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."
Jmiller, I think you've only touched on traffic flow improvement. Many cities use traffic signal synchronization to improve flow. Imagine what could be done by eliminating human inattention at lights, human response times. I would hope the cars will eventually communicate not only with each other but with the traffic signal systems too.
Looking at my previous post, I have gone a bit off topic. My apologies. More on topic, when all is said and done 2020 is probably a bit too early for a really autonomous vehicle we can live with to really reach the city streets in anything but a combat type vehicle.
I personally love the thought of having the ability to turn the driving over to an autopilot I can trust on a really long drive. That might work in this world with minimal security risk.
As far as security goes, I perasonally think we have gone a bit overboard with the expenditures on the TSA, intrusions into personal privacy and silly measures such as continuing temporary flight restrictions on non-commercial aircraft just because the president passes through town. A post 9/11 society doesn't seem to see things such as liberty as important as control from dangerous attacks. To that I say control is truly an illusion and I am sure the people in charge of security pay that more than lip service to that fact. If it were up to me, the Patriot act would be repealled or allowed to expire and officials would have some reasonable cause boundaries put back up on their inspecting our lives. Personal liberty vs security is an interesting issue for the public to ponder when you move from private airplanes to private cars being restricted from whole areas just like deciding where to cut expenditures from our federal budget, perception overrides principles. It all takes time to sort out these balancing acts. Right after 9/11 we had precious little time for protecting ourselves and following evidence trails, but the world isn't quite in the same situation as it was when Osama and Mohamar were around. Personally, I am not buying any car with OnStar because of the potential misuse issue no matter what corporate assurances are given. If I have a device, I want to be able to decide what it sends out, "trust me" doesn't work when it comes to privacy.
Isaac Asimov had similar thoughts about autonomous machines in, "I Robot." It was a message that needed to be heard before we even needed to think about the implications way back in 1950 when he wrote the book.
I understand your point that something like this could be used maliciously but I don't think we curtail all development due to a few fanatics. However, what type of safety devices could be installed to make sure that the car can only be operate when a person is in the car.
I agree that we may not be ready for this technology but I think it has more to do with the fact that we are unsure what consumers are looking for as well as what the car makers mighrt deliver.
A good question might be what the consumer is lookin for. Does the average consumer want to get somewhere as soon as possible? Or does the the consumer want the car to drive to the location with as few lane changes as possible.
There is also the question of bad driving conditions. At some point does the car just refuse to drive because the road is too slippery.
great point. I don't know about you but I might be a little leary if my car decided to pull in front of a car when I didn't think there was enough clearance.
Having the car drive itself will eventually happen, but the public shouldn't be allowed free access to it. Sure we can build it, but should we?
My point is malicious usage. A car is already a lethal weapon, but to let driverless cars loose for the public to use and the criminal potentials beyond battering type weapons are staggering.
Terrorists spring to mind, but assasins, and all sorts of other criminals would love to get their hands on a good decoy, autonomous barricade or maybe more that would all be used to thwart capture or distract/disable the efforts of law enforcement. Put enough big brother control/monitoring on the car and general usage becomes a problem.
A hacked autonomous car could become a pseudo guided missile in itself, but that's the first level of trouble.
I don't want to see people who might be on a stacked freeway, a bridge or even near a motorcade with an autonomous car or truck loaded with high explosives or worse and some nut job with the remote trigger. No driver, would make it much easier on the evil doers of the world as they would just set the course on this guided missile without having to make the ride. Look at what our troops deal with at check points add to that the IED issue and with a little imagination horrific scenarios spring to mind both here and abroad.
I don't think we are socially ready to accept or handle these potential problem tools in peoples garages or parked in front of their houses. Keep these technologies with DARPA/DoD or in some extremely controlled environment where every move of the vehicles are controlled, no external threats could be mounted, and some sort of check system is in place.
This is a veritable Pandoras box. Keep the lid shut.
As I posted in an earlier message, the lawyers will be able to hit on the auto manufacturers a lot easier if the drivers no longer have responsibility for accidents. It may reduce owner insurance premiums, but greatly increase manufacturer premiums and therefore initial cost of the vehicles.
You're right, Jack. My daughter is learning to drive, so I find myself pointing out tons of maneuvers that come so naturally we are not even conscious of them any longer. Avoiding careless drivers is a good example. There are others such as avoiding something we see in the road up ahead or changing routes when it looks like the road is blocked by an accident. Sometimes you have to make the decision when you're half a mile away or you miss the last exit before you're trapped.
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