Self driving buses, trains, trucks etc

magicbastarder · 27-08-2017 7:23pm

you are predicting that computers won't ever be able to park a truck into a loading bay? remember, we're not talking about *current* technology.

if (and when) it happens, it may happen with cues in the loading bay for the trucks - maybe like QR codes indicating the loading point, etc.
it doesn't strike me as a difficult problem to fix, particularly compared with a lot of other issues automonous trucks would face. the actual mathematics of parking a truck aren't that much harder than with a car, i'd hazard.

eeguy · 27-08-2017 7:57pm

Why would parking a truck be any different to parking a car to a computer?

If they can get a spaceship to land on a boat in the Atlantic then they can get a truck to park itself in a loading bay.

TheChizler · 27-08-2017 9:06pm

eeguy wrote: »

Why would parking a truck be any different to parking a car to a computer?

If they can get a spaceship to land on a boat in the Atlantic then they can get a truck to park itself in a loading bay.

Not to mention the computer would have the benefit of extra cameras, radar, etc and will be able to predict the entire maneuver to the centimeter.

AndrewJRenko · 27-08-2017 10:17pm

end of the road wrote: »

doesn't matter, there are such things as accidents.

It really does matter. There are very, very few road deaths that are now down to poor driving - either speeding, using the phone, drink driving, or just failure to drive to the conditions (ice or extreme wind or whatever).

LeinsterDub · 27-08-2017 10:30pm

end of the road wrote: »

no he doesn't. he's just giving the actual reality.

Claiming AI will never and humans will always be better is denying the reality of the world we live in where AI is constantly improving.

bk · 27-08-2017 10:30pm

magicbastarder wrote: »

an article touching on one part of research i'm not hearing much about; the word 'autonomous' is usually used for self-driving cars, which implies their driving aids are self-contained, but is there much research being done into cars which talk to each other? surely there could be some robust, low-range (e.g. 500m) signal broadcast by cars - a bit like an IFF signal in airplanes - announcing location, direction, speed, etc.
would not have to be high bandwidth stuff - plus it could also assist with the issue of cars dealing with cyclists - e.g. if i had a GPS unit on my bike that would warn a car (or HGV) that i was 30m behind, it could have benefits here too.

Yes all these self driving cars communicating with one another is a major part of self driving systems.

All Tesla's come with 4G built in and constantly update Tesla about road conditions, etc. So for instance if a new pot hole appears on the road, the first car that passes over it tells all the other Teslas before they even leave the garage!

Great idea about having your own unit on a bicycle. It could be as simple as an app on your phone, letting all cars know of your position, etc.

Mrs OBumble wrote: »

My guess is that the bus companies believe there would be too much of an issue with revenue protection - there are so many scummers here who would jump in without paying if there was a door not under the driver's nose. How's a driverless bus going get over that?

How does it work on Luas? Because from a revenue protection perspective Luas is fundamentally a self driving vehicle. Sure there is a driver, but he has zero interaction with the passengers, locked behind a screen, so we fundamentally already have exactly this.

It is policed by roving revenue inspectors, who issue fines.

And it is nothing new, 3 to 4 door buses with zero driver interaction are pretty much the norm across most EU countries for the past 50 years. It is a well solved problem already.

Mrs OBumble wrote: »

How will it cope with 89 year old Bridie who simply won't put her FTP on the reader - she's never had to before and she's just not going to start now. And the tourist from Spain who wants to know how to get to "Dunes es tores" (pronounced Dunnes Stores by most of ye) - yes she has Google maps, but map reading is HARD work for some.

How does the 89 year old handle Luas today? Because again, it is exactly the same, zero driver interaction. Same for the tourists. Somehow they all get by.

As an aside, self driving vehicles should be a fantastic revolution for the elderly and disabled. A major problem we have in rural Ireland is the when an elderly person loses their license they can become very insulated due to poor public transport. You should watch the recent RTE documentary on this very sad subject. Self driving cars will allow elderly and disabled people a level of independent mobility that they can currently only dream of and personally this is one of the reasons I can't wait for self driving cars.

