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autonomous cars - the future of motoring is driverless

T & P said:
I see the government is pressing full steam ahead with this tomfoolery

www.bbc.co.uk

Hands-free driving could be made legal on UK roads by spring

Government is consulting industry on technology which can take control of a vehicle at up to 70mph.
www.bbc.co.uk

Given that current technology and infrastructure is nowhere near where it should be, the roads might become a far more unpredictable place to be come next Spring.
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It’s talking about automated lane keep. At low speed. On motorways. Hardly full automation. Also afaik even Tesla doesn’t actually make this hands free - these system alert you if you take your hands off the wheel, then alert you more. Iirc some will stop the car if you continue to ignore it, but dunno whether that varies by location. Tesla will block you from you using auto stuff for the trip if you ignore warnings.
 
I understand that the driver must remain in control at all times even if the car is fully automated. It will first need a change to the highway code.
Given that the roll out of the use of the hard shoulder & smart motorways, is this simply not a desperate bid to get more cars into a limited space...road trains where vehicles drive closely to each other at a set speed and simply react to changes?
 
hash tag said:
I understand that the driver must remain in control at all times even if the car is fully automated. It will first need a change to the highway code.
Given that the roll out of the use of the hard shoulder & smart motorways, is this simply not a desperate bid to get more cars into a limited space...road trains where vehicles drive closely to each other at a set speed and simply react to changes?
Click to expand...

I think, given the legal/insurance situation there is no system out there that won’t essentially push responsibility onto the driver. And, also given legal situation as regards consumers, they have to do that somewhat actively. I mean we know Tesla have been at the leading edge of trying to get this stuff adopted, but even they now make sure that you must have your hands on the wheel at all times and that their system is easily disengaged.

I think on the second point you may be right, but it’s going to be a long time before these are widespread enough to have a substantial effect.
 
It is a worry. You here of people losing concentration or falling asleep atcthecwheel, especially on motorways. This will not encourage the "driver" to stay awake.
 
hash tag said:
It is a worry. You here of people losing concentration or falling asleep atcthecwheel, especially on motorways. This will not encourage the "driver" to stay awake.
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There are a few things counter to that though... First, as I mentioned, they do actually have measures designed to alert you if you fall asleep. And Teslas can bring you to a stop and pull you over (though whether that is activated probably depends on jurisdiction). Second these systems are probably at least as good as a human for something like low speed motorway driving... And finally, I mean, that kind of driving is very dull anyway. And we already have adaptive cruise control. Maybe it adds a 5% chance of sleep (random figure, needs studying), but the point is that if you're in a state where that makes a difference, you shouldn't be driving. There probably is a point where this becomes a substantial risk; autopilot on narrower roads or at high speeds, but I don't think this is it. And again, many of these situations will be ones that humans are shit at anyway.
 
The economist has an article behind a pay wall about the limits of AI technology and Driverless car, it looks like a long journey to get a fully self driving cars..

Rodney Brooks..

Deep-learning approaches are fundamentally sttistical, linking inputs to outputs in ways specified by their training data. Tha leaves them unable to cope with what engineers call "edge cases"...

escaped horse in the road, or a light aircraft making an emergency landing on a highway
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But it thought lane keeping was more achievable

www.economist.com

Driverless cars show the limits of today’s AI

They, and many other such systems, still struggle to handle the unexpected
www.economist.com www.economist.com
 
electrek.co

Tesla starts Full Self-Driving Beta rollout, Elon Musk says it 'will be extremely slow and cautious'

Elon Musk confirmed that Tesla is starting the rollout of its Full Self-Driving Beta update, which the CEO says “will...
electrek.co electrek.co

incredibly light on detail, I suppose I should do a little searching and see if there's more info. Nothing about where the cars are that are getting updates, I have no idea about the legality of this, although it wouldn't surprise me if they don't care like lots of silicon valley companies don't care.
Also a bit confused when they say it'll see in 4D not 2D after this? Autopilot before was just working off lane markings I guess which would be 2D but surely must also have had some comprehension of time since it relates so directly to speed so how was it 2D? Or is 4D something else and not the 3 physical dimensions plus time?
 
Rather than seeing an object in front to be avoided, does 4d see a car and can see how big Etc? As well as what it might be doing.
 
4d radar uses time as the 4th axis, so it's looking at not just what's the object in front of it at the instant the radar pings, but also the change - is that object getting closer/further away, using doppler shifting.
 
Musk is saying Autopilot wasn't enabled, and that the car didn't have full self-drive (FSD). I mean, y'know, it's Musk so... We'll see if the data is properly handed over and checked. It seems a cagey response... was autopilot disengaged immediately prior to the crash (e.g by safety systems going 'er... there's no-one in the driver's seat'), were the safety systems deliberately bypassed etc?

