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

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

#131

Post by Geee »

tormeh wrote: post #92
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…

Well, good luck to Google and Volvo in making the eye contact thing work...

It could use laser eyes to blind the other drivers. :)

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

#132

Post by [deleted] »

SoftwareMaven wrote: post #88
PeterisP wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Europe doesn't generally use 4-way stop signs ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All-way_stop ) in the traffic regulations; intersections tend to be either regulated, or with one road designated as the priority, or as roundabouts, not like this. I've driven a bit around Europe, but I have never seen a single such intersection in my life - if they exist, they must be rare. Of course, "if you have an intersection of non-pr…

In creating an autonomous car, successfully handling those rare edge cases are going to be the thing that differentiates success from failure. Roundabouts and Michigan left turns are rare in most places in the US, but an autonomous car would still have to be able to handle them.

[deleted]

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

#133

Post by mandeepj »

koenigdavidmj wrote: post #106
mandeepj wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>* Licensing for a car is time-limited. I think this is about 10 years or so. In US it is 4 years. I was surprised to see that low time frame as in India it is at least 20 years. And, in US, you are also required to renew your registration plates every year

What I mean is "you're not allowed to register a car again after that point". Most people sell it across the Strait in Malaysia. This distinguishes them from the US and India, where you can drive a car until it doesn't work anymore. Also, your US numbers of course vary by state.

Thanks for clarifying. Registering and licensing are not same.

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

#134

Post by fizz_and_buzz »

thematt wrote: post #95
augustl wrote: post #35

I own a 2013 XC60 and as a programmer, I'm amazed at how well their current automation works in practice. The car reads road signs to show me the current speed limit in the dash (actual OCR, not a GPS database). It works amazingly well, except when it's very dark in the winter. Adaptive cruise control flawlessly follows cars based on radar, even in somewhat dramatic full stops, e.g. when there's suddenly heavy traffi…

Why would it bother OCR'ing road signs? That seems much more error prone and needlessly complex. That data is readily available from a data sources based on your GPS location, I know TomToms and other navigation devices have it.

Where I live, signs that change to adept to the traffic flow a pretty common[1]. Also, sign for construction sites are not in gps databases.

[1] http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:VBA_showing_100_kilom...

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

#135

Post by greeneggs »

danielweber wrote: post #46
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.

I don't see "Google needs to pre-map the route" as a hurdle at all. Even if Google had never been in my area, I would not mind one bit having to do my daily commute manually for a week while the car builds more and more detailed maps of the route, if it saved me the hassle of the commute for months thereafter. Plus, every time the automatic car goes over the road, it's presumably checking its prior maps and flagging…

If the car could map the route automatically, then it wouldn't need the pre-map in the first place. The problem is that creating the map routes currently requires expert human attention. Driving your daily commute manually for a week won't do any good.

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

#137

Post by toong »

brownbat wrote: post #130
mkempe wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe because their goal is to steadily build a car system that can read the environment and adapt speed and direction based on the actual situation? a map is not the territory. The latest models also detect pedestrians, bikes, and even animals -- and the car sets off an alarm and brakes so that we don't run over them. High beams are politely turned off when meeting another car, as well as when passing near pedestria…

I wonder what happens to speed limits when self driving cars are ubiquitous... I mean, once there are no more revenue from violations, and cars know ideal speeds far better than legislatures, should we just let the computers figure out what speed they want to go?

Currently, 'recuding accidents' are the primary driver for speed regulations (at least in Europe)

There are a lot of other variables to optimize for, both on individual basis (fuel, travel time, battery life, ...) and collective basis (congestion locallity, total time lost in congestion, emissions, ...)

I guess legislatures - over time - will try to optimize some variables for 'the greater good' instead of minimizing your travel time :-)

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

#138

Post by steven777400 »

mkempe wrote: post #123
haberman wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems unlikely to me that the supported routes have train tracks, construction cones, bike lanes, etc. -- the kinds of difficult problems of urban driving that Google has put a lot of resources into solving.

Driving in Göteborg is by no means a piece of cake. Unlike most American cities, there are a lot of pedestrians and bicycles, plus trams, and by necessity they sometimes take priority over car traffic. However, one major traffic simplification in Europe is that there is no such insanity as "go ahead and turn right even when the light is red -- and run over crossing pedestrians unless they back off."

"The pedestrian didn't know which way to run, so I ran him over."

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

#139

Post by [deleted] »

thematt wrote: post #95
augustl wrote: post #35

I own a 2013 XC60 and as a programmer, I'm amazed at how well their current automation works in practice. The car reads road signs to show me the current speed limit in the dash (actual OCR, not a GPS database). It works amazingly well, except when it's very dark in the winter. Adaptive cruise control flawlessly follows cars based on radar, even in somewhat dramatic full stops, e.g. when there's suddenly heavy traffi…

Why would it bother OCR'ing road signs? That seems much more error prone and needlessly complex. That data is readily available from a data sources based on your GPS location, I know TomToms and other navigation devices have it.

[deleted]

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

#140

Post by Qworg »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #113
bluthru wrote: post #75

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.

> The industry would benefit from sharing all of their data with OpenStreetMap. What is the barrier to entry for an open platform for people to submit this same data to OpenStreetMap. Precise Positioning + GoPros + data processing on the backend.

All of those things? Plus the new StreetView cars are running LIDAR as well.

Major projects like this have a ton of hardware limitations.

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