UKC

Aside from it's ridiculous looks, who will be liable in the highly likely event there is an accident? I say highly likely because in the real world we all know how glitchy vehicle electronics end up getting in day to day use.
I note, no bike rack for when it switches off leaving you miles from home

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-27587558

In reply to woolsack:

Driving isn't all about not crashing into other things, it's also about being aware that if you don't take some form of preemptive action something else might be on a collision course with you.

Can electronics ever replace the human brain being able to anticipate something that hasn't happened yet?

In reply to woolsack:

How do you tell it where to go? Does it follow sat-nav maps?

Que cars jamming up people's gardens, stuck miles down rough potholed land rover tracks and driving over cliffs.

In reply to butteredfrog:

I did think it was a little optimistic that the prototypes had no steering wheel or pedals so that, even assuming the navigation worked perfectly for the journey, having reached your destination you couldn't park it on the drive, move it so you could get the bins out. Let alone stuff like manoeuvring round the gas station and choosing which side you want to fill from.

I guess they wanted to show that, in principle, it worked with no human control at all, but actually it suggested (perhaps unfairly) that they hadn't really thought it through at all.

In reply to Dave Garnett:

Talking of not having thought it through at all ... why would an electric vehicle need to stop at a gas station?

In reply to john arran:


For Ginsters and porn, why else?

In reply to Trangia:


I'd suspect they can already far exceed it. Our attention is very narrowly focused and prone to regular lapses as we tire or become bored. Computers don't get bored and don't divert all their attention to the MP3 player or the pretty girl on the pavement or the idiot tailgating at the expense of their broader situational awareness.

jk

In reply to jkarran:

I am sure that's true but I suspect these vehicles will make different mistakes. E.g What do they do when traffic lights are out, or when the road isn't visible in the snow, or when diversion signs are missing or put upsidedown?

In reply to Trangia:
They've already done 700,000 accident free miles which should earn them a 30 or 50 year no cliams discount.

In reply to MG:
I wonder if a child can trap a Google car with a dozen traffic cones?

In reply to jkarran:

The DLR (Docklands light railway) has driverless trains and I would think a train is far simpler to control by computer than a car on the road.

But the journey usually makes you feel ill as the train is constantly slowing down and speeding up randomly and the journey is almost never smooth. The normal tube trains with drivers are much more smoothly driven.

In reply to MG:


Don't get me wrong, I expect they'll cause all sorts of hilarious chaos once they're released into the wild

My point was that computers can solve the sort of collision avoidance problems that we can, the difference is they'll be doing it as well 8 hours into a drive as they were when they set off, I'll be barely conscious of what's in front of me let alone beside and behind.

jk

In reply to elsewhere:


I like this idea.

Well I hope they dont become too popular as I've just started out as a driving instructor.

In reply to Richard Wilson:

But they would be a real help to me, I am too blind to drive.

In reply to woolsack:

They depend on Google's road maps! Well, there's your first problem.

How will they cope with road works, temporary changes to road signs / rights of way etc. What if two Google cars meet each other face on down a two way road where there's only room for one car to advance? Wales & Scotland & rural England are full on such roads.

In reply to Flinticus:

I imagine they'll be able to communicate and decide who goes first, much more reliably than we currently do!

In reply to elsewhere:


It would interesting to know where these miles were clocked up. It sounds great but if they were mostly on the grid type roads typical of the eastern US, it is not so impressive.

In reply to Jon Read:


Would they need to pair or accept a friends request first?

In reply to woolsack:

I can see these being a boon to the gentleman traveller who has inadvertently over refreshed himself at the local tavern...

In reply to MG:
Mostly California & Nevada which may be the only places where it's allowed.

In reply to john arran:

OK, smartarse, but you still have to manoeuvre to get to electric hook-up points!

Don't get me wrong, I think this will almost certainly be normal within 20 years in some US urban areas and motorways but it will be something you engage when you want it, like cruise control. And, like cruise control, I suspect it will be more appropriate in fairly predicatable and laminar traffic flows, and will take a long time to catch on here.

It will be a while before it's like Will Smith's Audi in I, Robot, and even that had a manual override.

In reply to jkarran:

I don't think they have or ever will. I often think about this when walking down a hill at the end of the day. Often you walk fast, seeing and measuring the ground in front of you and reacting to any unexpected changes. There is a lot of info processing going and putting that processing into action very quickly.

I was watching a sparrow fly. The speed of changes of direction and accuracy is amazing. Again, I don't think machines will ever get close to that.

