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A soft foamy exterior to increase safety. Self Driving. No Steering Wheel. No Brakes
Googles new self driving car
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NorthCarolina
(11,197 posts)without the Johnny.
ladjf
(17,320 posts)
liberal N proud
(60,338 posts)Why do innovative vehicles always have to be so ugly?
notadmblnd
(23,720 posts)cars are about more than a mode of transportation. This will go no where in the US and GM will be just fine.
berni_mccoy
(23,018 posts)to license their technology. Google has placed this technology in other vehicles as well.
GM is one of the more progressive American car companies, thanks mostly to Obama.
951-Riverside
(7,234 posts)Pretty dumb move on Google's part to remove the steering wheel and peddles which prevents occupants from manually taking over in case something goes wrong.
And why would I get into one of these things when public transportation exists?
A Simple Game
(9,214 posts)Second, no more drunk drives.
Third, no more texting drivers.
Come on, I bet if you tried you could come up with a few.
How about no more sleepy drivers.
No more Speeders.
Your turn.
Driving time is now productive or enjoying the scenery time.
Driving time is now nap time.
My god this is easy, you should try it!
951-Riverside
(7,234 posts)The problem here is too many people making bad decisions. Useless devices like this tries to compensate for human error and fallibility but in the end it takes away responsibility.
Reduce the human population by 1 billion and you'll reduce drunk driving, texting drivers, mass shooters, terrorism, mass migration and more importantly you'll save the environment. Self driving cars, wind farms and solar panels aren't going to solve the mess we're in.
adieu
(1,009 posts)from the planet will cause a huge economic and labor shock that we might not be able to pull out of for a long, long time.
As it is, the birth rates for most countries are below the 2.2/family replenishment rate. Humans have only been rapidly increasing in population in the past 70 or so years, primarily due to better medicine and health so that life spans have increased from 50 yrs of age to 70+ yrs of age.
But that time when people will eventually die is coming up just around now. Birth rates post WWII have been low in almost all countries, so in the next 10 to 20 years, we will see a shrinking of the population, globally. And a MASSIVE shrinking in some of the biggest countries, like China, the US, all of Europe.
That is not a good sign for the global economy.
davidthegnome
(2,983 posts)Self driving cars, wind farms and solar panels might not solve the mess... but they'll help. They're progress. I think they're pretty awesome. I doubt I'll ever be able to afford a self driving car, but I find the concept of it totally awesome.
How do you suggest we reduce the human population by 1 billion? Would it not, perhaps, be better to come up with innovative new technology to begin to at least make headway in solving our mess?
Pharaoh
(8,209 posts)I can't believe all the negativity here. Its incredible technology!
Historic NY
(37,451 posts)way back in the day when the trained monkeys were sent up in space capsules too.
I wonder how it avoids a Mack truck in its lane.
LTR
(13,227 posts)In fact, GM is already planning a second generation upgrade for 2015.
They also export the car to a few of their international divisions, such as Opel and Vauxhall in Europe and Holden in Australia and New Zealand. The Volt is badged as a Chevy in China. The car is also sold throughout Asia and South America. Granted, production isn't as high yet as, say, the Impala. But they still do very good numbers, and they are very committed to it.
Plucketeer
(12,882 posts)Thanks - but I'll just keep living in the world of realities.
sinkingfeeling
(51,461 posts)
onehandle
(51,122 posts)jberryhill
(62,444 posts)Heck no, it will TAKE you to stores who pay Google for delivering customers.
The rest of the time, you'll just end up at porn shops.
wtmusic
(39,166 posts)RufusTFirefly
(8,812 posts)
And all this time I thought these voracious corporations were doing it all just to serve me better.
Crowman1979
(3,844 posts)It's like we're heading toward being taken over by the borg.
happyslug
(14,779 posts)First, it requires that ALL roads have improvements on GPS. What I mean by that is at the present time, GPS has the ability to determine one's position within 10 feet. To get more accuracy then that requires nearby GPS assistant transmitters which can get you within inches of your true location. At the present time such assistant devices are in Airports on the runways and the paths to and from other locations to the Runways ("other places" include terminals) and ports. Railroads have made resistent joining that club for with rails they already have that capacity (If you are off the rails as much as four inches, railroads have other problems, i.e derailments).
