The Self-Driving Car

Mr Benevolent

The number of cars on the road is increasing fast. Accidents and traffic jams are getting worse and more frequent. Autobraking, prebraking and speed matching are becoming more common on high-end cars. So why not go the whole hog and make cars self-driving? Ok, it'll be ten or twenty years before fully self driving cars become common, but it makes so much sense in terms of reducing road deaths, accidents, traffic jams and insurance premiums. Cars will be safer, more efficient and you can blame the computer if things go wrong. Speed sensors can be hooked to the speed limits.

Fine, there's no point in making these cars mandatory, but once the initial bias is overcome I'd think that more than 70% or drivers would go for this option. Naturally they'd have the chance to override, but what would be the point?

Self-driving car in action

bladespin

AFIK Mercedes already have one but when Top gear tried it (few years back) the radar failed resulting in a minor crash lol.

ShadowHearth

they are still funding it? GM?

Top gear was talking a bit about self driving cars and i have to admit they were right.

autopilots can pilot planes alot better then humans, but would you sit in to a plane with no human pilot? thought so

Mr Benevolent

bladespin wrote: »

AFIK Mercedes already have one but when Top gear tried it (few years back) the radar failed resulting in a minor crash lol.

Be fair, Top Gear are not known for their impartial non-entertainment driven shows. Most of the stuff is faked.

autopilots can pilot planes alot better then humans, but would you sit in to a plane with no human pilot? thought so

No offence to you but comparing the self -driving car to an airliner autopilot is ridiculously wrong. An autopilot does nothing other than fly a set course at a set altitude - it doesn't monitor the aircraft and it definitely doesn't respond to the infinite dangers in the sky. The two simply don't compare and it's a non starter as a means for debate. Believe me, I know aircraft well enough to know the comparisons, much better than I know cars tbh. An airliner autopilot is a moron maintaining a set of preset numbers.

An airliner just can't fly without a human, end of story. A car can easily drive without a human, firstly because it's a 2D problem, secondly because 'threats' and obstacles can be seen and predicted and thirdly because the computer has better reaction times than a human.

nialler

I'm nearly sure the new Lexus LS has a "Take me Home" mode which doesn't require the use of anything only keep an eye on things, the car does it all itself.

Mercedes S-Class and I'm sure the CL have intelligent Cruise Control which will brake and stop while in cruise, not sure if it'll pull off again, they've also got blindspot sensors to alert you if you pull into a lane and there's a car in your blindspot.

I've got a 9 year old S-Class that as an optional extra had "Distronic" so put it in cruise and set the distance between you and the car ahead and it would stick at that distance, pretty impressive for a car of that age I'd say.

A lot of cars now have lane assist so I'd say the next gen or the one after that Merc (say 9-10 years) they'll be driving themselves using GPS, Radar and intelligent camera/computer systems effectively giving you the self drive car that has better reaction times and more than likely safer, but then again do they have the intelligence to see a situation develop and prepare for it?

N

nialler

Confab wrote: »

An airliner just can't fly without a human, end of story. A car can easily drive without a human, firstly because it's a 2D problem, secondly because 'threats' and obstacles can be seen and predicted and thirdly because the computer has better reaction times than a human.

An Airbus A380 can effectively fly from London to Sydney with no human at the controls, they're only there as a backup and again would fly on a plane with no pilot? Same for the Boeing Dreamliner.

Autopilot, auto-land, auto take off they're a helluva lot more advanced these days.

UCAV anyone?

bladespin

Confab wrote: »

Be fair, Top Gear are not known for their impartial non-entertainment driven shows. Most of the stuff is faked.

Very true but I must admit watching an S class plogh into the back of another was very entertaining

Mr Benevolent

they're only there as a backup

With respect that's utterly incorrect.Yes most airliners have autoland (since the 50's), but if another airliner suddenly moves onto the runway the autopilot won't notice and *BOOM*. It needs human interaction to stop it killing people.

They don't have autotakeoff (the authorities refused to certify it). If they did the same problem would apply.

UCAV anyone?

The UCAVs are controlled by trained operators on the ground and use the autopilots for cruise and workload reduction. Again, it's not the same as a self-driving car.

I'm nearly sure the new Lexus LS has a "Take me Home" mode which doesn't require the use of anything only keep an eye on things, the car does it all itself.

