals to the car instantly, so it saves a couple hundred ms on each end. It probably ends up with a good bit more time than an average human to make decisions. Of course the robocar isn't allowed to drive like an average human. It'll have to drive like a perfect human. Seems like that should be doable. [1] http://books.google.com/books?id=YkNY6gjxnMIC&lpg=PA396 http://books.google.com/books?id=YkNY6gjxnMIC&lpg=PA396 [Awesome Dinosaur Comics link]http://www.qwantz.com/index.php?comic=1806 http://www.qwantz.com/index.php?comic=1806
- Robin_Message 15y ago
  I expect the forward and rear radar, well, the forward radar, are used on the highway where faster updates are necessary. Human reaction time is only about 5-10fps, so its not like 15fps sensor acquisition is worse (assuming the machine can react very quickly once it has sensor input.)
mflanagan 15y ago
Does anyone know what languages are used to build the software brains for the car? I haven't found any information on the actual software architecture, more on the hardware.
- packetslave 15y ago
  The Stanford/Udacity course gives a pretty good overview of the software and algorithms behind the self-driving car, implemented in Python.
- eru 15y ago
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Grand_Challenge http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Grand_Challenge has a bit on the languages.
ajays 15y ago
I would love to see these in a city like SF. It's a small city (geographically), but we spend $1B/year on MUNI, which carries about 700K passengers/day. Put together a fleet of, say, 5000 such autonomous vehicles that take you door to door, for the price of a MUNI ticket. Wow. That would be something.
- Someone 15y ago
  If I do the math, you will need many more than 5000 vehicles. 700k trips with 5000 vehicles is 140 per vehicle per day, say 50 in morning traffic and 50 in evening traffic, the other 40 in-between. Even assuming 5 people in e car at each trip, that means 10 round trips from suburb to the office per car. I guess you will need at least 100k vehicles, but with that number of vehicles, that $1B per year starts to look cheap ($10k times 100k = $1B)
  - im3w1l 15y ago
    Maybe cars for the long tail routes, and hours?
revelation 15y ago
You may giggle at Googles attempts to catch up with Facebook, but looking at this video.. boy, they are way ahead. Google isn't so much a search company, its an innovation company. They are already building the next trillion dollar industry while Facebook is optimizing sharing cat pictures.
- kamaal 15y ago
  >>They are already building the next trillion dollar industry while Facebook is optimizing sharing cat pictures. What makes you think that sharing cat pictures isn't a trillion dollar industry? Last time I check photo sharing apps and bird-in-pig games fetch and sell for more money than life saving cancer drugs.
cpeterso 15y ago
I'd like to see some self-driving cars in a high-speed chase or race. Google and NASCAR produced a joke video about self-driving race cars: * Video: http://www.nascar.com/video/none/none/120331/cup-mar-google/ http://www.nascar.com/video/none/none/120331/cup-mar-google/ * More info: http://www.google.com/racing/ http://www.google.com/racing/
- sp332 15y ago
  Already done, 2 years ago by Audi http://www.engadget.com/2010/11/21/autonomous-audi-tts-scales-pikes-peak-in-27-minute-climb/ http://www.engadget.com/2010/11/21/autonomous-audi-tts-scale... Some competitive jockeying would be fun though!
ChuckMcM 15y ago
Given the amount of stuff going on it made me skeptical of GM's claim they would have a self driving car available for sale in 2015. The Google stuff is pretty cool, I notice they don't show the early videos of people running around the parking lot trying to get it to stop :-) But such things are to be expected in development. This is a technology I look forward to as it would simplify a lot of things.

