I am so thrilled I can’t wait. Well, I have to - the article says it’ll be about 8 years before this goes to market.
But seriously, this is wonderful news, especially for those long highway hauls in rural areas.
What do y’all think? Would you want a car that can drive itself?
I have wanted one ever since I read about the possibility in my Children’s Encyclopedia entry on the Future over 20 years ago.
Google is doing the innovative stuff the rest of us just don’t have time to do. They’ll take over the world and we will love them for it.
Robot designated driver, FTW!
It’s not so much that I’d want to have a car that can drive itself as it would be that everyone around me would want me to have one. I’m not a very good driver.
Oh, heyull yayuss.
As part of my job I am very peripherally involved with this sort of project. (I don’t work for Google, so don’t ask. I work for a company that sometimes works with car manufacturers on advanced projects such as this one.)
Many in the industry think this sort of thing is definitely coming in the future. There is a convergence of computing technology, sensor accuracy, and mapping attribution and detailing that is making this possible.
It seems that the current GPS technology would be making this very feasible. There are just so many benefits, from accident and traffic jam prevention, removing irresponsible/aggressive driving, fuel savings, time savings, less cops/courts/lawyers needed, etc. I hope the car makers are seeing the writing on the wall.
Can these things tell the difference between a human lying in the street, and a pile of clothes? A cardboard box vs a giant hunk of metal? Can they tell black ice from water? Can they drive on poorly marked roads, gravel roads, snow-covered roads? I have a hard time believing a computer has the pattern-recognition capabilities, and the intelligence to deal with al the different sorts of events and conditions that come up when driving. If you have to have a human watch over it in case something unusual comes up, then it’s useless. In fact, it’s worse than useless because people will become complacent and not pay attention.
Wouldn’t you avoid these things the same anyway? Are you supposed to hit a pile of clothes, you’re not allowed to swerve around it?
Another drawback mentioned elsewhere online…bombs. Now you don’t even have to have a suicide bomber, just program the car.
I wonder about the insurance issues involved. If a person isn’t driving, who is at fault when there is some kind of accident…the software designers?
This was raised in one of the articles I read about this. Basically…they don’t know yet. We’re hitting the point where technology is running faster than the law can keep up. Right now these cars are street legal because there’s someone behind the wheel to take it if things go awry, but since the goal is to eliminate the driver…
Just what we need, a bunch of cars that drive like Californians, We might as well save some money and stop repairing everything but the left lane, because that is all that will be used.
They should hit the market about the time the gas runs out … .
Car Bombs that drive themselves…
Yes. And eliminate all human drivers. Fewer accidents. Less traffic. Greater efficiency all around.
Car makers are not only seeing the writing on the wall, they are interested in developing this technology. Anything to keep their industry relevant in the future.
Well airplanes have had autopilots for years. IIRC there are even automatic takeoff and landing systems available. They still have pilots even though I would be willing to bet they could be flown remotely just like predator drones.
Cars was just a matter of time.
This is all piddling stuff. Sure there will be marginal conditions where the computers won’t be able to make the call as to what it is seeing or where to go or what to do. Simple: design it so it fails safe ie it stops. Then you as the human decide what to do next. Even if this means you have to drive the car yourself some miniscule part of the time, so what?
and we could talk on our cell phones!
Imagine how nice this could be for truck drivers or traveling by RV, the vast majority of the time you would basically just be along for the ride,