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Google Cars Drive Themselves, in Traffic

nytimes.com

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Re: Google Cars Drive Themselves, in Traffic

#61

Post by jackowayed »

In Google's blog post, they said that they think automated cars will "significantly reduce car usage". I have no idea what they're basing that claim on.

Automated cars eliminate many of the costs of driving--lost time, frustration, etc. When you decrease the cost of an activity, people are going to do it more, not less.

In fact, if you ask people that can afford cars but commute by train why they do it, many will say that it's because they can work on the train and not have to deal with driving in traffic. Those people would definitely consider switching from the train to automated cars.

Re: Google Cars Drive Themselves, in Traffic

#62

Post by bruceboughton »

K3G wrote: post #43

It will take a decrease in sensor costs for this to become commercially viable. The "device" on top of the car is a Velodyne LIDAR system, which if I recall correctly, costs around $75k. Using a sensor that costs more than the vehicle it controls makes selling this difficult, to say the least.

You could say this about any new technology. Mass demand will solve this problem.

Re: Google Cars Drive Themselves, in Traffic

#63

Post by andreyf »

Groxx wrote: post #18
dandelany wrote: post #13

Very cool, but I sometimes worry that the illusion of safety is more dangerous than the original danger itself. In Boulder, where I live, several crosswalks were identified as being particularly dangerous for pedestrians, and pedestrian crossing signs with big flashing lights were installed at these locations over the past 5 years. This spring, a report was released[1] that showed accidents at many of these crosswalk…

> they cannot be perfect Two things: 1) neither are people; far from it. (you already knew this though, so...) 2) I wholly agree... as long as other people are driving . Get rid of people's irrationality / drunken behavior on the road, and automated car driving becomes a much easier problem. A computer can take more into account than a human, and decide faster. The transition is almost guaranteed to occur at some poi…

2) I wholly agree... as long as other people are driving. Get rid of people's irrationality / drunken behavior on the road, and automated car driving becomes a much easier problem. A computer can take more into account than a human, and decide faster.

Even if you have near perfect data about where the other cars are there's always uncertainty about other objects on the road: tree branches, deer, a child running after her puppy. I'd speculate that it's better to rely on a vision system that can recognize those as well as cars well enough to be safe instead of treating different classes of objects differently.

Re: Google Cars Drive Themselves, in Traffic

#65

Post by andreyf »

reader5000 wrote: post #20
dandelany wrote: post #13

Very cool, but I sometimes worry that the illusion of safety is more dangerous than the original danger itself. In Boulder, where I live, several crosswalks were identified as being particularly dangerous for pedestrians, and pedestrian crossing signs with big flashing lights were installed at these locations over the past 5 years. This spring, a report was released[1] that showed accidents at many of these crosswalk…

If the computer driver is correct 99% of the time and the human driver 98%, then it is a vast improvement. I imagine that ultimately this technology would result in almost 0 human input other than e.g. typing in a destination.

typing in a destination

You mean speaking, right? ;)

Re: Google Cars Drive Themselves, in Traffic

#68

Post by blakeweb »

If you're interested in more, Brad Templeton has been singing the praises of a future with robot cars, and how to get there, for many years, both in all the futurism un-conferences I've visited in the bay area, and on his very thorough website:

http://www.templetons.com/brad/robocars/

Re: Google Cars Drive Themselves, in Traffic

#69

Post by jfager »

mjfern wrote: post #25

The key question is why would Google produce this technology and enter the autonomous driving market? I think one of the key issues for Google, from a corporate strategy standpoint, is "freeing up people's time." Driving is one of last places where we spend significant time awake without being able to use the Internet and hence any of Google's services (except if you use a smartphone, which is now illegal in some sta…

Google currently hires people to drive their streetview cars. They could save a significant amount by automating that collection process. Beyond not having to pay drivers, you also don't have to have vehicles designed to keep their occupants safe, which could be significantly cheaper to produce, operate, and maintain.

And even though it's not a core part of their business today, the first company that can offer a viable automated trucking platform is going to be strongly positioned in a multi-trillion dollar industry.

People criticize Google for being "just an ad company". Branching out with tech like this would put an end to that pretty quickly, wouldn't it?

Re: Google Cars Drive Themselves, in Traffic

#70

Post by jfager »

jackowayed wrote: post #61

In Google's blog post, they said that they think automated cars will "significantly reduce car usage". I have no idea what they're basing that claim on. Automated cars eliminate many of the costs of driving--lost time, frustration, etc. When you decrease the cost of an activity, people are going to do it more , not less. In fact, if you ask people that can afford cars but commute by train why they do it, many will sa…

Because an automated system would be less prone to congestion, and the average time for travel would go way down. You'd have to do the math to find the break-even point, but I'd imagine that you could add many more cars into an optimally flowing traffic system and still end up with less total running time.
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