So in other words, you'd feel safer in a rocket going into orbit? Impressive.
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So in other words, you'd feel safer in a rocket going into orbit? Impressive.
As above, so below
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Nothing in my post was meant to imply we shouldn't pursue the technology vigorously.Originally Posted by Van Rijn
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Embedded systems -- like digital flight controls -- don't need operating systems.And which operating system would you trust to drive your vehicle for you? Microsoft? It would bring a whole new meaning to the phrase "Blue Screen of Death".
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And that is worse than what happens now in what way? Sorry, I've known several people killed or seriously injured by drivers who were neither drunk nor using cell phones. If we're collectively sane, so we have an adequate certification process, computer-controlled cars are going to be safer than human-controlled ones.
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If you stop and think hard about the situation, it's actually the human driven cars that are the ridiculous part of having computer driven cars on the road.
Computer driven cars stop being ridiculous when they're the only ones on the road.
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Being ignorant is not so much a shame, as being unwilling to learn. Benjamin Franklin
Chase after the truth like all hell and you'll free yourself, even though you never touch its coat tails. Clarence Darrow
A person who won't read has no advantage over one who can't read. Mark Twain
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True; but pilots need continual updates on thier training, the equipment is meticulously maintained, and there are people watching every one of them while they are flying.
Personal vehicles (as they are now) don't have any of that. I just wonder how many people drive around with thier engine light on and don't care.
You also have lax restrictions such as Indiana where renewal is online. No eye exam, no new picture, just a click and pay.
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How do these things make a computer, which can react faster and more precisely than any human, coordinate constantly with the other vehicles in the vicinity, and do so reliably without being subject to conditions like fatigue, distraction, illness, intoxication, inexperience, emotional state, or sheer incompetence, less desirable?
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Now that I think more deeply about the computer driven cars, I suspect there would be huge social issues. I suspect that a properly programmed car could make one immune to tickets. If the car can't break the established programming, then as long as it is in "automatic" mode, you shouldn't be able to do something ticket-able.
I suppose that there could be some very positive social changes enable by automatic cars. Imagine if your personal car could be designated as an ambulance. That would very efficient for getting you to a hospital.
What if instead of an alarm, the car could pilot itself away from someone trying to steal a radio or the car itself. There would have to be a lot of safe guards in place, but it is a neat idea. "Sir, I am sorry. I had to move so that I was not stolen. I will pick you up in five minutes."
Traffic stops could be an option event: "Place your car in self drive mode or pull over." Much safer for police, and if you complied perhaps no ticket for you.
No tipping a valet, the car parks itself. What if a firefighter could order your car out of a no parking zone or make the zone much bigger? Maybe you wouldn't need to designate no parking zones at all. The same for handicapped parking, the "driver" gets out at the door and the car parks itself anywhere. The owner would "summon" it on the way to the door and doesn't have to travel across the parking lot at all.
I have been blueskying a lot.
Solfe
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'That was tops! Who's not good at math? I was all, "Four!"' - Finn, Adventure Time.
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Coordinate with other vehicles on the nearby roads to minimize stops at lights, route around blocked or particularly crowded roads, etc. This is something that wouldn't require full automation.
Collision detection and avoidance, coordinating multiple vehicles, etc are not major obstacles, the big challenge is terrain navigation...recognizing where the vehicle can safely and appropriately drive. There's a lot of unmarked, poorly maintained roads and driveways, pedestrian walkways and access paths that look like roads, etc. It's unreasonable to expect a vehicle to work out where it can go on its own when dealing with routes that aren't in any database and lack any unambiguous indications. A workaround might be to have the driver manually drive the route and some alternate routes for the car to store for later reference, so the car "learns" the roads its owner needs it to drive on (and perhaps uploads information about the roads to a common database, though you'd need a way to handle things such as private drives...maybe just require a certain number of unique travelers in a given period of time before a path is considered a public road).
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Why do helicopters crash? Answer: too many moving parts.
To suggest that you can dumb-down the driving public with your infatuation with computer chips is a non-starter. It is more likely that we will reduce the number of drivers and remove some of the riffraff that never should have a license in the first place. That's all.
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They quite often don't crash. And when crashes do happen, the majority of the time it is due to pilot error.
They don't even have that many moving parts compared to vehicles with piston engines, their mechanical failure rate has more to do with the requirements for low weight and the high stresses imposed on and performance required from the components. Besides, computers involve few or no moving parts. Plus, automobiles already have them. A computer in control of a vehicle has the same ultimate fallback the engine control computer has if it experiences failure...stop the vehicle. It in fact has the additional backup of a human who can take over if it encounters problems.
