Everyone seems really concerned with the edge cases right now. What about insurance and liability? What about when X happens and it's raining? These are (usually pretty minor) technical challenges, and I haven't heard one yet that we won't be able to overcome with today's technology.<p>Under given circumstances the car will be safer than a human or it isn't. The moment it crosses that threshold (for most conditions) the world is going to change for the better. From there it's just a matter of optimization until a human watcher isn't even required.<p>Self-driving cars are worth every penny of research. They will some day be safer than human drivers. With a full network of communicating cars and fail-safes we could almost eliminate traffic-related injury and death. Some day your insurance company will probably charge you more per mile you choose to take control of your car.<p>Beyond safety, this could make life way more convenient and make living far more convenient. We won't need to waste 4-10%+ of our entire lives staring at the road doing nothing. That's huge! Once the cars are safe enough, you'll be able to read, write, or take a nap.<p>Life also gets a lot more efficient. We won't all need cars. Think about the social ramifications. We won't need all that parking space we waste at home, work, at grocery stores, or downtown. Rather than needing 2 cars for me and my wife, I could send it back to get her once I get to work - or maybe just sign up for a service that completely eliminates the need to own.
In this discussion I very rarely see mentioned how heavy are cars. Since when do we need multi tons machine to move a being that is usually below 100kg from a to b? Here in northern China, many people have very small egg-cars, which are nothing more than an electric bike with a thin shell for the cold, and this is much less likely to kill someone by accident.<p>I think we have been under a very strong brain washing so that we all believe a nice car is big and has this and that. Maybe these car ads will be seen in 20 years the same way we see cigarette ads right now: dangerous brain washing by a lobby gone crazy.<p>(Edited slightly to avoid unfortunate pun)
Question for self-driving car aficionados. When I'm driving and encounter a strange or dangerous situation these days I often try to think if a robocar will be able to handle it properly. One situation came up the other day that made me nervous. I was driving on a relatively empty highway at high speed (70mph) and there was a piece of debris in one of the lanes. I spotted the debris far ahead and safely changed lanes.<p>For an autonomous car, the car will a) need incredibly far range to see this debris in time and b) will need incredibly precise lidar/radar to see the debris if it is small. At a far distance, a small piece of debris covers a minuscule solid angle on the sensor. At high speeds, you have a twofold problem that tests the limits of the onboard sensors and collision avoidance systems: objects approach rapidly, and small objects can cause catastrophic damage or cause other collisions. In the case where other cars are on the road, the problem seems straightforward since the robocar can probably see all the other cars ahead of it changing lanes in a pattern. On a deserted highway however the car is in trouble unless it can spot the debris from a very far distance, it seems. Any thoughts?
It's amazing how new technology is meeting old technology again. For example, the horse drawn carriage.<p>Typically, the carriage driver doesn't steer the horse but points it in the direction they want to go. The horse and it's little horse brain negotiates the terrain and immediate obstacles.<p>You never had to steer the horse to avoid driving over the cliff, it was smart enough to know self preservation. The modern mechanical car doesn't even have that level of avoidance systems. This left the driver to manage more strategic tasks. There were downsides obviously. Horses could freak out and run over a crowd of people.
This is amazing, but if anything it's made me more wary of some of the challenges the project faces.<p>- What if the cyclist fell off his bike in front of the car? How quickly can the computer process the real-time imagery and react compared to a human with their peripheral vision.
- What if the cyclist swung from the pavement on to the road. A human driver will probably have spotted the hazard (we all train for that kind of thing when learning to drive) earlier. What are the limitations of the peripheral vision of the car when checking hazards?
- What if a fire hydrant bursts on the side of the road 50m in front of the car and makes the road ahead really wet? Can the cameras determine and detect quickly enough the need for different driving (and probably braking) due to a change in surface?<p>The sad truth of this is that whilst it's an interesting technical challenge, I really can't forsee a situation where a computer could react to all the different things that could happen when driving a car as well as a human.
I love how the car understands the cyclist's hand signals. The self-driving car is going to have a gigantic impact on the world, I can't wait to see it commercialised.
There are lots of subtleties in in-town driving. For example, the Google car will crawl its nose forward just a bit to indicate when it thinks its turn has come at 3 and 4-way stops. This is a strong signal to the other drivers that the car is about to make the turn, and reduces the frequency of contentions inside the intersection.<p>It's a nice touch to have the robot replicate behaviour that most people are not even aware they are using.
somehow the current scuffle between uber and regular cabs seems to miss the joke. we're going to need a plan for the eventual unemployment of a lot of cab drivers, regardless of how the cab is hailed.
I assume that someone has done an analysis of how the sensors will interact when there are many self-driving cars on the road?<p>Because many of the primary sensors are active (radar, lidar), will they work when they're surrounded by 50 other cars also blasting out the same signals?