Mrs OBumble wrote: »

They'll all be replaced with driverless pool cars, you say? How many seats will be in each one - enough for Mam, Dad and the four kids? Or will the kids be expected to travel separately - how old do you have to be to travel alone? What if the kids car gets there before the parent one - will it hold them inside until the parents arrive?

You are making this sound far more difficult then it is. We already do this with Taxi's and GoCar.

With Taxi's in myaxi/uber, you can opt to order a regular taxi, a wheelchair accessible one or a 7/8 seater depending on your needs.

With GoCar, you can opt for different car sizes, city car, mid sized car, SUV or even a van (and also EV options now), depending on your needs, just like any rental company.

It will be the same with these car sharing services. These companies will have massive fleets of vehicles of different sizes. I suspect the majority will be one/two seaters as in reality that is what most people are really driving, but they will also have 5 seaters, 7/8 seaters, vans, etc. if you need it.

Really non of this should be surprising, just go to any car rental place and see the variety of different types of vehicles available.

Mrs OBumble wrote: »

Will they have car seats and booster cushions that magically adapt to the child's age?

Bring your own car seat! I do this now. I've a baby, but don't own a car. But we do have a fantastic lightweight car seat that we stick in when using taxis or firends/relatives cars. Really not difficult at all.

Mrs OBumble wrote: »

Ramps that automatically roll out to cater for grandad in his wheelchair?

Of course, order a disabled compatible car, just like you can order a disabled taxi today.

BTW as I mentioned above, self driving cars will be an absolute revolution for the elderly and disabled.

Mrs OBumble wrote: »

What happens when the passenger starts having a seizure when the car is half-way from Dublin to Galway - if the car's not smart enough to detect that, pull over and call an ambulance, then we have a major reduction in service.

Huh!! Well it would be a damn sight better then someone losing control of the vehicle due to a seizure and crashing into other people at 120km/h.

Rumour has it that the car that hit 6 pedestrians last week in Dublin may have been a heart attack. This is actually a major benefit of self driving cars.

Of course if a person starts feeling unwell, they can report it if they can and the car can immediately start driving them to the nearest hospital, so another benefit.

Mrs OBumble wrote: »

What do you do if your pool car arrives, complete with used needles or condoms that the last passenger left in it?

What do you do if a taxi turns up looking like that?

Of course you report it, the service sends another car, the first car returns to depot for cleaning and they check the video logs of the previous user and then ban them from ever using the service again.

BTW they are planning to include smell sensors in vehicles like this, that can detect solid vehicles so that they are immediately sent for cleaning, without the next customer ever seeing it.

Mrs OBumble wrote: »

How many rural residents will be prepared to wait the extra 20 minutes that a pool car will take to get to their house at times when there's usually low demand - eg at 2am when someone's waters have broken earlier than expected and they'd like to get to the hospital before giving birth, please!

What happens now for people who don't own cars? Plenty of pregnant ladies have been brought to hospital by taxi, just ask any driver.

You can always call for an ambulance if needed, just like people do today.

BTW you seem to be thinking that you can't own a self driving car! Of course you will still be able to buy a self driving car and have 100% use of it just as you can today for an ordinary car. In really rural areas, with low population density, then it probably make more sense for people to own their own car, that happens to drive itself, then use the on-demand type services, they are more likely to be a more urban thing.

In the above scenario you could even temporarily rent a self driving car to sit outside your house for your exclusive use for the few weeks before birth, if it was something you were concerned about.

Rave.ef wrote: »

As far as it just going from a to b and then a driver taking over it won't be feasible trucks and buses are extremely expensive pieces of machinery as they are so imagine the price of these when they come on the market first and still having to pay a driver.

