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GM Says Driverless Cars Will Be Ready By 2018
Posted by
kdawson
on Tue Jan 08, 2008 04:04 PM
from the look-ma-no-hands dept.
from the look-ma-no-hands dept.
Gregor Stipicic writes "Cars that drive themselves — even parking at their destination — could be ready for sale within a decade, General Motors Corp. executives say. 'This is not science fiction,' Larry Burns, GM's vice president for research and development, said in a recent interview. GM plans to use an inexpensive computer chip and an antenna to link vehicles equipped with driverless technologies. The first use likely would be on highways; people would have the option to choose a driverless mode while they still would control the vehicle on local streets, Burns said. He said the company plans to test driverless car technology by 2015 and have cars on the road around 2018."
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Submission: General Motors: Driverless cars ready by 2018 by Anonymous Coward
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Good (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Good (Score:5, Interesting)
And you probably thought that was a weird law. California's just ahead of the curve.
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Also, all of the episodes I've seen have them driving the car by Remote control.
Depending on how its interpreted "Remote Control Driver" != "Driverless Car"
Number 1 use (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:Good (Score:5, Funny)
Further, what makes you think you can react to road dangers faster than a radar-equipped mesh-networking auto-bot?
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Re:Obligatory (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Obligatory (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Good (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Good (Score:5, Insightful)
* Make truckers obsolete
* Allow dropoff/pickup of children without you being present
* Allow pickup of groceries or other goods without you being present
* Make it so you don't need parking near your destination (vehicle can leave, park elsewhere, and return later)
* Greatly increase throughput (autoconvoying, reduction of drag, traffic-aware route scheduling, reduction of human error)
* More green space for a given amount of throughput (same)
* Greatly increase speeds (same)
* Greatly decrease fuel or energy consumed at a given speed (same), helping the environment.
* Decrease costs to consumers (as above) and thus opens up wider travel opportunities/deurbanization.
* Facilitate better integration of the vehicle and the road (example: bridges that know how much capacity they can support and vehicles that know how much they weigh so that they can be built lighter (and thus cheaper) while still being safe by never routing too much weight to be crossing a given bridge at once)
* No speeding tickets
* No drunk drivers
* No need to pay attention to the road -- but those who like to drive could still offroad, go to tracks, etc.
* Greater response time of vehicle and built-in system-aware hardware eases transition to new technologies, such as inductrac maglev roads, powered roads to recharge electric vehicles, or whatnot.
** Above technologies further increase speed, decrease energy consumption, boost economy, and decrease cost to consumers
* Greatly boost the economy (all of the above)
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
* Completely kill the fun and independence of the open road for human fun. - No more jumping on your motorcycle for an adventure on the open road. The "iron butt" will become a thing of the past. One more chink out of the independent spirit.
Re:Good (Score:5, Insightful)
No need to pay attention to the road -- but those who like to drive could still offroad, go to tracks, etc.
I fully support your right to go have fun driving your vehicle if that's what floats your boat. You don't, however, have a fundamental right to use something constructed by lots of my taxpayer dollars (the public road system) as your personal playground and put me in unnecessary risk while on it. In such a future, if you wanted to drive for fun, you could easily go drive somewhere that's for people who want to drive for fun; however, our tax dollars weren't collected to build you a racetrack.
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Re:Good (Score:5, Insightful)
You know, you're right. You're right! You pay for it, you should be able to do whatever the heck you want with it. Speaking of that, I should go to an Air Force base and take a free ride on a jet fighter. Hey, I'm paying for it, right? Who cares what the "intent" of the program is. It's all about what "I want" to do with the program, right? Who cares whether the "intent" of the transportation budget is to move people and goods. If you want to use it for your own personal needs, screw the purpose of the transportation budget (moving people and goods), right?
The people who cause most accidents arnt truck drivers, taxis or couriers.
