Nissan pledges commercially viable autonomous drive by 2020. • Hacker News Board

Re: Nissan pledges commercially viable autonomous drive by 2020.

#71

Post by dylangs1030 » Tue, Aug 27, 2013, 7:42 PM UTC

ebbv wrote: post #57

Amadou wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the interaction between terrible human drivers doing wildly unpredictable, insane things and the inflexible, unadaptable automated cars. There are only so many things bad human drivers can do, the physics is pretty limiting. It isn't like they can teleport in front of another car. Even the craziest things like opposing traffic jumping the median into oncoming traffic isn't all that crazy, it isn't conceptually differ…

> There are only so many things bad human drivers can do, the physics is pretty limiting. It isn't like they can teleport in front of another car. Even the craziest things like opposing traffic jumping the median into oncoming traffic isn't all that crazy, it isn't conceptually different from a deer jumping in front of a car. I was thinking about your assertion that it's easy to solve, and why exactly I disagree with…

The AI in games like Gran Turismo is a terrible example. That AI is not designed to avoid accidents. Accidents are an acceptable part of the game play, and you're racing at high speeds above the norm.

It would be at least as difficult, or less so (but not more so) to program AI to interact with human drivers with the primary goal being safety, not speed and exhilaration.

Re: Nissan pledges commercially viable autonomous drive by 2020.

#72

Post by tlb » Tue, Aug 27, 2013, 7:43 PM UTC

sp332 wrote: post #52

ebbv wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think you read what I wrote. I said people are terrible drivers. I think likely a fleet of all automated cars will be safer than a fleet of human drivers. The problem comes in the interaction between automated drivers and human drivers. Among other things.

I still don't get it. Maybe a computer could react to an erratic human driver faster. But more importantly, it can react more consistently than a human driver who gets tired or distracted (or confused by other humans' behavior). Edit: To put it another way, a computer that avoids common-case crash scenarios most of the time outweighs humans avoiding edge-case scenarios sometimes.

By watching faces or body language, human drivers can sometimes predict sudden moves before they happen. Example: children playing on the sidewalk and suddenly running into the road.

Still, I believe autonomous cars can be made better than human drivers.

Re: Nissan pledges commercially viable autonomous drive by 2020.

#73

Post by stephenhuey » Tue, Aug 27, 2013, 7:59 PM UTC

dylangs1030 wrote: post #63

ebbv wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am sure that the automated drivers will react faster, but the problem is that they can only react to events they have been programmed to react to and only in the ways they have been programmed to react. There's no ensuring either of: a) It will react to everything that it needs to react to / not react to things that it shouldn't. b) It will react in the proper way when it does react. This is the problem. Like I sai…

The problem with your thinking is that you assume the engineer's behind this can't program a response to every conceivable condition. I'd argue they can. If you have a 3-dimensional model, with a finite number of axes to move upon, any movement towards the vehicle from another vehicle, no matter what it is, can be enumerated and mathematically modeled. Once that has been done, it is a matter of programming the autono…

Exactly, and and if the total number of crashes decreases by one or two orders of magnitude, then the outlier incidents that the automated cars couldn't correctly respond to might be a tiny number, so low that it pales in comparison to the number of mistakes made by human drivers.

Re: Nissan pledges commercially viable autonomous drive by 2020.

#74

Post by GFischer » Tue, Aug 27, 2013, 8:17 PM UTC

jjcm wrote: post #14

ebbv wrote: post #7

No thank you. I am very dubious about other people's driving skills, I tend to assume everyone else on the road is out to kill me and will do the dumbest thing possible at any given moment. But even so, I am also an experienced software developer, and I know that software is only as good as the author(s). Bugs happen. It's inevitable. And I don't want to die or be injured because of software errors. I'd rather it be…

I politely disagree. Having driven next to self-driving cars for the past few years in the bay area, in my opinion they are far more competent than most drivers. They don't stop tracking the road to put on makeup or check their phone. They don't get distracted by the kids in the back seat. They have their sensors on the road constantly, and not just in front of them. They don't have blind spots. Will bugs happen even…

Self driving cars sound like a slam dunk for the U.S. driving conditions (Bay Area, etc..). I'd buy one in a heartbeat there.