The point would be imagine you had a fleet of 30 trucks, well now rather then needing 30 drivers, you only need 2 or 3 drivers in an office to remotely connect into the trucks to handle the difficult bits.

magicbastarder · 27-08-2017 10:45pm

bk wrote: »

Great idea about having your own unit on a bicycle. It could be as simple as an app on your phone, letting all cars know of your position, etc.

it could be similar to bluetooth, but longer range - as mentioned; low bandwidth would be fine - once every quarter of a second, say, it could ping out GPS co-ordinates, vehicle type, speed and direction - to be picked up by all other nearby vehicles. given the known issues with bikes, HGVs, and blind spots, this could be a simple but effective warning system; or even at night, when approaching a junction and a car is approaching from 90 degrees so the lights aren't mutually visible or effective...

eeguy · 27-08-2017 11:18pm

bk wrote: »

Yes all these self driving cars communicating with one another is a major part of self driving systems.

Fantastic post.
People tend to focus in on the negatives and the "oh well what ifs..." without realiseing that most have already been solved and the rest are usually quite easy to solve.

There's a HUGE overestimation of how difficult it is to drive a car. If nearly every person in the world can drive one after about 10 hours of instruction, then how difficult can it be to have a supercomputer work it out.

I can't wait until Tesla do their coast to coast autonomous run later this year.

Mrs OBumble · 27-08-2017 11:20pm

end of the road wrote: »

doesn't matter, there are such things as accidents.

A few. Eg mechanical failure earlier than would have been expected.

Most are incidents caused by lack of care or attention though.

eeguy · 27-08-2017 11:30pm

Mrs OBumble wrote: »

A few. Eg mechanical failure earlier than would have been expected.

Most are incidents caused by lack of care or attention though.

Mechanical failure is nearly always due to improper car maintenance and hardly ever due to a manufacturing fault. Worn tyres and worn brakes can be lethal.

bk · 27-08-2017 11:34pm

magicbastarder wrote: »

it could be similar to bluetooth, but longer range - as mentioned; low bandwidth would be fine - once every quarter of a second, say, it could ping out GPS co-ordinates, vehicle type, speed and direction - to be picked up by all other nearby vehicles. given the known issues with bikes, HGVs, and blind spots, this could be a simple but effective warning system; or even at night, when approaching a junction and a car is approaching from 90 degrees so the lights aren't mutually visible or effective...

Yep, there absolutely are folks working on exactly this.

I hadn't thought of your bicycle example, which is a great idea. But the examples I had heard of were not also car to car, but also car to road side infrastructure, for instance traffic lights, speed signs, etc.

They can help give a more precise location via triangulation then just GPS (which can be blocked by tall buildings, trees, tunnels, etc.).

Also another example I heard of is road side signs telling cars of approaching road works.

Check out wireless mesh networks for cars.

BTW some of this is likely to come to being even before we get full self driving. Systems like this can be used to tell a driver when s/he is going over the speed limit or warn of upcoming construction work or simply auto-brake if the two cars in front of you crash.

Rave.ef · 28-08-2017 10:20am

TheChizler wrote: »

eeguy wrote: »

Why would parking a truck be any different to parking a car to a computer?

If they can get a spaceship to land on a boat in the Atlantic then they can get a truck to park itself in a loading bay.

Not to mention the computer would have the benefit of extra cameras, radar, etc and will be able to predict the entire maneuver to the centimeter.

I have no doubt how a computer can manage all this my point was on the other road users. I know all the cameras and gadgets will pick up and distance and objects. What I was getting at is the person in they're car who won't wait the few seconds decides they can squeeze in front and can't (idiots do this on a daily basis) then the messages are all jumbled up in the computer and all of a sudden there's traffic mayhem.
Also I can see the interest in the idea of this technology but realisticly if this is a reality, in this little country alone there is roughly 70,000 of us that will be out of work. That's not something to be excited about.

Rave.ef · 28-08-2017 10:28am

bk wrote: »

magicbastarder wrote: »

it could be similar to bluetooth, but longer range - as mentioned; low bandwidth would be fine - once every quarter of a second, say, it could ping out GPS co-ordinates, vehicle type, speed and direction - to be picked up by all other nearby vehicles. given the known issues with bikes, HGVs, and blind spots, this could be a simple but effective warning system; or even at night, when approaching a junction and a car is approaching from 90 degrees so the lights aren't mutually visible or effective...

Yep, there absolutely are folks working on exactly this.

