Self-Driving Cars

[Sidney1st]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... roads.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Driverless trucks will be trialled next year in the UK

[BFCmaj]

What would happen if two driverless cars met on a single track road?

[ClaretEngineer]

What would happen if two driverless cars met on a single track road?

Some form of electronic dogging?

[South West Claret.]

I've been reading that it's predicted that by 2020 there will be self driving taxis worldwide. Volkswagen say they'll have self-driving cars on the road by 2019 and BMW say they'll launch a self-driving electric vehicle by 2021.

What are you thoughts on this - would you be happy to catch a taxi which will drive you to the airpot without anybody in the front?

With drones getting better each week, it wouldn't surprise me to see eventually, self-flying small 4-5 seater planes,where everything is operated via satelite and sensors, making sure nobody crashes into each other during flight.

No, a thousand times no

[Sidney1st]

I'd assume most commercial planes are flown using auto pilot for the majority of the journey, so completely pilotless planes probably aren't too far away.

Same could possibly be applied to the larger ships, both freight and cruise.

[CJW]

Self-driving, 100% accident-free cars.
I tell you, the nanny state won't be happy until everyone lives forever.

[CrosspoolClarets]

I drove past one of those lorry trains once in the Australian Outback by pulling into the opposite carriageway. About the length of a football pitch. It terrified me even though the road was straight and empty. These long driverless truck convoys on our motorways sound like a recipe for disaster. Too many questions unanswered. Does it pip its horn to alert a driver drifting into its lane? Does it hold back from its mate in front to let a car pull on from a sliproad? You need a human for these things, not a robot.

[keith1879]

In regards to big expensive programs being abandoned etc, this isn't the NHS or another government office phucking things up.

I'd still prefer self driving cars, plus I'd like more electric/hybrid cars/buses/lorries too.

Never saw this when the thread was live before. Based again on my IT project experience I would have to say that private industry is where the most cost-cutting and fudging takes place. I would 100% rather trust my life to a system designed and tested in-house by a government department than by a private company. (Bear in mind these days however that most supposedly government projects are run by imbeciles from big international consultancies who know nothing at all about the subject matter - unfortunately such consultancies are also getting an increasing foothold in private industry). I stick to my view that we could never get to a point where everything could be considered properly tested in all cases.

I think maybe we could do so on motorways where the possibility of sudden surprises in terms of cars pulling out of parking bays and pedestrians running out is reduced but even then I'm doubtful whether we could have safe interaction between self-drive and idiot driven (ie most) cars. How long would it take to get to the point where even 50% of cars have self-drive technology? There's billions being spent and car manufacturers are not idiots but I just can't see what the expected outcome is at the moment. I'm interested to see where it goes as in general terms I am a big fan of technological innovation.

[Sidney1st]

At some point self drive cars will be banned, bit like fossil fueled cars will be in 2040.

[Sidney1st]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/ ... harge.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Tesla are going to build electric lorries too.

[No Ney Never]

Should a pedestrian or another car be struck by a self drive car, are they going to be paid out by the insurance company or is there going to be a tussle between them and the manufacturers over fault, leaving the individual out of pocket until the company's settle their argument?

[lucs86]

Problem we're going to have with getting self-driving cars on the roads won't be from the technology, it'll be humans being d***s about it and not being able to share.

The self-driving cars will be programmed to avoid collisions at almost all costs, so at low speed anything coming within a foot or so will make it brake. At traffic points where lanes are merging, drivers will quickly realise that they can just nudge in front of the self-driving car and it won't nudge back. In cities you'll have early adopting self-driving car people trapped in traffic all day, constantly being cut up by selfish humans exploiting the programming. People would soon get sick of it. Having to share the road with humans will hold self-driving technology back massively I reckon.

[Imploding Turtle]

When they can make a computer that doesn't crash, I'll think about trusting them with my car.

Seriously, I don't fancy it. Maybe I would be safer in a self-driving vehicle, statistically; time will tell. But I think I'd trust myself rather than a machine and take my own chances.

Your car already has a computer. Has it ever crashed?

[Imploding Turtle]

Relevent video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHzzSao6ypE" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Sidney1st]

Should a pedestrian or another car be struck by a self drive car, are they going to be paid out by the insurance company or is there going to be a tussle between them and the manufacturers over fault, leaving the individual out of pocket until the company's settle their argument?

The self driving cars will have cameras on them so insurance companies will be able to spot if the pedestrian needs to be taught how to cross a road safely.

This has been mentioned on this forum before and some people seem to be overly concerned without realising that the number of cameras on these cars will soon highlight who's fault it is.
It will be more often then not the pedestrian who will be at fault rather than a car with sensors that's designed to 'see' people stepping out in front of it.

[aggi]

Relevent video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHzzSao6ypE" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

There was a more fundamental issue causing traffic in the first few seconds of that video. It showed a whole array of cars carrying one person, I think this is the standard image to solve that problem

[Sidney1st]

Your car already has a computer. Has it ever crashed?

Great answer.

Some people don't seem to realise that new cars have electric braking systems instead of hydraulic, including electric handbrakes
Steering systems are no longer physically connected to the steering wheel and that's been happening for about 15yrs, quite common on the Fiat Punto's in the early 00's and the Micra from 2004 ish.
Automatic wipers with the help of rain sensors, light settings that mean they turn on when it's dark, running lights on all the time etc.

All these things have been slowly introduced without anyone really noticing.

[Carport]

If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.
Henry Ford

I suspect in 20 years time people will wonder how we ever put up with having to drive ourselves. First Semi Autonomous then fully autonomous. Inevitable. As is the advent of the AI revolution that will have massive impact on society as we know it now. All change please!