You have yet to give any facts or reasoning supporting your position, just uninformed ranting and appeals to emotion.
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True, but if a road is so poorly maintained or low state (gravel) that its lane markings are absent or worn out then it may not be a candidate for instrumentation, unless the instruments are cheaper than road paint per unit length of road. If we use a system where the instrumentation is few and far between (except on curves and intersections) then maybe it would be cheaper than paint. Maybe it would be a solar-powered module attached to road signs.
I still think passive markings are just as good, if not better, because they have a different failure mode and a longer mean-time-between-failures. Not only can it be markings on the road but on the backs of other signs on the road, perhaps with NIR reflecting or fluorescing material so that it's invisible to humans. The best practice would be to use both. Of course, any active or passive marking risks the same hazard as regular visible elevated signs - they attract bullets.
I was thinking NIR LEDs would be the perfect candidate tech. I was thinking about having it separate from the other indicator lamps, but with the change to color LED instead of incandescents, IR blooming won't be a problem. However, having a set distance between the various LEDs would help a computer discern distance, speed and heading. But the system is not immune to accidental or intentional spoofing (sunrise/sunset), and people may customize their cars to remove or obscure the NIR signal LEDs. (some people already do that with Daytime Running Lamps, and some people like to put running lights on trucks smaller than 3/4 ton just for kicks). It might be a good idea to give a computer the ability to use shadows and silhouettes to make guesses about the size and location of vehicles that are not instrumented properly, and make guesses about intentions based on aspect changes in the outline of that vehicle. It might even be useful for it to have a database of known vehicle outlines so that the computer can use those dimensions to more clearly discern distance, speed and heading. On the other hand, maybe it's not that important as using visible taillights for aspect discernment may be sufficiently accurate when combined with an adequate safety margin.The bit rate required is not great, a straightforward solution would be to use IR LEDs in the vehicle lights to emit signals that the navigation cameras can pick up. This would make it quite clear which car is transmitting which signal and make interference difficult.
A database of vehicle outlines might also be useful for police in case a certain vehicle needs to be identified or if there is a search for a certain type of vehicle due to a crime (e.g. an Amber Alert - child abduction emergency), in which case the computer can then attempt to capture an image of the license plate for comparison. (I know that might sound like a privacy issue, but perhaps the car should ask the driver if it should keep an eye out in the event of an alert in their SAME and alert the driver if the vehicle is found and ask if it should contact police, so that the human always maintains agency, which might help prevent any Big Brother abuse.)
Et tu BAUT? Quantum mutatus ab illo.
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Can people hear police car loudspeakers when at highway speeds? They might use some a radio or light signal to make your computer notice when it's your car specifically being asked to do something (as opposed to a general move over and let the police car or ambulance or fire truck pass). Unfortunately, some people might try to spoof the signal to cause cars to pull over for kicks or for criminal intent. So, a solution might be to have the police car use some sort of coded or encrypted protocol by which to identify itself that your car can use to query an online or stored database (regularly updated).
Cars might also be able to park closer together and fit more in. When one wants to park or leave, it signals the other cars and they all shuffle a bit so that there is room to maneuver.No tipping a valet, the car parks itself. What if a firefighter could order your car out of a no parking zone or make the zone much bigger? Maybe you wouldn't need to designate no parking zones at all. The same for handicapped parking, the "driver" gets out at the door and the car parks itself anywhere. The owner would "summon" it on the way to the door and doesn't have to travel across the parking lot at all.
Et tu BAUT? Quantum mutatus ab illo.
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Having my car start everytime for everyone around me parking or leaving.... Thanks for killing my battery.
We can dream up schemes and solutions to all these problems, but the reality is that any system needs to be maintained, needs to be adopted for all applications. Cities have a hard time with thier infrastructure now. I see plenty of missing signs, burned out traffic lights, crumbled roads, etc all around me. If they don't have the time and money to maintain what they have now, how do you think they can do the same for a more sophisticated system?
Besides, technology can solve a lot of things, but it also causes the issue that when something goes wrong, it goes horribly wrong.
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What I had in mind was RFID tags embedded in the pavement. Almost certainly would be cheaper than paint, installation would be the great bulk of the cost. And you mainly need them at turns and intersections and where speed limit changes...more or less where you'd need a painted marking.
And maybe the roads are better maintained where you live...there's some heavily traveled roads in this area that get much of the way to gravel before getting fixed up, especially up in Michigan (combination of thinly populated areas with poor funding for road maintenance and fall-spring weather that makes roads rapidly disintegrate).
Markings of any sort, even signs, tend to get obscured in snow (or flattened by plows/wayward vehicles) during the winter or vegetation during the summer around here. It's barely a suitable approach with human drivers.