But they *do* cause accidents. Drunk drivers only cause ~40% of accidents [car-accidents.com]. ~42,000 people die per year in auto accidents. Put 9-11, our troops lost in Iraq, and all of those sorts of things in perspective: 42,000 *per year*. Car accidents are the *leading cause of death* for people between ages 6 and 27. 394,000 large trucks were involved in crashes in 1999. 5,203 people died and 127,000 were injured. The economic damage of the accidents was a staggering $150 billion, just in 1999. Let's put that into perspective: Hurricane Katrina did only $81 billion.
This is not something trivial. You not only want the American public to pay for your entertainment, pay *huge amounts of money* for your entertainment, but you want to keep us in a system that injures half a million people a year, kills several tens of thousands per year, and does almost twice the economic damage as Hurricane Katrina each year. For your entertainment. Pardon me if I'm a wee bit hostile to the notion.
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Re:Good (Score:5, Insightful)
What, you don't think you'll be able to tell the computer where you want to go? Or give it commands like "turn left up ahead" or "stop here"? Personally I'd love to be able to really look at the scenery on those country drives rather than dividing my attention between it and the road, and then at the end of the day just tell the car "home, James" and sit back and snooze.
Hell, they could even put in a steering wheel and pedals so that you think you're in control, but the computer just takes those inputs as suggestions.
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Re:Good (Score:5, Interesting)
If you're truly willing to give things up, then you can have what you want. Figure out a way to get a job where you can work from home. Sell the car. Move somewhere with really cheap housing where you can walk to the grocery store. It sounds like I'm being glib, but I'm dead serious. Do it.
I did it. My wife and I both took 50% pay cuts to find work at home jobs. We sold one car and used it to pay off the other. We fill up our remaining car about once every 2 months or so. We had many expenses before that we no longer have, including about $150 USD/mo in toll roads and about $250 USD/mo in gas, and our car insurance is super cheap now with 1 car fully paid off instead of 2 cars. Plus, we both recovered about 2 hours per day each on commute times, which we now use to enjoy our happier less stressful lives.
Seriously-- if you're honestly willing to make sacrifices to not sit in traffic, then do it. You're in charge of your life, right?
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Re:Good (Score:5, Insightful)
* Not door-to-door service. Rules out the weak, the disabled, many of the elderly, many of the young (safety), and the vast throngs of able-bodied people who, whether you think the reason is justified or not, simply don't want to walk a dozen blocks to make all of their connections every day because they:
* Have "better things to do" than spend an extra 5-10 minutes each way walking several blocks, or
* "Don't want to" walk several blocks
* Need to be transporting goods (dry cleaning, groceries, etc) long distances by hand. I'm in good shape, but even I'd hate to haul, say, a 40 pound bag of water softener salt plus a couple gallons of milk, a few quarts of juice, and all of the other stuff I might happen to pick up at a grocery store.
* Greatly increased travel time. I can drive to the grocery store in three minutes, but it'd take about an hour get there via bus -- at peak service times. Even if they 10xed funding to make busses run 10 times as often, it'd still take three times as long to get there. And this excludes the aforementioned time to walk to the bus stop. Busses, light rail, and rail are simply a poor fit for going from specifically point A to specifically point B. They do great on long stretches, but simply can't cater to the individual needs of their many passengers.
* Has economic penalties (greatly increased transit time is not free to an economy)
* Has leisure time penalties (as above)
* Lacks individualism (something Americans tend to prize)
* Lacks the ability to leave things of yours in a vehicle.
* Lacks the ability to maintain (or not maintain) the vehicle in the shape you find acceptable, or to modify it to your liking
* Lacks room for transporting goods -- both everyday goods (groceries, dry cleaning, etc) and non-everyday goods (a refrigerator, a desk, etc). Especially important on "goods" that aren't allowed to be transported in public transport -- pets, dangerous chemicals, etc.
* Requires a much greater degree of pre-planning for trips to get your route and timing down.
* Has serious time penalties if you miss a connection.
* Lateness (above) has serious economic and leisure-time penalties.
* Forces people to be in close proximity with other people (laugh if you want, but the hypochondriacs, agoraphobes, racists, and vast throngs of people who merely want to be left alone won't be laughing)
* Doesn't make use of our vast amount of existing infrastructure (only applies to rail and light rail, not busses)
The overwhelming majority simply won't vote for any candidate who would eliminate personal transportation for public, and any transportation proposal needs to deal with the reality that there are many, many reasons, both good and bad, that it's not a general purpose solution.
