Best part of the embedded video, and a moment sure to bring a smile to the engineer's faces is at 1:45. No amount of data can give you that sort of useful feedback.
Just press go: designing a self-driving vehicle
211–220 of 322 posts
Re: Just press go: designing a self-driving vehicle
#212The comments here are rather disappointing. It doesn't have manual controls? Well thats the point! I want to leave my crap in it and paint it some ugly color? Get with the times, young people already opt to not own cars. I can't double park in the city? Why are you imposing your steel box on people living in cities, many of which do not own cars and want walkable streets? I mean, this is the news website for a startu…
> young people already opt to not own cars. Really? Any study on this matter?
Yes. This has been discussed on the Internet quite a bit. Not sure if exact reason has been determined. I'm not young but I sold my car years ago because it's expensive, inconvenient, and seldom used where I now live on the US east coast.
Here's one article, you can Google hundreds more.
http://www.digitaltrends.com/cars/5-reasons-young-people-are...
Re: Just press go: designing a self-driving vehicle
#213Earlier quoted context omitted.
1. Public transport will still be cheaper, so it will still have its place. And I think we'll see small charging spaces that autonomous vehicles can use every block or so. Plus parking for these vehicles will be dense and save loads of space - it is obscene how much of our space is dedicated to parking. I think we'll also see something in between a typical commuting vehicle and a bus. If 10 people in a specific area…
A bus is possible, but if this was a viable business, it should exist already. The only difference is the cost of the driver, so the automated bus might save passengers $5/day. Is that $5/day extra cost keeping this business non-existent at the moment? I'm a little skeptical. Keep in mind your taxi service is cheap because it's on the road all the time. A taxi might make $250/day, and pay the driver half of that cost…
"A bus is possible, but if this was a viable business, it should exist already. The only difference is the cost of the driver, so the automated bus might save passengers $5/day. Is that $5/day extra cost keeping this business non-existent at the moment? I'm a little skeptical."
$5/day could be enough, especially if the parking situation changed for drivers at the other end. Take away street parking (no longer required when most cars are autonomous) near my office and I'd likely catch the bus. Have a bus that took me virtually door to door (rather than walking 3-4 blocks at each end) and I'd likely switch already.
I think lack of imagination might be one thing stopping a service like this existing now, and volume of passengers. If you wanted to start it now, you'd need coverage to justify the advertising campaign to build customers and to make it worthwhile. You'd need a fleet and then to hire and train drivers.
In the future, it will be APIs/software.
Imagine it's almost worth my while to pay $15/trip now. Then take out the driver and make it $10/trip plus pain-free bookings - I could read/work without feeling like I was being rude to the driver. Then imagine my booking app offers me $5/trip if I'm willing to car-pool, with the software automatically picking my ride-mates and most efficient pick-up and drop-off route. I'm pretty likely to do that. In dense areas and with time, manoeuvrable vans could be even more effective and the upgrade could be done with a software update.
Not to mention the bonus of taking cars off the street.
Autonomous vans on demand are going to be incredibly useful for wine tasting trips...
Re: Just press go: designing a self-driving vehicle
#214I wonder whether they will first become available as a product that individual people can buy, or if Google will open some sort of service where you can sign up for a monthly "car plan" for X miles. Or maybe partner with a taxi company/Uber, where you pay per ride but the cars are driverless. I imagine all 3 models will be tried at some point, and it'll be interesting to watch their development and which one eventual…
While I sort of like the idea, there's still going to be lots of traffic in and around those bus/van depots. We're also going still need storage near urban downtowns for all those 1-person cars that spend 95% of their day idle waiting for the 5pm rush.
In between peak times, these vehicles could do same-day goods delivery.
One pulls up outside your office/residence and a Boston Dynamics Cheetah leaps out with your package between it's teeth.
Or the car acts as a mothership for sidewalk to door airborne drones.
Re: Just press go: designing a self-driving vehicle
#215Earlier quoted context omitted.
How about something simple like telling the car, "back up 10 feet" or "move to the spot across the street". This is dead simple short range routes...
How does one "tell" the car what to do without controls ? I hope you're not suggesting voice recognition because anything less than 100% accuracy will guarantee accidents and possibly deaths.
I'm pretty sure current cars with controls guarantee accidents and deaths
Re: Just press go: designing a self-driving vehicle
#216One of the few pleasures of modern world is now slowly being removed! :-D
I guess I will treasure my memories of driving Lamborghini Murcielago over 200mph forever and will tell my grandchildren there was a time when you actually could drive a car yourself!
And to those that argue young people don't want to own the car - it's mostly about not wanting to spend your life commuting, hunting parking spots or in traffic jams, and frankly, daily driving to work in the States is as boring as it can get.
I don't own a car, I rely on public transport which is usually faster in European cities than driving your own car, allowing me to work on a lot of stuff while traveling. Whenever I need I rather rent a car - it's newer, serviced, no hassles and I can try different cars at will. From that point of view self-driving vehicle is wonderful (if it becomes eco-nomical/logical), though as a car-geek and F1/CART fan I really love to drive for pleasure.
Re: Just press go: designing a self-driving vehicle
#217It 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…
No one said that there won't be cars with manual controls in the future. There are certainly use cases for both. The market will decide which cars are more popular. There's no need to play pundit on the Internet.
Re: Just press go: designing a self-driving vehicle
#218The comments here are rather disappointing. It doesn't have manual controls? Well thats the point! I want to leave my crap in it and paint it some ugly color? Get with the times, young people already opt to not own cars. I can't double park in the city? Why are you imposing your steel box on people living in cities, many of which do not own cars and want walkable streets? I mean, this is the news website for a startu…
Is a car parked on a street really an imposition on you?
(I say this as someone who drives to work each day and parks on the street.)
Yes, think about the space taken up by parking, and the visual barrier it presents.
There's a shopping and restaurant strip between me and my office. The shop owners campaign for maximum street parking for the convenience of their customers, on top of the side-street and off-street parking behind most of their buildings. Yet at almost all hours, the entire strip is lined on both sides with cars to the point that anyone passing can't easily see shop windows, foot traffic, the social proof of people eating in a popular restaurant, etc. You just drive on through because it lacks appeal.
Think about a shopping centre and how open-air parking means that the complex takes up a huge amount of space and sets it all back so far from the road for anyone walking. If we took out parking allocations (or went with undercroft parking) and collapsed cities or filled in those areas with more "living" spaces, I think the result would be more appealing. Blocks could be more lively or smaller and more walkable.
There's some interesting stuff about parking here: http://www.cato-unbound.org/2011/04/04/donald-shoup/free-par...
Re: Just press go: designing a self-driving vehicle
#219The comments here are rather disappointing. It doesn't have manual controls? Well thats the point! I want to leave my crap in it and paint it some ugly color? Get with the times, young people already opt to not own cars. I can't double park in the city? Why are you imposing your steel box on people living in cities, many of which do not own cars and want walkable streets? I mean, this is the news website for a startu…
Is a car parked on a street really an imposition on you?
Real estate in most cities is extremely expensive. Now consider all the space we give away for free so people can momentarily store their cars.
Some people have realized the extreme bargain this is:
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/08/nyregion/a-rent-free-place...
Re: Just press go: designing a self-driving vehicle
#220Given that they're capped at 25 mph, these are legally "low-speed vehicles", not cars, which means they're way less regulated. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-speed_vehicle
That's very handy when you're building a bunch of barebones prototypes. Clever Google!