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Volvo’s first self-driving cars now being tested live on public roads in Sweden

kurzweilai.net

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Re: Volvo’s first self-driving cars now being tested live on public roads in Sweden

#71

Post by koenigdavidmj »

jareds wrote: post #69
simonebrunozzi wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been talking about this for years with friends. I bet on Singapore. (I lived there 2.5 years and know the place a bit).

Do you need a car in Singapore? I thought they had decent public transit?

They do, and generally it's a difficult place to have a car:

* Severe congestion pricing

* Expensive due to severe taxes (generally over 100k USD)

* Licensing for a car is time-limited. I think this is about 10 years or so.

The last point in particular makes it feasible to cycle out the entire country's cars in a relatively short time.

EDIT: Add more newlines between bullets

Re: Volvo’s first self-driving cars now being tested live on public roads in Sweden

#72

Post by wkz »

PeterisP wrote: post #67
dalke wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

4-way stops exist in Sweden. Quoting from Wikipedia at http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stopplikt : > Vissa korsningar har en stoppskylt vid varje väg, ett så kallat flervägsstopp. Det innebär att alla som kommer till korsningen måste stanna, oavsett vilken väg man kommer på. Tanken är att man vid flervägsstopp ska ta ögonkontakt med medtrafikanter för att på så sätt komma överens om vem som ska köra först. Or my transla…

Do you actually have them in Sweden? I was taught similar rules back when getting a driving licence, but it doesn't neccessarily mean that such intersections exist - I was told about intersections that were like that in 1960ies, but those spots have traffic lights now.

I drive through one a few times a week, in Västerås, Sweden.

Re: Volvo’s first self-driving cars now being tested live on public roads in Sweden

#73

Post by toomuchtodo »

checker wrote: post #50
Qworg wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google currently has a req out for a electromechanical engineer to work on a new sensor system. I'm betting they're building a new sensor for their vehicle - rotating, but perhaps not LIDAR. Cracking the heavy rain/snow problem would require more than just a new design though - you'd need a totally different sensor modality, a mix of sensors that can extract enough data, or a system that's far more robust to noise.

I realize the costs would be high, but would there be a way to embed some information in/near the roadway that would assist the onboard systems? I think there might be some advantages in making the road smarter in addition to the car.

Even if you use a sensor fabric on the road way, as well as high precision/precise positioning GPS (sub-centimeter resolution) for lane keeping, you will still need a sensor that can build the environment around the car in a model software can process. Some sort of lidar/radar combination I believe.

Re: Volvo’s first self-driving cars now being tested live on public roads in Sweden

#74

Post by protomyth »

haberman wrote: post #54
protomyth wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, they picked a test route to be decently representative and allow them to setup their tests correctly. It is not an A to B thing. role_v's comment is a pretty good explanation https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7698495 The quote ghaff posted https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7698610 it seems like you are describing Google more than Volvo.

> role_v's comment is a pretty good explanation https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7698495 That's not an explanation, it's speculation just like my speculation is.

http://www.volvocars.com/intl/top/corporate/news/pages/defau...

note the:

Our aim is for the car to be able to handle all possible traffic scenarios by itself, including leaving the traffic flow and finding a safe ‘harbour’ if the driver for any reason is unable to regain control,” explains Erik Coelingh, Technical Specialist at Volvo Car Group.

Plus the goals listed.

Volvo did do a land-train style project called SARTRE http://www.motorauthority.com/news/1072088_sartre-self-drivi...

Re: Volvo’s first self-driving cars now being tested live on public roads in Sweden

#75

Post by bluthru »

Has anything been said about an open protocol for inter-car communication? What about sharing point cloud data?

I have a bad feeling that Google is going to keep everything sealed in Google Maps. The industry would benefit from sharing all of their data with OpenStreetMap.

Re: Volvo’s first self-driving cars now being tested live on public roads in Sweden

#76

Post by toomuchtodo »

ghaff wrote: post #23
Qworg wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google's system is not yet arbitrary. They prerun the roads the system drives on. I'm excited to see more "in the wild" units - more competition and innovation is always a good thing.

This quote from a long New York Times article on Google is highly relevant: "The self-driving algorithms do not work because there has been some breakthrough in artificial intelligence; they run on maps. Every road that Google’s robo-cars drive on was first surveyed by a human-driven pilot car outfitted with sensors accurate enough to measure the thickness of the painted lines in the middle of the road. Every detail…

So Google self driving cars run in a virtual environment prebuilt for them by their street view cars being manually driven, with sensor input to fill in the realtime data variables (people, other cars, traffic light state). Brilliant!

Re: Volvo’s first self-driving cars now being tested live on public roads in Sweden

#77

Post by Qworg »

andrelaszlo wrote: post #39
chiph wrote: post #3

No rotating laser dome on the roof?

I spotted one of them close to where I work: https://plus.google.com/105073266122249925354/posts/a7XDM2xg... There's SOME kind of thingy on the roof. Not sure what it is though. Any ideas? Didn't want to go too close though: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_83efj9Xdg :)

Those look like dual GPS antennas.

Re: Volvo’s first self-driving cars now being tested live on public roads in Sweden

#78

Post by anigbrowl »

jotm wrote: post #68
GnarfGnarf wrote: post #2

Volvo have stopped selling manual transmission ("stick") cars in North America. They have lost me as a customer.

How is it possibly better than automatic? I've driven a manual Scania, it's a serious pain in the ass - automatic transmissions are a godsend for trucks...

Some people like driving rather than seeing it as a means to an end. I got to really enjoy gearing on a motorcycle.

Re: Volvo’s first self-driving cars now being tested live on public roads in Sweden

#80

Post by i80and »

jotm wrote: post #68
GnarfGnarf wrote: post #2

Volvo have stopped selling manual transmission ("stick") cars in North America. They have lost me as a customer.

How is it possibly better than automatic? I've driven a manual Scania, it's a serious pain in the ass - automatic transmissions are a godsend for trucks...

It really depends on the person and the vehicle. I learned to drive stick some years after I started driving, and I just adore the experience to the point where I will not buy an automatic car. Maybe in the future. But not now.

That said, trucks and passenger vehicles with rubbery shifter bushings might be a different story. There's a lot of shifter and clutch variation out there.

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