Mercedes S-Class and I'm sure the CL have intelligent Cruise Control which will brake and stop while in cruise, not sure if it'll pull off again, they've also got blindspot sensors to alert you if you pull into a lane and there's a car in your blindspot.

I've got a 9 year old S-Class that as an optional extra had "Distronic" so put it in cruise and set the distance between you and the car ahead and it would stick at that distance, pretty impressive for a car of that age I'd say.

A lot of cars now have lane assist so I'd say the next gen or the one after that Merc (say 9-10 years) they'll be driving themselves using GPS, Radar and intelligent camera/computer systems effectively giving you the self drive car that has better reaction times and more than likely safer, but then again do they have the intelligence to see a situation develop and prepare for it?

I want one!

stevenmu

Confab wrote: »

An airliner just can't fly without a human, end of story. A car can easily drive without a human, firstly because it's a 2D problem, secondly because 'threats' and obstacles can be seen and predicted and thirdly because the computer has better reaction times than a human.

The fact that it's a 2d problem actually makes it more difficult. The collision only happens along a one dimensional line in both cases, but in the case of a car it only has a 2d plane to pick an escape route on, the plane would have have a full 3d space to choose it's escape route (assuming it's not very close to the ground at the time). Not to mention all the other obstacles on the ground, trees, walls, buildings, pedestrians etc. Also, being airborne makes it far easier to detect and identify potential threats, on the ground there is far more clutter to pick threats out of, a small tree beside the road could easily be a small child about to run out etc. In the air everything is to be avoided, on the ground you can't realistically emergency brake every time there's a tree or bush or post beside the road. And there's a much longer unobstructed view of your surroundings too.

Looking at it from a computers point of view, automating flight is far far more simple than automating driving (which still doesn't mean it's a great idea yet either).

markpb

DARPA funded the Urban Challenge in 2007 and invited universities to programme a car that could drive completely unaided along a regular road, merge into moving traffic and negotiate a four way junction. The results were pretty impressive but it has a long way to go.

To be honest, I'd imagine the kind of incremental improvements nialler mentioned earlier are more likely to be the way it eventually happens. And whatever about a computers ability to react in an emergency, I'd imagine they'll be less likely to cause an accident because they can accurately judge distance and speed and are less likely to tailgate.

Mr Benevolent

stevenmu wrote: »

The fact that it's a 2d problem actually makes it more difficult. The collision only happens along a one dimensional line in both cases, but in the case of a car it only has a 2d plane to pick an escape route on, the plane would have have a full 3d space to choose it's escape route (assuming it's not very close to the ground at the time). Not to mention all the other obstacles on the ground, trees, walls, buildings, pedestrians etc. Also, being airborne makes it far easier to detect and identify potential threats, on the ground there is far more clutter to pick threats out of, a small tree beside the road could easily be a small child about to run out etc. In the air everything is to be avoided, on the ground you can't realistically emergency brake every time there's a tree or bush or post beside the road. And there's a much longer unobstructed view of your surroundings too.

Looking at it from a computers point of view, automating flight is far far more simple than automating driving (which still doesn't mean it's a great idea yet either).

Looking at it that way I agree, but it's still a 'dumb' versus 'smart' argument. Airliner autopilots are dumb and have no avoidance capabilities at all. You might as well have Brian Cowan at the controls. A happy mean for cars would be to reduce roads accidents by xx% with the selfdrive system. It's never going to be perfect, but it'll be much better than humans doing it.

karlog

You cant give a car a mind of its own. Soon it will question why its taking orders from humans. Then you'll have a whole car rebellion on the streets crashing into stores and running down innocent bystanders. It will be like
'i robot' except with cars.

B00MSTICK

Wouldn't be any fun though would it?

stevenmu

Confab wrote: »

Looking at it that way I agree, but it's still a 'dumb' versus 'smart' argument. Airliner autopilots are dumb and have no avoidance capabilities at all. You might as well have Brian Cowan at the controls.

Oh I agree, from what I know of airliner autopilots they're pretty dumb and simply follow a set of instructions from point A to B, and the good ones can go from A to B to C . Potentially though, if someone was to automate either cars or planes, planes are far easier (I'm pretty sure some of the military-grade autopilots are far more advanced too)