I hadn't thought of your bicycle example, which is a great idea. But the examples I had heard of were not also car to car, but also car to road side infrastructure, for instance traffic lights, speed signs, etc.

They can help give a more precise location via triangulation then just GPS (which can be blocked by tall buildings, trees, tunnels, etc.).

Also another example I heard of is road side signs telling cars of approaching road works.

Check out wireless mesh networks for cars.

BTW some of this is likely to come to being even before we get full self driving. Systems like this can be used to tell a driver when s/he is going over the speed limit or warn of upcoming construction work or simply auto-brake if the two cars in front of you crash.

Volvo trucks already have something similar. A very good adaptive cruise controal and a braking and warning system that's is amazing. look it up on you tube it's very impressive.

LeinsterDub · 28-08-2017 10:33am

Rave.ef wrote: »

I have no doubt how a computer can manage all this my point was on the other road users. I know all the cameras and gadgets will pick up and distance and objects. What I was getting at is the person in they're car who won't wait the few seconds decides they can squeeze in front and can't (idiots do this on a daily basis) then the messages are all jumbled up in the computer and all of a sudden there's traffic mayhem.
Also I can see the interest in the idea of this technology but realisticly if this is a reality, in this little country alone there is roughly 70,000 of us that will be out of work. That's not something to be excited about.

The Spinning Jenny will be the death of us all!

magicbastarder · 28-08-2017 10:39am

Rave.ef wrote: »

then the messages are all jumbled up in the computer and all of a sudden there's traffic mayhem.

i think computers are a little better than people when dealing with jumbled up info. this is not where computers are at a disadvantage.

Rave.ef · 28-08-2017 10:40am

might as well go on the dole now and start walking up and down the town's and embrace the future

bk · 28-08-2017 10:47am

Rave.ef wrote: »

Volvo trucks already have something similar. A very good adaptive cruise controal and a braking and warning system that's is amazing. look it up on you tube it's very impressive.

Auto-braking systems is becoming pretty standard in all new cars. It is mandated for all new cars sold in the US from 2022. However most of the big manufacturers over there have already doing it far in advance. It is the new most have safety feature like ABS/airbags were previously.

magicbastarder · 28-08-2017 10:48am

LeinsterDub wrote: »

The Spinning Jenny will be the death of us all!

yes, people found alternative employment after technological disruption in the past, but trite statements like the above do nothing to address the fact that a) it was not necessarily pleasant for all involved; b) significant societal changes often followed, not all of which were positive; and c) assuming autonomous vehicles do make it onto our roads, it may happen faster than industrial revolution changes did.

eeguy · 28-08-2017 12:49pm

Rave.ef wrote: »

might as well go on the dole now and start walking up and down the town's and embrace the future

I'd be looking at employment alternatives if I was involved in professional driving.
In 10 or 15 years things could look very bleak.

Once one haulier gets involved in automation and can lower their costs, then everyone else will need to adapt or they'll lose business.

Remember Kodak? Tens of thousands were layed off at the start of this decade, because they missed the rapid development of digital technology. I'll guarantee that IF Level 4 automation comes out in the next decade, you'll see the same thing happen as traditional professional driving services struggle to adapt to lower cost competition.

Automation is only a computer, a few cameras and sensors, plus a piece of software, probably a fraction of the cost of an actual car.

vicwatson · 28-08-2017 12:51pm

They should trial this in India and let us know how they get on

eeguy · 28-08-2017 1:10pm

vicwatson wrote: »

They should trial this in India and let us know how they get on

Funnily enough, India has apparently banned autonomous cars to save jobs.
https://www.motoring.com.au/india-to-ban-autonomous-cars-108231/

Make of that what you will. Personally I think it's only a stopgap measure. If India relies on it's low cost labour to make it competitive, then this may be a step in the wrong direction. I don't know enough about it to predict how this will go.

LeinsterDub · 28-08-2017 1:13pm

magicbastarder wrote: »

yes, people found alternative employment after technological disruption in the past, but trite statements like the above do nothing to address the fact that a) it was not necessarily pleasant for all involved; b) significant societal changes often followed, not all of which were positive; and c) assuming autonomous vehicles do make it onto our roads, it may happen faster than industrial revolution changes did.

