Bob Lutz "All cars will be driverless in 20 years"

[B3sat16v]

I think this is a bad idea. I'm never going to trust a computer to drive a car for me.

Do you fly commercially? Because if you do a computer is flying the aircraft 90% of the time. In fact they are sooooo good at landing and conducting approaches that in low vis the aircraft lands itself.

[strykersbane]

Yes. Commercial flights are largely automatic. But we still have near collisions, and the density in the sky is WAY lower than on the roads.

Abs to the trolls who talked about gps not being the main navigation system: there is no way you'd be able to store the road info for all the roads you want yo drive along with the os for the visual processing. These cars are tested in ca, which has some of the best cell coverage in the us. Lets see how well these work in new england, the midwest, the mountains...the fact is we are at last a few trillion in infrastructure from where we'd need to be for this to be a real, reliable system with enough redundancies for it to be safe.

And my point about SkyNet and the vortex saviors still stands. :-)

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[B3sat16v]

Yes. Commercial flights are largely automatic. But we still have near collisions, and the density in the sky is WAY lower than on the roads.

Do you fly? Because it might appear that the amount of planes is low, but if far from that, specially in SOCAL.

[Tiero]

Yes. Commercial flights are largely automatic. But we still have near collisions, and the density in the sky is WAY lower than on the roads.

Abs to the trolls who talked about gps not being the main navigation system: there is no way you'd be able to store the road info for all the roads you want yo drive along with the os for the visual processing. These cars are tested in ca, which has some of the best cell coverage in the us. Lets see how well these work in new england, the midwest, the mountains...the fact is we are at last a few trillion in infrastructure from where we'd need to be for this to be a real, reliable system with enough redundancies for it to be safe.

And my point about SkyNet and the vortex saviors still stands. :-)

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I think everyone can agree that the current infrastructure isn't there yet. The key idea is that it will be there. With unlimited processing power anythings possible we aren't as complicated as we like to think we are.

You don't think you can store the entire US road system on a flash drive?

[BRealistic]

If you plan to make special roads for driver-less cars- just go ahead and make high speed railway lines.


And no car company is going to take on driver-less car liability unless forced to by government, and you know how well the average voter likes it when the federal government forces stuff on them.

[1985Jetta]

Do you fly commercially? Because if you do a computer is flying the aircraft 90% of the time. In fact they are sooooo good at landing and conducting approaches that in low vis the aircraft lands itself.

I've only flown once in my entire life and that was 11 years ago.

Still not liking this driverless car concept.

[turbinepowered]

I amsure it has been said but computeres never crash or fail

We will be safer offer with driverless cars..

[hardcore4life]

Wow, three completely unrelated videos. Thanks.

How is this unrelated, it proof that those safety system can indeed fail, imagine the drive less car won't stop and hit other car while stopped at the red light

[hardcore4life]

Do you fly? Because it might appear that the amount of planes is low, but if far from that, specially in SOCAL.

Airplanes still rely on flight controllers on the ground

[Excathedra]

A clip showing a research programme regarding this topic:

How is this unrelated, it proof that those safety system can indeed fail, imagine the drive less car won't stop and hit other car while stopped at the red light

Today's system, as seen in the clips, is not intended to replace or diminish the driver's role in any way. It is simply intended to assist the driver, should he/she become distracted in any way. It is programmed to cut in late and hard, when a collision is almost a fact; Activating the brakes fully with minimum reaction time which hopefully will help you avoiding the crash, or at least reducing the speed of impact.

It's hard to know why the system does not activate as it should in the clips. What I do know is that they system has an auto-turn off function when it senses that something is out of the ordinary. For instance if the system has been activated a number of times in a very short time period - it will assume that something is malfunctioning and inform the driver of this while it leaves active mode. Perhaps this was not cleared out before they showed the system - or in other words, the circumstances ended up provocing the system to a shut down.

That does show, that things can go wrong, yes. But no one is really arguing that we're ready for such a radical change just yet. Not even Bob Lutz.

