Most of us dream of eliminating the time-consuming daily chore of driving our cars to the office. But if you could sit in the back of your car and work while it drives you to the office, would you do it?
Surprisingly, that's a question you may have to answer one day. Engineers from General Motors Corp. said recently that fully autonomous vehicles will be ready to hit the streets in 2020, and that automakers will be able to offer the technology if consumers want it.
"We believe that the world [of driving] will be autonomous on demand," Alan Taub, vice president of global research and development for GM, said in an interview with Design News. "There will still be fun-to-drive situations. People do enjoy driving, but not all the time."
Vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure communications will augment and, in some cases, replace the multitude of sensors that would otherwise be needed by autonomous vehicles.
Image courtesy of GM
Taub says that many of the technologies for self-driving vehicles are already in place, and that the ones that aren't will be available by mid-decade. He cites four pillars of the fully autonomous vehicle: Full, 360° situational awareness; autonomous braking and steering; global-scale, real-time digital maps; and "driver-partially-in-the-loop" technology, which would enable drivers to share the chores with the car.
"Today, we can already do it in low-chaos environments," he told us. "If you try to go to Bombay, with very heavy congestion, people not driving in their lanes, and a mixture of pedestrian and vehicle traffic, our ability is limited. On the other hand, if you go to a freeway, where you only have to recognize vehicles and stationary objects, we can do that."
If you think that sounds a little bit too much like science fiction, then consider the DARPA Challenge events. In those events, which took place in 2004, 2005, and 2007, autonomous vehicles used cameras, radar, lasers, and tons of computing power to make their way across urban and desert courses. In 2004 and 2005, they drove over sand dunes, through valleys, along highways, and over rivers. They had to spot lines of barbed wire and so-called tank killers -- pieces of angle iron laid across the desert floor to stop their progress. And they prevailed. In 2005, five vehicles finished the 132-mile course without a shred of help. In 2007, in an urban environment, six vehicles finished.
Back then, vehicles won by employing numerous Pentium blade-type computers, digital signal processors, and field-programmable gate arrays, all of which "fused" the information from scores of sensors. The engineers who put the systems together sometimes referred to the trunkloads of computing equipment as "supercomputers on wheels."
Or there will have to be a focus on the 100 mile round trip. When I think of designing something new, my first goal is to understand what the specifications are. I wonder what the car companies are focusing on.
That may be the toughest part of the development of the electronic car. What round trip do you try and shoot for? What kind of acceleration do you target? And I think from a generational standpoint I think the younger generation may be a little more likely to give up some things in favor of a green car. Some of us are a little too dreamy about our gas guzzling muscle car that we cruised around town in. And unfortunately, it's that group of people that might actually be able to afford the EVs.
Good observation, Jmiller. Look like our current culture isn't quite ready for widespread use of EVs. It certainly doesn't seem EVs are designed for the long commute that is so prevalent in our present lifestyle. I can't imagine the long commutes will end soon. So EVs may have to develop quite a bit before they can truly replace an internal combustion car.
Until we can solve the charging station issue or have replacement batteries at every local gas station the electonic vehicles are going to be kept back. We have become such a mobile society. Often driving 40 or 50 miles to work in some rural areas. 40 years ago it wasn't that way. You worked in the town you lived and wouldn't have to worry about a long drive to work. In that environment a rechargeable vehicle would have been possible because few drove that far.
I wonder if we as a society are willing to give up some of our freedom to promote the electrical vehicles.
And how many times have we been driving slow on the freeway for no apparent reason. I would assume electronically driven vehicles would result in less gawking out the window when there's some type of an issue. I've often dreamt of the ability for everyone to hear the word "GO!" shouted on the radio at the same time so we could all start moving at 55 instead of 15.
It reminds me of some of the new technology out there for dark warehouses, where the forrkifts all drive themselves and bring the components to the assembly line automatically. And think about the accidents that could be prevented by one car talking to another as they weave in and out to get to their destination. Lots of potential. But lots of work to get there.
Good points, TJ. Lately, I've started to wonder about how quickly we will build out the charging stations. I'm not so sure we will soon have EVs and hybrids at scale to really begin to build out a decent infrastructure. If batteries keep blowing up and prices stay high, EV revolution may slow to a creep.
I don't know about costing less, Rob. I would suspect much, much more. Traffic signals are a municipal responsibility, not federal. Each will have its own contractor, and probably multiple network protocols as industrial automation already sees. Cars will have to be able to communicate via these multiple protocols.
Implementing this at the same time as trying to jumpstart electrical charging stations is going to be a challenge. Modernizing the transportation infrastructure (not even counting the actual roads) is going to approach the trillion dollar level.
If we could create a grid that includes both moving and stationary items, that could save thousands upon thousands of lives. We're getting close to the technology, but deployment may be another factor. It would certainly require mammoth government investment, but probably much less that the interstate system cost.
Good point, TJ. How many times have you seen a light change and wondered why no one seems to be moving? One of the goals of vehicle-to-vehicle communication is to enable vehicles to talk to one another and then move in organized "flights" through traffic lights.
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In response to rising interest in autonomous vehicles, the federal government has called upon states not to authorize operation of self-driving cars, except for the purpose of testing.
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