[john'sroseyspecs]

images-21.jpg (10.22 KiB) Viewed 3727 times

I haven't noticed all them fancy gizmos! Still got wind up windows and a cassette player

[dsr]

Your car already has a computer. Has it ever crashed?

The car's computer has failed and the engine ceased to work, if that's what you're asking. But since the car's computer doesn't have any say over the accelerator or the steering, then the car itself didn't crash.

[Sidney1st]

images-21.jpg

I haven't noticed all them fancy gizmos! Still got wind up windows and a cassette player

I keep seeing images of what the new Defender could look like.... safe to say the Defender community isn't happy, but it's potentially due for release in 2019.
Will be a TD5 on that reg?
It is, I just checked

[Sidney1st]

The car's computer has failed and the engine ceased to work, if that's what you're asking. But since the car's computer doesn't have any say over the accelerator or the steering, then the car itself didn't crash.

Depends on if your car has throttle cable or electrical throttle.
Same with the steering.

[No Ney Never]

I suspect that self drive mode will only work on certain roads / routes, there will have to be big improvements in the accuracy of GPS for it to work everywhere. There are enough scrapes in the concrete of the multistorey car parks without taking a self drive car in there when GPS is only accurate to within a couple of metres.
What happens when travelling through a tunnel and the vehicle loses its GPS signal?

[Sidney1st]

Cameras and sensors will get it through tunnels on predetermined routes.

[aggi]

I suspect that self drive mode will only work on certain roads / routes, there will have to be big improvements in the accuracy of GPS for it to work everywhere. There are enough scrapes in the concrete of the multistorey car parks without taking a self drive car in there when GPS is only accurate to within a couple of metres.
What happens when travelling through a tunnel and the vehicle loses its GPS signal?

GPS is only a part, it's not of a high enough resolution to do much other than tell a car roughly where it is. There are cameras to recognise road markings, lasers to give a 360 degree image, etc. A self driving car with all that information will do far better in something like a car park.

[Sidney1st]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWyZ_AhusaM" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

The Chinese are well ahead of the game for parking, we could learn a lot from them.

[No Ney Never]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWyZ_AhusaM

The Chinese are well ahead of the game for parking, we could learn a lot from them.

I think you'll find they're not, there's been one in Leeds for years. Not an underground, but still an automated multi storey of the same principle.

[Sidney1st]

Well I never knew that, but I've never really spent any time in Leeds.

[Pstotto]

Lorries too...

[Bertiebeehead]

I think you'll find they're not, there's been one in Leeds for years. Not an underground, but still an automated multi storey of the same principle.

I was talking to the kids about this the other night, is it still there?

[paulus the woodgnome]

I like motorbikes. Will there be self driving motorbikes? That would be interesting.

[No Ney Never]

I was talking to the kids about this the other night, is it still there?

Been a few years since I was last there but I would assume so.

[Lowbankclaret]

[quote="dsr"]But they don't have a collision avoidance system.

Really dsr,

They do its called TCAS.

[CoolClaret]

I drove past one of those lorry trains once in the Australian Outback by pulling into the opposite carriageway. About the length of a football pitch. It terrified me even though the road was straight and empty. These long driverless truck convoys on our motorways sound like a recipe for disaster. Too many questions unanswered. Does it pip its horn to alert a driver drifting into its lane? Does it hold back from its mate in front to let a car pull on from a sliproad? You need a human for these things, not a robot.

It'll be able to calculate with a much higher certainty that we can at far, far, far greater speeds than we can, every possible outcome of every type of maneuver they would be doing in relation to it's surrounding environment.

[Lowbankclaret]

It'll be able to calculate with a much higher certainty that we can at far, far, far greater speeds than we can, every possible outcome of every type of maneuver they would be doing in relation to it's surrounding environment.

yep then do the complete opposite to what a human would expect, or the computer would crash leading to ermm !!!!

[OdihamClaret]

I sell advanced processors for machine learning applications such as autonomous cars and there are a few misunderstandings in some of the posts here.

Advances in Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) frameworks (CAFFE, TensorFlow) and networks (GoogLeNet, Squeezenet) are coming through thick and fast. These frameworks and networks, along with parallel processor advances on which these run, are vastly improving autonomous capabilities.

Those that say they wouldn't trust an autonomous car apparently are unaware that Airbus aircraft already have a decision triangle of three flight computers that handle all flight controls and there is no joy stick direct interface to flaps or rudder activators. The pilot makes "requests" of the computers. the computers regard the pilot as just another aviation sensor input as part of the sensor fusion landscape.. sometimes overruling him.

The aircraft flight control computer software is written not by human hands, but is auto generated from aviation certified code generators just to remove human error. These code generators themselves undergo massively long certification processes to gain approval.

For cars,advances such as high speed time stamped Ethernet will allow the car ECU's to resolve lane position to sub 1cm at 250km/h and do this with absolute determinism (repeatability).

Level 4 (fully) Autonomous cars will be with us in 2021
I can then drive from Odiham to Burnley whilst reading a good book!

[Wile E Coyote]

if driverless trucks are on our roads, at least hitch hikers should be safer, but the transport caff's will lose out. No more fat slobs guzzling full english breakfasts .

[No Ney Never]

I can just imagine kids in the future finding a way of downloading a road rage app and installing it on the self driving car software, that would be interesting.

[OdihamClaret]

NoNayNever,
Fully autonomous cars will not need GPS, they use the car sensor fabric (LIDAR etc)and use parallel processors that run machine learning (ML) algos of a ML sub type called inference, such algos as image segmentation and scene perception where the processor decides between what is street furniture, where are other vehicles and what are pedestrians in urban environments.