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Volvo’s first self-driving cars now being tested live on public roads in Sweden
- GnarfGnarf 12y agoVolvo have stopped selling manual transmission ("stick") cars in North America. They have lost me as a customer.
- ape4 12y agoIf you dislike automatic transition I guess you'll not like self driving cars.
- StavrosK 12y agoI was quite a fan of the manual transmission, but I got an automatic car for the first time now (Mercedes A-class), and it's just so good at shifting that I never even consider it any more. I think of the transmission as another part of the driving experience to automate away now, like turning lights and parking brakes on and off.
- venomsnake 12y agoThere is difference with automatic gearbox (planetary gearbox) and DCT gearbox which is much closer to the manual IIRC.
- squidsoup 12y agoUnfortunately you'll also be automating away an element of driving that many people consider fun.
- StavrosK 12y agoIt still has paddles, so you can manually shift. Sure, if you don't like it, it takes away the element of fun, but a few minutes of fun isn't worth the hours of manual-shifting drudgery during rush-hour traffic for me.
- throwaway7767 12y agoHow would you automate turning lights? They are pretty useless if they only fire when the car is already turning. The whole point of them is to give a warning prior to turning.
- StavrosK 12y agoSorry, it was "turning lights (on and off)", I meant the headlights.
- nmcfarl 12y agoIt’s quite possible that’s true of many people. But I like manual transmissions as they force me to pay attention to the act of driving quite frequently. Without that constant reminder, I have a tendency to zone out and go on autopilot myself, which is of course dangerous. Manual transmissions are my hack to attack this issue - but I’d love to have a self driving car where I was reasonably confident that my zoning out would not be a safety hazard. (As a manual transmission isn’t a great hack, and I live in an urban area, I mainly take the bus, which solves the "zoned out problem" completely.)
- ghaff 12y agoI suspect that "zoning out" will be a big question as these technologies are brought to market albeit in a different way than you describe. Many of the things being worked on will likely be useful and potentially available as assistive systems well before they could be delivered as part of a complete autonomous system. However, there will almost certainly come a point when you can provide too much of certain kinds of assistance unless you're prepared to actually turn over full control to the system. You can't have a system that doesn't need a person to do anything 99% of the time but requires that same person to take over control at a moment's notice to deal with some situation that the computer doesn't know how to handle or, indeed, didn't even recognize.
- McGuffin 12y agoMaybe if you'd bought a lot more Volvos, they still would've had a market for that option.
- chiph 12y agoWith draconian CAFE requirements coming (49 mpg average [1][2] for vehicles the size of a Honda Fit), manufacturers are really ramping up their efforts to be compliant. Automatic transmissions now can deliver 1-2 better mpg than a manual, plus sometimes faster shift times. You're also seeing a lot more CVT transmissions vs. conventional planetary gear ones these days because they typically deliver 2+ mpg better economy. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAFE#Agreed_standards_by_model_year.2C_2011-2025 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAFE#Agreed_standards_by_model_... [2] I'm not saying the days of the V8 are over (like in Mad Max 2 -- "The last of the V8 Interceptors. A piece of history.") .. but if you want one, you might want to start thinking about buying one to keep.
- refurb 12y agoThat's the first time I've heard of automatic transmissions giving better mileage than manuals. I always thought the drive train loses on an automatic transmission (mainly the torque converter) was the issue? Has that changed?
- chiph 12y agoDepends on the design, YMMV, etc. etc. But Consumer Reports found that the Ford Fiesta and Mazda 3 returned 1 mpg better when specced with an automatic. http://consumerreports.org/cro/2012/01/save-gas-and-money-with-a-manual-transmission/index.htm http://consumerreports.org/cro/2012/01/save-gas-and-money-wi... If you choose the CVT in the Nissan Versa, you'll get 5mpg better economy over either the manual or the automatic choices. http://www.edmunds.com/fuel-economy/five-myths-about-stick-shifts.html http://www.edmunds.com/fuel-economy/five-myths-about-stick-s...
- jotm 12y agoHow is it possibly better than automatic? I've driven a manual Scania, it's a serious pain in the ass - automatic transmissions are a godsend for trucks...
- anigbrowl 12y agoSome people like driving rather than seeing it as a means to an end. I got to really enjoy gearing on a motorcycle.