I don't think any of this would affect whether I'd by a decent FSD car. Don't want to prejudge this case specifically, but you'd have to be fucking daft to completely rely on it at this stage of development, even if you were absolutely sure it was installed. Broadly speaking Teslas seem to have significantly better safety records than average, though I haven't dug into that and most articles seem to be on their own stats. Presumably most of them don't have FSD software enabled. But yeah, I doubt we're about to see a spate of accidents like this.

Do they have any kind of 'new user' system? Like if the car detects someone who hasn't driven it, it gives them a rundown of how auto features operate etc...
 
I am still astounded the apparent relaxed attitude to operating cars in autonomous mode they have in the US. And whereas the driver’s seat being unoccupied might be illegal, just demanding a human must sit at the controls but allowing them to take a passive role unless there’s an emergency is not much better. I’d argue that overall it’s less safe in split-second situations.

I genuinely doubt we will see a completely foolproof all-autonomous car society in our lifetimes anyway. Even when the technology has advanced enough to iron out every possible glitch or complex scenario on highways, cities are far more complex. For the simple and unsolvable reason that cars in cities have to share the road with pedestrians and cyclists, who are often unpredictable in their behaviour as well as undetectable to a car’s sensors if they suddenly materialise right in front of a car between two parked vehicles, as countless peds do regularly and will continue to do.

Of course, a fully autonomous car society might prove to be safer in urban areas than the current status. But the oft paraded pledge by campaigners, politicians and car makers alike that a zero deaths society is the only acceptable target, and achievable with our current and near-future projected technology, is frankly absurd, and actually detrimental to the cause if even an extremely low death rate is seen as a failure.
 
I've always disliked Heatherwick. Not quite sure why. Lacking in depth maybe.

But yes, the idea of car with configurable interior space has been around for-fucking-ever.
 
T & P said:
For the simple and unsolvable reason that cars in cities have to share the road with pedestrians and cyclists, who are often unpredictable in their behaviour as well as undetectable to a car’s sensors if they suddenly materialise right in front of a car between two parked vehicles, as countless peds do regularly and will continue to do.
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Do you genuinely believe your reaction times are better than a computer's? You should go on the Krypton Factor or something.

I for one cannot wait for the day when dumb humans are banned from manually controlling motorised vehicles on public roads.
 
maomao said:
Do you genuinely believe your reaction times are better than a computer's? You should go on the Krypton Factor or something.

I for one cannot wait for the day when dumb humans are banned from manually controlling motorised vehicles on public roads.
Click to expand...
It's not just about reaction times though, is it? It's also about handling unpredictable events.
 
I caused a Volvo XC90 to brake automatically when I predictably crossed the road on a zebra crossing last year. The driver looked confused.

No doubt if I'd unpredictably skipped into the road from behind Tesco delivery van, the driver would have used his skills in reacting to unpredictable situations and braked well before the on-board computer woke up.
 
Santino said:
When though?
Click to expand...
Sometimes. Better keep an eye out.

What's the worst that could happen? Some cars could stop for a plastic bag by mistake? Human drivers kill over a million people a year. I'm pretty sure technology can improve on that.
 
Also, if you're a cyclist, an autonomous car sees Road User class: cyclist - maintain distance until safe passing possible. Which is most definitely not the case for humans. And you can have more cycle paths, or speed-limited shared use areas simply because you have much better traffic management in general.

In residential areas you can restrict speed to 15mph and the car will actually go at that speed, not 30mph. You also potentially have far fewer parked cars on the road anyway, because there's a neat underground car storage hub 5 minutes away that the car can pootle off to.

You can have different classes of cars serving different areas. E.g an in-city commuter car doesn't need to be able to go 70mph for 4 hours. You can provide demand-based public transport; this street needs a 12 person vehicle at 8.30 am, this stop on Holloway Road needs 15x 60 person vehicles between 8 and 9 am etc. This person feels the need to commute on their own, they can hire something on the order of a Citroen Ami.

But y'know, what will the car do if it has to decide between an innocent grandmother appearing from nowhere and crashing its driver into a brick wall?
 
T & P said:
Hey, don't just take my word for it :)

www.theguardian.com

Bikes put spanner in works of Dutch driverless car schemes

Report highlights problems bicycles cause to self-driving cars’ detection systems
www.theguardian.com www.theguardian.com
Click to expand...
Doesn't say anything about it being a problem insurmountable in your lifetime. Just a difficulty with immediate implication. And
The report concludes that as a result it might “make more sense to keep transport modes separate rather than integrating [autonomous vehicles] to work there”.
Click to expand...

tend to agree with this anyway. Dedicated bike routes and autonomous cars on a network of purpose built roads sounds good.
 
That a computer will one day drive a car better than a human is a fairly obvious fact. We're not there yet though. And the problem is the crossover point - we'll only see the true benefits when we get rid of all human drivers.
 
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