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Just press go: designing a self-driving vehicle

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Re: Just press go: designing a self-driving vehicle

#111

Post by valas »

psychotik wrote: post #102
SoftwareMaven wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People want to know where they are going. Very few, if any, people would be happy looking at where they've been. The dash is most likely two-fold: they have to cover up what's behind the dash and they need a place to put things like air bags. Finally, if I was designing this, I'd want it to feel enough like a car that people fully recognize all the ways it's not a normal car to increase their excitement about it. Jus…

Ever sat backwards on a train? Or first class in a plane? It doesn't matter if you're not driving.

I know a lot of folks who get car sick sitting backwards in busses.

Re: Just press go: designing a self-driving vehicle

#112

Post by malandrew »

One question I'm curious about is whether or not we will shift to having seats in a different configuration such as having people sit facing each other. Furthermore I'm curious what factors will contribute to one configuration over another.

factors that may matter: (1) safety

(2) situational interaction (meeting, road trip with family)

(3) social norms (what are we used to. e.g. the french sit next to each other in cafes, but americans sit across from each other)

(4) motion sickness

(5) ???

Re: Just press go: designing a self-driving vehicle

#113

Post by [deleted] »

twerquie wrote: post #54
doomlaser wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 kid…

[deleted]

Re: Just press go: designing a self-driving vehicle

#114

Post by beefman »

Looks like it has no trunk, which is a huge use case for self-driving cars. How many trips do you make just to move things around? How much of what you own would you rather rent if you could have it delivered within 15 minutes? Then there's the economics of prepared meal delivery... I'll be surprised if passengerless cars don't outnumber passenger cars in 20 years.

As for moving people, a significant part of city bus fares goes to driver salaries. And other vehicles tend to avoid buses / don't rely on making eye contact with bus drivers. And buses follow predefined routes. So it's surprising to me that Google is going for private cars instead of city buses as a first market.

Re: Just press go: designing a self-driving vehicle

#115

Post by Pxtl »

slyall wrote: post #34
rquantz wrote: post #15

It 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…

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.

Kinect.

Re: Just press go: designing a self-driving vehicle

#116

Post by kamaal »

It will be good if we can see these cars tested on the streets here in India. India is an amazing test bed for this kind of an application. Narrow roads, haphazard traffic, undisciplined crowd and driver behavior, kids playing on the roads, obstructions, potholes, animals on the roads etc etc.

This will make an amazing place to test this set up.

Plus India is an amazing business opportunity, given the overall scale of the economy here.

Re: Just press go: designing a self-driving vehicle

#117

Post by skriticos2 »

beefman wrote: post #114

Looks like it has no trunk, which is a huge use case for self-driving cars. How many trips do you make just to move things around? How much of what you own would you rather rent if you could have it delivered within 15 minutes? Then there's the economics of prepared meal delivery... I'll be surprised if passengerless cars don't outnumber passenger cars in 20 years. As for moving people, a significant part of city bus…

Looks like there is a bag compartment for had luggage where the dashboard normally is. The size of the thing does not suggest it's built for heavy lifting, I'm sure there will be models for that too.. maybe even the same with the passenger seats ripped out. When the car self-drives, you don't need the driver anymore to get stuff around. This really opens possibilities.

The first prototype might not be the be-all-end-all thing, but it makes me confident that they don't try to design that on the first go.

Re: Just press go: designing a self-driving vehicle

#118

Post by vacri »

Mister_Snuggles wrote: post #18
rquantz wrote: post #15

It 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…

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…

Why not go the whole hog and just shuttle people to whichever house has an open bed for the night? With some smart scheduling software, you could ensure that families get shuttled to the same location.

Re: Just press go: designing a self-driving vehicle

#119

Post by kyrra »

kamaal wrote: post #116

It will be good if we can see these cars tested on the streets here in India. India is an amazing test bed for this kind of an application. Narrow roads, haphazard traffic, undisciplined crowd and driver behavior, kids playing on the roads, obstructions, potholes, animals on the roads etc etc. This will make an amazing place to test this set up. Plus India is an amazing business opportunity, given the overall scale o…

How many drivers in India properly obey driving laws? My understanding is that it can be pretty hectic driving India streets and breaking the law is required to make forward progress. I'm guessing a self driving car as designed for the US roads may be useless in India.
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