Self driving cars in the present, good idea or bad idea?

[Bill D]

Here you are required to get your own service.
There are four approved services.
None of them have single pass trucks.

What that means is that every Wednesday there are four trash trucks in my alley and on the streets.
Every other Wednesday there are eight.

Why?
Well, according to the free market teahadists, the competition makes it more efficient.

Obviously that’s bull shit, but that’s what they say, loudly and at every chance when the idea of a single contractor is brought up.

And those compactor trucks gets something like 2-3 miles per gallon. So having four times as many trips means they burn lots of extra fuel to help keep your air dirtier and smelling like progress not those nasty clean forest smells.
Bill D.

 

[ewlsey]

I can see self driving cars being practical some day in sprawling cities with well defined routes and relatively moderate climates. Places like LA, Miami, Dallas, Seattle, San Fran, etc.

I'd have a hard time believing a self driving car will ever be practical for those of us who live in the sticks. Where I grew up, a large percentage of roads are still poorly maintained unpaved gravel. There's ton of salt used in the winter.

Most folks here could not afford to buy or maintain a self driving vehicle. Even simple cars are plagued with wiring issues after as little as 5 years from salt corrosion.

I just don't see it being practical at this time.

 

[jscpm]

I have a lot of expertise in the systems used in automated vehicles and I can tell you: don't hold your breath because "driverless cars" are not coming any time soon.

I was on a panel recently at a "thought leader" conference (don't ask) with a lot of political elites in attendance and the question was "name three things the public does not understand or underestimates" and one of my three things was that autonomous vehicles were not feasible with current technology and that statement made me EXTREMELY unpopular at the conference. I could even see one do-nothing asshole from MIT in the audience who was actually shaking his head while I was talking.

Another thing I would point out that most people miss is that there are TWO issues with autonomous vehicles: (1) how viable is it, and (2) what is the benefit or actual use case. Most people don't realize that there is less use for "driverless cars" than they think. It reminds me a lot of the Apple Newton. Back in 1995 everybody (including notably John Sculley) assumed that we needed to have handwriting recognition in computers. It was idiotic. Now you laugh at it, but exactly the same mentality is behind the whole "driverless car" chimera.

 

[TDegenhart]

Actually, I fear that too much automation is going to be bad. It has already been shown that when a machine takes over most but not all of the piloting duties, the human copilot gets bored and distracted. When needed, he/she cannot react fast enough. I favor aids but leave the wheel in the drivers hands and his/her feet on the pedals.

Tom

 

[ewlsey]

We've had auto steer tractors for over 10 years now. You have to turn it around and get it set up, but it drives itself across the feed. Many a farm hand has fallen asleep at the wheel and ended up tilling or plowing the neighbors field.

 

[Gordon B. Clarke]

I'll make this a 100% American question. If you're in a driverless vehicle and get into an accident or crash - who do you sue?

 

[Scottl]

Actually, I fear that too much automation is going to be bad. It has already been shown that when a machine takes over most but not all of the piloting duties, the human copilot gets bored and distracted. When needed, he/she cannot react fast enough. I favor aids but leave the wheel in the drivers hands and his/her feet on the pedals.

Tom

Interestingly enough Elon Musk is now blaming much of the Model 3 production backlog on overuse of robots. He said they proved to be not as versatile as humans.

I also know a bit about the realities of self-driving vehicles but I'm bound by non-disclosure and government rules so I can't say more. I 100% agree that they may be viable at fairly low speeds running around a defined space like a campus or office park but out in "the wild" (the world most of us drive in) they are not capable of processing all the unexpected things that can occur. I've read several articles suggesting that the pedestrian who was run over was not recognized as a pedestrian because she was not in a mapped crosswalk. I also understand that the video shown on TV looked much darker than what a human driver would have seen.

Same way, how do you teach an SDV that "behind a rolling ball comes a running child" or behind a running dog often comes a frantic owner? It only sees blobs and probably couldn't distinguish between a small dog and a ball, and certainly not between a dog and a fox or coyote.

I've also read that the demand for them is coming from about 20% of the population, which I suspect is mostly a mix of those with commercial interests and the most gadget-distracted drivers who would like to relinquish ALL driving duties so they can have more screen time.

 

[Gordon B. Clarke]

I'll make this a 100% English answer. The insurance company.

Why would you SUE the insurance company? Has "sue" taken a new meaning?