- i80and 12y agoIt really depends on the person and the vehicle. I learned to drive stick some years after I started driving, and I just adore the experience to the point where I will not buy an automatic car. Maybe in the future. But not now. That said, trucks and passenger vehicles with rubbery shifter bushings might be a different story. There's a lot of shifter and clutch variation out there.
- chiph 12y agoNo rotating laser dome on the roof?
- nabla9 12y agoLIDAR does not work in rain, on wet roads or in the snow. Google car drives only in good weather in California for a reason. In Sweden they could drive maybe a week in a year. ... Sommaren är kort de mesta regnar bort ..
- Qworg 12y agoGoogle currently has a req out for a electromechanical engineer to work on a new sensor system. I'm betting they're building a new sensor for their vehicle - rotating, but perhaps not LIDAR. Cracking the heavy rain/snow problem would require more than just a new design though - you'd need a totally different sensor modality, a mix of sensors that can extract enough data, or a system that's far more robust to noise.
- checker 12y agoI realize the costs would be high, but would there be a way to embed some information in/near the roadway that would assist the onboard systems? I think there might be some advantages in making the road smarter in addition to the car.
- ensignavenger 12y agoI think this is ultimately the best way forward, but I am excited to see other tech alternatives develop, too. I really don't think it would be that expensive, at least along Interstates and major highways, to embed a trace wire to help guide self driving cars. (At least, during regular maintenance and new construction- tearing up roads to add it would obviously be expensive).
- toomuchtodo 12y agoEven if you use a sensor fabric on the road way, as well as high precision/precise positioning GPS (sub-centimeter resolution) for lane keeping, you will still need a sensor that can build the environment around the car in a model software can process. Some sort of lidar/radar combination I believe.
- MrClean 12y ago“The test cars are now able to handle lane following, speed adaption, and merging traffic all by themselves,” This is an important step, although I must say they appear to be far behind Google. My money is on Google getting to an acceptable deployment phase far earlier.
- protomyth 12y agoGiven the driving conditions in Sweden and the years of experience Volvo has as a car company, I would bet they will be able to deploy and all weather version before Google.
- haberman 12y agoThis effort does not appear to be as ambitious as the Google approach. The cars drive a specific test route around "50 kilometers of selected roads in and around Gothenburg." That's quite a different thing than a system where you key in an arbitrary destination and the car drives you there.
- Qworg 12y agoGoogle's system is not yet arbitrary. They prerun the roads the system drives on. I'm excited to see more "in the wild" units - more competition and innovation is always a good thing.
- ghaff 12y agoThis quote from a long New York Times article on Google is highly relevant: "The self-driving algorithms do not work because there has been some breakthrough in artificial intelligence; they run on maps. Every road that Google’s robo-cars drive on was first surveyed by a human-driven pilot car outfitted with sensors accurate enough to measure the thickness of the painted lines in the middle of the road. Every detail of the road has been mapped beforehand. According to Peter Norvig, Google’s head of research, it’s a hard problem for computer vision and artificial intelligence to pick a traffic light out of a scene and determine if it is red, yellow or green. But it is trivially easy to recognize the color of a traffic light that you already know is there." http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/15/magazine/googles-plan-for-global-domination-dont-ask-why-ask-where.html?_r=0&pagewanted=all http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/15/magazine/googles-plan-for-...
- dalek2point3 12y agoanyone has any idea where their location data (i.e map) is coming from?
- andrelaszlo 12y agoI'm guessing Lantmäteriet (National Land Survey - https://www.lantmateriet.se/ https://www.lantmateriet.se/).
- jotm 12y agoI can't wait for self driving tech to be put into use - transportation will get cheaper and faster (no more 8-10 hours driving limit bs), not to mention that one or two persons could drive a dozen trucks filled with cargo (though a lot of truckers will hate that)...
- objclxt 12y ago> transportation will get cheaper and faster (no more 8-10 hours driving limit bs) Why do you say that? Somebody is still going to need to be awake at the controls, at least for the first few decades of self driving tech. There's a reason pilots on planes don't go to sleep when the auto-pilot kicks on.
- hershel 12y agoIt's not a good comparison: flying vs driving have totally different response times(minutes vs seconds). One could even say people can't respond in a good way in seconds , unless they keep full attention at all times, which beats the purpose of self driving cars.