The Trucking industry has also resistant moving such equipment to the Interstates, on the grounds right now truckers, if you look at their pay on a per hour basis as oppose to per trip basis (Truck drivers are paid per trip NOT per hour), their pay is below minimum wage
The big push for self propelled vehicles has been the US Army and then only for trucks on their supply line. Right now, if the US Army moves into a country, the Army has to set up a port and then set up a trucking system to support the troops in the field. The trucking system is the weak point of any invasion force, if it is destroyed, the Tanks and Infantry leading the charge run out of Ammunition, Food and Fuel and the attacks comes to an end. Thus securing the Supply system is important and the weak point of the supply system is the trucking of supplies.
In WWII, the "Red Ball Express" kept the US Army supplied till it broke down in the fall of 1944. The US and its allies had to basically sit out the supply problem till the Spring of 1945, when it had been partially rebuilt. During the Vietnam War, the Ho Chin Minh Trail was the key to keeping the Viet Cong Supplies in South Vietnam. Trucks were the main transport device (followed by boat) but bicycles were used to keep supplies going south in areas between areas bombed out by US forces.
The US Army has wanted to switch from driver operated trucks to self propelled trucks since at least the 1990s. Most supply routes tend to be fixed and trucks along the those routes are rarely attacks at any strong points but in areas weakly patrolled and guarded by US Forces. This leads to high loses among drivers of such trucks (And a tendency for drivers to abandon such trucks when attack, when it is possible for the truck to continue to travel out of the fire of the enemy). Thus the Army sees self propelled and self driven vehicles as an ideal supply vehicle and has been pushing it as a concept since the 1970s. The Trucking industry seems to support the concept but refuses to spend money on it.
The US Army's problem with such self driven trucks have been numerous. First, keeping the electronics working. Second, how to handle other vehicles on the road (the US Army policy has been to outlaw them, but that does not seem to become policy in actual combat situation for the combat the US has been engaged in has been urban and rural guerrilla activity among an active civilian population, active in the sense they use the same roads to go to and from work, to go shopping and to use the same roads, as roads in the US are used). Third setting up a system that any guerrilla will have a hard time destroying (Transmission from satellites can be jammed, local transmitters can be located and destroyed).
Now, the Army's effort has been duplicated by the Department of Transportation (and I suspect to assist the Army in the Army's effort but given the cover of being Civilian). The Department of Transportation has had problems dealing with animals, pedestrians, bicyclists and older vehicles that do not have computers. So far I have heard of Department of Transportation tests of self propelled cars in the Interstates, where Animals, pedestrians and bicyclists are NOT to be on and where other vehicles do not stop for any reason other then traffic (No one stops to pick someone up, or drop someone off, stop at a red light, stop at a stop sign, or just stop because they are unsure where they are going).
These limited trips have all been successful, but they were all in controlled environments with no movement off the interstate system OR on tracks where the above can be eliminated (Such as in the Google example). The real problem is the real world, interaction with other vehicles, pedestrians, animals and Bicyclists AND what happens if contract with the GPS systems fails? Those are the real issues, an these are issues that have to be addressed before we permit self propelled Vehicles on the public highways. There is a big push for such self propelled vehicles from the US Army and the Trucking industry (Both see huge cost savings in eliminating drivers) but the problems are immense (One problem I have not mentioned is what happens if someone is hurt by a self propelled vehicle, who is liable? Right now, the primary person liable is the person operating the vehicle, he or she is the one that goes to jail, but if the vehicle is self propelled who goes to jail? An issue no one wants to address right now for they first choice would be no one, but the people will see such an death as a homicide and demand that someone goes to jail just as if a truck driver killed a pedestrian who was rightfully on the highway).
This concept has been kicked around since the 1970s (and I suspect the 1960s) but the above problems have always been in the way, and I do not see anyone coming close to addressing most of them. The ability to have a self propelled vehicle is getting close to being usable (providing we find a way to pay for the local GPS assistant devices) but except for the interstates, how are these things to operate? And who is liable when they don't are still up in the air.
berni_mccoy
(23,018 posts)And I also think you don't know enough about the technology in this system. It uses much more than GPS. Radar, artificial vision, etc. This technology is real. Here is a link to the same system running in a Prius, working on live roads, over 2 years ago:
happyslug
(14,779 posts)And that was a van, on a road that was separated by hedges and other barriers from the car in question. Every other vehicle in the movie was PARKED. As one engineer told me, driving with nothing else moving is easy. That hard part is interacting with other MOVING TRAFFIC. Thus to be effective such a system HAS TO BE ABLE TO OPERATE IN THE FOLLOWING ENVIRONMENT:
1. Where pedestrians WALK in the same road as the Vehicle (I notice Sidewalks in the Video, but no one on them). Much of the US has roads WITHOUT SIDEWALKS, and thus cars MUST operate with Pedestrian traffic on the same road.
