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How Google's Self-Driving Car Works

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Re: How Google's Self-Driving Car Works

#101

Post by sophacles »

tomkarlo wrote: post #97
sophacles wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't read the parent as paranoid at all. I thought it was pretty cool. Further, wrt the optimal/most direct route thing: * the algorithm could be tweaked to "adpresence" en-route fairly easily * "most direct route" is an ambiguous term. There could be two routes that involve almost same distance in miles, but the slightly longer one is likely to take less time. Which constitutes most direct? It turns into an opti…

There's a crucial difference between what you're proposing and what the parent suggests - user choice. At least as I read the parent, he's not saying you're given a choice of what route, etc. That seems like a crucial distinction to leave out if he meant that it would be at the request of the user.

There is a crucial difference also between what you are responding to, and what I said. I am not necessarily proposing the user choice should be followed or is even necessary. It is just a possible variation on the theme.

If you get in a cab and say "take me to $x" it is the cab driver's responsibility to take the best route. However, since metering is distance AND time based, there is a lot of wiggle room in what best route means. It is always an optimisation problem, and relies on imperfect data of the future conditions of the route. Further, in most american cities, there are many routes that are no more or less direct, as a result of the grid system. Therefore the car taking you on the route that goes past paid displays is not kidnapping. It is choosing 1 of n equivalent routes - the one most profitable for the operator, while still meeting the criteria of the user.

Further, even with advanced traffic and condition understanding available to a robotic car, the ability to choose optimal path will probably improve significantly, even when the small fudge factor to go past advertising is accounted for. So what if it is 30s less optimal on your ride to go past the advertised place, when the human cabbie would have chosen a route adding 5 minutes?

Re: How Google's Self-Driving Car Works

#102

Post by Someone »

ajays wrote: post #61

I would love to see these in a city like SF. It's a small city (geographically), but we spend $1B/year on MUNI, which carries about 700K passengers/day. Put together a fleet of, say, 5000 such autonomous vehicles that take you door to door, for the price of a MUNI ticket. Wow. That would be something.

If I do the math, you will need many more than 5000 vehicles. 700k trips with 5000 vehicles is 140 per vehicle per day, say 50 in morning traffic and 50 in evening traffic, the other 40 in-between. Even assuming 5 people in e car at each trip, that means 10 round trips from suburb to the office per car.

I guess you will need at least 100k vehicles, but with that number of vehicles, that $1B per year starts to look cheap ($10k times 100k = $1B)

Re: How Google's Self-Driving Car Works

#103

Post by njs12345 »

Joeri wrote: post #95
solutionyogi wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My guess is that originally self driving cars will be mainly used on highways and take you to the metro hubs. Once you reach a very populated metro area, you will use the local public transportation.

They would probably BE the public transportation. We need large buses because drivers aren't flexible enough to deploy, and you need to have enough capacity to meet peak demand. If you can have smaller driverless vehicles, and just put more of them on the road during peak hours, it's much more cost-effective (and environmentally friendly) to have smaller capacity vehicles. I doubt we'll see more than 10 people per pu…

A diesel bus gets 6mpg --- you only need 10-15 people on one to match even the most fuel-efficient of cars in terms of environmental friendliness, unless you're referring to something else..

Re: How Google's Self-Driving Car Works

#104

Post by tomkarlo »

sophacles wrote: post #101
tomkarlo wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a crucial difference between what you're proposing and what the parent suggests - user choice. At least as I read the parent, he's not saying you're given a choice of what route, etc. That seems like a crucial distinction to leave out if he meant that it would be at the request of the user.

There is a crucial difference also between what you are responding to, and what I said. I am not necessarily proposing the user choice should be followed or is even necessary. It is just a possible variation on the theme. If you get in a cab and say "take me to $x" it is the cab driver's responsibility to take the best route. However, since metering is distance AND time based, there is a lot of wiggle room in what be…

"If you get in a cab and say "take me to $x" it is the cab driver's responsibility to take the best route. "

Obviously this can vary by municipality, but in most cities drivers are required to take the "most direct" route, rather than the "best" route, if for no other reason than the latter would be so subjective as to be useless for enforcement purposes.

So if you're in a New York taxi (for example), the driver in theory isn't allowed to take you off the most direct route without your permission, even if another path would be faster.

Re: How Google's Self-Driving Car Works

#105

Post by im3w1l »

Someone wrote: post #102
ajays wrote: post #61

I would love to see these in a city like SF. It's a small city (geographically), but we spend $1B/year on MUNI, which carries about 700K passengers/day. Put together a fleet of, say, 5000 such autonomous vehicles that take you door to door, for the price of a MUNI ticket. Wow. That would be something.