It won't be able to drive around New York if it follows the rules so strictly. It will never be able to turn. They'll have to add a setting for aggression...
What happens when some asshole with some knowledge of the algorithm decides to troll commuters? For example, standing around an intersection, pretending to move forward/backward, forcing cars to just stop there.
> Jaywalking pedestrians.<p>There was a episode on this on the 99% invisible podcast:
<a href="http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/episode-76-the-modern-moloch/" rel="nofollow">http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/episode-76-the-modern-...</a><p>The above page has photos and a full transcript of the episode, I very highly recommand it.<p>This piece reminded me of the 'problem' of jaywalking because the complexity the self driving Googe car boast to be able to handle, could also be instead reduced or anhilated by adequate urban policies. There are movements to get the car out of urban areas [1] or at least make the pedestrian the 'owner' of the street, and I think self driving cars should be positionned more as an auto-pilot for long distances, rather than attempt to make sense of the current chaos in high density areas.<p>[1] <a href="http://i.imgur.com/v3ff7FY.jpg" rel="nofollow">http://i.imgur.com/v3ff7FY.jpg</a> ("you are the traffic", a Roumanian poster seen in /r/bycicling)
I think the coolest thing about self-driving cars is they can create a mesh network with one another. If I'm driving to work and a traffic accident occurs 2 miles ahead on my route, with multiple self-driving cars present at the accident, those cars can share traffic information with all self-driving cars in the area. My car will then plan an alternative route around the accident before I've even seen it.<p>Communication would be encrypted of course to prevent tampering.
Apparently Mercedes Benz has come quite far regarding autonomous driving.<p>In September 2013 they let one of their S-Class models drive the historic route from Mannheim to Pforzheim in Germany with some journalist(s) on board[1].<p>On this route the worlds first long-distance (194km/121mi) ride in a motorized car was undertaken in 1888 by Bertha Benz, wife of Carl Benz, who developed, what is known today as the worlds first modern automobile.[2]<p>This route contains interurban as well as urban parts. The prototype car nicknamed "Bertha" is not easily recognizable from a standard S-Class model, which already contains most of the systems necessary to enable autonomous driving.<p>[1] Google translation: <a href="http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=de&sl=auto&tl=en&prev=_dd&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.spiegel.de%2Fauto%2Faktuell%2Fautonomes-fahren-unterwegs-mit-einer-s-klasse-auf-autopilot-a-920803.html" rel="nofollow">http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=de&sl=auto&tl=en&pr...</a><p>[2] <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertha_Benz_Memorial_Route" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertha_Benz_Memorial_Route</a>
I saw an interesting comment on the blog post. Is anyone keeping tab on the project knows if Google in working on some sort of communication between vehicles on road. That will make the self driving cars much more accurate. Lot of 'sudden' circumstances will be predictable by the car.
We need a DIY Lidar or a cheap Lidar. Any ideas or existing projects?<p>(the 3D scanning device on top of the Google car, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lidar" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lidar</a> )<p>The Lidar that Google uses costs 80k dollars, more than most cars.
Reading a lot of comments here, the theme seems to be that the benefits will trickle down to the average consumer. I can see immediate cases where it's just going to go to those with sufficient economic muscle.<p>Less need for a garage means smaller houses, and more of them (for example).<p>Improved insurance? Probably the same insurance premiums (inflation adjusted), with a higher premium for more human miles driven.<p>If there is money on the table, it will get taken by those with the wherewithal to grab it.
I'm wondering how much self-driving cars will improve the system?<p>far less accidents, much faster, less traffic jams, more efficient, no traffic light, different speed limits etc...
I still think that the best application for computer controlled cars is to have humans driving and computers handling the safety, braking when they detect danger, stuff like that. Lots of accidents like hitting pedestrians, cyclists or other cars could be avoided, and it's not as high level and difficult as what they're currently trying to figure out.
The interesting problems are:<p>- tracking thousands of objects' trajectories to avoid as many threat-weighted collisions as possible. (think NYC times square)<p>- not going too fast when visibility is blocked<p>FYI: When I was at Trimble Nav, there were self-driving farm equipment demonstrated c. 2000.
Autonomous car in the Berlin city center (2011): <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZqL6j2D5H4" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZqL6j2D5H4</a>
Genuine question, can anybody answer how these cars will:
1) Allow for situational aspects of driving eg I need to get there quickly so might drive faster because I'm running late? 2) Protect from people intentionally take advantage of safety mechanisms eg cutting in front, stepping out onto the road?
Given that the NSA will likely have a backdoor into any automated driving system, is this really a technology you'd like to see become all pervasive? "We don't like this guy's ideology - ok, let's arrange for him to have an 'accident'".