[Sortafast]

Abs to the trolls who talked about gps not being the main navigation system: there is no way you'd be able to store the road info for all the roads you want yo drive along with the os for the visual processing. Yes. Commercial flights are largely automatic. But we still have near collisions, and the density in the sky is WAY lower than on the roads.

Introducing facts into the discussion is not trolling.

No way to store all the road info? Really? Now you're just making stuff up to try to prove your non-point.

[Sortafast]

How is this unrelated, it proof that those safety system can indeed fail, imagine the drive less car won't stop and hit other car while stopped at the red light

You posted video of Volvo's safety systems. We're talking about Google's driverless car tech. The Volvo videos are irrelevant.

People have been running into cars stopped at red lights for decades. Google's driverless cars are better than the average human at driving now, and they're only going to get better.

You act like people are very good drivers on average. Generally, we are not. It's a pretty low bar to set.

Driverless cars are going to happen. I don't agree with Lutz's claim that ALL cars will be driverless in 20 years, but you'll definitely see them on the roads.

[B3sat16v]

Airplanes still rely on flight controllers on the ground

The original comment was about how well does a computer controls a device/machine/tool. And they do a pretty damn good job at it, better than humans by far. Prime example is in automation of manufacturing.

As far as ATC goes, they are pretty automated these days, the humans are there for sanity and because humans like to have that human interaction.

I guarantee you that if it is a published departure that does not require vectoring, the FMC will be flying most of the flight, shortly after take off, while the pilots monitors the aircraft.

Airports like LAX have published departure (SID) and arrivals (STARS) that for the most part do not require vectoring for ease of flight and ATC simply just monitors.

[strykersbane]

A couple things: to the troll point about planes over cali, many more cars are on ca roads then are in the sky. Stupid to even suggest there aren't. Pilots still handle the maneuvers that involve precision flying.

To the point about road maps: sure, gps info to simple road maps is possible. Now add in the road lean (for adjustments of drift) all traffic signs, potential road hazard info, vehicles on the road that don't have gps, and a redundancy system to back all that up. Now we're at the level of ridiculousness in terms of onboard storage. Ps. We're now at the point where we cannot decrease the size of or technology in terms of chip size. We're close to needing a major jump forward to sustain progress in the chip field, so positing that we will get to smaller and smaller things is not totally defendable.

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[Chris_V]

To the point about road maps: sure, gps info to simple road maps is possible. Now add in the road lean (for adjustments of drift) all traffic signs, potential road hazard info, vehicles on the road that don't have gps, and a redundancy system to back all that up. Now we're at the level of ridiculousness in terms of onboard storage.

So how do the Google cars manage to do it now? Magic? Think about what they can do now, then move forward 20 years.


As to the computer crashing being bandied about, how often does the computer in your microwave crash? Machine coded stuff is pretty stable. And if a computer is tasked to do one job it's usually pretty damn stable, too. Like a Mac that only has to do photo editing. You'll rarely see a crash with that sort of scenario.

[Sortafast]

To the point about road maps: sure, gps info to simple road maps is possible. Now add in the road lean (for adjustments of drift) all traffic signs, potential road hazard info, vehicles on the road that don't have gps, and a redundancy system to back all that up. Now we're at the level of ridiculousness in terms of onboard storage. Ps. We're now at the point where we cannot decrease the size of or technology in terms of chip size. We're close to needing a major jump forward to sustain progress in the chip field, so positing that we will get to smaller and smaller things is not totally defendable.

Again with the making stuff up.

How do the google cars drive now, if this is so impossible?

[B3sat16v]

A couple things: to the troll point about planes over cali, many more cars are on ca roads then are in the sky. Stupid to even suggest there aren't. Pilots still handle the maneuvers that involve precision flying.

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I would surely hope so as cars cannot fly!

Are you a professional pilot that flies in SOCAL? If you are neither the keep quiet in the corner.

I am a professional aviator and I fly in SOCAL. The amount of air traffic in SOCAL in tremendous. Go seat by LAX and you will see. And just because there is not a 1:1 relationship does not mean airways are not congested.

