Self-driving cars--overhyped?

Quote: Dalex64

The self-driving car is very close to being real, I think. Small steps at first, but imagine the convenience of getting on the highway and turning on the autopilot, and having the car notify you when you are near your exit so you can take over again. You could read the paper (those still exist, right?) have your coffee, do some work before you get to the office, like checking your email.

I do not buy that the car will drive the highway and you can just sit there and do work. Pilots cannot just ignore everything in airplanes, and cars have way more to hit. I still see way many problems getting the fuzzy logic correct, it is going to be a figurative and literal bumpy ride until they do.

Quote: AZDuffman

I still see way many problems getting the fuzzy logic correct, it is going to be a figurative and literal bumpy ride until they do.

But you could see a dedicated highway in southern USA where containers drive themselves to dozens of stops where human drivers can pick them up and drive short distances to final destinations. I think this could be competitive with trains because you don't need to stop a train just to offload a few containers.

Ultimately this system would be safer because you wouldn't have heavy trucks competing with awful human automobile drivers on interstates.

Quote: Pacomartin

But you could see a dedicated highway in southern USA where containers drive themselves to dozens of stops where human drivers can pick them up and drive short distances to final destinations. I think this could be competitive with trains because you don't need to stop a train just to offload a few containers.

The thing I saw would have about 5 tractor trailers convoy just a few feet apart with drivers in just front and back to save on fuel. Forgetting such convoying is both illegal in most states and unsafe anywhere I don't see it. I assume you mean not just lanes but new roads?

My issue is this, my GPS still gets confused at things. In downtown Pittsburgh it is near useless as the roads are too close together and the area too tight. You are past a road before it can reset. I am sure this happens in many cities, surely in Manhattan which has similar issues with a tight grid but a larger scale. That is just the GPS. How will the entire car behave when all is not perfect?

Another thing is driving skill. American drivers are already terrible though not the worst in the world. The more "practice" we take away the worse it gets when the driver will have to take over.

Apple and Google really confuse me here. They almost want to build their own cars. Are they nuts?

This is very brief and short on details, but it claims that Mercedes-Benz is testing a semi-autonomous truck and might have them in service on the roads by 2018.

http://www.businessinsider.com/driverless-truck-drives-german-autobahn-daimler-mercedes-benz-2015-10

Quote: AZDuffman

I assume you mean not just lanes but new roads?

I was thinking of a new road. These Bus Rapid Transit already have automated equipment that assists the bus driver. He doesn't steer it into the bus terminals, but they are guided in on their own. IN particular the bus driver's skill does not determine the gap between the bus and the boarding platform. This allows the riders to board the bus from several doors, while not falling into the crack. It beats the old kneeling bus that forces people to climb a few stairs.




Many cities have driverless light rail, so the computers keep the cars from hitting each other in one dimension. Keeping a vehicle with a trailer on a road with barriers should not be that much harder.

This is a riot. This was made by GM in 1956
who thought we would have driverless cars
by 1976. You have to watch this. The first 2
min is cornball, you can skip it. There's
another one I remember where they're eating
dinner and sleeping as their car whisks
them along. Youtube has a ton of these
old 50's and 60's futuristic videos, they
loved the future in the 50's.

Quote: Evenbob

they loved the future in the 50's.

In 1966, at 8PM Star Trek came on Thursdays, and The Time Tunnel was on Fridays. Both were pivotal to my 9 year old brain, as they taught me about the future. The time travelers had no control of destination in TT.

The Outer Limits began when I was age 6, and it just scared me.

In real life, between the first and second episode of Time Tunnel, NASA conducted the Gemini XI mission for 3 days in space. They made two space walks and did 44 orbits. There would be one more Gemini mission two months later that lasted for 4 days and did 59 orbits.

In the second Time Tunnel episode was the only episode without aliens set in the near future. In "One Way to the Moon" the heroes find themselves on board a spacecraft's service module just before blast off in 1978 on the first U.S. manned spaceflight to Mars. The extra weight of the two time travelers means they must make a stop on the moon to replenish the fuel and continue the mission.

The writers thought it was perfectly reasonable assumption that in 12 years we could fly to Mars and have the capability to make an emergency pit stop on the moon.

Before the series completed it's 30 episodes, Apollo 1 would catch fire on the launch pad, killing all three astronauts. By 1972 we would give up on the moon, and by 1978 we would be planning for 1981 Space Shuttle launch.

There was a piece on 60 Minutes recently on driver-less cars. It was very impressive -- but now that I think about it, maybe it was rather hyped up. The show claimed driver-less cars had many thousands of hours on the road with a much safer accident record than the overall average per mile driven. However, it wouldn't surprise me if they tested these cars under safe conditions and they always have a human being to take over if a hairy situation comes up.

If forced to a prediction, I'm skeptical that driver-less cars will be available at an affordable price within a generation. It would also depend on the definition of a driver-less car. I could see something in 20 years where the car can drive by itself, but will set off an alarm if it gets overwhelmed, for a human driver to take over, much like the so-called driver-less cars today. I definitely don't see a car that can drive by itself with no human being as a back-up in the vehicle.

Maybe Paco can elaborate, but I think there is a truly driver-less car challenge between Barstow and Primm, or something like that, every year, on dirt roads, and no car has come close to completing it.

Quote: Wizard

Maybe Paco can elaborate, but I think there is a truly driver-less car challenge between Barstow and Primm, or something like that, every year, on dirt roads, and no car has come close to completing it.

DARPA Grand Challenge was from 2004, 2005 and 2007 and there were no finishers in first race, 5 finishers in second race and 6 in in the third. The first two went over rough terrain, and the third was urban driving where they could encounter normal traffic.

DARPA has shifted their focus toward other competitions.

Quote: Pacomartin

DARPA Grand Challenge was from 2004, 2005 and 2007 and there were no finishers in first race, 5 finishers in second race and 6 in in the third. The first two went over rough terrain, and the third was urban driving where they could encounter normal traffic.

Oh, I didn't know anybody ever finished it. Thank you for the correction.