Will drones make self drive cars obsolete?

BattleCorp

Self drive cars seem to be a technology that a lot of people think will be a game changer.

But thinking about it, will drones not make self drive cars obsolete? Imagine having a pod that you sit in and relax while a drone picks up the pod and whisks you away to your destination in super quick time?

Surely we are almost at that point with technology right now?

everlast75

BattleCorp wrote: »

Self drive cars seem to be a technology that a lot of people think will be a game changer.

But thinking about it, will drones not make self drive cars obsolete? Imagine having a pod that you sit in and relax while a drone picks up the pod and whisks you away to your destination in super quick time?

Surely we are almost at that point with technology right now?

They already do, in parts of Afghanistan and Iraq...

The Backwards Man

You're getting way ahead of yourself.

Drones and self drive cars are a long ways off for those of us that would benefit most from drones and self drive cars, they'll probably be competing in large urban areas in the near future, where self propulsion should have been outlawed decades ago, but I'll be old and grey before a drone takes my turf home or a self drive car takes me home from the pub.

Sh1tbag OToole

All they'll do is make the world very boring. Like one of those bad sci fi films

BattleCorp

The Backwards Man wrote: »

You're getting way ahead of yourself.

Drones and self drive cars are a long ways off for those of us that would benefit most from drones and self drive cars, they'll probably be competing in large urban areas in the near future, where self propulsion should have been outlawed decades ago, but I'll be old and grey before a drone takes my turf home or a self drive car takes me home from the pub.

Jaysus, I wouldn't be too sure about that. Sure aren't Amazon trialing deliveries by drone?



Sure realistically all we need is bigger drones with the ability to carry us around, no?

I reckon 10 - 20 years, or even sooner.

_Brian

Sh1tbag OToole wrote: »

All they'll do is make the world very boring. Like one of those bad sci fi films

Self driving cares would indeed make things boring, I like driving and the driving itself reduces the monotony of getting places. Take that away and I would hate it.

Autonomous people carrying drones, my god why hasn't I thought if this potential advancement, I want one now !! Imagine having a drone capable of lifting you off and bringing you about by flying. Ordinary folk will never be trusted to fly but this could open up the sky to those of us otherwise grounded.

Tabnabs

Spot on OP, drones are a huge step towards the Sci-Fi future becoming a reality. Your pod idea is probably the public transport model for the future.

But these ideas are being developed already.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TWOQ0xcDOU4

galljga1

The Backwards Man wrote: »

You're getting way ahead of yourself.

Drones and self drive cars are a long ways off for those of us that would benefit most from drones and self drive cars, they'll probably be competing in large urban areas in the near future, where self propulsion should have been outlawed decades ago, but I'll be old and grey before a drone takes my turf home or a self drive car takes me home from the pub.

Now we're talking.

Sh1tbag OToole

BattleCorp wrote: »

Jaysus, I wouldn't be too sure about that. Sure aren't Amazon trialing deliveries by drone?





Sure realistically all we need is bigger drones with the ability to carry us around, no?

I reckon 10 - 20 years, or even sooner.

Since all the delivery people will be on the dole and various other professions will be obsoleted and since none of these companies want to pay any tax there will be very little money people will have left for ordering things on Amazon.

All these big tech companies like Amazon, Netflix, Google, Lyft, Uber are in a massive rush to replace 100% their employees with machines so the founding members can go live in a massive house in the Bahamas while the billions pour into their bank account from a completely autonomous business.

Since a small fistfull of companies already have 23% of the USA's cash, what's going to happen when we add in a couple of extra companies that suddenly have the world monopoly on personal transport and have almost no costs? Feck all people will be ordering from Amazon anyway

kneemos

It takes a massive amount of energy to lift anything vertically.

Non flyer I'm afraid.

BattleCorp

Sh1tbag OToole wrote: »

Since all the delivery people will be on the dole and various other professions will be obsoleted and since none of these companies want to pay any tax there will be very little money people will have left for ordering things on Amazon.