2. With other MOVING VEHICLES. This is in many ways the big problem, for vehicles often travel at different speeds. I notice even at the intersection where the Pirus stopped at a stop sign, they was NO OTHER TRAFFIC in the intersection.
3. I notice no bicycles or horse drawn wagons, while both are rare, bicycles are increasing in popularity, but in some rural areas horses are still used to haul wagons.
I am sorry, this LOOKS like it is on a Public Street, but it appears to be some controlled area (I suspect early morning just after sun up in June or July when the sun raises the earliest in the day). In effect the lack of traffic, animals etc makes these roads the same as an interstate or enclose raceway, which self driven cars have used since the 1970s in control tests.
The problem is NOT the vehicle itself, but its interaction with other MOVING objects. That is the real test and this video avoids that problem entirely.
berni_mccoy
(23,018 posts)You are forgetting one car especially: the car that is filming it, which is at times in various positions around the autonomous car.
happyslug
(14,779 posts)As to the car photographing the car, from the location of the photo it is clear they did NOT fear blocking any traffic coming the opposite direction, thus could stay in THAT lane to get a better video of the Google Car. The photo car does not come near the front of the Google Car, nor goes opposite it, nor interacts with the Google car except from the rear left hand side (Called the "Blind side" by most drivers, for it is the area between the view from the side mirror and the rear view mirror). Thus the photo car, if it stayed in that position, is NOT in a position for the Google car to interact except to ignore it (as most drivers would, except in the car to their left is over taking them).
The Car is interacting with nothing that requires anything more complex then go X feet stop, turn go X feet, Turn, go X feet turn. Auto Driver cars could do that in the 1960s. Now, this Google car could be program to go through a drive through and park in a parking spot (a little more complex then a car could do in the 1960s) but the key is interacting with MOVING OBJECTS, i.e. animals, people, bicycles, and other vehicles and this video shows NONE OF THAT. It shows a lot of PARKED CARS, but in parking spots (Which a car in the 1960s could have been programmed to avoid). The problem had been and continue to be interaction with other moving objects, something your video does NOT show.
backscatter712
(26,355 posts)The spinny thingy on top of the car's roof is a laser sensor that gives the car's computers an image of everything around it. It also has a bunch of cameras that also give imagery that's processed by the car's computers.
It's necessary technology - GPS just gives you coordinates. Any self-driving vehicle has to have sensors to get a more precise picture of the environment around it, and give it the ability to detect obstacles, pedestrians, other cars, etc. so it can properly navigate. The cameras can recognize obstacles, see signs, traffic lights, is able to correctly read them, and so on. They've been operating in regular city traffic, and doing it rather well.
Google's self-driving car experiments have been pretty successful - a different self-driving vehicle, which was a more conventional car with the sensors, computers & equipment retrofitted, had exactly one accident, and if I remember right, that was when a human was driving. The computer was batting 1,000.
happyslug
(14,779 posts)The real test is in enthronements which is NOT controlled, i.e. Pedestrians walking in front of the vehicle, can it detect them in time? Animals running in front of the Vehicle (i.e. the Squirrel that runs almost in front of you, then dashes back, will the system detect the Squirrel, detect when the Squirrel retreats?).
AS to the other methods, all have been tried and found wanting, in Airport and ports the decision was made to go with GPS assistance transmitters, which can, with the GPS system, put down your location in centimeters. These systems have been costly, thus only in ports and airports, but they have been effective. These other methods are NOT as effective, but offer the ability to provide such details with much lower costs. The problem has been, while they offer the possibility of self driven vehicles operating safely in heavy and mixed traffic environments, so far they have FAILED in such environments.