- jotm 12y agoThe driver won't have to be vigilant or even awake for the whole time, only in emergencies. I'm assuming the car would stop or slow down automatically in case of any problem and notify the driver. Good point on the pilots, though I always felt that it's unnecessary for them to stay awake (especially on cargo planes). And it looks like many do fall asleep inflight: http://uk.reuters.com/article/2013/10/08/oukoe-uk-britain-pilots-sleep-idUKBRE98Q0L620131008 http://uk.reuters.com/article/2013/10/08/oukoe-uk-britain-pi... Truckers, on the other hand, need to be alert all the time, falling asleep for even a few minutes can be catastrophic. I'm mostly hoping for fewer human drivers - two drivers/technicians should be enough to drive a whole convoy of trucks between cities/countries.
- augustl 12y agoI own a 2013 XC60 and as a programmer, I'm amazed at how well their current automation works in practice. The car reads road signs to show me the current speed limit in the dash (actual OCR, not a GPS database). It works amazingly well, except when it's very dark in the winter. Adaptive cruise control flawlessly follows cars based on radar, even in somewhat dramatic full stops, e.g. when there's suddenly heavy traffic ahead. I always have my foot on the break pedal just in case, but I'm yet to have to intervene.
- thematt 12y agoWhy would it bother OCR'ing road signs? That seems much more error prone and needlessly complex. That data is readily available from a data sources based on your GPS location, I know TomToms and other navigation devices have it.
- nawitus 12y agoAt least in Finland, probably in Sweden too speed limits change often (every 6 months) due to winter. In my experience the GPS databases are extremely often not in sync, and you can't predict which speed limits change and when. In addition, there are electronic speed limits that change depending on the weather in real-time. OCR seems like a better option for these conditions.
- noselasd 12y agoAnd they can change faster than that. Yesterday they put up a 50km/h sign for half a kilometer at my drive to work due to some roadwork, today it was gone again.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- interurban 12y agoI think OCR may have reliability issues, but most road signage has consistent properties (size, height, font, etc.) that could be easily optimized for. It also covers the (admittedly limited) situations where no GPS is available (tunnels, skyscrapers). If there are temporary changes in speed limits due to construction or other events, OCR could immediately identify those with no need to download new information.
- jareds 12y agoI wonder what the first country that will allow completely automated cars with no human driver is? As a blind person I wonder if that would be enough to have me consider migrating from the U.S. depending on the country.
- danielweber 12y agoYou should seriously consider approaching car companies. There will be some (understandable) public resistance to automatic cars, but you could make an excellent poster boy for their benefits.
- shalmanese 12y agoGoogle already thought of that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdgQpa1pUUE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdgQpa1pUUE
- simonebrunozzi 12y agoI've been talking about this for years with friends. I bet on Singapore. (I lived there 2.5 years and know the place a bit).
- jareds 12y agoDo you need a car in Singapore? I thought they had decent public transit?
- koenigdavidmj 12y agoThey do, and generally it's a difficult place to have a car: * Severe congestion pricing * Expensive due to severe taxes (generally over 100k USD) * Licensing for a car is time-limited. I think this is about 10 years or so. The last point in particular makes it feasible to cycle out the entire country's cars in a relatively short time. EDIT: Add more newlines between bullets
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- majidarif 12y agoThis won't work in our country. Drivers don't follow traffic regulation, the roads can't even be called roads. Everything is just wrong. Even a very advance AI can't handle our roads in Philippines.
- jotm 12y agoHeh, that's true for most countries. But I'm pretty sure the tech can already handle motorways - the cars could self-drive there, then let the driver take over in cities...
- bluthru 12y agoHas anything been said about an open protocol for inter-car communication? What about sharing point cloud data? I have a bad feeling that Google is going to keep everything sealed in Google Maps. The industry would benefit from sharing all of their data with OpenStreetMap.
- icebraining 12y agoHas anything been said about an open protocol for inter-car communication? Yes: http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/02/03/us-autos-technology-rules-idUSBREA1218M20140203 http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/02/03/us-autos-technolog... But I don't think it's for mapping, just safety.
- toomuchtodo 12y ago> The industry would benefit from sharing all of their data with OpenStreetMap. What is the barrier to entry for an open platform for people to submit this same data to OpenStreetMap. Precise Positioning + GoPros + data processing on the backend.
- Qworg 12y agoAll of those things? Plus the new StreetView cars are running LIDAR as well. Major projects like this have a ton of hardware limitations.
