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Honda's $20k Civic LX now offers self-driving capability for highway use

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Re: Honda's $20k Civic LX now offers self-driving capability for highway use

#81

Post by sp332 »

Alupis wrote: post #50
mchahn wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and am currently in the middle of a 360. You have no faith in AI. The car will always be better at driving than the human. It would be much better at handling a 360 than a human ever could. Actually humans are very bad at handling 360s unless you are a pro.

Humans are very, very good at handling unknown complex situations. In order for any AI to handle any situation, it must first be programmed to do so. If that situation was an unknown, you get undefined behavior. Undefined behavior in a car traveling down the road is not a good thing to place a bet on... especially your life. This is why majority of sane driverless vehicle talk has concluded a human driver must always…

But you only have to program it once and then all the cars get the update. That's a lot better than hoping every individual human got properly trained and remembers what to do.

The list of situations a car has to react to is not infinite. You can program a reasonable response for a broader list of situations than you could for a human. And really, a human would fare very badly in your situations so a computer could hardly do worse.

Re: Honda's $20k Civic LX now offers self-driving capability for highway use

#82

Post by TrevorJ »

Alupis wrote: post #50
mchahn wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and am currently in the middle of a 360. You have no faith in AI. The car will always be better at driving than the human. It would be much better at handling a 360 than a human ever could. Actually humans are very bad at handling 360s unless you are a pro.

Humans are very, very good at handling unknown complex situations. In order for any AI to handle any situation, it must first be programmed to do so. If that situation was an unknown, you get undefined behavior. Undefined behavior in a car traveling down the road is not a good thing to place a bet on... especially your life. This is why majority of sane driverless vehicle talk has concluded a human driver must always…

I tend to think the "A human driver must be ready to take over" line of thinking has a lot to do with liability as well. I just think it sets up an unfair situation where the human will often fail.

Re: Honda's $20k Civic LX now offers self-driving capability for highway use

#83

Post by samcheng »

Gratsby wrote: post #66
ben1040 wrote: post #27

This looks like the "Sensing" feature that Honda has implemented on some of their other vehicles. I just bought a 2016 Accord that does the same thing -- there's a camera mounted on the windshield, another camera in the front grille, and a radar sensor on the front bumper. Calling it "self-driving" is kind of a misnomer and I think the article kind of blows it out of proportion. It will track the car in front of you…

Mercedes has had the ability to keep a safe following distance for a decade or more. The lane assist is not something I've heard of, but I stopped staring at the latest and greatest features on cars around the time that Mercedes came out with the follow feature.

Mercedes also has active lane-keeping assist functionality.

Re: Honda's $20k Civic LX now offers self-driving capability for highway use

#84

Post by winter_blue »

> The Obama administration has proposed spending $4 billion to accelerate autonomous-car technology during the next decade.

Hmm, what are they spending it on? There's a lot of money being spent on developing this technology already by multiple private companies. I assume it's for something else...

IMO government research money should go into stuff that private industry is unwilling to fund, like pure math, theoretical physics/CS, and other things that have very long-term yield/results timelines.

Re: Honda's $20k Civic LX now offers self-driving capability for highway use

#85

Post by vonmoltke »

turtlebits wrote: post #36
vonmoltke wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I mentioned in a previous thread some time ago, where does this notion of self-driving cars suddenly meaning shared cars come from? To some people these things seem to be joined at the hip.

Once cars are autonomous, it makes it drastically simpler to carpool/rideshare or even pick up and drop off riders that may share the same or partial route as you. Also if your car is able to drop you off, it can be a shared resource when you don't need it.

I want to reply to all three of you (turtlebits, maxerickson, teod) with basically the same points. I'll put it here because yours is currently the top-ranked reply, but I am going to address all three of you.

> Once cars are autonomous, it makes it drastically simpler to carpool/rideshare or even pick up and drop off riders that may share the same or partial route as you.

I don't see how it is drastically simpler. Yes the logistics would be easier. There still needs to be an infrastructure for identification of passengers and dispatch of vehicles that is completely independent of what is driving the vehicles themselves.

> Also if your car is able to drop you off, it can be a shared resource when you don't need it.

Assuming I want my car shuttling other people around, particularly when I'm not in it.

> Prompting a human that is also driving to make a 3 block detour is pretty hard to do safely. Prompting a passenger to see if they will take a 3 block detour to save cost is not so hard to do safely.

True, but the bigger issue is, will the current occupant of the vehicle ever say yes?

> The self driving vehicles would also be reporting available ride shares to people looking to make trips.

Somebody could already do this with human-driven cars.

> To me, it seems like the incentives to own a car may not be so great once self-driving taxis are available, especially in the city. No need to worry about parking, insurance, maintainence, or gas.

How is this different than human-driven cars? Do you really think cabbie salary is enough of a driver in the pricing of taxis now that shared car services will suddenly become attractive once they are eliminated?

I pretty much agree with y'all on the technical barriers being overcome, but I think y'all and others seriously underestimate the sociological barriers that would need to be overcome to make this a reality on a large scale. Maybe I don't want to pick up random strangers on my way to work. Maybe I don't want to add five minutes to my commute to pick someone else up. Maybe I don't want other people in my car.