People forget how much mental effort goes into driving. It appears simple, but it is not. People see a baseball player catch a call on the run and assume it is easy, but when you look at the math the ball player is doing to catch that ball it is complex, we have to resort to calculus to do the same calculation. In many ways this has been the problem, our brains developed in a complex world where we learned to see what we needed to see and ignore everything else. The brain takes what it sees and does constant calculations as to where we make the next step, put our hands, and move our body. We also see what other people, animals and objects and doing and use that input to determine what we do next (Our eyes are so complex in that most of what the eye takes in and uses to give us vision never goes to the brain, it stays in the eye for further use and what is sent to the brain is what is usable by the brain).
The most dangerous part of driving any vehicle are intersections. You go from most objects going one of two ways to an area where objects can go four or more ways (and if a pedestrian goes diagonal through the intersection you just increased in to eight ways and maybe more). Interstates avoid intersections by having on and off ramps instead. Yes, Camera can detect a Red Light and stop a car, but can the Computer driving the vehicle detect a pedestrian crossing the street in front of the vehicle when BOTH the pedestrian and vehicle has a green light? Such situations are NOT unusual, with the cross walk blocked by the panel the controls the red lights.
I suspect I know why you have more faith in such systems then I do, I am much more familiar with older Urban areas and Rural Areas built per-automobile where the problems I mention above makes driving a automobile difficult when compare to driving a vehicle in a post WWII suburb, which were designed around the automobile. Post WWII Suburbs tend NOT to have sidewalks (and if they do have sidewalks such sidewalks are NOT along major highways). The roads tend to be very wide so you have long sight distances (something missing on most urban and rural roads) so you can see other vehicles. The wide roads permit you to see animals while before you hit them. Pedestrians and bicyclists are rare, for the road system discourages them in suburban areas (Not to surprising, Urban and Rural Areas share much higher rates of pedestrian travel then Suburban areas).
Thus it is easier to retrofit an auto drive system into Suburbia then into urban or rural America. The problem is any system has to also work in Urban and Rural America and that is where the problems really come into play. I have NOT seen any effort to address the problems of Urban and Rural America and such self driven vehicles. I suspect the reason is the problems of urban America is just to complex (suburbia is so much simpler when it comes to traffic flows). The problem with rural America is that the distances involved and the tendency to have concentrations of many areas with the same problems as Urban America Traffic flows, with miles of nothing in between (and gates and other exit and entrance points all over the place with no set pattern). Rural America's biggest problem is pedestrians and bicyclists share the road with Automobiles and as such you have to take them into consideration (including trying to figure out how to avoid a pedestrian on the side of the road, but within the white line for there is no place else to walk, on a 6-7 foot wide lane in a vehicle 6 fit wide (Narrow roads are quite common in Rural America, many were first paved during the Great Depression as part of various get people back to work programs. Since the Great Depression many of these roads have received very minimal upkeep (some have actually been turned back to dirt roads to reduce the cost of maintenance).
Yavin4
(35,443 posts)1. Today a lot of people work through reading and sending email communication. That 45 mins spent driving are too precious to lose. Folks need to be in constant communication. At my gym, people cannot work out unless they're texting/emailing. A self driving car allows people to email and text while commuting.
2. It's not just about the U.S. If self-driving cars become the standard in Europe and Asia, then all auto makers will adjust to those markets. They're not going to continue to build manual driving cars just for the U.S. market. It won't make any sense.
3. If self-driving cars are safer and eliminate accidents, then insurance companies won't insure manually driven cars. It's too much of a risk.
Tommy_Carcetti
(43,185 posts)At least as far as I'm concerned.
I wouldn't step one foot in that thing.
ErikJ
(6,335 posts)backscatter712
(26,355 posts)You'd use an app that looks sort of like Google Maps to select your destination, then the smartphone would network with the car and tell it the destination. Then the car starts driving itself.
TlalocW
(15,386 posts)There's a dude hunched down behind the seats in control of the car. I can't believe you suckers fell for this!
Just kidding.
TlalocW
Locrian
(4,522 posts)
TlalocW
(15,386 posts)They didn't go over a cliff.
TlalocW
PeoViejo
(2,178 posts)More POVs are not.
Progressive dog
(6,905 posts)the blue screen does mean death.
yuiyoshida
(41,833 posts)And these people jump in...and ride along. That takes some guts. WHat if something goes wrong? You have no control right? man...
I think I would rather control the thing.
KansDem
(28,498 posts)