138 points by ma2rten 15y ago

islon 15y ago

I want to believe this is the future. Maybe not from Google, maybe from other companies, but self-driving cars are an amazing idea. Put a 100mph giant piece of metal in the hands of humans, on the other side, is not a smart idea...

deleted 15y ago
[deleted]

div 15y ago

Once legislation is updated to allow self-driving cars in most parts of the world, I wonder how profitable self-driving cars could be for Google. About 77 million cars were produced in 2010. With the appropriate licensing, a percentage of that could make a very nice profit. I should buy some Google stock :)

deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
dangrossman 15y ago
I don't see what Google's role is going to be, aside from pushing forward legislation for unknown reasons. The auto manufacturers don't need them for the technology and research... they've all had access to that for just as long. We'd have self-driving cars today if the public (and regulators) were ready for it. But they're not and aren't going to be overnight; what makes more sense is to gradually introduce the features a little at a time so that the move to complete autonomy is a small step instead of a leap. First, automatic parking. Then, collision detection warnings. Next, lane assist that steers you back into the lane when you drift. In the next few years, you'll start seeing "smart cruise control" that will drive for you on well-marked roads in mapped areas. "Cadillac To Release Self-Driving Cars By 2015" http://www.inquisitr.com/227496/cadillac-to-release-self-driving-cars-by-2015-video/ http://www.inquisitr.com/227496/cadillac-to-release-self-dri... Maybe 10-15 years from now we'll be at the complete autonomy point.
- Qworg 15y ago
  According to Urmson, Google doesn't want to be in the car business - just the software business.
- huherto 15y ago
  I don''t know. It is my impression that traditional companies are not able to produce complex software. I guess there are many paradigms that you have to break to become a software company. It seems to me that is the reason why cell phone companies ended up buying their O.S. from google.
  - jacquesm 15y ago
    > It is my impression that traditional companies are not able to produce complex software. What gave you that impression? What do you define as a non-traditional company?
    - div 15y ago
      I think OP defines non-traditional in this instance as software companies. While I believe there's room for other companies to develop self-driving navigation systems, I think the Android example is pretty apt. It's interesting to think about when self-driving cars will actually be in stores. By then, all navigation systems will meet strict safety guidelines and some standardised tests. If all self-drivers are equally safe, the AI's driving style will become a differentiating factor. It seems to me like Google has an advantage in this type of development, although the future can certainly prove me wrong.
    - chc 15y ago
      I think what he means is that car companies are good at making cars, but they're not as good at making the kind of AI you need for a fully autonomous car.
  - MaysonL 15y ago
    Spend some time studying what current auto engines are, and how much software they embody. I'm not sure how much of it has been developed by the auto companies themselves, but there's quite a lot of it, and it's pretty robust: how ofter has your car OS crashed lately?
stellar678 15y ago
If autonomous cars become significantly safer in terms of the number of accidents, you could make a strong argument for lighter and lower-density of structural materials, less passenger safety features, just significantly simpler cars. Of course that would depend on getting all the cars on the road to be self-driving - you don't want your crashless 500 pound Google car getting smashed by a behemoth human-driven Smart Car. But if you significantly reduced the materials cost in the car, that opens a big margin for Google to trade in.

sambeau 15y ago

I wonder if they will eventually license the self-driving software in an Android-like model?

Estragon 15y ago
Pretty unlikely, at least in the medium term. What's the business strategy which would motivate that?
Qworg 15y ago
Doubtful. Most of these companies want to own the tech. I'm actually concerned they won't be able to sell it if they tried - Chrysler is actively developing a self-driving system that they hope to deploy in 2 years.
- jsnell 15y ago
  Really? I'm no expert, but this seems like a market where it'd be natural for there to be only a few major players, rather than every manufacturer having their proprietary implementations. Why would you build an in-house system rather than buy one? Generally because buying is more expensive in the long run, because you can build a better one, or because keeping the expertise in-house allows for more chances of integration. The expense idea makes no sense. This is software we're talking about, so the marginal cost is always going to be 0. It's also software that's likely going to have to through very expensive certification procedures to be allowed on the roads (or to be allowed by insurance companies). How could it possibly be economical for a manufacturer with 2% market share to do this on their own? So could a smallish manufacturer at least build a better one, if not cheaper? It's hard to see why you'd expect that. Maybe if 20 of them tried, a couple of them would end up with a better technology than what could be bought. But even if that's true, it's not going to brighten the day of the remaining 18 manufacturers who ended up with substandard software. There's one obvious exception (regional differences - maybe Japanese drivers have very different preferences from German ones, or something). Are there any integration benefits from making the software for self driving cars in-house? I can't think of any, but I'm not too familiar with the automotive industry. Maybe there's something obvious I'm missing. Of course there's no guarantee that even if the future ends up as one of a few major in-house systems and a couple of successful publicly available ones, Google's solution would be one of the successful ones. Still seems like it's worth a shot.

