Autonomous Systems

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Would you ever own an autonomous vehicle?

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Cad

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scientia potentia est
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mkopec said:
I know, its still fun to discuss, because you know we will get there eventually.

Also in a busy city, there wont be that much time to react and break, even for a computer. Imagine going like 45mph down some city road and a bike just happens to appear right in front of you but you nor the car could see it because a truck or van was obstructing the view/radar.

Or kids playing in a neighborhood street and one just happens to run out chasing a ball or something, but again, could not see it detect it because of cars parked on the street.
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Well, for one thing, autonomous vehicles won't speed. And it'd probably want to slow down when visibility is limited like that, where a human driver might be like "fuck those idiots if they walk out."

You're describing a situation where people do something dumb that no amount of intervention could prevent, whether the driver is human or computer. Whats the point?
 
Tuco

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mkopec said:
What about the hard choices autonomy will have to face from time to time, for example lets say there is a pedestrian on the road, but when the car swerves to avoid said pedestrian, there is a chance to hit another two pedestrians that are in the way of him swerving. Third option is swerving to miss both but killing the person/people in the car.
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They should do what human drivers are told to do. Slam on the brakes.

There's a few reasons for this:
1. Programming a planning system to successfully navigate high slip manoeuvres is bad for a variety of reasons.
2. Generally, slamming on the brakes is the best outcome for many of these scenarios. Not all of course. I can think of several times where I've avoided collisions by swerving, I'm sure you have too.
3. Slamming on the brakes is a very defensible decision from a litigation perspective.
 
khorum

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Arent the google cars communicating with each other to signal road conditions beyond their range and stuff already?
 
Tuco

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khorum said:
Arent the google cars communicating with each other to signal road conditions beyond their range and stuff already?
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A bunch of people are doing vehicle-to-vehicle (v2v) and vehicle to infrastructure (v2i) stuff, but it's not widespread enough to create the kind of hive mind we're hoping for. It will be eventually.

It already exists with a driver-in-the-loop system for me in that very frequently I'll get navigation directions between my work and residence. There are three different routes I can take dependning o ntraffic situations and I waste 10+ minutes if I choose wrong.
 
Borzak

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No speeding? Screw that. If you get the right drivers they can do 3 to a rig and deliver pretty damn quick and never stop but for gas. I'm pretty sure they speed like hell for the right amount of money.
 
Tuco

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Borzak said:
No speeding? Screw that. If you get the right drivers they can do 3 to a rig and deliver pretty damn quick and never stop but for gas. I'm pretty sure they speed like hell for the right amount of money.
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I think this will be a pretty big consideration for a lot of people. I know when I went to school I had to drive through the city. Because of how poorly timed the lights were, if I went the speed limit it took me 35-40 minutes to get to school. If I sped some 10-15mph over and got lucky with the lights, I got there in 25. It'd be a tough sell if you told me I had a steady 40m commute with autonomy, and without it'd be 30mph on average.
 
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Tuco said:
I think this will be a pretty big consideration for a lot of people. I know when I went to school I had to drive through the city. Because of how poorly timed the lights were, if I went the speed limit it took me 35-40 minutes to get to school. If I sped some 10-15mph over and got lucky with the lights, I got there in 25. It'd be a tough sell if you told me I had a steady 40m commute with autonomy, and without it'd be 30mph on average.
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What if there were no lights because the autonomous vehicles have clear sight lines and seamlessly shoot the gaps in the traffic?
 
Borzak

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Well for individuals I don't know, but a couple years ago the option for us was to overpay 3 drivers to drive from MI to Louisiana, or hire a plane to do it for 300k. Pretty sure those guys were speeding.

When I came down sick I was driving to work to be there at 7 and left at 5:30 am. Boss said just come in at 8 or 9 to make it easier. Shit it took a half hour longer because you get behind all the people just dicking around and not going to work in a hurry and were driving the speed limit. Wasn't even school zones because it was 100% interstate.

I'm sure like most areas if you are on the interstate at a busy time of day you better be going 10 mph over or you'll get run over.
 
khorum

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Not on local streets though. They'd need like special bladed rims like those old Roman chariots to mow down hipsters on their fixie bikes too.
 
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kaid

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Tuco said:
They should do what human drivers are told to do. Slam on the brakes.

