Google Cars Drive Themselves, in Traffic

Very cool, but I sometimes worry that the illusion of safety is more dangerous than the original danger itself.<p>In Boulder, where I live, several crosswalks were identified as being particularly dangerous for pedestrians, and pedestrian crossing signs with big flashing lights were installed at these locations over the past 5 years. This spring, a report was released[1] that showed accidents at many of these crosswalks had actually <i>increased</i> since the lights were installed. "Taken together, the data suggests that approximately eight additional crossing accidents per year occur at these locations," says the report.<p>There are lots of theories about why, but I think it boils down to one thing: when pedestrians can hit a button and light up these big signs which are supposed to make everyone stop, it makes them feel much safer, to the point that many people will hit the button and start walking almost immediately, without taking the time to make sure that all lanes of traffic are aware of their presence and stopping.<p>The prospect of automated cars scares me because, obviously, they cannot be perfect, and they will not be able to identify every dangerous driving scenario. Of course, there is a manual override, but I fear that the car being right 99% of the time will lead to such a complacency in "drivers" that, in the 1% of cases where the car is wrong and about to hit something, we will not be able to stop in time. The more accurate the car is, the more safe we feel, and the less likely we are to monitor it as closely and notice when it is wrong.<p>Anyway, I rather hope I'm wrong. I'd really like to drink my coffee and read during my commute as my car drives me to work.<p>[1] <a href="http://www.dailycamera.com/boulder-county-news/ci_14859190" rel="nofollow">http://www.dailycamera.com/boulder-county-news/ci_14859190</a>

This is such good news -- probably some of the best tech news so far this year -- that I keep looking for problems. It's <i>too</i> good.<p>So, although I'm hugely supportive of this, and I think it's possible to have fully autonomous vehicles within a decade, I want to see it. In production. Then I'll believe. Up until that point it's like one of those science stories where it works in the lab but nobody has any idea whether or not it will work with humans. There is a long, long way to go from the mechanics of AI and auto-driving and the real thing happening. It's not just the technology. There are about 17 large groups of people and organizations that need to be re-aligned before this would ever fly, even if it were perfect. This could easily end up like pot legalization, where it's obvious for years that the current laws are idiotic but it takes an entire lifetime to get the politicians on the same page as the public.<p>I'd love to go all blue-sky on this, going on and on about the massive changes true auto-drive would entail. But instead I'm opting to be very cautious about separating press releases from real products and benefits.<p>(Still, it's awesomely cool)

The key question is why would Google produce this technology and enter the autonomous driving market?<p>I think one of the key issues for Google, from a corporate strategy standpoint, is "freeing up people's time." Driving is one of last places where we spend significant time awake without being able to use the Internet and hence any of Google's services (except if you use a smartphone, which is now illegal in some states, and in any event isn't an ideal place to be clicking on ads). There is a safety issue here as well. Although using a smartphone while driving is illegal in some states, people are driving while using their smartphones with increasing frequency. We need our Internet "fix."<p>I am sure this driving technology also taps into several of Google's key capabilities: e.g., programming expertise, its voice recognition technologies, search, and its mapping software (Google Maps and Navigation).

<i>And in the event of an accident, who would be liable — the person behind the wheel or the maker of the software?</i><p>The insurance company, just like today. Possibly paid for by the manufacturer and entirely included in the sales price, or possibly paid for by the driver/owner like today.

Finally! A giant step towards 'packet-switched' personal transport, using dynamically-routed, market-dispatched autonomous cars on standard roads.<p>Cancel the bullet train, and instead plow all that money into rapidly deploying this.

Ha, I saw these cars multiple times this past week in San Francisco, including turning from Broadway onto Columbus in heavy traffic. If that was done autonomously, then I'd be very impressed since I have trouble navigating through those intersections without hitting the many bold pedestrians.

It is clear that one day automated cars will make less mistakes than human drivers, and that such systems can reduce the amount of traffic accidents.<p>There is one big problem - convincing some people this is true, and that cars will make mistakes, but far less mistakes than humans.<p>The problem is there are many people that fail to see it that way. More than once I was in a situation of explaining the concept of automated cars to others, and always the opposing arguments go something like: "But, can you be absolutely certain that there isn't going to be one single case where a car makes a mistake and kills someone". No, I cannot, and I will not.<p>And, of course, once the self-driving cars become a reality, such cases will happen. And than there will be an article in some scandal-seeking newspaper how an automated car killed the father of two, and how this is a what happens when you let science control your life and when you let all those over-educated people do what they want... Or something along that lines...<p>Frustrating.

The thing that excites me about this isn't the driving, it's the parking. Living in SF, it would be <i></i>AMAZING<i></i> to be able to pull up to whereever you were going, get out, and tell your car to go find it's own parking spot. Then, when it's time to leave, click that button on the key fob, and the car is waiting outside in five minutes.

