Comment Re:Bad answer to the bridge question (Score 1) 28
I wonder if anyone is using curb feelers. Those were great.
I wonder if anyone is using curb feelers. Those were great.
And you can work in the car too.
I think we're going to see some clever work come out of Hollywood that may answer your question. The regular car chase is a bit tired, but it's going to be different when the robots drive the cabs. "The Fifth Element" was pretty cool. I think we'll see some more that try to answer the question of what to do when you can't get away.
I think the benefit for the casual drivers will be big. We're already seeing the explosion of companies like Uber and Zipcar. I think we'll see plenty of self-driving robots acting as cab companies.
Yup. You're right. And they have regular cameras too to do pattern recognition. Plus, they can communicate with each other to relay news to the cars that come behind them. There are multiple sensing vectors, as the AI guys might say.
I don't know if there's much in it that wasn't in Jules Verne more than 100 years ago.
But I did try to bring together some basic numbers that offer some context to help readers think about some of the ways that the autonomous car can change society. It's a deliberately short and simple book. It's more of a seed that helps the reader crystalize his or her thoughts.
Ah, I used to have an 86 Porsche. It was a great car and cheaper than my wife's Honda-- until I had to have the front rack and pinon replaced. Sigh.
Can you elaborate? Which kind of networking issues? The advantage cars have is that they're only concerned with the cars that are nearby or about to be nearby. They don't need to worry about all O(n^2).
If you check out some of the airports like Orlando or DFW, the trains are automated. It's largely a union and a political thing. They could be automated but the cities choose to create jobs instead.
Exactly. Those are great examples.
And that's why I started writing the book. The secondary and tertiary effects are going to be fascinating. Why put up signs if computers will use GPS to know where they are? There will be so much more freedom for everyone young and old. It's going to be a big change. Almost bigger than the Internet.
You're right about problems with rentals and shared things but the problems are slowly being solved. I've had great luck with Zipcars. People who abuse the cars are kicked out of the program. The cars of the future may have a video camera watching them at all times and the car company may just dig it up if there are questions about smoking or abuse. The privacy will suck but maybe people who want a clean car will choose to have the camera running.
The other sharing systems are doing a good job policing the issue and so I'm pretty sure we'll see workable systems.
Exactly. Google is putting plenty of miles on their cars and they're finding quite a bit of success. The DARPA Grand Challenge cars are almost a decade old. We're switching over from science to engineering. Marketing won't be long.
Yes, you're right. Boston and NYC are nightmares. But then again computers can do certain things better than humans. They handle scale up more gracefully. A human might be able to process a number of pedestrians and dangerous items, but the human brain maxes out pretty quickly. If a computer can track one pedestrian, it can probably track 10,000 too. The scale up is just linear. You just add a bit more computing power. If the Google car can handle SF with a certain number of processors, I'm pretty sure it can handle Boston or NYC with twice as much computer power. At least that's my off-the-cuff guess.
And we can create even more tools that offer a gradual evolution. We already have a database of all of the roads. With a bit more precision, we could build a device that could tell whether you're following a common path that others have taken before or if you're drifting into the way of oncoming traffic.
There are some, though, that suggest that gradual evolution may be more dangerous than jumping directly to fully autonomous vehicles. As the humans have less and less to do behind the wheel, their mind drifts elsewhere. They start texting more, working on their nails, or occupying themselves with other things. The car is usually doing a good job taking care of things. But the problem comes when the humans are called to do one of the few things they're supposed to do. If their mind is elsewhere, there could be a crash.
Yes, scale up is a big question mark. But on the other hand, computerized cars should be able to communicate with each other. They can ask permission to change lanes or at least warn each other with better regularity than the humans I see on the road. They will be able to swap plans with each other and that should help them do a better job than humans. They'll have more information.
No amount of careful planning will ever replace dumb luck.