Germany plans highway test track for self-driving cars
1–10 of 38 posts
Re: Germany plans highway test track for self-driving cars
#2A test highway? I thought the highway was the solved problem. Google's car handles the highways so well that they don't even bother testing it on the highways anymore.
Re: Germany plans highway test track for self-driving cars
#3A test highway ? I thought the highway was the solved problem. Google's car handles the highways so well that they don't even bother testing it on the highways anymore.
A highway is not a German Autobahn.
Re: Germany plans highway test track for self-driving cars
#4A test highway ? I thought the highway was the solved problem. Google's car handles the highways so well that they don't even bother testing it on the highways anymore.
A highway is not a German Autobahn.
In my experience there is no significant difference between an Autobahn and a North American highway regarding the difficulty of navigation. The tricky parts are the ramps, exits, construction zones and merging, and they occur roughly with the same frequency.
I think the test track is more about testing technology which will be installed at the roadside.
Re: Germany plans highway test track for self-driving cars
#5A test highway ? I thought the highway was the solved problem. Google's car handles the highways so well that they don't even bother testing it on the highways anymore.
Still, if the highway were only autonomous networked vehicles, you could do some other cool things, like allow faster speeds and more throughput because the cars could be spaced closer together.
Re: Germany plans highway test track for self-driving cars
#6Earlier quoted context omitted.
A highway is not a German Autobahn.
In my experience there is no significant difference between an Autobahn and a North American highway regarding the difficulty of navigation. The tricky parts are the ramps, exits, construction zones and merging, and they occur roughly with the same frequency. I think the test track is more about testing technology which will be installed at the roadside.
There is though: there is no speed limit on German Autobahns
Re: Germany plans highway test track for self-driving cars
#7Earlier quoted context omitted.
In my experience there is no significant difference between an Autobahn and a North American highway regarding the difficulty of navigation. The tricky parts are the ramps, exits, construction zones and merging, and they occur roughly with the same frequency. I think the test track is more about testing technology which will be installed at the roadside.
There is though: there is no speed limit on German Autobahns
This doesn't matter at all to Google's cars. They are designed to ignore the speedlimit in favour of the real speed of traffic around it[1], as it has been proven to be far safer than slowing down. It's currently caped at 16km/h over but this is an arbitrary limit.
Re: Germany plans highway test track for self-driving cars
#8A test highway ? I thought the highway was the solved problem. Google's car handles the highways so well that they don't even bother testing it on the highways anymore.
Still, if the highway were only autonomous networked vehicles, you could do some other cool things, like allow faster speeds and more throughput because the cars could be spaced closer together.
I suspect they will rather limit the speed for autonomous vehicles since there's no limit, but above 130 km/h you will be partly guilty for accidents even if it wasn't your fault. (So it's a legal issue.)
The A9 is a very interesting choice because it links Munich to Berlin and probably has a lot of business travellers. If they could work while driving, it could be a big selling point.
Re: Germany plans highway test track for self-driving cars
#9A test highway ? I thought the highway was the solved problem. Google's car handles the highways so well that they don't even bother testing it on the highways anymore.
Still, if the highway were only autonomous networked vehicles, you could do some other cool things, like allow faster speeds and more throughput because the cars could be spaced closer together.
You still need to account for the possibility of hardware (and software!) failures - so there's not as much slack there as one might think. But yes, good point regarding throughput.
As for speed, not so sure. You end up with (more) problems with traffic noise, and you end up with a lot more fuel consumption. The question at the end of the day with speed is political in nature though.
Re: Germany plans highway test track for self-driving cars
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
In my experience there is no significant difference between an Autobahn and a North American highway regarding the difficulty of navigation. The tricky parts are the ramps, exits, construction zones and merging, and they occur roughly with the same frequency. I think the test track is more about testing technology which will be installed at the roadside.
There is though: there is no speed limit on German Autobahns
The only hard part about that is avoiding cars coming at high speeds from behind. (Though usually these people will be used to slowing down and they actually have to slow down if the car in front of them is legitimately overtaking another one The main responsibility to keep everyone save lies with the fast driving car on the left lane and with cars changing lanes to insure that they are not blocking someone else. Since autonomous cars have no blind spot and should be quite good at estimating distance and speed, presumably better than humans, that should really not be an issue.)
It's not as though you have to drive fast. Most people actually don't drive super fast, they stick to 130 to 160 km/h. You will only occasionally encounter someone going way beyond that. Just because there's no limit doesn't mean people drive at speeds they are uncomfortable with … extended periods at 160 or beyond make me queasy and I tend to stick to 140 or so. That also gets better mileage.