In Google's blog post, they said that they think automated cars will "significantly reduce car usage". I have no idea what they're basing that claim on.<p>Automated cars eliminate many of the costs of driving--lost time, frustration, etc. When you decrease the cost of an activity, people are going to do it <i>more</i>, not less.<p>In fact, if you ask people that can afford cars but commute by train why they do it, many will say that it's because they can work on the train and not have to deal with driving in traffic. Those people would definitely consider switching from the train to automated cars.

Nova did an excellent (and surprisingly technical) episode [1] on the 2005 race mentioned in this piece, including Thrun's Stanford team. It was especially impressive as a triumph of Thurn's software-based approach over several of the other veteran teams that relied heavily on complex hardware (e.g., those teams used camera gimbals while Thrun's team just compensated for camera bumps using code).<p>For those of you on Netflix, it's available as a streaming video [2], and I highly recommend it.<p>[1] <a href="http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/darpa/" rel="nofollow">http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/darpa/</a> [2] <a href="http://www.netflix.com/WiMovie/The-Great-Robot-Race-Nova/70050544" rel="nofollow">http://www.netflix.com/WiMovie/The-Great-Robot-Race-Nova/700...</a>

"The only accident, engineers said, was when one Google car was rear-ended while stopped at a traffic light."<p>Google robot &#62; Humans

I wonder if this is legal. I mean, if one of these cars went haywire and mowed down a bunch of pedestrians before the "driver" was able to take control, I reckon Google would have some splainin to do. With autonomous vehicles coming closer and closer to a reality, it's somewhat alarming that there appears to be no legal body attempting to define some guidelines on this subject. At the rate our government works, we'll have fully functioning, marketable autonomous vehicles long before it's legal to use them.

If you're interested in more, Brad Templeton has been singing the praises of a future with robot cars, and how to get there, for many years, both in all the futurism un-conferences I've visited in the bay area, and on his very thorough website:<p><a href="http://www.templetons.com/brad/robocars/" rel="nofollow">http://www.templetons.com/brad/robocars/</a>

That's very promising. Living in a pretty safe place (Canada), driving is probably the most dangerous thing that I regularly do. I'm very happy with the safety advances of the past decade (more airbags, electronic traction control, brake force distribution, better crumple zones, more high-strength materials, etc), but it's not quite "active" enough to make me feel truly safe (especially because it doesn't address human error).<p>Truly looking forward to the commercialization of technology.

From TFA:<p><i>“The technology is ahead of the law in many areas,” said Bernard Lu, senior staff counsel for the California Department of Motor Vehicles. “If you look at the vehicle code, there are dozens of laws pertaining to the driver of a vehicle, and they all presume to have a human being operating the vehicle.”<p>The Google researchers said they had carefully examined California’s motor vehicle regulations and determined that because a human driver can override any error, the experimental cars are legal. Mr. Lu agreed. </i>

In the short term, I could easily see the value in a souped up cruise control for driving on interstates. combined with infrared/night vision, this could easily make nighttime driving safer.<p>Also, this has great potential (though would probably generate a lot of controversy) for drunk driving. Imagine if your car had a safety mode that could watch out for potential accidents and prevent them even with a human driver.<p>Amazing possibilities ahead.

"Google is an AI company, they just don't advertise the fact."

Timely, I wrote about some German research project that has a car doing a trip in normal traffic in a big city:<p><a href="http://jacquesmattheij.com/Autonomous+driving+cars+one+big+step+closer+to+reality" rel="nofollow">http://jacquesmattheij.com/Autonomous+driving+cars+one+big+s...</a><p>The google car seems very much reliant on its gps data, in the article there is this passage: "He did [interrupt auto mode] so twice, once when a bicyclist ran a red light and again when a car in front stopped and began to back into a parking space. But the car seemed likely to have prevented an accident itself."<p>Seemed likely is not really good enough though, you have to be sure enough not to interrupt the auto-driving at all for this to be usable.<p>The biggest problem with auto-driving cars that have a human supervisor is that there is nothing more dangerous than having to be alert for a long time when nothing happens. Invariably you will be distracted when something does over the course of tens of thousands of miles.<p>Regular traffic is one thing on mapped streets is one thing, but that 100's of thousands of emergency situations that a normal career on the road throws at you over a lifetime contains quite a few where I really wonder how a 'robot' driver would deal with them.<p>I'm all for 'automated drivers', but I'd like the researchers to be sitting in the passenger seat and to have their kids playing around the car (or come out on their tri-cycle from between two parked cars) while they drive it to prove that it is safe. Overrode but the car would have probably done it is not good enough yet, even though the achievement is very impressive this is not as close as it seems.<p>Computer programs are great at dealing with everything that you can think of beforehand, it's the exceptions and the response to those exceptions that matters in an application like this.<p>I also wonder how they'd deal with liability issues if their driver was not actually paying attention to traffic and the software made a mistake and caused an accident.

Where they'll get their foot in the door is closed campuses. I bet the military could run this on the base and keep the liability issues in the family. Similarly, perhaps a large corporation would license it. Or even better, airports.