yread 15y ago

I wonder how long will it take till the price of something like this gets to reasonable levels. The lidar and other sensors probably won't get cheap anytime soon. Imagine the costs of Google having to drive through all the places first, mapping them. Then the massive insurance until its proven that self-driving cars are safer (and then it will probably get expensive again after a first accident) Perhaps it would make sense for government to step in like it did with electrical cars. Edit: It seems the LIDAR they use costs 75000$. :-/ http://eole.ecam.be/claroline/backends/download.php?url=L0dvb2dsZV9jYXItc3VtbWFyeS5wZGY%3D&cidReset=true&cidReq=AN52 http://eole.ecam.be/claroline/backends/download.php?url=L0dv...

patrickk 15y ago
The cost of the hardware, sensors and mapping is expensive (initially) if you are talking about adding the hardware to a vehicle that one person or family will own. If you are talking about adding it to each vehicle in an autonomous taxi fleet, it suddenly makes a lot more sense and economies of scale kick in quickly. You are replacing a taxi drivers wages with sensors and mapping essentially. Not to mention extremely-well paid surgeons who clean up after drunk driving accidents, theatre nurses, insurance costs, cost of mechanics.....this technology has so many implications it's hard to visualise them all initially. It's going to be extremely disruptive to some industries, and a boon to others (e.g. where I live, rural pubs are in trouble. This could change all that - "get driven home at 200mph in perfect safety after a night getting smashed!" etc.)
Dn_Ab 15y ago
Some people have noted that personal ownership of a self driving car is non-optimal in terms of effective use of this tech. But you make an excellent indirect connection. Since these things would be be most effective with a lot of usage, electrical cars or some other renewable energy source would be ideal for the environment.
tocomment 15y ago
Isn't the kinnect an example of very inexpensive LIDAR? (I may be wrong)

ctdonath 15y ago

Everything Google does feeds back, somehow, to data mining. How does self-driving cars fit in to Google's plans? ETA: Downvoted for asking a serious question? WTH?

draz 15y ago
I dont work for Google, so I dont know. I'd imagine some projects aren't all about the strategic long term "money plan," rather that strategic long term "people plan." This is a cool project, and Google might just want to give talented people an outlet for their creativity. They work on this fun-project (and are having a good time so they don't want to leave Google), and they also work on another project that actually brings in money. Moreover, a project like signals prestige to outsiders (which attracts more talented people). Plain and simple
Game_Ender 15y ago
What do you think a bunch of people in self driving cars with smartphones or personal wifi hotspots are going to do? Surf the internet, and therefore use more of Google's products. It's similar to Chrome or Android in that it enables more people to use Google's core services which they make money off of.
- Qworg 15y ago
  Well, the car itself becomes a device, right? - Active internal displays that push ads based on detailed mapping information. - Delivering you to a particular location after you look it up on Google. What's the Price per Delivery (PPD) on AdWords?
- ctdonath 15y ago
  Sensible answer, tnx. Anyone play with the numbers? average web use vs. average AdWords profit vs. typical commute?
- rhino42 15y ago
  Also, publicity... Never discount publicity
15y ago

omegant 15y ago

It is normal for pedestrians to look for eye contact in order to know if a driver will yield the right of way or simply will accelerate and pass (in light less crosswalks). In dense pedestrian cities (I am from Spain) it is very usual to have some guessing and false start stop between the pedestrian and the driver, nobody seems to know who is going to yield finally. I wonder if this is been thought and how you'll signal the car's intention to a pedestrian?, maybe a forward braking light?. It could be that automatic cars will be much better yielders than a human driver.