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Sounds workable.
Sounds like we're at the same latitude. We get road replacements fairly frequently due to the multiple freeze-thaw cycles each winter, which means roads go bad quickly, but they also get fixed quickly.And maybe the roads are better maintained where you live...there's some heavily traveled roads in this area that get much of the way to gravel before getting fixed up, especially up in Michigan (combination of thinly populated areas with poor funding for road maintenance and fall-spring weather that makes roads rapidly disintegrate).
But they are continuous and for the most part, contiguous. What would be the spacing on RFID tags? I'm guessing that depends on power source and that depends on size and that depends on ruggedness for a roadbed.Markings of any sort, even signs, tend to get obscured in snow (or flattened by plows/wayward vehicles) during the winter or vegetation during the summer around here. It's barely a suitable approach with human drivers.
I ask because if the wheels are slightly out of alignment or the wind is blowing or the roadbed is slanted, the car may drift out of position. A lane marker spotting system will notice this continuously. GPS can be fairly precise, if there are enough satellites visible, and can tell you where you are along a line with a map as guide, but it may not be accurate enough to keep you from drifting onto the shoulder or into the next lane.
The computer will need good optical recognition anyway, to avoid obstacles too and know the position of the car in relation to the optics to know how to clear an obstacle, so it may as well read lane markings.
Et tu BAUT? Quantum mutatus ab illo.
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By the time computers are driving cars, you're powertrain is likely to be mostly battery.
How is this different from now? Roads, signs, traffic lights all need to be maintained in the current paradigm. If a lot of the system is based not on the roadway but on vehicles, then they will naturally take over as newer vehicles replace older vehicles. It might make the newer cars more expensive, although a lot of the increasing computer use of cars is getting more affordable through economies of scale, but as accident rates decrease, insurance premiums may also decrease on such cars allowing it to pay for itself.We can dream up schemes and solutions to all these problems, but the reality is that any system needs to be maintained, needs to be adopted for all applications. Cities have a hard time with thier infrastructure now. I see plenty of missing signs, burned out traffic lights, crumbled roads, etc all around me. If they don't have the time and money to maintain what they have now, how do you think they can do the same for a more sophisticated system?
That's why you should have redundancy and alternate methods in a system. Human drivers currently have no redundant systems, backseat drivers not included.Besides, technology can solve a lot of things, but it also causes the issue that when something goes wrong, it goes horribly wrong.
Et tu BAUT? Quantum mutatus ab illo.
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Hi Swampy, The whole problem with this concept is failure mode. Now, if your engine konks out, it's bad enough, but AAA will get to you and tow you( better get out of the car and safe on the side ). But to suggest that we abandon our responsibility to operate an motor vehicle and cede that responsibility to a computer begs credulity. Living on the edge of a surprise is no way to go through life. The failure mode is death .End of game.
No, the technological infatuation of putting computers to work on every device known to man is fraught with dangers beyond reason. Talk about computer crash !!!!!!!!!!!!
Your life hangs by a thread with such a scheme. There are many applications where computers serve us well. This is not one of those applications.
Frankly, I would rather have an old volkswagen bug with a simple electrical system that was bullet-proof than these computer infested behemoths which are deliberately designed to
get into your wallet....in a big way. We want more reliability, not more vulnerability. At least..... that is how I believe and think. I would hate to have to reply when someone asks .....
" Say, where is your family ? " that " They died in a head-on crash from a failed computer.
I can rest easy,...knowing full well that the insurance companies won't buy into such a naive scheme. Even they have money to lose. We have only our lives.
Best regards,
Dan
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Ok, let's first do the mixed first: an automobile that will stop you from dangerously crossing lanes and other dangerous actions, rather than a fully computer-driven automobile first.
Institutional reforms have been proposed long time ago, but how effective are them?
Please visit my blog:
http://completereality.wordpress.com
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Ok, a deer jumps out at night (happens all too often) . Your lane is blocked . You have 2 seconds to act. BUT......
you have to over-ride this stupid computer which insists on driving you through the windshield and totaling your car.....
so you won't change lanes. No. People have to grow up, think responsibly and act .
Banned
Ships are largely computer-driven, particularly tankers and cargo vessels. We override as required, but it's usually not required.
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Still no reason or facts, just nightmare scenarios based on your own ignorance and meant to provoke an emotional response.
This is exactly the situation a computer is better equipped to handle than a human. More likely is that you swerve into oncoming traffic, lose control of the vehicle, or fail to react sensibly in time to avoid the collision, when a computer driver could have stopped the car while avoiding oncoming traffic, or in the worst case when the collision is unavoidable, reducing the speed at time of impact to something lower than a human driver could achieve. A computer would be taking evasive action and checking for other hazards while a human is still registering there's something amiss.