If I do the math, you will need many more than 5000 vehicles. 700k trips with 5000 vehicles is 140 per vehicle per day, say 50 in morning traffic and 50 in evening traffic, the other 40 in-between. Even assuming 5 people in e car at each trip, that means 10 round trips from suburb to the office per car. I guess you will need at least 100k vehicles, but with that number of vehicles, that $1B per year starts to look ch…

Maybe cars for the long tail routes, and hours?

Re: How Google's Self-Driving Car Works

#106

Post by merlincorey »

pilgrim689 wrote: post #52
omegant wrote: post #14

It is normal for pedestrians to look for eye contact in order to know if a driver will yield the right of way or simply will accelerate and pass (in light less crosswalks). In dense pedestrian cities (I am from Spain) it is very usual to have some guessing and false start stop between the pedestrian and the driver, nobody seems to know who is going to yield finally. I wonder if this is been thought and how you'll sig…

It makes sense for the self-driving car to yield to pedestrians all the time. So if you see that there is no driver, you assume it will stop until you are out of its way. There will be no more awkward social guessing games!

Something tells me you just made highway robbery (and worse) quite a bit easier with this scheme.

Re: How Google's Self-Driving Car Works

#107

Post by ChuckMcM »

Given the amount of stuff going on it made me skeptical of GM's claim they would have a self driving car available for sale in 2015.

The Google stuff is pretty cool, I notice they don't show the early videos of people running around the parking lot trying to get it to stop :-) But such things are to be expected in development. This is a technology I look forward to as it would simplify a lot of things.

Re: How Google's Self-Driving Car Works

#108

Post by jiggy2011 »

tomkarlo wrote: post #89
tzs wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's a possibility. I'm not saying they will do this. It's just an illustration of what someone controlling the software in a fleet of self-driving cars could do. You summon a self-driving taxi to take you to Bob's Bistro--known throughout the city for its steaks, and your call is serviced by a car using Google self-driving software. Google knows who you are and knows where you are going. The car's route planner de…

This is a pretty paranoid and far-fetched scenario. Generally, I'd expect that an automated taxi would operate under rules similar to current taxis - the obligation would be to take the customer to the destination via the most direct route specified, unless otherwise directed. Taking someone on another route might constitute kidnapping - you're essentially transporting them against their will to somewhere they did no…

I'd assume that a driverless taxi would have an "I want to get out, please drop me off at the next safe opportunity" as well as some method of disputing the fare.

Besides, it would not necessarily even have to redirect you past a different location, it could just stream an advert to the speakers in the car.

It could also be possible that some routes would be subsidized, like you could enter the location of one restaurant and a rival restaurant could offer to cover your fare if you went to them instead.

Another aspect is that you would need an easy way to split the fare amongst multiple passengers, I almost never take a taxi if I am traveling alone.

Re: How Google's Self-Driving Car Works

#109

Post by jiggy2011 »

Someone wrote: post #100
zf1234 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It will be interesting to see how people exploit the A.I. There might be little tricks you could do to make an autonomous car yield. Or if you see one about to park, maybe you could get really close to it, and it would try to find another spot instead of fighting for the spot. Or pedestrians might carelessly walk in front of it, knowing it will stop for them. Edit: It will also be interesting to see how the technolog…

"this road is congested, use alternate route" I guess someone will hack the software in his car to send a "road blocked" signal, so that he can drag race a friend on fifth avenue at rush hour. I also expect that it will become illegal to hack one's own car soon after that.

Stuff like congestion would probably be left to computers operated by the local traffic authority rather than the general public.

Of course you would need some form of hazard signaling which could be open to abuse (although it could be abused by human drivers anyway).

You can always monitor what cars are doing and if you find that some particular persons car is always behaving in a way that causes problems then you can potentially take legal action against them.

Re: How Google's Self-Driving Car Works

#110

Post by lupatus »

ph0rque wrote: post #87
omegant wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a second part on it. How will cars behave when they are driving along a crowded street in a place where people crosses anywhere and changing directions and intentions very fast. I don't think there will be dangers to pedestrian. But it's going to be a tought problem avoiding false emergency breaking. Once more you have to rely on visual contact to know what are the real intentions of people. Crossing, waitin…

Maybe following the lead of European and South American cities, city downtowns will become pedestrian-only zones.

This doesn't make sense for many American cities where the downtown only houses the municipal government, museums, and boutique shopping, but the city itself has several other major shopping districts, not to mention residential and industrial districts. These different districts are often miles and miles apart with no easy walking routes between or often within the districts. For example, Anchorage, Alaska, is 1,704.7 sq. miles (4,415.1 sq. km) [1], and it can sometimes take over 2 hours to drive from one end of the city to the other.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_by...

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