adamjernst 15y ago
I too thought of a forward braking light. When self-driving cars become common enough, people would learn to interpret it.
VBprogrammer 15y ago
My experience in Spain is that drivers won't yield unless the alternative is hitting you! In that regard not much will change with self driving cars.
- excuse-me 15y ago
  That is one concern - will there local versions of this car as there are with google search? I really would prefer to face the google.Canadian version rather the google.Paris or google.Rome tuned examples
pilgrim689 15y ago
It makes sense for the self-driving car to yield to pedestrians all the time. So if you see that there is no driver, you assume it will stop until you are out of its way. There will be no more awkward social guessing games!
- omegant 15y ago
  There is a second part on it. How will cars behave when they are driving along a crowded street in a place where people crosses anywhere and changing directions and intentions very fast. I don't think there will be dangers to pedestrian. But it's going to be a tought problem avoiding false emergency breaking. Once more you have to rely on visual contact to know what are the real intentions of people. Crossing, waiting for the car to pass, simply unaware of the car coming, going to pick something that fell at the border of the street but no intention to cross. Not an easy task! Also it is strange they are not working on a kind of transponder, that could be used between nearby cars to coordinate maneuvers(maybe I missed it on this article, but I think I read about somebody was developing it) . It will be usefull once robocars are more common.

pbw 15y ago

The technology is impressive, but humans drive okay without LIDAR, radar, or GPS. Maybe some day self-driving cars can drive using only two small visible-light sensors located above and behind the steering wheel. It might just be an AI challenge to operate that way, and commercial systems will always employ advanced sensors for better safety. But I don't think true parity has been reached until they can drive like we do.

Qworg 15y ago
The problem is not the AI (driving is relatively simple), but the sensors. Cameras are bad vs. our eyes.
- xxbondsxx 15y ago
  Artificial Intelligence is a broad category -- it's not just the driving decisions to be made but also the particle filtering, car localization, policy search, object tracking, kalman filter, etc etc. The fact that the car can intelligently drive around bikers on the side of the road (and wait for an appropriate time to do so) is a significant AI challenge if it's actually broken down. It involves everything from raw noisy sensor readings to high level policy search. Sure our eyes have great resolution and batteries-included depth perception, but they can't see around 360 degrees around the car at 15 fps. Pros & cons
  - Qworg 15y ago
    I wouldn't rate particle filtering, localization, object tracking and filtering in AI. They are enablers, but not the intelligence. Policy search is AI. =) Eyes not only have great resolution and depth perception, but are attached to an amazing pattern processing machine that looks forward in time to estimate the next set of perceptions. They're also very environment-invariant - sun, snow, heavy rain, fog, etc would screw a camera, but human eyes can handle it relatively gracefully.
jonknee 15y ago
But people aren't very good at driving, it would be silly to try and handicap computers with the features we evolved. Every new car made already has lots of advanced technology to make up for our two eyes.

daenz 15y ago

> With its full 360° horizontal field of view by 26.8° vertical field of view, 5-15 Hz user-selectable frame rate and over 1.3 million points per second output rate, the HDL-64E provides all the distancing sensing data you'll ever need. That's pretty interesting. I would have thought that they needed data at a faster rate than 15fps.