Go read about CAT II and CAT III landing and tell me if the pilots fly them.

[Shmi]

A couple things: to the troll point about planes over cali, many more cars are on ca roads then are in the sky. Stupid to even suggest there aren't. Pilots still handle the maneuvers that involve precision flying.

To the point about road maps: sure, gps info to simple road maps is possible. Now add in the road lean (for adjustments of drift) all traffic signs, potential road hazard info, vehicles on the road that don't have gps, and a redundancy system to back all that up. Now we're at the level of ridiculousness in terms of onboard storage. Ps. We're now at the point where we cannot decrease the size of or technology in terms of chip size. We're close to needing a major jump forward to sustain progress in the chip field, so positing that we will get to smaller and smaller things is not totally defendable.

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You seem to think you need to store roads onboard the car to navigate them. Or that you need GPS. The Google cars navigate in real-time, because the software recognizes in real-time what the cameras are seeing, and adjusts to that input. You do need GPS up to a point to get a good idea of where you're starting from/are, but not for fine adjustments that GPS cannot supply.

They don't start driving with every stop-light, stop sign, and turn mapped out. They don't refer to GPS to tell how far from the lane they are, how far to the next turn, etc etc. They pick those things up from the cameras and react accordingly. They see a red light, they stop. See a stop sign, they stop. They don't know before they see them that they're there.

Road lean is negligible. If the computer senses an outside force is pushing the car to one side of the lane, such as road lean or wind, the computer is going to compensate to keep the car in the lanes.

You do have a point about road hazards, and I do not know how Google, Nissan, and other manufacturers are solving it. But they're working on it and I wouldn't doubt at all they have it figured out within 20 years.

You also mention storage is not going to be possible and chip size is nearing a limit... I'd say the hardware we currently have is entirely sufficient(how do you think Google does it?), the only remaining obstacle is the code they have to write to deal with road hazards/construction and making decisions like we do.

[turbinepowered]

As to the computer crashing being bandied about, how often does the computer in your microwave crash? Machine coded stuff is pretty stable. And if a computer is tasked to do one job it's usually pretty damn stable, too. Like a Mac that only has to do photo editing. You'll rarely see a crash with that sort of scenario.

USUALLY those sorts of embedded systems are not meant to handle upgrades, as a driverless car would undoubtedly need to be designed to handle.

How often do you upgrade the firmware in your microwave? In your toaster?

Accessibility, flexibility and complexity are all contributing factors to a crash. A machine that is meant to be user accessible is going to have more issues with crashes (given the same quality of coding) than one that is fixed and inaccessible. A machine that must deal with diverse situations (ie a desktop) will be more vulnerable than a single-purpose embedded system (microwave).

A driverless car system (with cameras, GPS, and other sensors) is orders of magnitude more complex than your microwave. Lots of things that can go wrong.


[edit] Not saying that they're guaranteed to crash, mind. Just suggesting that perhaps you compare apples to apples, and not apples to toasters.

[Chris_V]

[edit] Not saying that they're guaranteed to crash, mind. Just suggesting that perhaps you compare apples to apples, and not apples to toasters.

The point I'm making is that a personal computer crashes because there are a lot of factors that the hardware manufacturers and software programmers can't forsee, like hardware incompatabilities between various vendors when you put new bits in, and software that you install later that, say, conflicts with another bit of software that the factory loaded, or one that hasn't been thoroughly tested. It's not necesarily the "fault" of the computer, but a byproduct of so much non-standardization and the need to allow just about eveery kind of software and hardware combination to be added to it. Part of why PCs crash far more often than Macs, and why stndalone computer systems like car ECUs crash vastly less often than either.

Again, the point is it's not really going to be an issue of computers crashing in environments where you can't change the hardware or add software. I'd be vastly more worried about sensor failure, as that seems to be an area that the engineers can't get right for durability (yes, the system is fine when the car is new, but at the 50k mile mark, how many of those sensors are ready to fail?)

