Imagine you're in a crowded parking lot and don't feel like circling for what seems like hours to find a spot. Now, what if you could tell your car to find its own spot and, even better, command it to pick you up again when you're ready to leave?
That's the promise of Nissan's NSC-2015.
One of the objectives in the design of the car is to "reduce time loss, such as that spent on looking for parking," said Toru Futami, expert leader for Nissan's IT & ITS development department, in a press release.
Nissan's NSC-2015, on display at the CEATEC 2012 conference in Japan, can find its own parking spot and return to pick you up after being summoned via mobile app. The car uses sensors and a camera to keep track of its location, and gives an owner a 360-degree camera view via an LTE connection of the area around the car, allowing him or her to remotely trigger the car's alarm in case of suspicious activity. Nissan will begin selling the car in 2015.
(Source: Nissan)
To that end, after the NSC-2015 uses sensors and a map to gain an awareness of its own location, finds itself a spot, and safely parks in it, its owner can use a smartphone to access an automated valet parking app to summon the car for pick-up when it's time to go.
The car also has an integrated LTE connection that allows its owner to keep track of its status and location via a smartphone. This type of monitoring can come in handy in case someone tries to break into the car, as the camera provides a 360-degree view of what's happening directly outside of it, according to Nissan. In case of a possible intrusion or attempted theft, the NSC-2015's owner can set off the car's alarm remotely.
Nissan isn't the only automaker -- or company, for that matter -- to explore the design of robotic, self-driving cars, which many believe is the future of driving. Car manufacturer and rival Honda debuted its self-driving car in 2009, which helps a human driver do the job.
More famously, a couple of years ago Google demonstrated a self-driving Toyota Prius that, powered by Google software and hardware, could anticipate oncoming traffic, stop signs, or pedestrians in a crosswalk. Rather than go completely driverless, Google's self-driving car, like Honda's, supplements the work of an actual person behind the wheel.
As romantic as a car that drives itself sounds, it will probably be some time before these robotic autos hit the road across the US, as most states still have laws that require someone to actually drive a vehicle for it to be roadworthy.
However, in California, Google's self-driving cars have legally logged hundreds of thousands of miles.
Nissan expects to have its self-parking car on the market by 2015.
Thanks for sharing that story, Bob. It shows the other side of the coin--not only can the car find a spot for you, but it also can help you find IT (or it finds YOU) if you've forgotten where you've parked. I am among those type of absentminded people who sometimes actually forgets this trivial detail as well. :) If the programming is right and the car is intelligent enough, I, too, can see its usefulness in limited situations, as long as all types of safety precautions are taken and the car only uses appropriate spots. I am not sure I am comfortable with the idea of driverless cars going all over the roads, but in limited and specific use cases, I am all for it.
During my junior and senior years at the university I was a commuting student and lived off-campus. My wife and I had a small apartment about 10 miles from the parking lot that serviced most of the engineering buildings. (I'll just bet you know what's coming next.) There were those mornings, when leaving late, I just managed to slide into the last parking space, jump out of the car, and literally run to class. I never looked back to notice where I had parked. That bit of trivia could wait. Four hours later, it was walk and search. I really could have used Nissan's robocar back then. I drove a third-hand Ford Falcon, grey in color. In other words--a generic car very suitable for my commute but somewhat nondescript. From that experience, I can definitely see some benefit from a vehicle such as this but wonder if their time is near or far. Let's hope the safety aspects are well thought and remain operational during the life of the car.
Parallel parking skills are already beginning to fall by the wayside, William K. None of the four young (20-28 years old) drivers in my family can parallel-park a car.
The frequent fault associated with automating things is that many people forget how to do them, or just get way out of practice. That could lead to disater when they forget how to drive, since the most likely time that a human would need to take over would be for some exception that the system was unable to deal with. That would be a real problem.
Another portion of this blog has been discussing the start-stop button for cars. One button for both start and stop has got to be one of the very stupidest things ever released to the public. No apology offered, it is just stupid to have one control with two opposite functions. Even more, to have that control just sending a request to a computer is very poor judgement indeed. If you examine the industrial controls industry you will see that for many years the emergency stop function has been in hardware, bypassing the computer (PLC). That was not just a "suggested practice", it was a non-negotiable rule, both by PLC makers and by the industry management people, the safety people, and even the unions. They all had a mandate that the emergency stop function not only be a single function button, but also that it be independant of any computer type of controls.