 

[TDegenhart]

We've had auto steer tractors for over 10 years now. You have to turn it around and get it set up, but it drives itself across the feed. Many a farm hand has fallen asleep at the wheel and ended up tilling or plowing the neighbors field.

You will agree that this is a good use of auto steer that doesn't translate to interacting with other drivers at high speed. Properly programmed the tractor should have stopped at the end or turned and kept going. No real difference from programming a mill cutter.

Tom

 

[ewlsey]

Yes, driving a tractor across a flat field at low speeds in a prescribed path guided by GPS with a human operator is a whole other game than driving on public roads in all weather conditions.

 

[Gordon B. Clarke]

I've got a robot lawn mower. I never let it run after sunset as the "things" that come out at dusk and night aren't usually as fast as those in daylight.

 

[Scottl]

I've got a robot lawn mower. I never let it run after sunset as the "things" that come out at dusk and night aren't usually as fast as those in daylight.

Might turn a cottontail rabbit into a bobtail rabbit?

 

[CarbideBob]

Interestingly enough Elon Musk is now blaming much of the Model 3 production backlog on overuse of robots. He said they proved to be not as versatile as humans.

......

Same way, how do you teach an SDV that "behind a rolling ball comes a running child" or behind a running dog often comes a frantic owner? It only sees blobs and probably couldn't distinguish between a small dog and a ball, and certainly not between a dog and a fox or coyote.
.....

On point one , Duh, seems Elon is relearning the lessons from GM in the 80's (can you say "Factory of the Future") and lean or TPS dislike of "monuments to automation".
Both of these big clues and given the paycheck he was handing for engineers out at the time you'd think some of this should have been brought up.
Perhaps a blind faith in new tech or a craving to do such which I can side with.

On point two, we are now at or past that level of "smarts" in the control side. Even your second problem is doable now.
It's not just "blob analysis" anymore. (scary thought, what if the car "knows" it's you and you are the pedestrian target).
Do not confuse such systems with a off the shelf Cognex industrial vision system.
One of my demos in machine vision class 35 years back was to ask all the students to leave the room and come back and sit in a new seat. The system had a 90+ percent correct rate of identifying where you had sat last.
Massive boards in this system and the IBM PC was a new tinker toy POS. We have come a long ways since then.

The real problem becomes building and keeping bug free systems with over a 100 million lines of code.
Unheard of and unimaginable in the past levels of software.
All divided into sub-systems which must communicate with each other at high speed and nobody gets to make a mistake.
Makes flying a missile from 800 miles away with no GPS or external guidance though your front door in a war zone a cake walk.

I don't know why people think this whole SDV thing won't work or be bought into by the young generation whom accept tech so easily.
It has been most of my lifetime coming and I welcome it knowing darn well the confusing complexity.
The kid's they don't know any of it behind the scenes and will buy in faster than I would. See this everyday and the market is them.

Having played with it few decades back my view is a bit biased.

Good/bad may be a age thing.
For me SDV great for get there and sit back, many other cars for a thrill to drive and not sure I want to give that up total control of everything yet.

I think it is coming soon, at lower costs than most think, and will be the accented norm.
More to the real world of the forum, old enough to remember when everyone thought a NC/CNC machine tool not going to be a something big and could not work or compete against a "real" manual machinist.
How did that work out? Own a CNC?
Bob

 

[CarbideBob]

I'll make this a 100% American question. If you're in a driverless vehicle and get into an accident or crash - who do you sue?

Is this a real question or a misunderstanding of how the system works here?
Can I back step a bit in time and tell you what happens if the old style cruise control jams.??
It pretty much falls on the maker of the vehicle and you can become a multi-millionaire overnight.
All you have to do is give up your most loved one forever.
Bob

 

[PDW]

Is this a real question or a misunderstanding of how the system works here?
Can I back step a bit in time and tell you what happens if the old style cruise control jams.??
It pretty much falls on the maker of the vehicle and you can become a multi-millionaire overnight.
All you have to do is give up your most loved one forever.
Bob

I reckon Gordon could buy himself a new mirror with any settlement, so it'd be all good.

PDW

 

[Gordon B. Clarke]

Is this a real question or a misunderstanding of how the system works here?
Can I back step a bit in time and tell you what happens if the old style cruise control jams.??
It pretty much falls on the maker of the vehicle and you can become a multi-millionaire overnight.
All you have to do is give up your most loved one forever.
Bob

It was a question in response to post ¤167