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Or we can try to do OCR with baggies of trash and other refuse. When people get out, have cameras inside take a photo and somehow tell if the car is clean or no
by stephengillie 11y ago
Or we can try to do OCR with baggies of trash and other refuse. When people get out, have cameras inside take a photo and somehow tell if the car is clean or not? Then maybe deduct a cleaning fee for leaving behind garbage?
The car could detect if there's garbage, and maybe use some kind of air sensor to tell if it stinks. If it's clean, it would go back into the motor pool, if not it would auto-drive to a detailer's.
(Who wants to help me start a robotic auto detailing company?)
- JoeAltmaier 11y agoHow about if its just disgusting? Condom wrappers and stains on the seat. Hard to detect automatically. Cameras are missing the point - back to human monitoring which is far from automatic.
- stephengillie 11y agoYes, yes. Since we can't cover all edge cases right now, let's abandon the concept completely! "Disgusting" is a normative, qualitative term. Can you put it into calculable, quantitative terms? I fail to see how cameras are missing the point. Are you saying that all condom wrappers will be the exact same color as the upholstery? Are you saying the stains on the seat will be the same color as the upholstery? (Are they still stains if they colormatch the material?) So we take some before photos, and do machine learning analysis. And we can have people rate the car, or even refuse a car, with the app. Yes, you'd have to have a motor pool with idle cars to get this to work correctly, but queue theory says you'd need idle cars during non-peak hours to meet peak demand anyway.
- maxerickson 11y agoI wonder if most of them will have upholstery, or if they will have something a little easier to point a pressure washer at.
- JoeAltmaier 11y agoWhoa, sorry, didn't mean to push any hot button. Just exploring the problem space, no emotional content intended. If a car service is automatic, there are no people guiding its normal operation. Putting cameras back in would mean, I thought, humans to monitor those cameras. That's adding back much of the cost of cabbies. So maybe the camera can be automated too! That's a good idea. In fact, just their existence may be enough to quash most objectionable activity (snogging, urinating, allowing pet messes, littering). In the end whatever the scheme has to be practical, not just possible. Its the details that sink projects. Like, how to keep the kids from using an autocar as a makeout pit. And so on.
- Symbiote 11y agoTake a train in most of the world and it won't have used condoms, dog vomit or pools of urine. It may or may not have cameras. Only Americans seem to have these problems with public transport — in which case, maybe the technology will be rolled out in Europe or Asia first.
- JoeAltmaier 11y agoA private car may be entirely different from a public train. Just thinking out loud. These auto-cars will be a new thing, dissimilar to what came before. Not an American thing (where did that come from?)
- freehunter 11y agoTreat any trash left as worst-case scenario. If it costs $1000 to clean a car when there is a bloody tissue left in the back, charge $1000 when there is a Snickers wrapper in the back. Not fair? Don't leave trash in the car.
- Retra 11y agoAccidentally leave your wallet behind? $1000 fine! I'm sure drunk people will love it.
- jobjh797878 11y agoWouldn't ZipCar or the smart car rental service have these issues? How do they handle them?
- zyxley 11y agoWhy focus so much on automatic detection? Just do the simple way that Car2Go does: When somebody gets in, they give a "thumbs up" or "thumbs down" in regards to the car's internal cleanliness. If the car gets too many "thumbs down" ratings, then it gets put on the list to be cleaned.