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Re:Good (Score:5, Informative)
Not around here. Around here, the primary users are the able-bodied poor.
Those are the groups that are the least likely to a) be capable of driving, and b) be able to afford the cost of owning, maintaining, insuring, and fueling a vehicle.
And, more importantly, walking several blocks to the nearest bus stop multiple times on each trip. I have a good friend with muscular dystrophy. She drives a car. The concept of her walking everywhere to catch busses, especially in winter, is almost laughably bad.
Healthy adults are the people who take transit the least, for the simple reason that they're the ones that can afford cars and have both the mental acumen and physical health necessary to operate them.
Tell that to gardeners, construction workers, factory workers, and all other "manual laborers". Tell them how wealthy they are. Go on. Because, at least around here, those are the sort of people you see on the bus. Them and students.
That's what an iPod and a book are for.
How nice for you that this is all you need to be unaware of everyone else around you.
Even the most obnoxious of the homeless insane wont try to talk to someone protected by such an overpowering barrier of leave-me-the-fuck-alone.
Funny, because I've had, on multiple occasions, homeless insane (or at least seemingly homeless and insane) people carry on one-sided conversations with me for my entire ride on the bus while I'm programming on my laptop the hole time, and I don't even ride it that often.
The grocery is that close, but you can't walk?
I don't know about you, but I don't exactly feel like needlessly losing 40 minutes of my day a twice a week and carrying back half a dozen bags of groceries weighing dozens of pounds total (sometimes more) in my arms. Or should I tow a little red wagon with me? Any more annoyances you'd like to pile onto my life for no particular reason?
that means your grocery store is at most 1.5 miles away. A reasonably healthy person can walk that in about 15 minutes.
It's actually 1.3 miles, 4 minutes drive, according to google
I'm sorry but 6 miles per hour is not a "walk". That's jogging. So, now what am I to picture -- you want me to jog with a dozen bags of groceries in my arm? What's next -- do you want me to juggle and play harmonica at the same time?
Anyone who's actually used public transportation at all (as opposed to the people who go around making up bullshit about how unsuited it is for everyone except healthy adults) knows that for short trips, it's usually easier to walk.
Um, excuse me, but I used to ride the bus daily. Don't lecture me about "anyone who's actually used public transportation".
Youths generally can't afford cars, so they depend on public transit.
I said the "young". As in children. As in "American parents don't typically want their kids riding alone on a bus and would rather just drop them off somewhere".
The elderly frequently can't afford cars and are often incapable of driving, so they depend on public transit.
If they're incapable of driving, I bet walking a dozen blocks with groceries in their arms is a blast, isn't it?
Not owning a car is a sign of being poor, not elderly.
The disabled are one of the lowest income groups in any society, especially American society with its disdain for social services. Do you really think that they can afford cars?
My friend Cathy has one. It's a junker probably worth less than a thousand dollars, but it drives just fine. It's fitted with hand controls so she can run it properly. Before she was able to get that car, she was part of a car co-op. Again, think for a second: person who can hardly walk, and you want her to *carry things* for *several blocks* each way to get to a bus stop? That's positively ludicrous.
Not to mention the fact that many disabilities directly prevent people from driving.
You really don't know anyone who's disabled, do you?
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Re:Good for safety (Score:3, Informative)
Humans make a lot of mistakes including the stupid excuses "I didn't see you". With computer controlled stuff, the software will *see* everything down to a given size all the time. It doesn't get distracted or starts the 'stare into oblivions', both of which result in the same scenario.
Cars and SUVs and trucks are the largest obstacle to safety for cyclists, pedestrians and motorcyclists. Remove the recklessnes
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
What's the problem? You just need a sensor and a little code that can juggle the special factors involved in Boston driving -- Relative Vehicle Size, Number of dents, Condition of the paintjob. Vehicle with the least to lose in a collision has the right of way. You won't even notice that a robot is driving.
