Google's self-driving cars will be available to 'ordinary people' within 5 years
computerworld.com
computerworld.com
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000087239639044352490457765...
by Dan Neil of the Wall Street Journal, published two days ago, is a good commentary on why "ordinary" people will mostly be glad to use driverless cars, and regulators and insurers will be glad to nudge drivers to use them.
"As a mature, postindustrial society, the U.S. has in many ways topped out economically (population growth, consumption) compared with younger competitors on the world stage. Americans are learning hard lessons about the value of their work in a race-to-the-bottom global economy.
"The one brilliant part of the U.S. economic profile is productivity. It turns out, Americans are a little nutty when it comes to work.
"If autonomy were fully implemented today, there would be roughly 100 million Americans sitting in their cars and trucks tomorrow, by themselves, with time on their hands. It would be, from an economist's point of view, the Pennsylvania oil fields of man-hours, a beautiful gusher, a bonanza of reverie washing upon our shores."
The statement in the article submitted here from Sergey Brin "You can count on one hand the number of years until ordinary people can experience this" is an ambitious prediction, and I wonder what that suggests about the cost of the self-driving system, as fewer and fewer cars look affordable to many "ordinary people" these days. I would especially like to see self-driving cars introduced in this state as soon as possible, where I expect they will perform on the roads much better than the typical licensed human drivers here.
Cars may never crash into each other again due to driver error. Cars will still need to be safe for the passengers because crashes will still happen.
If you count in binary, that could be 31 years. More if you count on knuckles and not just entire fingers as on/off. :)
Google has good support (including phone support) for the services that you pay for.
And if you want to contact the teams without using the product forum, try using Google+; I've seen that teams are often very responsive on there.
More seriously Brin is quoted "You can count on one hand the number of years until ordinary people can experience this." which is not equivalent to owning them, which I think the title baitingly implies.
Before robotic cars are viable, we'll first need cars that prevent human drivers from causing an accident. If a car can't stop a human driver from crashing, how can it stop itself?
And if people were to see accident rates plummeting for new cars, they would have the confidence that robotic vehicles will be safe too.
We can test robotic safety before the first robotic car takes to the road.
We already have cars today that can stop a human from crashing - there are cars that will automatically apply the brakes to avoid a collision (Volvo has one for pedestrians, Toyota for objects, some are in production), and can maintain a set distance to the car in front of them on a roadway (auto cruise control).
Those are both a form of automation / robotics, even if the car makers don't like to call it that.
The human eye is an amazing sensor, one we can't even get close to with our current technology.
The human eye is amazing, yes, but it has severe limitations relative to other types of sensors, which we have to compensate for with systems like headlights and street lamps. It's also backed by a recognition system that wasn't really ever designed to work at >20 MPH.
It's a pretty bad sensor. We can only see certain wavelengths need corrective devices, have a blind spot and can only focus on a small part of our visual field.
And if the system gets tired and the sensors shut down.
At night: much better than a human who can only see visible light
Stop for a dog: no problem at all
You haven't addressed the real problems:
In the snow: lane markers disappear
False positives: a load of snow falling off the car in front of you, or a garbage bag flying across the road, can both cause the car to go paranoid.
It's still vastly better than ugly bags of mostly water
Given that the sensor tech is only theoretically going to become affordable as production ramps up, they may have to start there to keep pushing things forward.
This NY Times article from last year hints at the same: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/11/science/11drive.html
It'll inevitably happen, but there's a ton of legal battles that will need to be fought between now and then.
So long as this was pitched as a service for them as opposed to competing with them, I doubt they'd fight it.
The only place I think you'd see push-back, is where drivers are not medallion/contract-holders but have (union) contracts that protect their place as the vehicle operator. But that's far from universal.
I personally do not see Google going in that direction, but it is an option to offer add-on systems for all cars. It doesn't necessarily need to be a partnership with anyone.