[strykersbane]

If you read all the posts, you would notice I made mention of the infrastructure in ca. Much better cell reception than most of the country. Hence, the current cars don't need to store much of the map data, just the closest few miles, and steam the rest.

to the pilot: really? How many cars are on an interstate and pass by a point every hour? How many planes pass through a 1 mile block in an hour?

No, cars can't fly, but they can kill people. I guess in twenty years I'll zombie this post and we'll see who was right. Considering that trains still have operators despite the fact that they are on tracks indicates how trusting the population is of self guiding vehicles.

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[turbinepowered]

The point I'm making is that a personal computer crashes because there are a lot of factors that the hardware manufacturers and software programmers can't forsee, like hardware incompatabilities between various vendors when you put new bits in, and software that you install later that, say, conflicts with another bit of software that the factory loaded, or one that hasn't been thoroughly tested. It's not necesarily the "fault" of the computer, but a byproduct of so much non-standardization and the need to allow just about eveery kind of software and hardware combination to be added to it. Part of why PCs crash far more often than Macs, and why stndalone computer systems like car ECUs crash vastly less often than either.

Again, the point is it's not really going to be an issue of computers crashing in environments where you can't change the hardware or add software. I'd be vastly more worried about sensor failure, as that seems to be an area that the engineers can't get right for durability (yes, the system is fine when the car is new, but at the 50k mile mark, how many of those sensors are ready to fail?)

I'll buy your point, though I think it will be blunted somewhat by how fractured this market is going to be. Unless one or two companies, say Bosch and Google, really get a dominant lock on the supplier market you're going to have widely varying platforms running varying software not necessarily written for that hardware configuration.

Self driving car systems will be more likely to be assembled like PCs than like Macs; Bosch may have its fingers in practically every engine management pie in the world, and to a large extent that's a very standardised, low-supplier count market. The parts going into a driving system are likely to be sourced from ANYWHERE. Cameras from this company, GPS transponder from this guy, cellular module from these guys, processor core from this company running this shell on this ISA... and it will probably change from maker to maker as they try to integrate it into the total car computer network.

[Sortafast]

Hence, the current cars don't need to store much of the map data, just the closest few miles, and steam the rest.

How do you know that? Have you worked on the Google cars? Do you have knowledge of their systems and programming?

No, you're just making stuff up. Again.

[Nourdmrolnmt]

No, cars can't fly, but they can kill people. I guess in twenty years I'll zombie this post and we'll see who was right. Considering that trains still have operators despite the fact that they are on tracks indicates how engrained the unions are in transportation companies.

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ftfy

[strykersbane]

http://m.spectrum.ieee.org/automaton...ving-car-works

So, the cars rely on very accurate, detailed 3d road maps and supplement with stored algorithms. Great, so the point about storage stands. They can only drive on roads already driven by a human. Roads change in terms of hazards and road closures, hence you need real time updates. Cars need to see each other and communicate intent for their efficiency to be optimized. Again, infrastructure. it's either immense storage concerns or it'sa streaming issue.

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[Nourdmrolnmt]

http://m.spectrum.ieee.org/automaton...ving-car-works

So, the cars rely on very accurate, detailed 3d road maps and supplement with stored algorithms. Great, so the point about storage stands. They can only drive on roads already driven by a human. Roads change in terms of hazards and road closures, hence you need real time updates. Cars need to see each other and communicate intent for their efficiency to be optimized. Again, infrastructure. it's either immense storage concerns or it'sa streaming issue.

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and storage is cheaper than all get out currently and only getting less expensive.

These aren't computers that need HD's with super fast random read/random write speed drives.

A properly optimized HD for cars will make all the difference.

Also, TWENTY YEARS.

remember AOL? that wasn't even 20 years ago.

[strykersbane]

About aol, we didn't need any infrastructure to move to a higher level of internet. We added fiber optic lines, but we had cable already run. And, we're one of the worst industrialized barris in terms of current infrastructure. We've never been willing to pay for improvement. heck, we're still paying off or interstate system, lol.

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[strykersbane]

And obviously, barris should be nations.

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