In fact, judging from most of the computer controlled gadgets around here,
The possibilities are endless! (Score:5, Funny)
"Drive to Pathmark"
"Pathmark is overrated. Destination modified to Walmart." *doors lock*
Re:The possibilities are endless! (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:The possibilities are endless! (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:The possibilities are endless! (Score:5, Funny)
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Too bad... (Score:3, Funny)
Does this mean... (Score:5, Insightful)
...that someone will have to come up with maps that are accurate? I don't mean ones that have pinpoint accuracy on the locations of roads, but thoroughfares with special conditions. I'd hate to riding in a car in autopilot that decided it could turn the wrong way down a one way street because the map data didn't show it.
Sounds about right. (Score:5, Funny)
If I believe anyone, I believe GM (Score:5, Interesting)
I will remain pseudonymous, but I will say that my current area of research (I am a graduate student) is tangentially related to this field, related enough that I've looked into trying to convince GM to give me funding (so far nothing has materialized). Specifically my research looks deals with programming language design (e.g., making less-than-Turing-complete-but-still-useful programming languages structured in useful ways) to aid in static analysis. The aim is at safety-critical code (nuclear power plant code, industrial controller code, automotive software) such that you can say "barring hardware failure, this code is 100% guaranteed to meet hard realtime constraints", etc.
Anyway, at least publicly, GM is probably the most impressive car company in terms of researching these sorts of things. I feel kind of bad for GM. I hear they're selling terribly and are even selling at a loss on many cars, but their research department really is something impressive. Maybe they're a little bit Microsoft-ish in that their research department is heavily insulated from the rest of the company, I don't know. But GM is doing a lot of cool stuff and funding a lot of cool stuff with regards to "correct" software.
If it were some other random company, I would probably roll my eyes and say "oh they'll probably just test it really really heavily and then tell us that it works", but more than most companies, I trust GM to develop cool technology (such as novel static analysis techniques) to get this to work. Their R&D [gm.com] is active in a lot of areas, 99% I'm sure will never amount to anything, but I wouldn't doubt it if they could get the technology together to get auto-driving cars in 10 years.
Disclaimer: as I mentioned before, my efforts to get GM funding are still unsuccessful, and consequently I'm not on GM payroll in any imaginable way. I don't even drive a GM car (or any car). In fact their cars look kind of lame in general, but their R&D department in Cool.
GM's problem: (Score:3, Informative)
GM's had 30 years to bring fuel efficiency & milage to the forefront of their goals. I have no sympathy for its demise.
Culpability (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
In any case GM is wr
GM assumes liability for driverless car accidents (Score:5, Insightful)
Correct me if I'm wrong.
It seems to me the only way this technology ever winds up on the road is if the owner of the car signs a waver at the car dealership to hold GM harmless and assume all responsibility for driverless mode accidents.
Re:GM assumes liability for driverless car acciden (Score:5, Interesting)
Now who can handle the insurance policy on that?
Then, of course, inane regulation.
Never mind that these will be safer and less obstructive than 95% of drivers. Never mind that they'll end the problem of drunk driving. Never mind that they will massively increase productivity. Everyone has to get their piece.
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Insurance would change drastically (Score:4, Informative)
far, FAR fewer than what we see today. Owning a self-drive capable car might even LOWER your
insurance payments as you're taking the human out of the equation. Think about what causes most
accidents. Hardware failure ? Um. . no.
Usually it's stupidity on the drivers part. Driving too fast, ( or too slow in the wrong lane )
didn't see the vehicle next to them, drunk, racing, rubbernecking, on the phone, whatever.
Remove the driver from the equation and 99% of the traffic fatalities will probably go away.
Once the tech arrives, it would probably take 5-10 years to get the changeover completed. Once
that happens, most of the accidents and the reasons behind them would vanish. Talk all you wish on
your phone. Eat your breakfast and rubberneck till you are blue in the face. The computer won't run
the light, blow the stopsign or try to race the idiot next to you. Freeway traffic will likely be
self-drive ONLY.
Hell, they may even RAISE the speed limits. The ones we have now have to factor in the idiot
equation. Remove the human problem and higher speeds navigated via computer will be just as safe
( if not safer ) than the lower ones driven by their flesh and blood counterparts.
the lower ones.
