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The View from the Front Seat of the Google Self-Driving Car, Chapter 2

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Re: The View from the Front Seat of the Google Self-Driving Car, Chapter 2

#71

Post by 6d0debc071 »

Touche wrote: post #64
6d0debc071 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Can self-driving cars parallel park yet? Non-completely-self-driving cars can do that: https://youtu.be/xpUqj_IHYp0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-rxJkVzUxI :) > Can they detect a strip where parking is only allowed between 9-4 and it's 4:30? Can they detect fire lanes? I don't have specific examples, but I know that it's possible to read signs easily, (as in you can write a program to do it yourself with no gre…

Yeah, sure, we can think of a far future where everything is automated but I think this discussion is more about the near future (near being when self-driving cars are for sale). The logistics of parking go far beyond getting into the space. How does it pay the parking meter? How does it know if a parking lot is public or not, how does it pay for that? How does it know not to go into the unsafe neighborhood where whe…

I can't disagree with you on all of that, but I feel like you might be making the problem harder than it needs to be:

Almost any initial solution is going to be imperfect, and is going to involve mistakes if you try to solve for the entire problem space. Usually, the way to address this is to solve a small subset of the problem. If you don't know how to pay for the parking in a particular place, don't park there. Things like that. You limit the problems that you have to address, and the lessons you learn while applying that technology and the infrastructure that develops around its use alters the difficulty of refining it to address other cases.

I can easily imagine the way that I would solve the parking problem, at least initially: Set it up so that the car can pay wirelessly and make it so that people who own parking spaces can add their carpark to a database as enabled for wireless payment. There are even systems which already exist that do something similar to this; toll roads, toll bridges, et cetera: you put a little device on the front of your car and that records your usage of the relevant infrastructure, which is then charged to your account.

Put a bunch of image recognition for parking signs in the car - good parking space usually follow fairly straightforward formats; I'm not sure whether the signage is defined in statute or regulation, but generally they're much alike. Do some simple correlations on whether the person actually indicates they want to park there to refine the algorithm....

Crime figures are publicly available, so you can hook into that database for avoiding bad areas...

And have a rule that says not to park somewhere if you're unsure.

#

In the case of taxis, it's even easier: there are designated taxi ranks where they have to wait. And, considering there commercial enterprise, (there are two types of taxi regulation here, it's a bit weird,) you could rely on the taxi company to fill out a database themselves of other places that the car could wait - it's in their financial interest to do so.

Re: The View from the Front Seat of the Google Self-Driving Car, Chapter 2

#72

Post by ghaff »

Touche wrote: post #61
defilade wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really. In a future of self-driving cars most people won't even own their own car so most of these cars will be shared - essentially automated taxis. So after the car drops you off it will go to its next call or park somewhere until someone calls it.

Maybe in big cities where the wait time is short. How is the car going to park itself? The grandparent's point was about how annoying trying to find a parking space is. Can self-driving cars parallel park yet? Can they detect a strip where parking is only allowed between 9-4 and it's 4:30? Can they detect fire lanes? EDIT: Also, are these automated taxis really going to be more affordable than owning your own car? Ta…

>Taxis are incredibly expensive today. Sure you save a lot of money when you don't have to pay a driver, but is it really enough to make car ownership undesirable?

This seems to be a point that is often missed. In denser cities--where utilization can be relatively high--drivers make maybe $15 per hour. (Maybe a bit higher when actually carrying passengers which is probably the relevant metric.) So it's not clear to me how these hypothetical vehicles are going to so revolutionize the way people get around by cutting costs by maybe $15/hour (ignoring other labor costs associated with cleaning or any incremental cost of the vehicle).

Re: The View from the Front Seat of the Google Self-Driving Car, Chapter 2

#73

Post by NathanKP »

thrownaway2424 wrote: post #68
daviddumenil wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a middle ground here where the car sees it's about to be rear-ended and softens the hold on the brakes just enough to convert some of the impact energy to forward motion. It knows the distance to the car in front and has a good idea of the rear car's speed. The only real variable is the weight of the approaching car but a pessimistic estimate could leave more margin to avoid touching the car in front.

That's the total opposite of what the car should do if it knows it's going to be rear ended. It should lock the brakes and tension the seat belts.

It depends on how fast the incoming car is travelling. If you are about to be rear ended by someone traveling 60 miles an hour (happens sometimes in rural areas where people don't pay attention and are traveling highway speeds on narrow two lane roads), then it would actually be safer to accelerate the car to 30mph and crash into the person in front of you so that it is a 30mph impact to front and 30mph impact to rear rather than a massive 60mph impact to the rear of the car.

Re: The View from the Front Seat of the Google Self-Driving Car, Chapter 2

#74

Post by Animats »

It's interesting to see Google's display of the situation.[1] Some of that has to be guessing by the software. They don't have an aerial view of the situation; that's reconstructed from their LIDAR scanner. That view is subject to occlusion by other vehicles. Their scanner is high enough that they can see over most small cars, but they can't see their far side. They show a map of all the vehicles in the intersection as if they had all that info, but if there's a truck or an SUV blocking their view, they can't see through it.

I'd like to see the video (they have cameras) that goes with the LIDAR reconstruction.

The CMU/Cadillac/Uber self-driving effort doesn't have a LIDAR on a tower, so they don't have as much information. They haven't been reporting accident data, which would be interesting.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WtLp2f-vM14

Re: The View from the Front Seat of the Google Self-Driving Car, Chapter 2

#75

Post by 6d0debc071 »

Touche wrote: post #58
inthewoods wrote: post #20

These cars could be so freeing for so many segments of society. I agree with everyone that reducing the commuting annoyance would be awesome - imagine not having to worry about parking your car in the city anymore. You drive in on a highway at 90mph, get dropped off and then the car goes home or onto another task or gets shared out. Amazing. I'm even more excited about getting the elderly out of their homes safely, a…

That would be incredibly wasteful. Double the cost of gas, double the environmental damage, much worse traffic because cars are going home by themselves with no passenger, then returning to get the passenger later.

