The mapping is the big problem. But road crews could do their own mapping and updating in the future. Time and money, sure, but not overwhelming so long as technical advancement happens.
For people that live in mapped areas it would be useful. For guys who live down a dusty road not as much. More and more people are going to be in the former category.
I didn’t say anything of the kind. My point is that the essential costs and collateral issues for these kinds of gosh-wow projects can’t be minimized or ignored, and those costs can be far from trivial - the opposite end of the spectrum, if anything.
Well, in theory - but if not, they require fairly rigid standards on things like curbs, lane markings, surface quality, turn radii, etc. Go off nice, new, flat, clean, well-engineered Bay Area suburb roads, and you no longer have many of those things. So it’s either bring those roads up to 21st century California spec or use some substitute like lane guidance wires, marker posts, whatever. (And then maintain them as carefully as many of our roads now aren’t.)
I used to live on those nice, neat, new California streets (and by new I mean “laid according to standards set in the late 20th century”). I am not sure there’s a curb within five miles of me now, on many, many miles of road that include relatively major through routes. Most of the population here would be in your theoretical early-adopter interest and finance bracket… and IMVHO, it ain’t-a gonna happen here.
Mapping alone is not a solution. There’s a thing called “ground truth” and it can only be determined in realtime by boots, wheels or rollers on the ground - not by remote observation or stored digital data.
Sorry - I used to live near a university famed for turning this stuff out and making sober predictions about its wonderful future. I delighted in going to public showings and asking those simple emperor’s-new-clothes questions that would make them go home sulking. I am abundantly familiar with the mindset that thinks a brilliant idea that works in the Engineering Department parking lot, or in the brand-new development surrounding Google HQ, will work globally, and that there’s no barrier to the rollout but insufficient vision.
In the end it (probably*) won’t matter if there are nay-sayers. If/when self-driving cars become available I would guess that the insurance rates for people who use them will be much lower than those who don’t. For example, my sister with two teen-age daughters is paying ~ $3k/year for insurance. I can easily see that dropping to a few $hundred with a self-driving car.
(* - I say probably because we could have knucklehead legislators pass laws that won’t allow companies to lower insurance rates for self-driving cars or make them illegal.)
We had off-road driverless cars in 2005. Machines have more eyes than people, and faster brains. All we have to do is teach them, and driving algorithms are getting better every day.
The reason driverless cars aren’t the norm right now is not a technical one. We only need to convince consumers like you and their politicians that people simply don’t make very good control systems during short time frames when lives are on the line, and that machines are already doing this better than people.
FYI, Volvo has committed to making sure that no one dies or gets seriously injured driving their new vehicles by 2020. Which, according to Volvo, means that their new vehicles ultimately get into no crashes. Volvo seems awfully optimistic. I mean if they really had a car that would never crash by 2020 then I would be the first to buy one for my parents and myself, even if the car was 10-20k more than what new cars usually cost.
Of course this is likely marketing BS, but still, what’s the good of over-promising and then under-delivering? It seems only to serve to ruin one’s credibility. Then again, people definitely don’t have memory spans of 6 years. In the context of stuff said in the media. I.e. who was the shooter in Aurora again? I can’t even remember.
Self driving cars have moved way beyond the early experiments with magnetic tracks, GPS and dead reckoning. Modern systems are primarily visual with GPS, local sensing and dead reckoning as additional inputs. Most use some form of neural net that allows the system to generalize in unfamiliar situations.
It is also a matter of degree. Traction control and ABS are being joined by steering assistance and hazard identification. Navigation systems are now common. In another 25 years the necessary components will exist on all passenger cars. 25 years after that those components will be integrated into self driving systems.
Earlier adaptation will be by heavy duty commercial trucking. Those trucks need to operate 24/7. Self driving trucks have major commercial advantages.
One in a million?
Google returned; About 2,490,000 results (0.38 seconds) for “Killed in police pursuit.”
Sorry, the public will never go for this. Invest in high speed rail instead, it’s proven to work.
Maybe you need a better GPS! Seriously, I’ve driven with my GPS in dozens of cities and towns in two provinces and three states, on everything from major freeways to a rutted country road that was barely more than a cow path, and have never seen this problem. No doubt map information isn’t perfect, but it’s not the disaster you make it out to be. Years after getting the thing, I continue to marvel at the accuracy of the GPS-map integration.