With my drive testing the limits of my sanity on a daily basis ( ~80 miles roundtrip to the office
through the worst traffic Houston has to offer ) I'll be first in line if / when this tech becomes
available.
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Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Yes, which is why the problem is greatly curtailed -- drunk merely has to be able to say, "God damn I'm wasted. Car, take me home." I'm willing to bet that most drunk people who get in a car will gladly take this option in preference to risking a DUI.
You are correct, of course, that part of the problem i
...Probably (Score:5, Interesting)
With the speed with which processing power and sensors become cheaper and more widely available, I think 10 years is definitely attainable. The tech is here, most of the problems are solved, we just have to wait for the price point to come down.
/.ed. ;)
[1] I was going to put our URL here, but the IT dept will kill me if the servers get
It's the surprises that scare me (Score:3, Insightful)
Personally, I'll believe it when I see it, and even then I think I'll be
It's About Time! (Score:4, Insightful)
Would legal/insurance issues kill it? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not like ALL the cars on the road will be driverless. Who is responsible for a crash that occurs while you aren't driving and are reading or asleep (why else would you want a driverless car)?
They might have better luck putting driverless "taxis" in crowded downtown areas where traffic moves slowly - that would reduce the damage and injuries associated with accidents at higher speeds.
Never let reality temper imagination
Re:Would legal/insurance issues kill it? (Score:5, Insightful)
But I do agree fully with you that legal/insurance-problem might be the biggest dealbreaker.
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Tech 10 years off isn't sci-fi? (Score:4, Interesting)
In my book, if you an't roll something out within 18 months, it's vapor. Talking about something you think is a decade away is just lip service clearly trying to generate some PR and drve up stock a few cents for the day.
Re:But the big question is... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
No, they need to just throw in the towel if they can't compete with their core product, because if they can't even do plain old cars decently, they're certainly not going to succeed at anything more grandiose.
GM's cars suck, and have sucked for a very long
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
They might if Microsoft writes the software and they try to exit from the wrong off ramp. There are people dying in flying cars all the time!
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:WHY are these bozos spending money on this? (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously, how can you even ask this question? Have you ever heard of the broken window fallacy?
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Re:Right... (Score:5, Insightful)
- It wouldn't race to the next red light, but infuriate you (like I do my passengers) by taking its virtual foot off the virtual gas pedal as soon as the light ahead turned red
- It wouldn't waste gas idling at the green light with its finger up its ass
- It wouldn't go east to get west (unless Microsoft made its nav system)
- It wouldn't pick the route with the most stop signs
You can already improve your mileage on the interstate (or autobahn) by using your cruise control.-mcgrew
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Re:Right... (Score:5, Interesting)
Once cars can really drive themselves, they should be in contact with other cars, road signs and such to maintain the best traffic conditions possible.
There will be no real reason for stop signs, traffic lights, speed limits, yield signs and such, all of this can be avoided once cars are driving themselves.
Of-course this requires an overhaul of the infrastructure and assumes all cars are driverless and communicating with each other, the road signs and such and that there are no others (pedestrians/animals/other obstacles) on the roads.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I think you're right. The uncomfortable part, though, is that when you're driving the car, you feel that you have the control over avoiding problems and accidents (I say you *feel* because in reality, there are some accidents you can't avoid). On the other hand, if the software BSODs and drives you off the bridge, you had nothing to do with it at all. Every time you get into one of these cars, you're putting your life into the
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
This can be done, there are object classification algorithms that can make the determination, especially if the toddler is crawling.
* Seeing well in the rain.
This can be done using near-IR cameras, in fact they can see better than you probably could.
* Telling the difference between a dishwasher carton (which might not have to be bra
Re:And monkeys might fly out of my butt (Score:4, Funny)
You don't read enough. There already exists a perfectly good sky car [moller.com]. 20mpg on pure, clean-burning ethanol, and completely safe computerized navigation and flight control. And it's quiet. And it goes well over 200mph, and can take off and land vertically, right in your yard. I can't believe you don't know about this vehicle. It's even red!
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