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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

#151

Post by DasIch »

steven777400 wrote: post #102
thematt wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I know in Seattle there are variable speed limit zones, where the signs are digital displays that can be changed at anytime to reflect appropriate speed limits for the current conditions.

These are heavily used in Germany on the Autobahn as well.

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

#152

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#153

Post by malandrew »

mkempe wrote: post #120
thematt wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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…

Wow. Total TIL moment. I love the fact that they take pedestrian safety seriously. I can't think of any other car manufacturer that really does that.

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

#154

Post by riffraff »

toong wrote: post #137
brownbat wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

do you mean reducing accidents (is the primary driver..), or are "recuding accident" a category of accidents?

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

#155

Post by malandrew »

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…

My gut feeling tells me that there should be a mandate that requires all safety software to be open-source and liberally licensed. Safety should be very much part of the commons and we all lose out when this type of software isn't shared freely.

Building high quality safety software and sharing it with all car manufacturers wins way more brownie points in my book than using it as a selling point.

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

#156

Post by augustl »

mkempe wrote: post #120
thematt wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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 how lane detection works. I've had it warn me in a situation where there was no markings on the asphalt due to recent construction work, so it seems to be more clever than just detecting when you drive over markings.

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

#157

Post by buro9 »

trose wrote: post #84
hershel wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a good comparison: flying vs driving have totally different response times(minutes vs seconds). One could even say people can't respond in a good way in seconds , unless they keep full attention at all times, which beats the purpose of self driving cars.

We've basically proven that short of a software glitch, the car will always react faster and more appropriately than a human since a computer can process more information quicker than a human.

There is no such proof at all.

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

#158

Post by _pmf_ »

malandrew wrote: post #153
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…

Wow. Total TIL moment. I love the fact that they take pedestrian safety seriously. I can't think of any other car manufacturer that really does that.

For certain safety classes, to reach the highest qualification, the vehicle-under-test must pass some pedestrian accident scenarios, so it's not that the manufacturers do this out of good will. The S-Class used to flatten pedestrians quite liberally, which caused it to fail certain tests, which in turn caused them to implement this: http://www.daimler.com/dccom/0-5-1210222-1-1210363-1-0-0-121...

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

#159

Post by Gustomaximus »

threeseed wrote: post #18
alkonaut wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think they are probably trying to solve the same problem from two different directions. Google appears to be making an advanced and expensive solution to "full" autonomous driving. The limitation will not be in where it can go, but it is initially limited in weather/environmental conditions. The target audience is likely not production cars in the short term, but a system like theirs can for example make their stre…

Never thought of this before but you might be spot on. Maybe Google has no intention of making autonomous cars for normal use but exclusively for Street View. Street View is hopelessly out of date in many places (4 years in some parts of Sydney for example) and it has to be super expensive to keep thousands of people continuously driving around the world. And Street View will likely be a vital and profitable data sou…

I wonder if they could cut costs simply by making an agreement with a taxi company to put the camera across a few cars. Then they would need less drivers to go out and cover the gaps taxi's don't cover over the course of a year or so. It would work well for urban cities one would think. Uber should have data to give a rough idea of coverage.

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

#160

Post by warbastard »

DasIch wrote: post #151
steven777400 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know in Seattle there are variable speed limit zones, where the signs are digital displays that can be changed at anytime to reflect appropriate speed limits for the current conditions.

These are heavily used in Germany on the Autobahn as well.

And in the UK on the busier stretches of motorway
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