If the controls in your robotic car fail, you certainly don't want to be in the situation where your only option is to say "please stop". Computers often don't hear very well.
These are all good concerns, William, and I imagine the car makers will address them in the underlying programming to make sure they don't cause problems. I imagine it wouldn't be hard to teach the car to recognize a handicapped sign or a bus stop through artificial intelligence, programming it to identify certain signs or the shape of a bus stop, for instance. I think rather than helping people who shouldn't be driving to drive, this car is actually meant to just make it a little less painless for the average and fully capable driver to get around.
So how will this wonderful driverless car understand to not park in a handycapped spot or a buss stop or fire lane? And if it is tom be so safe, it will be functionless and always som very slow, since it can't access risk, and it is moving based upon rules created by lawyers. And what will it do if there are NO parking spots? Would I come back four hours later and find a car out of fuel, or worse, with a dead drive batery?
At some time we must decide that the most poorly equipped 10% simply DON"T DRIVE, rather than give them a robot to help them cause accidents. Because computers can't actually think, they must follow sets of rules, and that precludes handling exceptions.
So instead of wasting time pushing in tht direction, research should pursue matter tramsort, instead. Another item from the future, but with vastly greater utility.
This is a bit off subject-- But, since I have a large group of car folks on line ... what is going on with head rests (a mandated feature?) one can no longer adjust the headrest front to back, and what is the wire that seems to be tied into the airbag system?
Chuck_IAG, What is this obsession with Microsoft and the Start button? There are countless products that use the same button/switch to start &* stop the device, yes? Lights, car key, TV, etc. There are lots of things to bash Gates about - but that one is not valid.
Suppose the parkbot will know how to discern the parking rules: street cleaning hours, local parking decal only, fire hydrant, etc?
Refer to Baxter, by Rethink Robots -- Baxter shows that system safety analysis precedes "programming": arms and actuators are padded, power loss actions are fail-safe, the system senses the presence of humans and slows down, humans can overpower the arms and actuators.
As I discussed under Theory of Mind, Baxter (which has no Theory of Mind (yet)) obeys "statutory" laws rather than emotions to slow down when it senses humans nearby.
Baxter doesn't need to be able to weigh "lives in the balance" – from a system safety stand point Baxter is incapable of being in a direct accident where it would have to choose. This is system planning, not programming.
That said, Baxter and the Robotic Cars have sensors in place that have the capacity to detect hazards and accidents outside of their tasks. Baxter has the potential to see smoke and flames. An automotive machine vision system than can detect pedestrians has the potential to detect collapsed humans.
What obligations do free humans have to act when "bad things" happen, e.g., witnessing a fire breaking out or seeing a body lying on a sidewalk? In the situation of slaves/servants, do these obligations revert to the owner/boss?
This is Second Law stuff. If not now, then "soon", cars will have all system elements and infrastructure in place to both detect hazards and accidents and to report them ("Hey, buddy, you have a low tire." "Slow dow, you idiot!" "Did you see what that moron just did?"). If the robotic car just steers around a body in the street, who gets sued if it doesn't "call 911"?
"They're robots, not some machine God who knows all."
Super human intelligence is implied by the reference to Dr. Asimov's Laws. If, as you suggest, the cars driving would be constrained by the laws, the car's design and the right-of-way management would be so constrained as well! How could the car's driving function comply with the 1st law if the brake system was not fail-safe? The onus is not on the programming but on the system safety assessment.
Robots are flying planes, and programming there is only a fraction of the safety consideration. I refer to SAE ARP4754 and SAE ARP4761, where you start out methodically considering the safety impact of every element at every level. The safety related effect of a kicked up rock IS considered and validated for non-robotic systems - today! I suppose that by the time we are trying to assess the safety considerations of robots that can weigh the relative "lives in the balance" impacts of two unavoidable imminent hazards, we will have already had to assess the safety considerations of robots automating the safety assessment of robots (DO-178'D'?). The safety assessment comes first, then the definition of safety requirements, >then< the programming.
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