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Self driving cars and beyond

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Re: Self driving cars and beyond

#41

Post by danmaz74 »

rimliu wrote: post #18
danmaz74 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure self driving will have a MUCH bigger impact on our lives than 3D printing. But it could take a pretty long time (really curious to see how long).

How? We already have means to get from point a to point b without driving ourselves. Sure, technology would be amazing, but besides that?

On the plus side, much less stress and much more time to do things we like/find useful; many less accidents. On the minus side, many, many lost jobs. In any case, considering how important cars are in our lives, it's a trasformative technology.

Re: Self driving cars and beyond

#42

Post by jsloss »

brudgers wrote: post #17
letscavort22 wrote: post #2

It’s great to explore this topic. You can have a lot of fun in picking a random industry and imagining the effect that self driving will have. Health - beyond the obvious effects on the emergency room, what else? Ambulances willl quite clearly be affected. Why would someone wait minutes for one to arrive when they can just hop in an autocar to go the hospital? Or would the entire emergency room itself be on wheels? (…

Every and each of the proposed benefits of vast public policy initiatives supported by a generous public purse in support of autonomous cars could be as easily derived from a similar public policy initiative to create public transit infrastructure.

I’m not convinced that’s true. The friction involved with public transit (limitations schedules, routes, and sharing of vehicles) are enough to limit much of the usage outlined in the above comment.

Re: Self driving cars and beyond

#43

Post by jahewson »

brudgers wrote: post #17
letscavort22 wrote: post #2

It’s great to explore this topic. You can have a lot of fun in picking a random industry and imagining the effect that self driving will have. Health - beyond the obvious effects on the emergency room, what else? Ambulances willl quite clearly be affected. Why would someone wait minutes for one to arrive when they can just hop in an autocar to go the hospital? Or would the entire emergency room itself be on wheels? (…

Every and each of the proposed benefits of vast public policy initiatives supported by a generous public purse in support of autonomous cars could be as easily derived from a similar public policy initiative to create public transit infrastructure.

Sure, in a city. But I really question that in places likes Southern California with its endless, winding suburbs. The place is built for cars.

Re: Self driving cars and beyond

#45

Post by petra »

chubot wrote: post #25
KKKKkkkk1 wrote: post #4

A couple of years ago there was a new article on the front page pretty much every day about the great new thing that will change our lives--3D printing. I'm worried that whatever happened to 3D printing is about to happen to self driving. What did happen to 3D printing?

Yes, I agree that you shouldn't take the premise for granted (that self-driving cars will be here soon). A high-profile Uber investor has said that level 4 self-driving won't be in the U.S. for 25 years: https://www.cnbc.com/2017/04/06/bill-gurley-uber-investor-se... That means they can service people without driver's licenses and people who can't drive -- the old and the young. Also, Chris Urmson said the transition…

Even if self-driving is AI complete , a taxi that knows how to self drive in the highway and easy areas of the city, but is remotely operated otherwise is extremely useful.

Add the ability to remotely drive a platoon of cars and it's even more interesting.

Re: Self driving cars and beyond

#46

Post by eclipxe »

letscavort22 wrote: post #2

It’s great to explore this topic. You can have a lot of fun in picking a random industry and imagining the effect that self driving will have. Health - beyond the obvious effects on the emergency room, what else? Ambulances willl quite clearly be affected. Why would someone wait minutes for one to arrive when they can just hop in an autocar to go the hospital? Or would the entire emergency room itself be on wheels? (…

At least where I am in the US (SoCal) distance to school is not a primary concern. The barrier to choice is not distance but school district boundaries and assignments.

Re: Self driving cars and beyond

#47

Post by KozmoNau7 »

transpostmeta wrote: post #19
ilovecars2 wrote: post #6

This is kind of a meta comment, but I’ve been lurking on HN for a while on car posts in particular. I have the impression that HN in general doesn’t like cars all that much, and in fact we would be much better of without them. I can’t argue with the facts: congestion and pollution in large cities, such as London, have never been higher where almost all on-road public transport is still run on diesel. However, I think…

Yes, this is a selfish opinion. Traffic kills a lot of people, and it's not just the ones doing the driving. Traffic is terrible for the environment, causes noise pollution and respiratory illness. I can understand that some people need to drive. But driving for pleasure is not something that should ever happen.

Why don't you think driving for pleasure should happen?

It doesn't have to be damaging to the environment, or dangerous if you're on the open road.

Re: Self driving cars and beyond

#48

Post by JohanByttner »

crwalker wrote: post #36
KKKKkkkk1 wrote: post #4

A couple of years ago there was a new article on the front page pretty much every day about the great new thing that will change our lives--3D printing. I'm worried that whatever happened to 3D printing is about to happen to self driving. What did happen to 3D printing?

What happened to 3D printing (ran and sold a small startup in this space): We realized that the vision of a 3D printer in every house was absurd. Consumer ≠ designer. Amazon is cheaper, faster, easier, higher quality unless I am putting on my design/engineering hat and doing R&D/NPI. We realized that 3D printers are just manufacturing tools, albeit really interesting ones. They belong in places where you might find C…

I second this. I'm part of an university team building a racecar and we mostly use additive manufacturing for carbon fibre parts that are difficult to lay by hands, such as the intake and certain wings. For this we just need basic polymers. It's a cost issue.

However, this year we are starting to build functional components. We are looking at printing the brake cooling ducts - they need to survive 200 C and 400 bar.

Some better funded teams print their uprights (the part joining the wheels to the frame) in titanium (https://www.reddit.com/r/FSAE/comments/6acr6d/amazing_additi...). The part is strengthened by annealing it.

The biggest problem in AM right now that I hear about is "how do we scale up"? Batches are very small and take a long time - to be truly useful, one needs to print a part in minutes, not days.

Re: Self driving cars and beyond

#49

Post by JohanByttner »

jaclaz wrote: post #26
KKKKkkkk1 wrote: post #4

A couple of years ago there was a new article on the front page pretty much every day about the great new thing that will change our lives--3D printing. I'm worried that whatever happened to 3D printing is about to happen to self driving. What did happen to 3D printing?

>What did happen to 3D printing? Basically "nothing". Sure 3D printers came out much cheaper (talking of FFF Fused Filament Fabrication or FDM Fused Deposition Modeling ) and much more precise/accurate, but still they are way too slow for any practical "final customer" use, outside the pure fun of it. Other technologies are still too expensive (or again still too slow) to get anywhere soon in "every household". In th…

3D printers aren't material reassemblers. They replace milling and lathing when those methods take a day or more per part. You won't see it in your cupboard but rather a flight engineer might use it.

Re: Self driving cars and beyond

#50

Post by JohanByttner »

ebbv wrote: post #9
KKKKkkkk1 wrote: post #4

A couple of years ago there was a new article on the front page pretty much every day about the great new thing that will change our lives--3D printing. I'm worried that whatever happened to 3D printing is about to happen to self driving. What did happen to 3D printing?

It’s the same thing that’s happening to VR and lots of other things that are getting hyped before the hard problems are solved. There’s been a serious epidemic in the last decade or so of mistaking solving the low hanging fruit for being “almost there.” 3D printing works ok for prototyping in certain scenarios, but it got hyped up for things it was nowhere near doing. Similarly everyone jumped all over VR assuming so…

I agree that VR got a bit hyped. AM, however, is alive and well. The biggest issues are cost and time - AM takes a long time and requires an expensive machine. Thus you can print super-intricate structural parts of an airplane, but not brake pedals for common cars.
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