It doesn't say great things about the reporting or fact checking here that they got the CEO of Google wrong in a publication entitled "Computerworld".
I don't care if they can't drive in the snow, heavy rain or fog. As long as the car can tell when driving conditions are too difficult for it and pull over to let me take over, I'm happy because 99% of my driving time is in decent conditions.
Even if I drive to Tahoe in the winter and have to deal with driving perhaps as much as 75% of the time, I'll still take automation the other 25%.
I bet the next quarter century will see this come to high end cars, not as self-driving, but as augmented safety, like a glorified cruise control that tracks other vehicles, intervenes when the driver is txting and fails to notice the cars in front are stopped, that kind of thing. Then very slowly the car will take on more and more of the role of driver and the cars the tech is installed in will eventually make its way down to the family Honda and computer augmented driving will be the norm. But that's probably mid century.
why would self-driven taxis be cheap? there's still the cost, the maintenance and the security issues.
With self-driving cars (or buses), you can have completely dynamic routes for ride sharing optimization. Think Zipcars with carpooling.
Why constrained routes? They can drive on mountain roads in the dark.
Just say "I don't understand this, so I am against it"
Though after we eliminate the need for insurance we still need to eliminate the legal requirements too. As long as those are in place I suspect they'll do fine. I don't know how you would even approach that problem though, since it doesn't even become a problem until safety is well and truly solved.
edit: edited the wrong comment somehow.
Because robots don't expect to be paid. This effect has been observed in other industries.
Also there is a an additional seat available.
High end luxury cars already have exactly these things. I expect to see them trickle down to "regular" cars, as safety features in luxury cars usually do, rather soon.
In fact, there is already talk of requiring systems like AEB on certain classes of new vehicles: http://www.unece.org/press/pr2011/11trans_p10e.html
In addition to AEBs, driver monitoring systems have been in high end cars for years, as have autonomous cruise control systems and lane departure warning systems.
Luxury cars are already so close to driving themselves, it is pretty wild.
we don't have augmented vehicles yet, we have simple warning systems, there's no car that will slam the brakes on for you if you didn't already and the car in front is stopped. There's nothing that will steer you back into lane, the closest thing we have to augmented driving is the stupid self-parking mode on some cars for the parking challenged.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomous_cruise_control_syste...
> Mercedes introduced Distronic in late 1998 on the S-class.[12] For 2006, Mercedes-Benz refined the Distronic system to completely halt the car if necessary (now called 'Distronic Plus' and offered on their E-Class and S-Class range of luxury sedans), a feature now also offered by Bosch as 'ACC plus' and available in the Audi Q7, the Audi Q5, 2009 Audi A6 and the new 2010 Audi A8. The Audi A4 is available with an older version of the ACC that does not stop the car completely. In an episode of Top Gear, Jeremy Clarkson[citation needed] demonstrated the effectiveness of the cruise control system in the S-class by coming to a complete halt from motorway speeds to a round-about and getting out, without touching the pedals.
> Jaguar began offering a system in 1999; BMW's Active Cruise Control system went on sale in 2000[citation needed] on the 7-series and later in 2007, added a system called Stop-and-Go system to the 5-series.[13] Volkswagen and Audi introduced their own systems in 2002[citation needed] through the radar manufacturer Autocruise.
> In the United States, Acura first introduced Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC) integrated with a Collision Mitigation Braking System (CMBS) in the late calendar year 2005 in the model year 2006 Acura RL as an optional feature.[14] ACC and CMBS also became available as optional features in the model year the 2010 Acura MDX[15][not in citation given] Mid Model Change (MMC) and the newly introduced model year 2010 Acura ZDX.[16]
And yes, we do have augmented vehicles already. Autonomous cruise control, which is what you described, has been in cars for years: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomous_cruise_control_syste...
> "Full cruise control (able to bring the car to a complete stop):"
Your perspective on the automotive industry is a decade or more out of date.
Should early car manufacturers have considered the blacksmiths and horse farms they'd put out of work?