In reply to woolsack:

Sounds fantastic to me - a real leap forward. It might not be too fanciful to imagine that eventually, the world's biggest cities will only allow electric, driverless cars, regulated to maximum speeds of 25mph - can you imagine what an incredible impact that would have on the population's quality of life - huge reductions in accidents, emissions AND journey times? On Radio 2 this morning, a 'Futurologist' (wtf?) claimed Mercedes already had the tech in place - just waiting for the European legislation (and culture) to catch up.

In reply to woolsack:

I'm really excited about driverless cars. It will be like all the best bits of train travel and car travel combined. You have your own personal space and direct door to door connection, but also you can relax on the journey and read a book or whatever. Sounds great.

In reply to Saor Alba:


I suspect modern robotics is much closer to solving this type of information processing problem than you think. See the robots being developed by Boston Dynamics (and therefore technology now owned by Google) eg. the BigDog (ie second) video at 0.37.

youtube.com/watch?v=wE3fmFTtP9g&
youtube.com/watch?v=W1czBcnX1Ww&

The future's already here, it's just not uniformly distributed.

In reply to Jon Read:


I remember a comment from one of the engineers about how they had to change the algorithm for the 4 way Stops they have in the US. The first version programmed in the 'official' rules from the US version of the highway code but they discovered the cars were too polite compared to humans and they needed to be more assertive if they were ever to get across the junction.

The self driving car has sensor capabilities that human drivers do not such as a laser scanners and microwave proximity detect as well as multiple cameras at various positions around the car, more detailed digital mapping, more accurate SatNav location and real time traffic information based on tracking the progress of other users of Google maps. It can be looking everywhere at once - it isn't like a human turning their head to look in the mirror.

Getting rid of the steering wheel and pedals is essential because they are a waste of space that constrains the layout of the cabin. Google wants the driver on their tablet or phone clicking on adverts during the trip.

In reply to Quiddity:
Those are spooky/amazing "animals" and funny to watch one skid about on ice.

In reply to 999thAndy:

Exactly. They are a brilliant idea. You don't need to own a car, rather can book one to come and pick you up from home and drive you to work, school, home from the pub. Essentially turns cars in to taxis without having to pay the driver. The opportunities for car sharing are opened up.

Going back 20 years I doubt anyone would have thought have thought we'd have google earth, streetview, satnav in our mobile phones, etc. Aircraft have been able to fly themselves for decades and sensor tech with collision avoidance built in to cars for some time.

I think the technology is already viable. It'll need some time to mature, but like electric cars already they are slowly seeping in to mainstream life. The problem, as always, seems to be people's willingness to accept it.

In reply to Saor Alba:


Simple, cheap, consumer machines are achieving this already.

http://tinyurl.com/pwa7hwy

I think you'll find computers are far more capable than we give credit, especially in this era where user analytics, behaviours and experiences are recorded by the likes of Google. Such huge amounts of information stored centrally has allowed massive advances in the last decade.

In reply to woolsack:

The problem with driver less cars (at the moment) is that they can;t make moral decisions.

Imagine : the car is driving at 50mph (not going to stop very quickly) and 2 obstacles present themselves - a dog on one side - a group of children on the other. We humans would make the decision without thinking about it - and the dog would get it - but how does the car make that decision. Or how about a man or a pregnant woman - again we make instant morale decisions that computers just aren't capable of making yet.

I think they certainly have their place - but there's a little work to be done before they'll be let loose everywhere

In reply to David Martin:




Automatic landings are a damn site safer than piloted ones - especially in adverse conditions !

In reply to Quiddity:

Big Dog isn't very stealthy is it? "Retreat men, I can't stand the buzzing"

In reply to woolsack:

If this takes off in a big way then Google will have made drone strikes obsolete. Just have a government only backdoor that allows them to send an instruction that makes the car switch off the airbags, disengage the seat belts and leave the road at 100mph.

No need to hack even, as it could be in the software from the start. You could even disengage specific safety features if you only care about one passenger.

It's for the greater good!

/paranoia

In reply to butteredfrog:


Listen. Understand. BigDog is out there. It can't be reasoned with, it can't be bargained with. BigDog doesn't feel pity or remorse or fear and it absolutely will not stop. Ever. Until you are dead.

In reply to mp3ferret:
I suspect the Google cars will screw up and screw up differently but they will screw up less often than humans.

I like the idea of a Google dog chasing a Google car.

In reply to Quiddity:


Or until it vibrates itself to bits, like a meccano model on a spin dryer, whichever comes first!

"ATTACK MEN, it's leg has fallen off!"

In reply to butteredfrog:

Harpoons, tow cables, go for the legs?

In reply to woolsack:

while there's still obstacles to overcome, lots of people are really underestimating the capabilities of modern programming and automated decision making!