Traffic:

I don't know that the traffic would be much worse, because if you assume that a significant number of cars are self driving, then you eliminate many of the problems in terms of traffic flow that come from a human driver: maintaining a constant speed and distance from the car in front, aggressive driving, counter-productive driving habits, tragedy of the commons issues. It is possible to use the roads far more efficiently than we currently are capable of as humans.

There's also the point that it doesn't really matter how bad the traffic on the roads is if the only majority of the things suffering that bad traffic don't have any people in them.

Gas and polution:

If you can tell your car to go somewhere else when you are not in it, then electric cars and out of city parking lots - things like that - become a lot more feasible. You no longer need the infrastructure to be right next to your office to make effective use of it.

Re: The View from the Front Seat of the Google Self-Driving Car, Chapter 2

#76

Post by Touche »

NathanKP wrote: post #70
Touche wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, sure, we can think of a far future where everything is automated but I think this discussion is more about the near future (near being when self-driving cars are for sale). The logistics of parking go far beyond getting into the space. How does it pay the parking meter? How does it know if a parking lot is public or not, how does it pay for that? How does it know not to go into the unsafe neighborhood where whe…

Compared to the logic involved in actually driving down the road safely these are all easy problems to solve. But realistically they are problems that won't be had, because in the near future (and probably in the far future as well) most people aren't going to buy their own personal self driving car because not only are they expensive, but it is pointless to have a personal car when it is way more convenient to offlo…

Sure, I might be overstated the problem of parking, but I still don't see how this is more economical than car ownership. If I have to summon a taxi for everywhere I need to go I need the taxi rates to be a fraction of what they are today.

Re: The View from the Front Seat of the Google Self-Driving Car, Chapter 2

#77

Post by deegles »

inthewoods wrote: post #37
higherpurpose wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Uber sees self-driving cars much more as an opportunity than a threat - unless they are afraid they won't be able to buy self-driving cars from anyone but Google, and Google won't sell to them. But I'm sure there will be quite a few suppliers by the time they need the cars [1]. [1] - https://www.yahoo.com/autos/s/uber-ceo-tesla-sell-half-milli...

Short term I agree with you, but longer term I'm not sure. Short term, they lower costs massively. Longer term, a majority of people have self-driving cars. If I live in the suburbs, I either keep it all to myself, or loan it out when I'm not using it. If I live in the city, then I likely don't own a car - but instead call on a car as I need to. These probably come from both individual lending their car, and from gro…

I could see people buying "priority" access to the self driving car fleet. People who don't mind waiting or don't need to move around during peak hours would just have lower costs.

Re: The View from the Front Seat of the Google Self-Driving Car, Chapter 2

#78

Post by thrownaway2424 »

NathanKP wrote: post #73
thrownaway2424 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the total opposite of what the car should do if it knows it's going to be rear ended. It should lock the brakes and tension the seat belts.

It depends on how fast the incoming car is travelling. If you are about to be rear ended by someone traveling 60 miles an hour (happens sometimes in rural areas where people don't pay attention and are traveling highway speeds on narrow two lane roads), then it would actually be safer to accelerate the car to 30mph and crash into the person in front of you so that it is a 30mph impact to front and 30mph impact to rea…

You're demonstrating perfectly the urgent need for self-driving cars.

Re: The View from the Front Seat of the Google Self-Driving Car, Chapter 2

#79

Post by brixon »

Animats wrote: post #74

It's interesting to see Google's display of the situation.[1] Some of that has to be guessing by the software. They don't have an aerial view of the situation; that's reconstructed from their LIDAR scanner. That view is subject to occlusion by other vehicles. Their scanner is high enough that they can see over most small cars, but they can't see their far side. They show a map of all the vehicles in the intersection…

TED Talk explaining how the car sees: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tiwVMrTLUWg

Re: The View from the Front Seat of the Google Self-Driving Car, Chapter 2

#80

Post by ghaff »

Khao wrote: post #31
ousta wrote: post #30

a quick question. heres the situation I am in a self driving car driving full speed on the highway, a little girl crosses the highway (highly unprobable but still possible) what will my car do? maintain high speed and kill her? or try to avoid her knowing that any attemps to avoid collision at this speed would likely injure me if not kill me? then how the car would react if it is a deer? then how the car will be 100%…

I trust a highly trained algorithm to make better and faster decision than a human driver. The algorithm is even aware of all the cars around it and their speed and can decide to take evasive action with a way better chance of success than I ever could.

Trolley problem philosophical discussions notwithstanding, I still suspect that the default mode (as it is with humans under most circumstances) will be to lay on the brakes and hope for the best.

That said, there are certainly circumstances where swerving is the right decision and a vehicle with 360 degree sensors is potentially in a better position to make an optimal decision than a human making a snap judgement based on mostly what they see in front of them. Probably the closest I ever came to being in a really serious accident happened on a highway when someone slammed on their brakes to avoid rear-ending the car in front, ended up drifting into the next lane where another car had to swerve to avoid them. I ended up swerving into the breakdown lane. Amazingly with cars swerving and braking all over the road at 70 mph, no one collided but it was a very near thing.

I strongly suspect that, however many decades away true self-driving is, good assistive driving and collision avoidance systems especially on highways are going to be a pretty big near-term win.

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