But what about Latin or Asian messes of countries? Say Rome, Buenos Aires, Lima, Hanoi or Bangkok? Lots of motorcycle and bycicle and human traffic (and in the case of my native Montevideo, horse-drawn carriages!).

Driving in some of those countries is more psychology and playing chicken than anything else (and yes, accident rates are apalling)

Re: Nissan pledges commercially viable autonomous drive by 2020.

#75

Post by comrade_ogilvy » Tue, Aug 27, 2013, 8:42 PM UTC

ebbv wrote: post #13

daeken wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you seen car accident stats? I'll concede that bugs do occur, but it would take some serious failure to make it any worse than the average driver. Even decent or good drivers are not that great, especially when you factor in distraction, tiredness, poor judgement of road conditions, etc.

If you were to replace every human driven car on the road with only autonomous cars, I will agree with you that the accident rate would likely be much lower over all. But there's two problems here: 1) We won't be replacing all the cars overnight. The problem comes with the interaction between terrible human drivers doing wildly unpredictable, insane things and the inflexible, unadaptable automated cars. And 2) I'm no…

My experience as a human driver is that most accidents can be avoided by either (A) slowing down in ambiguous situations, or (B) aborting that lane change (usually because two cars are attempting to go into the same space).

Those behaviors are easily improved upon by software. Dealing with lane changes is something software is likely to be vastly better at, because they can point sensors in all directions -- I only have one set of eyes.

Furthermore, a lot of horrific accidents are because of bizarre unexpected things that the human does not react to in a timely fashion precisely they are so far out of the normal scope of traffic flow.

For example, what if a car coming the other direction drifts in front of you on a rainy night? This is an unfortunately common and very lethal kind of accident in rural areas. It will take you 1 to 3 seconds to interpret the scenarios and react appropriately. (You only get 3-4 seconds before your are killed.) A computer can instantly recognize that car 100 yards away is maneuvering in a potentially lethal manner and begin slowing down right now. That buys more time for everyone.

Re: Nissan pledges commercially viable autonomous drive by 2020.

#76

Post by hardtke » Tue, Aug 27, 2013, 8:56 PM UTC

jerf wrote: post #58

hardtke wrote: post #50

I don't see any feasible way to transition to high speed linked autonomous cars. Unfortunately, there are a lot of people who need to get to work via car, and these people will not be able to afford a new car. Transitioning from a driver based to a driverless technology would take a government intervention in the economy that is unacceptable to most Americans. If we utilize the same road system, there would need to b…

Nonsense. You start with driverless cars that can use existing infrastructure with everybody else, then as the density of driverless cars goes up over time, you take advantage of the other economies that emerge. At some point, probably decades later, eventually society will simply ban driverless cars, but you don't have to start there. There's no need for a "big bang" event. By the time that happens, the "poor" won't…

By simply adding autonomous cars to the current infrastructure, it doesn't improve peoples lives in a directly obvious way. They can't go any faster, and traffic does not get reduced. Yes, there is the imperceptible benefit of a slight reduction in the probability of death, but a recent New Yorker article pointed out that antisepsis was slow to be adopted because the benefits were not as easily measurable -- in contrast, anesthesia, invented at the same time, was adopted worldwide almost instantly. I personally would only buy a driverless car if it meant I could immediately get where I am going twice as fast. Otherwise, I rather enjoy driving.

Re: Nissan pledges commercially viable autonomous drive by 2020.

#77

Post by stevewilhelm » Tue, Aug 27, 2013, 9:01 PM UTC

jerf wrote: post #51

stevewilhelm wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People fail to realize that the California bullet-train project is primarily an economic stimulus exercise.