All these big tech companies like Amazon, Netflix, Google, Lyft, Uber are in a massive rush to replace 100% their employees with machines so the founding members can go live in a massive house in the Bahamas while the billions pour into their bank account from a completely autonomous business.

Since a small fistfull of companies already have 23% of the USA's cash, what's going to happen when we add in a couple of extra companies that suddenly have the world monopoly on personal transport and have almost no costs? Feck all people will be ordering from Amazon anyway

I don't disagree with you one little bit but sure didn't the same thing happen when all those people with horses and carts were put out business by some new fangled contraptions that worked on petrol and diesel? That's life. Not all change is for the better.

BattleCorp

kneemos wrote: »

It takes a massive amount of energy to lift anything vertically.

Non flyer I'm afraid.

We'll see.

o1s1n

I still don't know how they're going to get around this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixIoDYVfKA0

gramar

Will drones make self drive cars obsolete?

Self drive cars haven't even made it to the market yet and already they're obsolete. They say things move fast but that takes the biscuit. :eek:

Capt'n Midnight

Two massive problems

First is the energy requirement for flight.
Drones max out at 30 minutes, and that's with zero payload. To lift a human you need expensive motors and lots of stored energy which tends to get released if there is a crash which leads on to the second massive problem.

Second is the separation distances and times used. Busiest airport ever handled the equivalent of 2100 round trips in one day. The M50 toll section handles 120,000 That's getting towards 10 times as many as the 15,000 using the Port Tunnel which uses a separation distances of 50m/100m

BTW this is also why the Hyperloop is flawed. Just can't handle enough passengers to provide real mass transit. There is also the issue that at high speeds you can't have sharp corners so massive bridge and tunnelling costs to stay straight and level. HS2 in the UK is costing FIVE times what a similar project in France would. But the higher speeds proposed for the UK would slash an extra 210 seconds off a journey to Birmingham.



There are other niggles regarding quality and almost complete lack of security in existing vehicle software. They are solvable but only if the whole industry does a complete U turn. There are also insurance problems, and noise problems because of the extra energy usage.

Skylinehead

Will teleportation make people carrying drones obsolete?


Find out next time!

RobertKK

Surely it will just end up with the self drive car bomb?

BattleCorp

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

First is the energy requirement for flight.
Drones max out at 30 minutes, and that's with zero payload. To lift a human you need expensive motors and lots of stored energy which tends to get released if there is a crash which leads on to the second massive problem.

We aren't there yet in relation to the energy needed but technology will overcome this problem. I'm sure when they were building steam engines, they didn't think anybody would ever invent a source of energy that could get something as heavy as the space shuttle so high that it would go into space.

Second is the separation distances and times used. Busiest airport ever handled the equivalent of 2100 round trips in one day. The M50 toll section handles 120,000 That's getting towards 10 times as many as the 15,000 using the Port Tunnel which uses a separation distances of 50m/100m

What have roads got to do with the use of drones? I wasn't envisaging drones following the path of the M50. Presently we follow road systems because cars can't take the shortest path, can't fly over obstacles etc. Drones aren't constricted by this. So we wouldn't be bunching drones together like we do with cars/trucks etc.

There are other niggles regarding quality and almost complete lack of security in existing vehicle software. They are solvable but only if the whole industry does a complete U turn. There are also insurance problems, and noise problems because of the extra energy usage.

All things that can be fixed over time. The technology is there to do this at the moment but it isn't practical. Give it time and as technology improves, it will get more practical to do this.

kneemos

BattleCorp wrote: »

We aren't there yet in relation to the energy needed but technology will overcome this problem. I'm sure when they were building steam engines, they didn't think anybody would ever invent a source of energy that could get something as heavy as the space shuttle so high that it would go into space.