There's a few reasons for this:
1. Programming a planning system to successfully navigate high slip manoeuvres is bad for a variety of reasons.
2. Generally, slamming on the brakes is the best outcome for many of these scenarios. Not all of course. I can think of several times where I've avoided collisions by swerving, I'm sure you have too.
3. Slamming on the brakes is a very defensible decision from a litigation perspective.
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Yes and combined with automated cars should be more likely to be following the speed limits and paying more constant attention to all of its surroundings it should both see the need to break sooner and be better positioned to do so safely. Then if you get the next level where cars start talking to each other one car having a problem could automatically make the ones coming behind start braking nearly instantly to give as fast a reaction time as physically possible.
 
kaid

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Kiroy said:
This is an easy fix until tech can solve. Driverless truck parks at designated spot at facility and a dude equivalent to a maratime pilot hops in and drives to end point.
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I would imagine pretty quickly trucking companies depots figure out a way to setup a "traffic control" grid for their yards to direct automated trucks to their bay's for unloading/loading.
 
mkopec

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Well one can safely assume future warehouses and such will be designed with automation in mind. I can even foresee the actual warehouse getting control of the truck when it gets there and using their more sophisticated guiding system, it docks the truck where then the robot army of forklifts goes to town. Kind of like the huge cargo ships have special captains that actually guide them and park them in port.
 
Borzak

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Yeah for a full yard, but a lot of stuff travels from point A to point B that didn't originate at a trucking company.

Anyway, they'll get autonomous figured out given time. But I'm not a fan of not having an option to manually drive the car. Since this thread popped up I keep thinking of lots of stuff that a computer is not going to get effectively. I have 50 people over once a year for a crawfish boil. I tell them where to park to avoid the soft ground and other stuff, that happens everyday for people not living in large metro areas. They know have trucks that will automatically back down a boat, it's a terrible seller tho.

Just like here launching a boat is often done off a levee into the river, no launch or no road. What do you do then?
 
mkopec

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Borzak said:
Yeah for a full yard, but a lot of stuff travels from point A to point B that didn't originate at a trucking company.

Anyway, they'll get autonomous figured out given time. But I'm not a fan of not having an option to manually drive the car. Since this thread popped up I keep thinking of lots of stuff that a computer is not going to get effectively. I have 50 people over once a year for a crawfish boil. I tell them where to park to avoid the soft ground and other stuff, that happens everyday for people not living in large metro areas. They know have trucks that will automatically back down a boat, it's a terrible seller tho.

Just like here launching a boat is often done off a levee into the river, no launch or no road. What do you do then?
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Tuco

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Cad said:
What if there were no lights because the autonomous vehicles have clear sight lines and seamlessly shoot the gaps in the traffic?
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When my grandkids try that out I'll have them tell your grandkids how it is.
 
Pancreas

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Tuco said:
I think this will be a pretty big consideration for a lot of people. I know when I went to school I had to drive through the city. Because of how poorly timed the lights were, if I went the speed limit it took me 35-40 minutes to get to school. If I sped some 10-15mph over and got lucky with the lights, I got there in 25. It'd be a tough sell if you told me I had a steady 40m commute with autonomy, and without it'd be 30mph on average.
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The reason for posted speed limits is because of human reaction times coupled with the design tolerances of most vehicles in mind. If everyone was some jacked out crazy trick driver that can thread a needle and spin 180 degrees into a parallel slot with 1/2 an inch to spare, and were driving suped up rigs with all the toys and a suspension that would leave you in disbelief... then yeah we could probably up the speed limits a little as put-putting around town at 25mph would be waaay below everyone's performance threshold.

Move onto later generation autonomous vehicle environments where there are no human drivers allowed and speed limits will probably not exist and instead an ever fluctuating maximum for all cars in a given area will be transmitted by the central navigation hub based on current weather and traffic conditions. You might be able to look up what the current allowable speed is in a certain district, but most of the time it will come down to ETAs. What's the fastest route to your destination, not how fast can you drive.

If autonomous vehicles take over, higher average speeds seem almost inevitable as the patterns will get "smarter" provided nothing screwy is introduced. Throw a pelican in the middle of the freeway during rush hour though and the whole thing might grind to a halt.
 
Ukerric

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Tuco said:
Autonomous vehicle racing would be a lot of fun though. You could cut loose on a lot of the safety features and open up the design restrictions.
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Isn't that what Formula E wants to do?
 
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