Perhaps if those denying this technology will ever be viable stop living in denial we can have a discussion on your very valid points.

Ben D Bus · 28-08-2017 1:23pm

magicbastarder wrote: »

yes, people found alternative employment after technological disruption in the past, but trite statements like the above do nothing to address the fact that a) it was not necessarily pleasant for all involved; b) significant societal changes often followed, not all of which were positive; and c) assuming autonomous vehicles do make it onto our roads, it may happen faster than industrial revolution changes did.

I think the concept of a basic universal income will have to be looked at seriously in the coming years as automation increasingly takes over at every level of employment. Done properly, we could actually make great strides towards the dream of not having to work out of necessity and actually choosing what we do with our time.

The technological changes are the easy bit, the societal change will take great leadership but will eventually be of huge benefit. The transition will probably be painful and ugly for many.

magicbastarder · 28-08-2017 2:23pm

yeah, i've heard predictions that it's the likes of accountants who have most to fear from automation in the next decade or two.

28-08-2017 2:26pm

magicbastarder wrote: »

yeah, i've heard predictions that it's the likes of accountants who have most to fear from automation in the next decade or two.

That's true. There is already a large degree of automation involved in project management and where there isn't, there's a lot of study and analysis to bring it to those aspects of the job.

vicwatson · 28-08-2017 3:45pm

eeguy wrote: »

Funnily enough, India has apparently banned autonomous cars to save jobs.
https://www.motoring.com.au/india-to-ban-autonomous-cars-108231/

Make of that what you will. Personally I think it's only a stopgap measure. If India relies on it's low cost labour to make it competitive, then this may be a step in the wrong direction. I don't know enough about it to predict how this will go.

Only to save jobs or the knowledge that no way in hell would they work there. It's chaos with normal cars.

MGWR · 29-08-2017 5:22am

Deleted User wrote: »

Don't know about the rest of you, but I am looking forward to seeing driverless buses, trains, taxis and luas

It's really not as far away as people think

To what purpose? What purpose does all this over-hyped automation serve, other than to add more complexity to machines that ought to be simpler in construction and to give the government free hand in suddenly taking control of what ought to be your autonomous personal vehicle? I see more accidents, not fewer.

It's a great way to make people stay home, that's for sure.

One thing I'll never get in is a pilotless airliner. Never in my life.

bk · 29-08-2017 10:15am

MGWR wrote: »

To what purpose? What purpose does all this over-hyped automation serve, other than to add more complexity to machines that ought to be simpler in construction and to give the government free hand in suddenly taking control of what ought to be your autonomous personal vehicle? I see more accidents, not fewer.

No more accidents due to drunk drivers, drugged drivers, sleepy drivers, distracted drivers, etc.

It will hopefully end the carnage on our roads.

Also buses that run 24/7 will be nice.

devnull · 29-08-2017 10:36am

MGWR wrote: »

To what purpose? What purpose does all this over-hyped automation serve, other than to add more complexity to machines that ought to be simpler in construction and to give the government free hand in suddenly taking control of what ought to be your autonomous personal vehicle? I see more accidents, not fewer.

It's a great way to make people stay home, that's for sure.

One thing I'll never get in is a pilotless airliner. Never in my life.

Automation has done wonders for metro and light rail operation over a lot of the world who now are able to run fast, frequent reliable public transport services automatically and eliminate human factors which are normally the most common causes of accidents.

As for never flying on a pilotless airplane, all I will say is that the number one cause of airplane disasters is pilot error by quite some distance and alot of them are controlled flights into terrain where the pilot has made a mistake, is not paying attention or is suffering from spatial disorientation or lack of situational awareness.

plodder · 29-08-2017 10:55am

In fairness though, the cases where a pilot has to take over to recover when the automation (software) crashes or does something stupid, are ones you don't hear about. Having said that, there are many situations now in aviation where the automation has to be used (eg autoland in poor visibility). So, the trend is definitely headed in one direction. I just wouldn't be so bullish about the exact time frames, for driverless buses, or planes.

devnull · 29-08-2017 11:12am

plodder wrote: »

In fairness though, the cases where a pilot has to take over to recover when the automation (software) crashes or does something stupid, are ones you don't hear about.

