7 ms·

Driverless Segways?

waterlesscloud 12y ago
Seems like an obvious step to me, particularly given that they are otherwise suited for limited, controlled areas and operational speeds.
- aetherson 12y ago
  I don't think that "driverless" segways have much of a niche in most versions of a driverless future. The potential for segways or at least segway-like-transportation-vehicles are, it seems to me, in a rail-dominated world. The fundamental problem with rail infrastructure is that rail only takes you to stations, and that stations are expensive (along several axes) but since you can't take your car on the train, you're limited to a very small radius around the station. Segways would extend that radius dramatically, making a functional rail infrastructure de facto cheaper. Most versions of "driverless cars" futures destroy rail-based infrastructure. They take all the advantages of rail and give them to the (already more popular) cars. At that point, your car can drop you off right next to your destination (and then go park itself elsewhere if necessary), so why do you need a segway? The versions of "driverless cars" that don't destroy rail-based infrastructure, I think, make "driverless segways" unlikely as well.
  - waterlesscloud 12y ago
    See my comment above, but the idea would be that you build your architecture, from the building to the town/city level, around the more efficient segway-sized form factor as opposed to the bulkier car-sized form factor that's better suited for distance travel.
    - aetherson 12y ago
      Predictions based on, "First, we'll completely redo our architecture from the ground up" are likely false. It seems like you have a (pleasant!) vision in mind, but not like you've taken a lot of time with the practicalities of it or how we get from here to there. So, first: the size of cars isn't principally about distance travel. Cars are built for speed (as soon as you're doing about 20mph, wind in your face becomes annoying for most people most of the time, and noise becomes high, and safety becomes an issue), for protection from the weather, and for cargo storage. Driverless cars may well become a little smaller, but there are plenty of reasons they'll stay fundamentally cars, not segways. Second: you can't build your architecture from the building to the city around segways. We already have cities. We can change them incrementally, but redoing them from scratch is just too expensive (again, on a number of axes) to contemplate. And incremental changes aren't going to go your way. People will get the driverless cars that work with how the cities work TODAY, and then those people will become a constituency for incremental changes to the city that will make the city MORE car-oriented, not less. Seriously, the full-featured, relatively cheap driverless car future is one in which public transit declines drastically in importance. It is absolutely not one in which people restructure their cities around transit.
      - waterlesscloud 12y ago
        Speed, weather, and cargo storage are mostly about transportation over...distances. For most shorter hops you need none of those things. Hence my statement. Of course existing cities wouldn't be rebuilt from scratch. But cities change all the time. Driverless cars certainly are better suited for the way cities are today. But as it becomes obvious that there are alternatives that don't require as much wasted real estate as cars use, and that crucially don't give up the personal freedom that cars provide, cities can and will adapt to that. The city of 2035 will likely be moving down that kind of path, whatever the exact details look like. New development will be designed for it from the ground up. This is just how transformation happens.
        aetherson 12y ago
        Speed (at the ranges that we are talking about) is important at the distances that we are talking about. Weather and cargo storage are totally distance-independent. But let's take a step back. We're imagining the sort of default rosy driverless-vehicle future, right? Driverless cars can be made that are fully autonomous, at least as safe as human drivers in essentially all conditions, and not terrifyingly expensive. We agree that in that case the driverless car is strictly more attractive to riders than the drivered-cars of today are, right? So if the value that a person today puts on having a car is A, and the value that future person puts on having a future car is B, then B > A? Indeed, B is much greater than A? And we also agree that today, cities are pretty car-oriented? So A is large ENOUGH that cities pander to it to a large degree? And there's a positive feedback cycle here where when cities pander to cars, that makes cars actually more valuable compared to the competition. Now what you're saying is that when we replace A with B, where B >>> A, cities will (eventually) pander to cars less. Why? The thing that you suggest is that cars waste real estate. Which, certainly, they do. I do note in passing that driverless cars might waste less real estate (for example, they could be sent to more distant and more inconvenient parking structures, or the utilization of people / car could go up with a rides-for-hire model). But whatever, at the very least the real estate efficiency of driverless cars is no worse than the real estate efficiency of regular cars. So meanwhile, today, the rail + maybe something like segway model has value X. We agree that X < A, right? That in America at least cars provide more value than transit, and so people get cars, and so cities pander to cars. Now you seem to be envisioning that in the driverless future, rail + segways have value Y, and Y is not only > X, it's also > A, and in fact > B. Why? What is it about driverless segways that is so great? Unlike driverless cars, they don't seem like they provide much value for their users (you aren't going to read a book while your driverless segway takes you to your destination, and though maybe they'd be a little better when drunk). And, further, we're saying that driverless segways are that awesome even if they have to reverse some inertia of cities currently being designed kind of "against" them, and indeed, even if they have to reverse yet more inertia because the FIRST thing that happens in our driverless future is people buy driverless cars and become a constituency for even more city-pandering-to-cars. I don't see it. Maybe if it takes a long time to get to driverless cars, because right now I think that the car domination of the world is getting a bit milder. Maybe if the current trend continues for a few decades, and then cities have become more hostile to cars, driverless or otherwise, the increased value of cars won't be enough that it will get over the inertia. But if we get good driverless cars in the next decade or fifteen years? In-city rail is just going to die in almost all cities. And once it's dead, it will be dead for a long, long time.
  - stonemetal 12y ago
    Maybe for legacy applications where driverless cars can't fit. They didn't tear down and architect most of Europe to make room for cars so why should driverless cars be any different? It would basically be the Vespa of the driverless age.
stevewilhelm 12y ago
Like these? http://www.kivasystems.com/solutions/ http://www.kivasystems.com/solutions/
Avshalom 12y ago
It doesn't need to be a segway then. That has always been a problem with the segway. Its never needed to be what it is.

