Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the eventual goal will be that most cars will be self-driving and that will negate most of those problems. I imagine that the vision of the future is a giant car-sharing program made up of self-driving cars all coordinated by Google. Think about it - you fire up an app to request a car, one appears at your door within a couple of minutes, takes you to work, then disappears. After work, a different car picks y…
AAAS - Automobiles as a Service. That could actually be pretty cool. Basically, a ZipCar + Uber that doesn't suck. That would be the dream.
Just press go: designing a self-driving vehicle
51–60 of 322 posts
Re: Just press go: designing a self-driving vehicle
#52I feel as though they really havent embraced the driverless concept with their prototype. Why have seats that are fixed and facing forward? What about a couch? Why is there a dash? The people in the video are essentially watching the car drive itself, when they could be doing anything else. There are probably a multitude of reasons why the things above are the way they are. However, the prototype seems like just anot…
>Why have seats that are fixed and facing forward?
Seats facing forward means that acceleration pushes you backward into your seat. Any other direction would increase motion sickness. And what would be the advantage of the seats facing a different way?
>What about a couch?
The seats do look like a couch to me...
Re: Just press go: designing a self-driving vehicle
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
That sounds cool, although most cities already have something similar in the form of buses, which are cheaper and more efficient than what you're talking about. In any case, they will probably not start by having a huge fleet, but by selling them as personal vehicles.
I wouldn't compare it to buses, I'd compare it to taxis combined with zipcar. Buses don't have the destination/pickup resolution that a small 2-4 seat vehicle has.
Buses don't need to be on fixed route. In Helsinki some buses are using dynamic routing based on demand. So basically those are shared taxis with drivers. When the driver can be dropped out of the equation service can be cheaper and there can be a lot more of these vehicles.
Re: Just press go: designing a self-driving vehicle
#54I think the biggest news was this sentence: If all goes well, we’d like to run a small pilot program here in California in the next couple of years. This is the next step in their very slow but, apparently, very steady march towards real self-driving cars that anyone can buy.
Why buy a self driving car when you could rent one as needed?
I used public transit, taxis and car sharing services exclusively until I started a family. At which point setting up the carseat every time became prohibitively cumbersome and I bought my own car. Children's car seats are very personal in terms of size and configuration and are required by law.
I think things like that will make people want their own self driving car. You want the one that fits your wife and two kids and your dog. Or you're rich and you want to be driven around in a really nice one that hasn't been used by other people.
The more I think about it, the more I imagine rich people increasing their car ownership due to self driving cars. Take your fleet with you to the cottage or across the country, why not?
Re: Just press go: designing a self-driving vehicle
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
For manual controls your could just plug in something like a PlayStation controller into a USB port or even a Phone app via Wifi/Bluetooth to control the car. No need to have permanent wheels, levers and pedals cluttering the "passenger" compartment.
It's always nice to have an actual mechanical linkage to the steering and motion, if the electronics had issues it could just as well affect the BT link from the phone or controller. I'm not familiar enough with all makes and models out today and perhaps there are plenty of examples where wheels are already just "controllers".
The technical term you're looking for is "drive by wire" and it actually only came onto the market in the last year on the Infinity Q50.
Re: Just press go: designing a self-driving vehicle
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree with you, perhaps in the context of a personal vehicle there does need to be manual control. However I can see these more as a form of private public transit, a fleet of driverless google cars cruising around and anyone with a subscription a la zipcar can hail them and go. Perhaps in this context, Google could operate parking garages where they can be recharged and cleaned while keeping them off the street an…
That sounds cool, although most cities already have something similar in the form of buses, which are cheaper and more efficient than what you're talking about. In any case, they will probably not start by having a huge fleet, but by selling them as personal vehicles.
All the signs right now point to Google's self-driving cars being a fleet, not personal vehicles. A few points:
* Google has expertise in "big data" and algorithms: running a fleet would fit their expertise.
* On the other hand, Google has no expertise in designing or marketing pretty cars. They don't have any dealership or repair network. To release a personal vehicle, they'd have to team up with a car company (and that partnership would have to be in place by now given Google's aggressive timeline).
* A fleet lets Google control the deployment carefully. Nobody is going to buy a self-driving car that only works in Mountain View. (Or, worse, they would buy the car, and then complain loudly.) But with a fleet, Google can start on a corporate campus, expand to Stanford, say, then Mountain View, etc. No worries about driving in the snow. No worries about self-driving cars getting in well-publicized accidents after an owner ignored the maintenance schedule.
Re: Just press go: designing a self-driving vehicle
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the eventual goal will be that most cars will be self-driving and that will negate most of those problems. I imagine that the vision of the future is a giant car-sharing program made up of self-driving cars all coordinated by Google. Think about it - you fire up an app to request a car, one appears at your door within a couple of minutes, takes you to work, then disappears. After work, a different car picks y…
AAAS - Automobiles as a Service. That could actually be pretty cool. Basically, a ZipCar + Uber that doesn't suck. That would be the dream.
I miss the days when you could read science fiction and think, "none of this exists, I wonder what the future will end up looking like?" We are way past the conceptual stage for the future of transport, and I think it will look exactly like the mashup you are describing.
Re: Just press go: designing a self-driving vehicle
#58It seems like a mistake to remove manual controls entirely, not necessarily because of safety concerns, but because there are a fair number of times when you need the car to go somewhere without having a route. I'm thinking of things like: Moving your car ten feet so somebody else can get out of the driveway; handling double parking during alternate side parking hours; moving the car because you were waiting to pick…
In the long run, if self driving cars work, people will no longer be qualified to operate their vehicles. Would you let your toddler move the car 10 feet to pick up grandma? That said they will almost certainly have a manual override in these things, it will just be tucked away out of view.
With approximately 30 thousand road fatalities every year, people today are barely qualified to drive. But with so few viable transportation options in most areas, we make do with a bad situation.
Re: Just press go: designing a self-driving vehicle
#59It seems like a mistake to remove manual controls entirely, not necessarily because of safety concerns, but because there are a fair number of times when you need the car to go somewhere without having a route. I'm thinking of things like: Moving your car ten feet so somebody else can get out of the driveway; handling double parking during alternate side parking hours; moving the car because you were waiting to pick…
Not to mention snow/ice. The software might be able to handle the nasty Minnesota roads, but not for a while (and what if people don't trust the cars in those conditions?). As far as I know, they've only been tested in sunny California.
That statement was probably a bit of a jump.
Re: Just press go: designing a self-driving vehicle
#60Tesla (or insert company willing to go big on electric cars) and Google really need to team up on this. Self driving cars have the potential to completely do away with owning personal cars. Imagine a new public/private service that allows people to travel where & when they want without having to deal with the hassles or cost of owning a car. With the added centralization, the headaches that electric cars cause can be…
This suggestion comes up whenever the topic of self-driving cars arises, but I wonder if access to a fleet of self-driving cars would be more akin to a cheaper taxi service than a replacement for car ownership. I suspect that many people would still prefer to own their own (self-driving) car rather than rent one from a fleet only when required. However the privately owned self-driving car could still drive itself to…
Fair observation, but I think this sort of centralization will come after maybe 2 or 3 generations (40 - 60 years). With a long enough timetable I believe the sentiment behind private car ownership will dwindle until it becomes a hobby akin to collecting telegraph machines.