+ getting around a fuel station - the cars have 360 degree sensors. I don't know a huge amount about the current models but there's plenty of tech out there that can take a 3d map of surroundings. and a bloody Roomba (them little automated vacuum things!) can get around obstacles without crashing ffs! Add in some sensors or transmitted info (even a map and course) from the location which is received on entering and you'd have effectively a train track with invisible tracks. Easy!

+ driving when the road is obscured by snow - go play with paintshop and see how the auto-scissors work incredibly well at finding the edge of images on complex backgrounds. Scale that up a bit with the above mentioned 3d mapping and you're just as capable as a human at finding the road/curb etc. Now add in sensors that can detect the curb even if it's invisible beneath the snow (infra red? I dunno but it's certainly possible) and you've improved it.

+ do I hit the dog or the child? - image recognition. Using an approximate child shaped image a computer can easily tell from the picture in front of it what's a child and what's not. Also it's very likely automated vehicles will be restricted to lower speed limits (and not 34 in a 30 either!) and they'll definitely register the need to brake and follow through on that need faster. Even if there's a collision it will be much less likely to cause serious injury.

+ parking on your driveway/in a garage - park where you want. Press a button to get a precise GPS location, scan and save a 3d image of your surroundings, boom - it knows exactly where to park and can save that info for future use. Parking in a town centre? aim towards the destination, spiral out (possibly using parking information from the satnav or from transmitted info at the location) looking for spaces of the relevant size. Easily as quick as a person and better at judgement so less faff.

+ bad terrain? - There's wheelchairs that can adapt perfectly to unexpected cambers and other terrain issues. The programming included in some wheelchairs is unbelievably impressive.

It's all a matter of combining hundreds or thousands of decisions and bits of info being scanned and updated much faster than we can consciously do, and then applying mathematically calculated reactions based on every possible outcome which is at least as reliable as our subconscious/instinctive reactions.

It's all possible. Just a matter of building up the data for it, which is getting closer to the workable level

In reply to Quiddity:

Use the force, Quadcopter pilots.

In reply to Scarab9:

How's it going to work in a post-apocalyptic situation? Then you will need an old skool car with manual controls. All that sat-nav stuff and sensors etc will have stopped working? Have you not seen any of The Walking Dead? How far would you get in a google car.

Google cars will also make it easier for the machines to take over. Imagine, all they need do is ramp up the speed and crash you into a wall, drive you over a cliff, into the sea etc.

In reply to butteredfrog:



I think you may need to buy a better sat nav

In reply to woolsack:


TBF vehicle electronics are pretty reliable these days and are invariably designed to fail in a safe mode.

In reply to Flinticus:

I do wonder about the long term lack of a manual override. I've not seen anything to indicate whether it's more of an advertisement/image reason during these early days or whether it's for safety reasons of some sort.

Assuming this ever rolls out to a less controlled area and numbers then I'd imagine if it's the former then we'll see an override put in, if it's the latter then tough.

In reply to timjones:

Pretty much all passenger airliners these days are fly by wire so reliability in a car environment shouldn't be such a big deal.

In reply to timjones:


Yeah right! ROFL Hence the usefulness of a bike rack for those get you home moments

In reply to woolsack:

They're about as reliable as they need to be. No point in having an incredibly robust MAF sensor when failure means a few quid at the garage. On the other hand the ECU is pretty robust, as if it fails you could have a pretty f*cked up engine.

In reply to woolsack:


I can only wonder what make of car you drive, IME total electrical failures are not an issue on Ford, Renault and Land Rover.

Personally I'm a big fan of an AA membership card for those get you home moments. I'm just too much of a wuss to strap a car onto the back of a bike and pedal home

In reply to Trangia:


With how I have to allow for people being either half asleep at ten to eight in the morning or in a hurry and wanting to rush home in the evening if I'm cycling, I find the idea of lots of little cars automatically avoiding things they could crash into quite appealing.

Personally, I think we will see the day when people just get into their cars and press go and everything drives along in streams of traffic without people randomly changing lanes without indicating or being involved in shunts though texting, or pulling our of side roads without looking, or not checking their blind spots before turning, or letting their emotions affect their driving for the worse..etc, and I think it could be a good thing.

As a concept, fallible humans being in sole charge of things weighing a couple of tons or more which can travel at high speeds seems nuts to me. Genuinely so, we accept it because there's no alternative yet, but in the future I think people will look back and wonder at how dangerous it was/must have been, like we do now with dangerous practices in different industries in the past.

That's my take anyway. ()

In reply to woolsack:

A car for sandal wearing ,recumbent bike riding ,pulse eating ,retired couples from the Cotswolds.

Wonder what Jezza's take on it would be.

In reply to andymac:
Ageist ()

Jezza is a dinosaur.