Driverless Segways?

Seems like an obvious step to me, particularly given that they are otherwise suited for limited, controlled areas and operational speeds.

aetherson 12y ago
I don't think that "driverless" segways have much of a niche in most versions of a driverless future. The potential for segways or at least segway-like-transportation-vehicles are, it seems to me, in a rail-dominated world. The fundamental problem with rail infrastructure is that rail only takes you to stations, and that stations are expensive (along several axes) but since you can't take your car on the train, you're limited to a very small radius around the station. Segways would extend that radius dramatically, making a functional rail infrastructure de facto cheaper. Most versions of "driverless cars" futures destroy rail-based infrastructure. They take all the advantages of rail and give them to the (already more popular) cars. At that point, your car can drop you off right next to your destination (and then go park itself elsewhere if necessary), so why do you need a segway? The versions of "driverless cars" that don't destroy rail-based infrastructure, I think, make "driverless segways" unlikely as well.
- waterlesscloud 12y ago
  See my comment above, but the idea would be that you build your architecture, from the building to the town/city level, around the more efficient segway-sized form factor as opposed to the bulkier car-sized form factor that's better suited for distance travel.
  - aetherson 12y ago
    Predictions based on, "First, we'll completely redo our architecture from the ground up" are likely false. It seems like you have a (pleasant!) vision in mind, but not like you've taken a lot of time with the practicalities of it or how we get from here to there. So, first: the size of cars isn't principally about distance travel. Cars are built for speed (as soon as you're doing about 20mph, wind in your face becomes annoying for most people most of the time, and noise becomes high, and safety becomes an issue), for protection from the weather, and for cargo storage. Driverless cars may well become a little smaller, but there are plenty of reasons they'll stay fundamentally cars, not segways. Second: you can't build your architecture from the building to the city around segways. We already have cities. We can change them incrementally, but redoing them from scratch is just too expensive (again, on a number of axes) to contemplate. And incremental changes aren't going to go your way. People will get the driverless cars that work with how the cities work TODAY, and then those people will become a constituency for incremental changes to the city that will make the city MORE car-oriented, not less. Seriously, the full-featured, relatively cheap driverless car future is one in which public transit declines drastically in importance. It is absolutely not one in which people restructure their cities around transit.
    - waterlesscloud 12y ago
      Speed, weather, and cargo storage are mostly about transportation over...distances. For most shorter hops you need none of those things. Hence my statement. Of course existing cities wouldn't be rebuilt from scratch. But cities change all the time. Driverless cars certainly are better suited for the way cities are today. But as it becomes obvious that there are alternatives that don't require as much wasted real estate as cars use, and that crucially don't give up the personal freedom that cars provide, cities can and will adapt to that. The city of 2035 will likely be moving down that kind of path, whatever the exact details look like. New development will be designed for it from the ground up. This is just how transformation happens.
      - aetherson 12y ago
        Speed (at the ranges that we are talking about) is important at the distances that we are talking about. Weather and cargo storage are totally distance-independent. But let's take a step back. We're imagining the sort of default rosy driverless-vehicle future, right? Driverless cars can be made that are fully autonomous, at least as safe as human drivers in essentially all conditions, and not terrifyingly expensive. We agree that in that case the driverless car is strictly more attractive to riders than the drivered-cars of today are, right? So if the value that a person today puts on having a car is A, and the value that future person puts on having a future car is B, then B > A? Indeed, B is much greater than A? And we also agree that today, cities are pretty car-oriented? So A is large ENOUGH that cities pander to it to a large degree? And there's a positive feedback cycle here where when cities pander to cars, that makes cars actually more valuable compared to the competition. Now what you're saying is that when we replace A with B, where B >>> A, cities will (eventually) pander to cars less. Why? The thing that you suggest is that cars waste real estate. Which, certainly, they do. I do note in passing that driverless cars might waste less real estate (for example, they could be sent to more distant and more inconvenient parking structures, or the utilization of people / car could go up with a rides-for-hire model). But whatever, at the very least the real estate efficiency of driverless cars is no worse than the real estate efficiency of regular cars. So meanwhile, today, the rail + maybe something like segway model has value X. We agree that X < A, right? That in America at least cars provide more value than transit, and so people get cars, and so cities pander to cars. Now you seem to be envisioning that in the driverless future, rail + segways have value Y, and Y is not only > X, it's also > A, and in fact > B. Why? What is it about driverless segways that is so great? Unlike driverless cars, they don't seem like they provide much value for their users (you aren't going to read a book while your driverless segway takes you to your destination, and though maybe they'd be a little better when drunk). And, further, we're saying that driverless segways are that awesome even if they have to reverse some inertia of cities currently being designed kind of "against" them, and indeed, even if they have to reverse yet more inertia because the FIRST thing that happens in our driverless future is people buy driverless cars and become a constituency for even more city-pandering-to-cars. I don't see it. Maybe if it takes a long time to get to driverless cars, because right now I think that the car domination of the world is getting a bit milder. Maybe if the current trend continues for a few decades, and then cities have become more hostile to cars, driverless or otherwise, the increased value of cars won't be enough that it will get over the inertia. But if we get good driverless cars in the next decade or fifteen years? In-city rail is just going to die in almost all cities. And once it's dead, it will be dead for a long, long time.
- stonemetal 12y ago
  Maybe for legacy applications where driverless cars can't fit. They didn't tear down and architect most of Europe to make room for cars so why should driverless cars be any different? It would basically be the Vespa of the driverless age.

stevewilhelm 12y ago

Like these? http://www.kivasystems.com/solutions/ http://www.kivasystems.com/solutions/

Avshalom 12y ago

It doesn't need to be a segway then. That has always been a problem with the segway. Its never needed to be what it is.