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.
Google Cars Drive Themselves, in Traffic
101–110 of 216 posts
Re: Google Cars Drive Themselves, in Traffic
#102Has anyone else read Daemon?
Re: Google Cars Drive Themselves, in Traffic
#103Personally I love driving. I hate being a passenger. I can see this being useful for some people, but not useful for me.
Re: Google Cars Drive Themselves, in Traffic
#104Finally! 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.
Except in this case, the transport protocol's job is to prevent packet loss rather than correct for it.
Re: Google Cars Drive Themselves, in Traffic
#105This is such good news -- probably some of the best tech news so far this year -- that I keep looking for problems. It's too good.
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.
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.
(Still, it's awesomely cool)
Re: Google Cars Drive Themselves, in Traffic
#106I 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.
And wouldn't they get pulled over, just as they would if they broke the speed limit in a normal car?
Re: Google Cars Drive Themselves, in Traffic
#107I 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.
I expect that once these cars become common enough for that to be a realistic problem, there will be some kind of certification devised and cars running uncertified software will be prohibited from public roads.
Re: Google Cars Drive Themselves, in Traffic
#108Finally! 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.
Actually, if you can build a smart traffic system out of this, you can drastically reduce the time cars spend idling and creating pollution.
Re: Google Cars Drive Themselves, in Traffic
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
While cars that drive themselves are not the final solution they could be a necessary stepping stone to mass transportation. Imagine a future where cars are not owned by individuals but are owned by few companies (or maybe even government, the way public transport is) and participate in what is essentially a global taxi network. Instead of using your own car you would just step out of your home, enter destination add…
You have described my personal vision of a PRT-connected future even better than I have myself.
What's so beautiful about it is that it takes a massive infrastructural liability -- a century of building our world around the automobile instead of around rail or other mass transit systems -- and turns it on its head. We get out of infrastructure jail free.
Think of the time humans spend behind the wheel of a car today. How many hours a day? How many solid days of driving a year? How many man-years of humanity are wasted on fruitless idling in traffic? A society with autonomous personal transport becomes a measurably more productive one and likely a happier and more satisfied one as well.
Re: Google Cars Drive Themselves, in Traffic
#110The 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.
I don't know Sebastian that well, but I believe his motivations are largely idealistic. At least, that's the pitch he and his group used to make to prospective members - that solving the autonomous driving problem could save tens of thousands of lives a year.