What have roads got to do with the use of drones? I wasn't envisaging drones following the path of the M50. Presently we follow road systems because cars can't take the shortest path, can't fly over obstacles etc. Drones aren't constricted by this. So we wouldn't be bunching drones together like we do with cars/trucks etc.



All things that can be fixed over time. The technology is there to do this at the moment but it isn't practical. Give it time and as technology improves, it will get more practical to do this.

How would they be different to Helicopters,that we've had for decades?

BattleCorp

kneemos wrote: »

How would they be different to Helicopters,that we've had for decades?

Pretty similar to helicopters really. Except you wouldn't be flying them like you would if you were flying a helicopter. Preprogrammable to pick you up and deliver you to your chosen destination. Programme in GPS co-ordinates and away you go.

If Amazon are going to be able to use them to deliver packages, then it's foreseeable that they will someday be able to deliver people, i.e. a mode of transport.

kneemos

BattleCorp wrote: »

Pretty similar to helicopters really. Except you wouldn't be flying them like you would if you were flying a helicopter. Preprogrammable to pick you up and deliver you to your chosen destination. Programme in GPS co-ordinates and away you go.

If Amazon are going to be able to use them to deliver packages, then it's foreseeable that they will someday be able to deliver people, i.e. a mode of transport.

So a helicopter.

They're cheap.

Capt'n Midnight

Skylinehead wrote: »

Will teleportation make people carrying drones obsolete?

teleportation is Murder :mad:

Capt'n Midnight

BattleCorp wrote: »

We aren't there yet in relation to the energy needed but technology will overcome this problem. I'm sure when they were building steam engines, they didn't think anybody would ever invent a source of energy that could get something as heavy as the space shuttle so high that it would go into space.

Technology won't solve the energy problem. In 1906 HMS Dreadnought was launched. She incorporated all the latest technology. Steam turbines were far more efficient than reciprocating engines and oil had twice the energy density of coal.


Just to let you know how far we've come since then, the only engine to challenge the steam turbine in some roles is slow diesel and even then it requires more expensive fuel. So most of the worlds baseload power stations and most of the largest ships still use steam engines.

Not everyone thinks the Shuttle was an improvement on the Saturn V for a start it could carry nearly five times the payload. Guess what it used for over 90% of it's fuel ? Oil.

If you want to go to the ISS you have to hitch a lift on what is essentially an updated 1957 Russian ICMB. Nearly 60 years later and we still haven't developed anything appreciably better. Different yes. Better, to be proven.

Tsiolkovsky proposed using liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen as propellants back in 1903. Yes you can get more energetic propellants. But no one uses Ozone which is a more energetic version of Oxygen. Similarly no one uses orthohydrogen, a more energetic spin isomer, first thing to do when liquefying it is to change to the lower energy parahydrogen.

Point here is that 1903 was a long time ago and we haven't improved much, well we can super chill the stuff so it shrinks a bit.

BTW the "best" rocket fuel developed was using hydrogen, lithium and fluorine. Hydrogen is just tricky and explodey.

Lithium is kinda interesting. First of all you have to melt the stuff. Now you have a molten metal that explodes on contact with water and dissolves some other metals. The plumbing on the rocket engine just got interesting. As it's a metal you don't want it solidifying in the pipes either. But cute and cuddly compared to ..


Fluorine. This is special. Forget about fluoride in water, this stuff is just evil.
The universe is made of three types of things.
1 - Inert nobel gases, nitrogen and oxygen,
2 - stuff that has already reacted with fluorine,
3 - stuff than bursts into toxic flames when exposed to fluorine

class 1 , so far Helium and Neon seem safe but HArF is a thing (Argon) and fluorine will have it's wicked way with the rest given the slightest encouragement

class 2 - if there is any dirt or you scratch an inert coating of fluoride then your rocket motor will be cleverly reduced to ash (and flames)
teflon sounds like it should be safe but it gets dissolved "like hot water through sugar"

class 3 includes sand, concrete , water , snow, safety equipment , wood , rubber, most plastics, people, baryonic matter.