But on the other side there are times when the automation prevents you from doing something stupid or sounds an alert to stop the pilots from doing something stupid because they have lost situational awareness - there have been many accidents where pilots have not trusted their instruments and systems and paid the price.

I don't think we're ready for a totally pilotless plane right now anyway, but the statistics show that human error is by far the number one factor in airplane accidents to this day but normally it's s series of events/bad decisions that leads to them rather than one particular error.

TheQuietFella · 29-08-2017 10:53pm

In my opinion this will never work unless you remove the human element from
the road network and that includes cyclists, road runners, motor cyclists and whoever else uses the system. How many of you are prepared to sacrifice that?

eeguy · 29-08-2017 10:53pm

TheQuietFella wrote: »

In my opinion this will never work unless you remove the human element from
the road network and that includes cyclists, road runners, motor cyclists and whoever else uses the system. How many of you are prepared to sacrifice that?

Your opinion is wrong.

TheQuietFella · 29-08-2017 10:57pm

eeguy wrote: »

Your opinion is wrong.

Well that's your opinion! Explain why I'm wrong?

eeguy · 29-08-2017 11:05pm

TheQuietFella wrote: »

Well that's your opinion! Explain why I'm wrong?

Because trials in the US and elsewhere by Tesla and Google and others have shown that autonomous cars can safely coexist with other road users under nearly all circumstances.

Tesla plan on doing a coast to coast trip this year from San Fran to NY completely autonomous on city and interstate. They also have demoed sensors that can see cars through other cars.
Teslas current autopilot and driver assist have been credited with saving lives when drivers failed to react to pedis and cyclists moving into the path of their cars.
Google have deep learning algorithms that can predict the movement of pedis, motorist and cyclists better than people can and have reaction times better than people.

All this stuff is still in demo and getting better year on year.

So in short, given the current state of technology, your opinion is wrong.

TheQuietFella · 29-08-2017 11:25pm

eeguy wrote: »

Because trials in the US and elsewhere by Tesla and Google and others have shown that autonomous cars can safely coexist with other road users under nearly all circumstances.

Isn't that the issue though, they cannot factor in the human element!

eeguy · 29-08-2017 11:32pm

TheQuietFella wrote: »

Isn't that the issue though, they cannot factor in the human element!

Why not? Humans factor in the human element. The algorithms learn by observing humans and driving on simulated and real roads. A computer has better vision, spacial awareness and reactions than a human.
Sure they make mistakes now, but less and less as the years go by.

People are terrible and dangerous drivers.

Stephen15 · 29-08-2017 11:40pm

eeguy wrote: »

Why not? Humans factor in the human element. The algorithms learn by observing humans and driving on simulated and real roads. A computer has better vision, spacial awareness and reactions than a human.
Sure they make mistakes now, but less and less as the years go by.

People are terrible and dangerous drivers.

Only if the person powering has all those things. I remember hearing about driverless cars that wouldn't work because the road marking weren't perfect.

eeguy · 29-08-2017 11:47pm

Stephen15 wrote: »

Only if the person powering has all those things. I remember hearing about driverless cars that wouldn't work because the road marking weren't perfect.

Sure they've had autonomous trucks driving on dirt roads in the mines in Australia. The first DARPA challenge back in 2006 was on an offroad course.

Cars don't need markings to drive. Sure it helps, but between their cameras, satnav and watching other cars they can stay on the road better than most people.

MGWR · 30-08-2017 12:26am

eeguy wrote: »

Because trials in the US and elsewhere by Tesla and Google and others have shown that autonomous cars can safely coexist with other road users under nearly all circumstances

They have not shown anything of the sort. That is called argumentum ad verecundiam, taking the source's word as proof.

jimmycrackcorm · 30-08-2017 12:32am

eeguy wrote: »

People and bikes already do what they like on the roads most of the time and can cause havok. What's to stop me walking out into traffic on Pearse St for example? Im fairly sure all the cars would brake for me. Probably get a few honks and a few curses thrown my way, but they'd still stop. I could sit in the road if I wanted and I'm sure no one would physically try to move me. More likely to call the gardai

A driverless car will do the same. But the outcome is still that the AI will have better reaction times and anticipation than a human driver. AI will learn from thousands of recorded experiences of behaviours that a human can't experience and deal more effectively.