The reason these shared car services don't really exist today has little to do with who or what is actually driving the vehicles and quite a bit to do with the nature of our society. You can't change that by just building a fleet of autonomous, on-demand cars.

Re: Honda's $20k Civic LX now offers self-driving capability for highway use

#86

Post by mikeash »

oblio wrote: post #54
adekok wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Normal desktop failure modes don't work well here. "Hi, this is your car. I've discovered that the road is icy, and am currently in the middle of a 360. Would you like to (a) take over, (b) call an ambulance, or (c) retry?" Too late! You've crashed.

A very old joke (circa 1997, when Clippy was introduced): Two engineers are arguing: a mechanical engineer and a software engineer. The software engineer brags: If we were the ones making cars, they'd go twice as fast as they do now and they'd use half the fuel! The mechanical engineer replies: Yes, but if you'd want to break in case of an emergency you'd get a pop-up saying: Are you sure you want to break? Yes/No/Ca…

There's a related joke about engineers riding in a car that breaks down.

The mechanical engineer says, "It's a loose belt. Let's tighten that and we'll be all set."

The chemical engineer says, "No, it's fuel contamination. We need to drain the fuel, filter it, and then we can be on our way."

The software engineer says, "No, all we have to do is turn the car off, get out, shut all the doors, then get back in and turn the car back on."

The irony is that I now own a car for which "reboot it" is a valid troubleshooting step....

Re: Honda's $20k Civic LX now offers self-driving capability for highway use

#87

Post by lbenes »

akamaka wrote: post #79
ben1040 wrote: post #27

This looks like the "Sensing" feature that Honda has implemented on some of their other vehicles. I just bought a 2016 Accord that does the same thing -- there's a camera mounted on the windshield, another camera in the front grille, and a radar sensor on the front bumper. Calling it "self-driving" is kind of a misnomer and I think the article kind of blows it out of proportion. It will track the car in front of you…

I blame Elon Musk for this shift in the meaning of "self-driving". It used to be a term that was only applied to driverless cars, but last year Elon announced that they plan to make the Tesla a self-driving car at the same time as announcing similar driver assistance features. While Tesla's driver assistance features are much more advanced than these, it's not much of a stretch after Elon already fired the first mark…

Language is organic and constantly changing. I used to insist on calling my drone, a remote controlled quadcopter, as drones were those autonomous military vehicles dropping bombs on weddings in the Middle East. But everyone now from the news to the FAA calls my little RC toy, a drone.

Sure, it bothers me to watch words like self-driving and hoverboard lose their meaning. If someone as influential as Obama can't protect my favorite Egyptian god, Isis, there's no point in blaming anyone or trying to fight it.

Re: Honda's $20k Civic LX now offers self-driving capability for highway use

#88

Post by dwiel »

tdicola wrote: post #49
nostromo wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I could get in my car, read a bit and fall asleep, and wake up in Las Vegas from San Francisco, I'd prefer it over flying every time. But this has more to do with how air travel has become miserable than anything else.

You can do this with buses today.

Actually, with buses today, it will take almost twice as long (14 hours) and require between 3-5 transfers [1]. In a car there are no transfers and it takes 8.5 hrs [2].

[1] https://www.google.com/maps/dir/San+Francisco,+CA/Las+Vegas,... [2] https://www.google.com/maps/dir/San+Francisco,+CA/Las+Vegas,...

Re: Honda's $20k Civic LX now offers self-driving capability for highway use

#89

Post by adrianN »

Gratsby wrote: post #66
ben1040 wrote: post #27

This looks like the "Sensing" feature that Honda has implemented on some of their other vehicles. I just bought a 2016 Accord that does the same thing -- there's a camera mounted on the windshield, another camera in the front grille, and a radar sensor on the front bumper. Calling it "self-driving" is kind of a misnomer and I think the article kind of blows it out of proportion. It will track the car in front of you…

Mercedes has had the ability to keep a safe following distance for a decade or more. The lane assist is not something I've heard of, but I stopped staring at the latest and greatest features on cars around the time that Mercedes came out with the follow feature.

But do they have it in such a cheap car? I know that the feature existed for a long time in very expensive cars.

Re: Honda's $20k Civic LX now offers self-driving capability for highway use

#90

Post by DanielBMarkham »

prostoalex wrote: post #76
kazinator wrote: post #15

Americans could rather use a robot highway driving instructor. "Consider moving over to the right line; you're driving at the speed limit, and a speeding car is approaching; you may confirm this in the rear-view mirror." "I have detected that you came to a full stop at the end of a generous freeway entrance ramp in light traffic. Suggested future action: look over the shoulder as early as possible and match the speed…

From personal experience a lot of people would benefit from Blinker Usage 101.

Poor blinker usage drives me nuts.

Yes, there are some cases where, well, stuff happens. A driver forgets until the last minute. Many times I see them hit the blinker a split second after they've changed lanes.

But far more frequently, I see the driver who is drifting between lanes at will, without thinking of the blinker, and seemingly without a care in the world. This is disturbing, especially since if I'm seeing the behavior, I'm behind the driver. That means it's my job to figure out where the winds will blow them next.

Too many times I see idiots posting on Facebook or texting as I pass. Many times this is when we're both doing 65mph or more. Insane stuff.

This isn't full auto driving, but every little step helps.

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