Great news for terrorists. Now all they have to do is bomb Google's data centers and kill everyone on the roads :)
Google-skynet is distributed across multiple data-centers, I'm sure.
Google Cars Drive Themselves, in Traffic
81–90 of 216 posts
Re: Google Cars Drive Themselves, in Traffic
#82The key question is why would Google produce this technology and enter the autonomous driving market? 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 sta…
Google is good at hard computer-science problems, which this is. It also has an obvious market application. Even if they don't market this themselves, it'd be easy to spin it off or sell it for lots of money.
Re: Google Cars Drive Themselves, in Traffic
#83It 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.
You could say this about any new technology. Mass demand will solve this problem.
Aren't car companies essentially all about wringing huge efficiencies out of mass production? Compare an automotive product to something requiring a similar manufacturing technique with more niche demand and there's usually a huge price difference.
Re: Google Cars Drive Themselves, in Traffic
#84In 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. 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 more , not less. In fact, if you ask people that can afford cars but commute by train why they do it, many will sa…
Because an automated system would be less prone to congestion, and the average time for travel would go way down. You'd have to do the math to find the break-even point, but I'd imagine that you could add many more cars into an optimally flowing traffic system and still end up with less total running time.
If that's the case, then people will just end up using the roadways even more.
"Hey, traffic's not as bad as it used to be since the Google auto-drivers smoothed out the traffic. Let's go to the store at 5:00 today!"
Congestion will again increase to the same point of suckage as before, but then, only non-human drivers will be qualified to be on freeways.
Re: Google Cars Drive Themselves, in Traffic
#85I 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.
If you are surfing Internet while riding your car -- you likely would not care much about exceeding speed limit.
People will always push boundaries.
Re: Google Cars Drive Themselves, in Traffic
#86The key question is why would Google produce this technology and enter the autonomous driving market? 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 sta…
Dr. Thrun is known as a passionate promoter of the potential to use robotic vehicles to make highways safer and lower the nation’s energy costs. It is a commitment shared by Larry Page, Google’s co-founder, according to several people familiar with the project. It sounds like this may be as much an idealistic pet project as it is any kind of corporate strategy.
Hey, less dying and making money!
Can't beat that.
Re: Google Cars Drive Themselves, in Traffic
#87Very cool, but I sometimes worry that the illusion of safety is more dangerous than the original danger itself. 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 crosswalk…
"The prospect of automated cars scares me because, obviously, they cannot be perfect."
They can, at least 1000 times more perfect that humans are. A computer could have and exact model of the road, and compare it to what it sees, could report bugs in an objective way, the same way computers on airplanes work, having made flying way more secure.
Re: Google Cars Drive Themselves, in Traffic
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because an automated system would be less prone to congestion, and the average time for travel would go way down. You'd have to do the math to find the break-even point, but I'd imagine that you could add many more cars into an optimally flowing traffic system and still end up with less total running time.
If that's the case, then people will just end up using the roadways even more . "Hey, traffic's not as bad as it used to be since the Google auto-drivers smoothed out the traffic. Let's go to the store at 5:00 today!" Congestion will again increase to the same point of suckage as before, but then, only non-human drivers will be qualified to be on freeways.
Like I said, you'd have to do the math. It's very possible that's true. But it's not a certainty. People have a limit on how much they want to drive regardless of how easy it is. After all, the store itself will still suck when everyone decides to go at 5.
I'm in NYC, I could hop on the subway any time I want without any hassle at all, but it's not like I do just because the option's there. Transportation is a means much more than an end for most people.
Re: Google Cars Drive Themselves, in Traffic
#89Very cool, but I sometimes worry that the illusion of safety is more dangerous than the original danger itself. 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 crosswalk…
"The prospect of automated cars scares me because, obviously, they cannot be perfect." They can, at least 1000 times more perfect that humans are. A computer could have and exact model of the road, and compare it to what it sees, could report bugs in an objective way, the same way computers on airplanes work, having made flying way more secure.
Oh, god. On my motorcycle, nothing scares me on the road more than people driving cars. Not only are they not perfect, they are far from perfect.
Re: Google Cars Drive Themselves, in Traffic
#90Finally! A giant step towards 'packet-switched' personal transport, using dynamically-routed, market-dispatched autonomous cars on standard roads. Cancel the bullet train, and instead plow all that money into rapidly deploying this.
This is not a solution to much, apart from getting stupid people away from control of vehicles. We still need to move to mass transportation, to reduce pollution, decrease traffic, stop our reliance on fossil fuels, increase productivity, remove noise, free up space in cities, and lots of other reasons.