I mean it's incredible even now to watch YouTube videos of Teslas driving autonomously, and especially when you see the differences in software revisions where people compare how better the cars deal with sections of the road that needed manual intervention previously.

But that is now. Between now an 2025 there will be vast improvements in image recognition, compute power and machine learning models from global learning that it's difficult to recognize now how good it will be in less than a decade.

But you don't have to take my word for it, just compare the advancement googles voice recognition to five years ago.

eeguy · 30-08-2017 12:45am

MGWR wrote: »

They have not shown anything of the sort. That is called argumentum ad verecundiam, taking the source's word as proof.

I never made a definite statement. In certain circumstances, trials have shown a certain outcome. Sources back me up.
What's the issue with that?

Varik · 30-08-2017 1:39am

Throw some pics up on Google photos to see how good image recognition is, insane what it can recognise.

Don't have location on my pic meta but it knew from the surroundings where they were, and even grouped wedding pics together (prob by a few pics and then date and time).

aliveandkicking · 30-08-2017 6:11am

This stuff really isn't as far away as people think. If you're in the driving game it is time to make a contingency plan.

magicbastarder · 30-08-2017 8:48am

Varik wrote: »

Through some pics up on Google photos to see how good image recognition is, insane what it can recognise.

AFAIK this needs an internet connection to work and does a comparison against lots of other similar photos whose content is known and tagged - so would be different from an in-car system where it may not have an internet connection, nor want to wait for the search results to be returned.

Varik · 30-08-2017 10:00am

magicbastarder wrote: »

AFAIK this needs an internet connection to work and does a comparison against lots of other similar photos whose content is known and tagged - so would be different from an in-car system where it may not have an internet connection, nor want to wait for the search results to be returned.

Wasn't a like for like, just a interesting observation on image reconition.

For fully self driving an internet connection would likely be a necessity, couldn't really have it driving around like tourist who refuses to ask for direction in a foreign country and hope it eventual arrives at the destination.

bk · 30-08-2017 11:51am

magicbastarder wrote: »

AFAIK this needs an internet connection to work and does a comparison against lots of other similar photos whose content is known and tagged - so would be different from an in-car system where it may not have an internet connection, nor want to wait for the search results to be returned.

Google just opts to do it in the cloud, it certainly isn't inherent to the technology. You can certainly do it on your laptop if you like. Plenty of libraries out their that do similar.

plodder · 30-08-2017 12:44pm

Looking at the big picture, it's really the enormous increase in processing power of cheap computing devices, that is driving this. Self driving has to be primarily controlled by on-board sensors and computing power, rather than anything in the cloud. We're at the stage where the hardware is cheap enough now and it's mostly a matter of getting the software right.

Though looking at that clip of the Nissan vehicle, it's interesting that each sensor has its own dedicated computer using 1.5kW of power which actually suggests the hardware has a bit to go yet. If the future is electric vehicles, then people will have a choice to make between added range, and self driving perhaps.

bk · 30-08-2017 2:23pm

plodder wrote: »

Though looking at that clip of the Nissan vehicle, it's interesting that each sensor has its own dedicated computer using 1.5kW of power which actually suggests the hardware has a bit to go yet. If the future is electric vehicles, then people will have a choice to make between added range, and self driving perhaps.

Early test systems often look like this. Just easier to make it work like this in testing. Part of the development process would be to take this and shrink the system to fit in one computer. Tesla's come with something like 12 cameras and radars and they use just one computer.

TheQuietFella · 30-08-2017 10:28pm

I'll lay money with anyone that within 20 years these cars, trucks or planes will neither be on the roads or in the skies above!

Self driving buses, trains, trucks etc

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