Keep in mind as well that map and GPS information is used for navigation, not for steering, traffic maneuvers, or object avoidance.
The presumption here is that self-driving robotics are half-blind and spectacularly stupid. If human drivers don’t need those things, why would a well-engineering self-driving car need them? Are we using technology from the 60s?
I have no doubt that over time, traffic signals and signage will be increasingly optimized for driverless cars, but that would be to make them even safer, not because they require it. Frankly from what I and many others see every day, “half-blind and spectacularly stupid” is an apt description of many human drivers.
And ground truth is determined in real time by the sensors and logic of a driverless car.
I’m glad I had finished my tea before I read this, or else you would have owed me a new keyboard. I forget the exact figure, but Mr. Roadshow of the Murky News has several times published figures that the average Bay Area driver spends at least several hundred bucks a years on repairs due to our smooth beautiful roads. Try 880 through Oakland some day. Yeah, we mostly have curbs and stuff, but no more than anyplace I’ve ever lived for the last 60 years.
Don’t let him fool you, RTFirefly. In the New Yorker article I read they don’t stay in Mountain View, they start in the East Bay and drive down the Nasty Nimitz to get to Mountain View - I assume using 237 not one of the toll bridges. As crappy a commute as you are likely to find, and I grew up just blocks from the Long Island Expressway. Not one penny has been spent by the state or the counties in getting the roads ready for these cars.
Do you know for sure the Google cars can’t handle this? There are lots of roads in Northern California without curbs either, which twist and turn through the forests. Positive that the cars haven’t been tried on them?
Even if there are some small number of people who live in places where the cars wouldn’t work - at least at first - the vast majority of the market lives in places where they can and do work.
The cars observe their surrounds - 360 degrees worth of surroundings. Much better than people do.
You really should actually read about them some time, since if you think they’ve only been driven within a few miles of Mountain View you don’t have a clue.
There are no technical obstacles to getting the cars out of Mountain View since the cars drive on real freeways all over all the time. There is plenty of work to be done in making them street ready for the average idiot. And for dealing with even more issues than they can deal with now. And especially in getting the price down to something people can afford. I think every car now costs several hundred thousand bucks, and looks awful.
I don’t believe Google has an plan to build cars, but rather to license the technology (and no doubt sell ads on the dashboard.) Hell, the Google cars drive past the Tesla plant all the time. Perfect match.
If the vehicle of the future uses GPS, cameras and maybe laser or radar such that it is aware of not only its own position, speed, acceleration/deceleration, but also the position of other vehicles…and in turn those vehicles know where they are…and the majority of those vehicles are communicating that information to each vehicle in a halo around the vehicle, I see that as a cluster or cell of safety.
If some group or enterprise, such as the USPS, or UPS or Fedex etc outfits their vehicles with GPS logging and recording ‘blackboxes’ to refine ongoing GPS data (resellable to self-driving car manufacturers)…and perhaps even additional GPS data points added by recording consumer vehicle data, those additional data points would smooth out the messiness of some GPS routes.
As I mentioned several posts up, my car is already using stereoscopic camera data to help me avoid accidents. And they did so relatively inexpensively with hardly noticeable added weight to the vehicle.
How’s this for a thought experiment? Given: Every car being equipped with cameras, with gps and some kind of transponder to communicate and coordinate its position relative to all other vehicles in range. Will there still need to be stop signs and traffic signals? The vehicles communicate amongst themselves when it it safe to proceed. The camera sensors detect no issues, confirmed by no issues being communicated via transponder…the vehicle continues into traffic without delay.
I’d have to say commendable as well. I might just have to get a Volvo after owning nothing but Japanese cars.
Side note to all those arguing about mapping and technology … you do realize that Google admitted that mapping is essential to its “autonomous” cars? And that its autonomous cars still can’t drive in the rain? And they can’t recognize temporary traffic signals … because they rely HEAVILY on meticulous mapping. And this all goes back to Volvo’s “promise” … if Google can’t do it, what can Volvo do?
Seriously, I’ve driven with my GPS in dozens of cities and towns in two provinces and three states, on everything from major freeways to a rutted country road that was barely more than a cow path, and have never seen this problem. No doubt map information isn’t perfect, but it’s not the disaster you make it out to be. Years after getting the thing, I continue to marvel at the accuracy of the GPS-map integration.