No sale. Economic stimulus is completely nonfunctional when the lead time is in the "many years". The term "shovel-ready" was thrown around a couple of years ago for a reason. Of course, I suppose you could just hope that you start planning for the project in this downturn, but it'll only start in the next one....

Work in the Central Valley, the part of California that was hit the hardest by the recent economic downturn, is expected to start this year.

[1] http://www.hsr.ca.gov/Programs/Statewide_Rail_Modernization/...

Re: Nissan pledges commercially viable autonomous drive by 2020.

#78

Post by jerf » Tue, Aug 27, 2013, 9:08 PM UTC

hardtke wrote: post #76

jerf wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nonsense. You start with driverless cars that can use existing infrastructure with everybody else, then as the density of driverless cars goes up over time, you take advantage of the other economies that emerge. At some point, probably decades later, eventually society will simply ban driverless cars, but you don't have to start there. There's no need for a "big bang" event. By the time that happens, the "poor" won't…

By simply adding autonomous cars to the current infrastructure, it doesn't improve peoples lives in a directly obvious way. They can't go any faster, and traffic does not get reduced. Yes, there is the imperceptible benefit of a slight reduction in the probability of death, but a recent New Yorker article pointed out that antisepsis was slow to be adopted because the benefits were not as easily measurable -- in contr…

It benefits the person owning the driverless car, who can now do something other than drive while still moving from A to B. You seem to be insisting on thinking collectively, but that's not how people decide or act. It only has to benefit the owner for it to sell.

The rich will be the last to let their human driven cars go, but they'll also obviously be the first to adopt them, once they're safe. In this case, the rich other than the ultra rich, who can already afford cars-they-don't-drive... giving further evidence that, yeah, people want this.

Your argument would, for instance, seem to explain why cars never took off... why, one car hardly benefits anyone. There aren't even any car suitable roads, after all, and think of all the horses the smelly, loud thing will spook! But... that's not how people buy things.

The collective benefits come later. The individual benefits come first.

Re: Nissan pledges commercially viable autonomous drive by 2020.

#79

Post by JoeAltmaier » Tue, Aug 27, 2013, 9:08 PM UTC

comrade_ogilvy wrote: post #75

ebbv wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you were to replace every human driven car on the road with only autonomous cars, I will agree with you that the accident rate would likely be much lower over all. But there's two problems here: 1) We won't be replacing all the cars overnight. The problem comes with the interaction between terrible human drivers doing wildly unpredictable, insane things and the inflexible, unadaptable automated cars. And 2) I'm no…

My experience as a human driver is that most accidents can be avoided by either (A) slowing down in ambiguous situations, or (B) aborting that lane change (usually because two cars are attempting to go into the same space). Those behaviors are easily improved upon by software. Dealing with lane changes is something software is likely to be vastly better at, because they can point sensors in all directions -- I only h…

Strangely, this might kill autonomous cars entirely. Any failure to properly respond to something bizarre can be the subject of a lawsuit that could kill the autopilot manufacturer.

Engineering solutions are a tiny part of getting this stuff to market.

Re: Nissan pledges commercially viable autonomous drive by 2020.

#80

Post by hobs » Tue, Aug 27, 2013, 11:52 PM UTC

001sky wrote: post #49

hobs wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Automation will certainly help with congestion by optimizing who is doing what when. I am not a network engineer, but I cant imagine that people are driving the most efficiently to even attempt to maximize throughput.

Automation will certainly help with congestion by optimizing... == No. You can't 'optimize' traffic away. LA is a case study.

I might have to look into this a bit more, and I would agree that adding more cars to the point of the system literally being unable to handle them cannot be optimized.

However, its clear to me that individual actors in the traffic system do not behave in a way that is beneficial to considerations above and beyond their own. I do believe that this would cause some decrease in overall traffic if it was "fixed" by an automated program. (If your car can drive 200 mph and not make a mistake, doesn't that imply that you can have more traffic throughput on the road?)

Either way, I am interested if you have specific examples besides the meme of traffic being terrible in LA. I assume they have done massive studies on the problem considering how problematic it is known to be.