Fluorine would mug a positron-electron pair if it got the chance.

What have roads got to do with the use of drones? I wasn't envisaging drones following the path of the M50. Presently we follow road systems because cars can't take the shortest path, can't fly over obstacles etc. Drones aren't constricted by this. So we wouldn't be bunching drones together like we do with cars/trucks etc.

How far would you separate them then ??

My point is that the minimal 50m separation on the Port Tunnel limits you to 15,000 trips a day. To replace the M50 you would need 10 times as much space.

Port tunnel is 4 lanes wide (both ways) so let's use 4 levels.

To replace the M50 you need 50m above the ground and 50 between the levels so a total height of 250m. The 10x lanes need to be 50m apart so you now need a 500m wide channel.

That's a lot of airspace.

If you increase the separation distance to 100m then you need 8 times as much room. 100m is very close for aircraft travelling faster than ground traffic which has grippy tyres for stopping and turning.

All things that can be fixed over time. The technology is there to do this at the moment but it isn't practical. Give it time and as technology improves, it will get more practical to do this.

Nope, not without changes in technology we haven't seen in generations.

The One Doctor

kneemos wrote: »

It takes a massive amount of energy to lift anything vertically.

Non flyer I'm afraid.

Not true.

Yes, it takes a lot of energy to lift something vertically, which is why drones don't stay in hovering flight long. Energy use drops off rapidly as speed rises. This is true for drones, helicopters, Harriers... whatever uses vertical lift.

Frankly I believe that hovering drones (quadcopters etc) will be replaced with autogyro-type RC aircraft.

kneemos

The One Doctor wrote: »

Not true.

Yes, it takes a lot of energy to lift something vertically, which is why drones don't stay in hovering flight long. Energy use drops off rapidly as speed rises. This is true for drones, helicopters, Harriers... whatever uses vertical lift.

Frankly I believe that hovering drones (quadcopters etc) will be replaced with autogyro-type RC aircraft.

So true.

The Randy Riverbeast

We'll be stuck with the cars for another while at least. We dont all have helicopters parked on the house for the same reasons we won't have flying drones. Maybe one day but it is a lot longer than the next 10 years when self driving cars will be introduced.

BalcombeSt4

Yes, because America will detroy every single car with their international drone strike policy.

mickoneill31

BattleCorp wrote: »

I don't disagree with you one little bit but sure didn't the same thing happen when all those people with horses and carts were put out business by some new fangled contraptions that worked on petrol and diesel? That's life. Not all change is for the better.

I was a kid when the same arguments for computers were used. They were putting people out of jobs and there'd be less workers as a result. Look how that worked out in the end. I'm sure people used the same arguments when automation went into factories.
I think we'll be OK.

Capt'n Midnight

mickoneill31 wrote: »

I was a kid when the same arguments for computers were used. They were putting people out of jobs and there'd be less workers as a result. Look how that worked out in the end. I'm sure people used the same arguments when automation went into factories.
I think we'll be OK.

Tell that to the 60,000 people Foxconn are replacing.

Winterlong

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

Tell that to the 60,000 people Foxconn are replacing.

People imagine that robots will look like C3PO and do household chores- but in reality the modern usage is automation on the factory floor. And that automation is very clever these days!

kneemos

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

Tell that to the 60,000 people Foxconn are replacing.

That's old technology,it's just become more economical to use automated production lines rather than people.

antodeco

This seems much more errective

Bit cynical

o1s1n wrote: »

I still don't know how they're going to get around this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixIoDYVfKA0

If a crash is inevitable, then the auto makers can avoid responsibility by handing control back to the sleeping human driver at the last moment.

mickoneill31

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

Tell that to the 60,000 people Foxconn are replacing.