JackC 15y ago
That is interesting! Looking into it, the estimated response time to an unexpected event for an average human driver is 1.9 seconds (i.e. time to notice, look, evaluate, decide, react).[1] Of that, 50 ms or 1/20th of a second goes to just processing the visual chemical stimulus into a usable signal.[Awesome Dinosaur Comics link] So if the robocar is getting a frame every 66 ms, that's probably not a significant factor making it better or worse than a human driver -- it's certainly not the key factor to optimize. On the plus side, the robocar is constantly looking in all directions rather than having to refocus on unexpected events, and can send signals to the car instantly, so it saves a couple hundred ms on each end. It probably ends up with a good bit more time than an average human to make decisions. Of course the robocar isn't allowed to drive like an average human. It'll have to drive like a perfect human. Seems like that should be doable. [1] http://books.google.com/books?id=YkNY6gjxnMIC&lpg=PA396 http://books.google.com/books?id=YkNY6gjxnMIC&lpg=PA396 [Awesome Dinosaur Comics link]http://www.qwantz.com/index.php?comic=1806 http://www.qwantz.com/index.php?comic=1806
Robin_Message 15y ago
I expect the forward and rear radar, well, the forward radar, are used on the highway where faster updates are necessary. Human reaction time is only about 5-10fps, so its not like 15fps sensor acquisition is worse (assuming the machine can react very quickly once it has sensor input.)

mflanagan 15y ago

Does anyone know what languages are used to build the software brains for the car? I haven't found any information on the actual software architecture, more on the hardware.

packetslave 15y ago
The Stanford/Udacity course gives a pretty good overview of the software and algorithms behind the self-driving car, implemented in Python.
eru 15y ago
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Grand_Challenge http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Grand_Challenge has a bit on the languages.

ajays 15y ago

I would love to see these in a city like SF. It's a small city (geographically), but we spend $1B/year on MUNI, which carries about 700K passengers/day. Put together a fleet of, say, 5000 such autonomous vehicles that take you door to door, for the price of a MUNI ticket. Wow. That would be something.

Someone 15y ago
If I do the math, you will need many more than 5000 vehicles. 700k trips with 5000 vehicles is 140 per vehicle per day, say 50 in morning traffic and 50 in evening traffic, the other 40 in-between. Even assuming 5 people in e car at each trip, that means 10 round trips from suburb to the office per car. I guess you will need at least 100k vehicles, but with that number of vehicles, that $1B per year starts to look cheap ($10k times 100k = $1B)
- im3w1l 15y ago
  Maybe cars for the long tail routes, and hours?

revelation 15y ago

You may giggle at Googles attempts to catch up with Facebook, but looking at this video.. boy, they are way ahead. Google isn't so much a search company, its an innovation company. They are already building the next trillion dollar industry while Facebook is optimizing sharing cat pictures.

kamaal 15y ago
>>They are already building the next trillion dollar industry while Facebook is optimizing sharing cat pictures. What makes you think that sharing cat pictures isn't a trillion dollar industry? Last time I check photo sharing apps and bird-in-pig games fetch and sell for more money than life saving cancer drugs.

cpeterso 15y ago

I'd like to see some self-driving cars in a high-speed chase or race. Google and NASCAR produced a joke video about self-driving race cars: * Video: http://www.nascar.com/video/none/none/120331/cup-mar-google/ http://www.nascar.com/video/none/none/120331/cup-mar-google/ * More info: http://www.google.com/racing/ http://www.google.com/racing/

sp332 15y ago
Already done, 2 years ago by Audi http://www.engadget.com/2010/11/21/autonomous-audi-tts-scales-pikes-peak-in-27-minute-climb/ http://www.engadget.com/2010/11/21/autonomous-audi-tts-scale... Some competitive jockeying would be fun though!

ChuckMcM 15y ago

Given the amount of stuff going on it made me skeptical of GM's claim they would have a self driving car available for sale in 2015. The Google stuff is pretty cool, I notice they don't show the early videos of people running around the parking lot trying to get it to stop :-) But such things are to be expected in development. This is a technology I look forward to as it would simplify a lot of things.