The truth that you keep ignoring is that humans are terrible drivers, and it's quite likely computers can be better, safer ones. We do not have a "responsibility" to ensure there is someone to blame when accidents happen. I'll take the risk of getting injured or killed by a wayward computer driver quite happily if it's lower than the risk of the same happening with a wayward human driver.
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In the second or so that it would take you to react, the computer calculates the current, straight line path of the deer, the current, straight-line path of the car, applies the brakes (and, like it or not, ABS is much, much better at controlling brakes than are humans), checks the other lane for oncoming traffic, and either a) swerves to miss the deer or b) determines that hitting the deer is less risk than hitting that truck coming down the other lane or that large tree to the right. This could all happen in about the time it takes for you to actually take your foot off the accelerator and move it to the brakes -- studies have shown this takes an alert human driver at least a second just to do that when confronted with an unexpected event -- and it makes it very difficult to see where it's better to disable the system: it will probably handle this sort of situation just fine.
Chances are very good that a computer driver will be better than most people really are, as opposed to how good most people think they are. Do consider that almost all drivers significantly overestimate their skill level and their ability to react in an emergency. Some of the worst exaggeration of skills are among people who consider themselves to be "very good" drivers.
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I said "Failure mode". You are driving along on two lane blacktop and your 'cruise'control ' fails,sending you head-on into
an oil truck. Done. Do you see ?
Dan
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You are driving along on two lane blacktop and you fall asleep, sending you head-on into an oil truck. Done. Do you see ?
Or rather, do you see why this is a silly way to argue?
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Reductionist and proud of it.
Being ignorant is not so much a shame, as being unwilling to learn. Benjamin Franklin
Chase after the truth like all hell and you'll free yourself, even though you never touch its coat tails. Clarence Darrow
A person who won't read has no advantage over one who can't read. Mark Twain
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And shall we compound our risks with electronics? Clearly no.
We had some good people on the Thresher. Some engineer decided to put an angle limit switch into the scram system.
When they hit the emergency blow system, and forward blew first, it scrammed the reactor. Ran out of steam and slid back down. Another case of electronics installed in a bad place.
I say put the money and research into better batteries. Now you are talking. The primary mission is transportation.
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You're ignoring the inconvenient facts that human drivers do this all the time, rather more often than existing car computers fail on the road, and that (as I've mentioned several times), there's a failsafe behavior in simply stopping the vehicle. That's not entirely safe, but mainly because the guy behind you might not have his car on automatic and so might not react fast enough to avoid running into you.
We would not be compounding our risks, a self driving car is not subject to the risks that result from having a human driver. We would be replacing a known-unreliable part with one that is designed to do the job more safely and reliably. You have done nothing to demonstrate that computers would be inherently worse than human drivers.
So an abnormal situation triggered a safety system in a submarine's nuclear reactor. How is this in any way relevant?
This is just another example of you trying to argue with something intended to provoke an emotional reaction, rather than actual facts.
Established Member
Dan are you aware that today’s automobiles have anywhere from 40 to 50 computers in them and the same amount of computing power in the Thresher’s time would have probably required half of the Navy’s fleet just to carry them?
The Thresher went down in 1961, over 50 years ago. Yes, things have gotten more complex, but our ability to handle and deal with complexity has also changed.
A driverless car is complicated but the only thing I can see that will stand in the way from it happening are not engineering and design issues but rather legal and liability issues.
To understand the real problem you need to watch this video of Sebastian Thrun who is the brains behind Googles driverless car. Sebastian’s goal is to reduce the number of auto related deaths by one million a year:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bp9KBrH8H04
Today there are about 1.2 million auto related deaths a year. If Sebastian and the automakers together are able to reduce the deaths by one million a year think of what they have accomplished. But can you see where the problem is? The automakers have taken over the responsibility of the remaining 200 thousand deaths.
Should the automakers not proceed? That seems to be your suggestion.
Fortunately Google and the automakers are working on the technology, but someone is going to need to step up and deal with the legal issues.
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The advocates for driverless computerized cars have not had to repair too many things in life. We aren't talking about inconvenience. We are talking death. Sell it to the insurance companies and the clamdiggers back home.
Keep it simple .
Question: would you like to drive a car with a steering collum made of a flourescent bulb tube? Probably not, for when it fails you will have no connection to the steering at all. What you are asking is to abandon a solid mechanical conection
for drive-by-wire. I simply don't like it at all.
Those who want it should try it on the alpine rally. Good luck.
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