What about the millions involved in jobs made possible by computing. I don't think anybody is stupid enough to think that some jobs don't get lost when technology advances but if we lose 1 million jobs and it facilitates the creation of 10 million of equal or better quality, I'll live with it. It happens over decades, not overnight.

Nearly every job now would have been done by several people if it existed 20 or 30 years ago. We are not awash with unemployed, unemployment is probably down since then.

Capt'n Midnight

mickoneill31 wrote: »

What about the millions involved in jobs made possible by computing.

Back in the 1960's in most industrial countries it was possible to get a new job tomorrow. If you wanted to work, you could.


Now we've "only" 8% unemployment which means one in 12 people won't find a job or if they do it will only be at the expense of others.

And our jobless rate is far higher than 8% thanks to keeping people in education years longer. People with degrees are now chasing jobs that would have been available to people leaving school with the inter in days gone by.

endacl

The Backwards Man wrote: »

You're getting way ahead of yourself.

Drones and self drive cars are a long ways off for those of us that would benefit most from drones and self drive cars, they'll probably be competing in large urban areas in the near future, where self propulsion should have been outlawed decades ago, but I'll be old and grey before a drone takes my turf home or a self drive car takes me home from the pub.

Years ago, my grandad had a donkey that knew his own way home from the pub. Does that count?

Bit cynical

Advantage of flying drones is the space available to them. No roads that they need to line up upon. Three dimensions of space. Easier to write collision avoidance algorithms when the only other objects to avoid are other drones. The autopilot on a plane makes much more sense than the "autopilot" on Tesla cars.
Even without collision avoidance, a self-driving car that follows roads and intersections is much harder than a self-flying plane, helicopter or drone.

Disadvantage, as Capt'n Midnight points out is energy requirement and the disastrous consequences of failure from a height.

But it is an interesting question. It could well be that self-flying drones for short distances become reality before self driving cars if the energy and reliability problems can be solved. There is also the problem of landing a vehicle with spinning blades in busy city streets. Probably some sort of infrastructure would be needed.

In both cases I think we could expect a large proportion of these vehicles to be taxis. With self-driving or self-flying there's no need to support a driver or pilot. The distinction between driver/pilot and passenger disappears. You may as well have the cost of vehicles shared between many users, you just need to have enough vehicles available to meet most of the demand most of the time.

Wibbs

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

BTW this is also why the Hyperloop is flawed. Just can't handle enough passengers to provide real mass transit. There is also the issue that at high speeds you can't have sharp corners so massive bridge and tunnelling costs to stay straight and level. HS2 in the UK is costing FIVE times what a similar project in France would. But the higher speeds proposed for the UK would slash an extra 210 seconds off a journey to Birmingham.

Aye and why the concept is a very old one, like going back to the 19th century old and every time a similar idea came along folks did the hard sums and realised "eh…nope. Looks good in scifi flics of future cities but otherwise…". The current one is far more about the Musk effect and some thinking him their silicon messiah.

mickoneill31 wrote: »

What about the millions involved in jobs made possible by computing. I don't think anybody is stupid enough to think that some jobs don't get lost when technology advances but if we lose 1 million jobs and it facilitates the creation of 10 million of equal or better quality, I'll live with it. It happens over decades, not overnight.

Nearly every job now would have been done by several people if it existed 20 or 30 years ago. We are not awash with unemployed, unemployment is probably down since then.

As was pointed out in the other thread on the matter, the big difference this time is pretty much all human labour is under threat and that includes computing jobs. Machines are replacing the heavy lifting, but they've been doing that for centuries, but now they're also replacing the heavy thinking too. There are few enough professions that it's hard to see how they couldn't be replaced down the line and that line isn't so long. Including creative ones. Machines can already write music that people can't tell apart from a human composer. Writing programs are getting better, ditto for design programs. Programs can already learn and that ability is growing. It's not too far off when they'll be able to learn enough to be able to copy most clerical work. Or learn enough that they program other machines, or the bulk of the programming, with last minute oversight by a human. For a time anyway.