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Should cars be fully driverless? No, says an MIT engineer and historian

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Re: Should cars be fully driverless? No, says an MIT engineer and historian

#21

Post by sandworm101 »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #19
sandworm101 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Astronauts and pilots also switch off. It's not a function of training, but boredom and/or distraction.

Which only strenghtens the argument for self-driving cars. Hell, we even make those highly-trained professional aviators and astronauts depend on auto-pilots because it's much safer this way.

So long as the self-driving car can cover every situation. What doesn't work is a system that expects the human to sit idle for hundreds of hours, then suddenly throws him/her the wheel and jumps ship. (Like the autodrive system in that simpsons episode where homer becomes a trucker.)

Re: Should cars be fully driverless? No, says an MIT engineer and historian

#22

Post by Animats »

jessaustin wrote: post #7

The Apollo program is hardly as convincing an example as TFA seems to think. That was early days for computing power. Humans have landed scores of other craft on various other bodies in the solar system, and that landing has been fully automated in every other case. If a manned moon mission were planned today it would probably be completely automated.

The first moon landings (Surveyor, Lunokhod) were robotic and were completely automated. The boost phase has been completely automated all the way back to the first manned space flights. After all, a monkey made the first flight. Other than lunar landing and some older docking operations, just about everything in space flight has been automated.

Re: Should cars be fully driverless? No, says an MIT engineer and historian

#23

Post by andrewray »

Cars seem fundamentally different than his other examples: Spacecraft, underwater vehicles, and airplanes. The importance difference is cars have a clear, visual grid of where they can travel and where they cannot travel. Painted lines on the road and navigational signs provide a construct of the environment around them.

Maybe the closest comparison is subway / metro rails. There are already many fully automated subway systems: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_automated_urban_metro_...

Re: Should cars be fully driverless? No, says an MIT engineer and historian

#24

Post by [deleted] »

Zikes wrote: post #3

I must be missing something, because it seems like Mr. Mindell is saying cars shouldn't be fully driverless because they can't be. He cites numerous examples of other promised automation technologies that seem to have become a pipe dream over the past several decades. Except, Google's driverless cars have now logged over a million fully automated miles. It is a proven technology. These aren't exploratory machines goi…

[deleted]

Re: Should cars be fully driverless? No, says an MIT engineer and historian

#25

Post by sandworm101 »

ekianjo wrote: post #17
sandworm101 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would suggest that Google cars haven't logged any driverless miles, at least not on public roads. They have humans onboard with backup controls (parking brakes if nothing else). So they are not driverless just yet.

a human not touching the wheel in most situations is a human that is NOT in control.

Hands off the wheel does not mean not in control if you can put those hands back on the wheel instantly. Take the hands off the wheel, get in the back seat, and take a nap. That's what I would call a driverless car.

The "hands not on wheel" argument has been made by many a defendant. Courts don't buy it anymore. If you are in the driver seat, inches from the controls, then you are responsible for the motion of the vehicle. Which is why you can be charged for drunk driving even though the car never moved. In the seat or at the controls = in control = not driverless.

Re: Should cars be fully driverless? No, says an MIT engineer and historian

#26

Post by arikrak »

I think it may take decades before cars are 100% autonomous in all situations. But if the AI can handle almost everything, it could take over and let the humans read a book, and alert them in the rare case their input is needed. Fleets of autonomous taxis and trucks could have remote controlled operators monitoring them.

Re: Should cars be fully driverless? No, says an MIT engineer and historian

#27

Post by TeMPOraL »

sandworm101 wrote: post #21
TeMPOraL wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which only strenghtens the argument for self-driving cars. Hell, we even make those highly-trained professional aviators and astronauts depend on auto-pilots because it's much safer this way.

So long as the self-driving car can cover every situation. What doesn't work is a system that expects the human to sit idle for hundreds of hours, then suddenly throws him/her the wheel and jumps ship. (Like the autodrive system in that simpsons episode where homer becomes a trucker.)

I agree. Self-driving system that expects humans to take over randomly every now and then when something unexpected happens is much more dangerous than 100% self-driving or no self-driving - it exposes only the worst aspects of human driving while removing the best.

Re: Should cars be fully driverless? No, says an MIT engineer and historian

#28

Post by zhanwei »

andrewray wrote: post #23

Cars seem fundamentally different than his other examples: Spacecraft, underwater vehicles, and airplanes. The importance difference is cars have a clear, visual grid of where they can travel and where they cannot travel. Painted lines on the road and navigational signs provide a construct of the environment around them. Maybe the closest comparison is subway / metro rails. There are already many fully automated subw…

There are still some elements of uncertainty in car driving. For e.g. driverless cars are confused by cyclist doing track stand[1]. Hopefully with enough data driverless car could overcome these difficulties.

[1] http://road.cc/content/news/162468-cyclist-doing-trackstand-...

Re: Should cars be fully driverless? No, says an MIT engineer and historian

#29

Post by snowwrestler »

andrewray wrote: post #23

Cars seem fundamentally different than his other examples: Spacecraft, underwater vehicles, and airplanes. The importance difference is cars have a clear, visual grid of where they can travel and where they cannot travel. Painted lines on the road and navigational signs provide a construct of the environment around them. Maybe the closest comparison is subway / metro rails. There are already many fully automated subw…

The hard part of self-driving cars is not staying within the painted lines of the road, the hard part is avoiding other valuable things like cars, trucks, bikes, people, wildlife, etc. There is no reliable visual grid for those things.

Subways handle this problem by being given dedicated underground tunnels which exclude all those things. And even subways hit people sometimes when they fall onto the tracks.

Re: Should cars be fully driverless? No, says an MIT engineer and historian

#30

Post by nemothekid »

sandworm101 wrote: post #25
ekianjo wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

a human not touching the wheel in most situations is a human that is NOT in control.

Hands off the wheel does not mean not in control if you can put those hands back on the wheel instantly. Take the hands off the wheel, get in the back seat, and take a nap. That's what I would call a driverless car. The "hands not on wheel" argument has been made by many a defendant. Courts don't buy it anymore. If you are in the driver seat, inches from the controls, then you are responsible for the motion of the ve…

This is an incredibly pedantic definition and has nothing to do with what Google is doing.

Google's car has logged driverless hours - despite where a human can be sitting. Are you seriously implying that a human sitting in the driver seat is controlling the car without touching it? If its not driverless, how is the car navigating? Through psychic powers?

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