Yes, they are coming: <a href="http://jalopnik.com/5572978/driverless-audi-tts-gets-new-colors-plans-for-pikes-peak" rel="nofollow">http://jalopnik.com/5572978/driverless-audi-tts-gets-new-col...</a><p>Seems like quite a few people are working on projects such as these. I heard some hairdo on TV the other day musing that they will reach general availability "as early as 2022". How do they even come up with those numbers?

I'd expect a situation to arise where cars are allowed to go into automatic driving mode on motorways/freeways but not in cities. Gradually more and more roads would become available for automatic driving as more and more cars get the automatic driving capability. I don't think people will ever be ready for an instant complete switch over. I'd expect it to be a gradual switchover which takes years.

I think we all see where Google is headed with this: free self-driving cars in return for advertising, like <a href="http://www.kahdo.com.au/kahdo.htm" rel="nofollow">http://www.kahdo.com.au/kahdo.htm</a><p><i>Driver, there's items you like on sale at that store. Driver, I think we should stop and check it out. Driver, we are stopping.</i><p><i>Dear, I don't feel safe having Lisa drive with that new Mark boy. You can just tell he dials aggressive.</i><p>But seriously, from a marketing perspective, I think the low-hanging fruit here is highway driving. It's a small, logical and therefore adoptable step up from <i>cruise control</i>, just with a little auto-steering (they already have auto-braking IIRC), and perhaps some networking for predicting lights, congestion and co-ordinating with other (online) cars.<p>Start with an "online-only" lane.

Single page: <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/10/science/10google.html?_r=1&#38;pagewanted=all" rel="nofollow">http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/10/science/10google.html?_r=1...</a>

I had no idea the technology was this advanced. Last I heard was the DARPA challenge where they were still struggling to navigate traffic-free dirtroads. Google blows mind once again.

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned one of the biggest issues with general acceptance of this system:<p>Police will be able to force anyone to pull over anywhere, at any time, and for any or no reason.<p>Even though they can do that now, people still <i>decide</i> to pull over. They are not <i>forced</i> to.<p>And what if there becomes a database that police forces compile, showing the history of movements of everyone? That database could potentially be leaked.<p>I think the privacy implications of this should get at least some thought.

I am very happy to be an engineer. I would be very uncomfortable turning the world over to robots if I was some other kind of job, but as I am an engineer I will hopefully be the one MAKING those robots, which is the only end of the stick I want to be on when robots reach the critical point in taking care of us.

It will take a decrease in sensor costs for this to become commercially viable. The "device" on top of the car is a Velodyne LIDAR system, which if I recall correctly, costs around $75k. Using a sensor that costs more than the vehicle it controls makes selling this difficult, to say the least.

Have they tested it in the rain?<p>Have they tested it in the snow?<p>Have they tested it driving on ice?<p>Does it know when its fuel gets low?<p>Can it tell when a head gasket blows and the engine is overheating?<p>Have they driven it on the highway?<p>Have they driven it on the countryside?<p>How does it treat cyclists?<p>How does it treat pedestrians?<p>How does it treat deer, squirrels, birds and other fauna on the road?<p>How does it respond to aggressive drivers?<p>Can it park?<p>Can it parallel park?<p>Does it know not to block the box?<p>Does it know what to do when a traffic light is out?<p>Does it know to pull over when emergency vehicles need to pass by?<p>Does it know how to merge?<p>Does it know how to avoid hanging out in other cars' blind spots?<p>Does it know that eighteen-wheelers have large blind spots ("If you can't see me, I can't see you")?<p>Does it know what to do when four cars come to a four-way stop intersection simultaneously? (Does anyone?)<p>Can it find parking?<p>Can it pick a parking spot that's far enough away from driveways and fire hydrants?<p>How much of the logic is dependent on the car it's installed for?<p>How much work is involved in installing it to a new car?<p>What does it do if it gets boxed in by FBI agents on the highway?<p>What does it do if debris knocks out the camera?<p>What does it do the if car in front of it starts fish-tailing on ice?

This will never take off because Google or carmakers can not assume more liability for accidents than hundreds of millions of drivers can. Technically, cool. From a practical legal perspective, a non-starter.

It is impressive how Google just goes to new areas with success all the time.

I really hope that cars can become safely automated in my life time but I'm worried that people will start "jailbreaking" their cars so they can exceed the speed limit.

Personally I <i>love</i> driving. I hate being a passenger. I can see this being useful for some people, but not useful for me.

a novel solution to ending drunk driving

Think of the millions of hours spent behind the wheel today, which could be spent on Google instead. Maybe this is what they're "driving at."

can anyone see this completely eliminating human taxi drivers within the next 10-15 years?

Code + howto on github, anyone?

Has anyone else read Daemon?

It will take only a few of these:<p><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNi17YLnZpg" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNi17YLnZpg</a> (volvo crash avoidance failure)<p>to shake people's confidence in these systems.

So, why is google driving cars?<p>what about if GM announced a search engine? Everyone would have their opinion then.

Great news for terrorists. Now all they have to do is bomb Google's data centers and kill everyone on the roads :)