- songgao 12y agoA lot of companies are working on WAVE/DSRC. Here's a demo from Volvo: http://youtu.be/tasa3D1vVTc http://youtu.be/tasa3D1vVTc And yes the safety applications like emergency brake, intersection collision warning, or curve speed warning etc., have high priority but other Applications like mapping are also possible. I think current mapping applications use road side infrastructures (also through DSRC) but I guess you could share traffic information (Waze?) using inter-vehicle communication. Here's an technical paper if anybody is interested: http://secs.oakland.edu/~gpcorser/vanet-kenny-DSRC.pdf http://secs.oakland.edu/~gpcorser/vanet-kenny-DSRC.pdf
- bra-ket 12y agodid they warn the pedestrians?
- mkempe 12y agoI know you meant this as a joke.. however, Volvo cars do watch for pedestrians and automatically stop for them if needs be. In the worst case, there is an external airbag that will deploy in front of the windshield to avoid the worst types of injuries based on decades of analysis of car accidents with pedestrians (in Sweden).
- jpatokal 12y agoExcept when they don't, as demonstrated in the rather famous fail below during a PR demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lcJ9xgBZJdI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lcJ9xgBZJdI The explanation was "The failure of the test was due to the dummy not being set up properly", which I find rather less than reassuring. http://www.drive.com.au/motor-news/volvo-crash-test-goes-wrong-20100925-15rak.html http://www.drive.com.au/motor-news/volvo-crash-test-goes-wro...
- ptr 12y agoThat's like Gate's BSOD during the demo of PnP. Works now, doesn't it? ;) On the 'up side'; if the pedestrian safety air bag fails, it'll be just like any other car.
- ommunist 12y agoThis will probably not work in Britain. Especially at one particular roundabout on the Isle of Dogs. http://goo.gl/8AqnLE http://goo.gl/8AqnLE <~ See for yourself.
- squidsoup 12y agoCan't help but think some of the traffic engineers in the UK are a little bonkers, see Swindon's Magic Roundabout (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_Roundabout_(Swindon) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_Roundabout_(Swindon)).
- lmm 12y agoAmericans are always awed/terrified by the Magic Roundabout, but it's actually very practical (turning right is much easier than on a single big roundabout, and the whole thing moves better), and straightforward to use even for newcomers (well, assuming you've used roundabouts at all - I understand America doesn't have many of them?)
- zizee 12y agohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_Light_tree http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_Light_tree (sculpture).
- amckenna 12y agoWatching the video it struck me that the lights embedded in the barriers between lanes are a really good idea. It provides illumination of the road and the barrier without large poles lining the road which block the view and are expensive.
- mkempe 12y agoIn Sweden the national traffic authority is responsible for steadily improving the road conditions and environment in order to make road traffic safer (for everyone). What you noticed is one example of their many improvements.
- mkempe 12y agoHere are a couple of interesting pieces on road safety in Sweden: - Why Sweden has so few road deaths [1] - Vision Zero (fatalities and serious injuries on highways by 2020) [2] [1] http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2014/02/economist-explains-16 http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2014/02/ec... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vision_Zero http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vision_Zero
- cscx 12y agoHow does Subaru EyeSight compare to Volvo's autonomous safety features? Note: I know EyeSight can't drive the car itself.
- hellbreakslose 12y ago"tested live on public roads in Sweden" All I saw was a guy driving that car. Didn't actually get to see the car driving on its own.~ Can't believe it till I see it.
- nigekelly 12y agoVery interested in this space and how it will end up. We have a big emotional attachment to cars evidenced by the fact that the annual cost of taking taxis everywhere is probably cheaper than the annual costs of owning a car if you live in a city. NYC habitants have probably made this transition already. SO if we end up with self driving taxis then this form of transport will become ridiculously cheap as the driver's salary is now eliminated. The rationale to own a car will become harder to justify. Also I read recently that our actual usage of cars is very low over a year. This means huge inefficiency. There is plenty of spare capacity per car to do alot more journeys. If we all start taking self driving taxis that run 24x7 in a few years time where does that leave the car companies. One assumes with far fewer car sales. Are they shooting themselves in the foot?
- peteretep 12y ago> We have a big emotional attachment to cars evidenced by > the fact that the annual cost of taking taxis everywhere > is probably cheaper than the annual costs of owning a > car if you live in a city I don't think that's true of most cities. Definitely not true of London.