There's been lots of "oh, this will never happen" around here on this subject over the years.

Well, it appears to be happening. The march of technology cannot be stopped.


Waymo One, the first commercial robotaxi service, is now picking up passengers in Arizona

https://www.latimes.com/business/aut...205-story.html

 

Yeah, those hideous vehicles have been on the roads for quite a while now, with a lot of them in Tempe around the ASU campus.



And I see that story has some misleading information. It was not a highway, it was a Tempe city street a half mile from the downtown area.

"The experimental vehicle, with an apparently inattentive Uber employee behind the wheel, plowed into a woman walking a bicycle across a highway at night. "

 

That's the liability angle. I am confident there will never be fully autonomous cars on the roadways of today because of two things:
1. The highways are an open system.
2. Someone has to take liability for the inevitable wrecks caused by number 1.

I think there will be autonomous railroad engines here soon. There are already autonomous airport trams, and I think subways will happen too. These work under the "they won't stop in time anyway" principle. For instance, if you stop on a railroad track, the train is not at fault, since it cannot stop in time. Even a computer cannot stop it in time.

Now, I fully expect autonomous cars soon in HOV -style lanes in major cities. The problem with an open system, you cannot plan for everything that can happen. In a closed system, a central tracker knows where everything is. Train #1 thinks it sees something, Central Control says there is actually nothing there, and the fences are all well maintained, so there is actually nothing there, and we can proceed.

Any robotic car, on its own, in an open system will have one of two problems: False positives, or ignored positives. False positives mean picky cameras and cleaning lenses and random panic stops. Ignored positives mean dead pedestrians. You cannot hit that needle eye with today's tech in an open system.

 

More information from a local news outlet:

Wow, a delivery truck turning left caused the system to essentially crash. As Koda posted, these are not ready for use in an open system.

 

It will happen. Though a lot of problems will have to be worked out. I live out in the country, most back roads do not have lines painted on them. You have to pull off the road to let large tractors/combine by. Another thought what happens in bad weather like snow when roads are covered or other kinds of bad weather.

 

Of course with the way people drive here in the Mid-Atlantic in snow, self driving cars probably won't make it worse.

 

That's probably among the reasons they're starting out in places like Arizona and not Minnesota.

 

Exactly. Little rain and no snow, but I wonder how they'll fare during a haboob?

 

Instant decision making is another hurdle. Do you plow down the child who ran out between parked cars or swerve into oncoming traffic?

 

It is my understanding of the traffic laws that you lay on the brakes as hard as you can and stay in your lane.

 

120 years ago cars were never going to be other than a toy for the rich, 200 years ago trains couldn't transport people over 35 mph because they would be asphyxiated, At the battle of Agincourt in 1415 there was one authenticated casualty from a gunshot, but the longbow would never be surpassed.....

Roger.

 

What do human-driven cars do during a haboob? They stay off the road. I'm guessing autonomous cars will do the same.

 

Those are different issues. If you trample a man with a horse, or run him over with your car, you are at fault. If you run a man over with a train, slow or fast, you are at fault. A weapon of war is automatically your fault, that's the point. A good comparison is, a mag-lev car powered by a fusion power lump, that runs someone over, is still the fault of the driver, but an autonomous car, normal, via gas engine, is not the fault of the driver, and that's the issue. It's legal, not technical.

 

No they don't. The freeways and city streets are full of cars driving as they typically do, the same as other areas of the country during heavy rain, snow, fog, etc.

 

Well, then it would be hypocritical to criticize a robotic car driving through a storm, haboob or otherwise, if cars with drivers do it. But my guess is that robotic cars would be required to sit out weather that is significantly inclement, which would make streets safer overall if more people start getting around by them.

 

The point is cars with human driver can do it, but can an autonomous car do it?

 

I doubt that will be an issue. I'm guessing the autonomous vehicle operators will err on the side of safety and sideline their vehicles in bad weather. Probably something a few humans could take a lesson from.

 

Well that would put a damper (ha!) on their use in areas with frequent heavy rain, such as practically everywhere along the Gulf Coast, or in areas of the north and midwest where it snows a lot.

 

This depends on one's definition of bad weather. I don't think rain, even heavy rain, necessarily falls into that category. I'm thinking snowstorms, ice storms, sleet, that kind of thing. And who knows, maybe autonomous cars will ultimately be more suitable in some climates than others. Maybe we won't see them in Duluth and Buffalo like we'll see them in Phoenix and Miami.

 

In another hundred years... "You mean you have to use your hands"

 

Meh I'd walk first.

 

x2

In Iraq (not as often in Afghanistan) there would be severe dust storms that would completely obscure the road. We still had to drive our Mitsubishi L200s and Toyota Hiluxs like any other day.

I still believe driverless cars will be like the ones seen in the movie 6th Day.



The automated cars seen in the movie Total Recall will take longer to be accepted:

 

All of this may be mute. If the trucks are automated first as they surely will be, the economy will grind to a halt.

 

Agreed.

It does if you're counting on a LIDAR system for "seeing" the roadway and other vehicles. Water droplets, whether rain, fog, or snow will diffract / block the laser. I've been in countless storms on the Gulf Coast where it rained constantly for days, sometimes up to a week, without letting up. In a typical thunderstorm that happens almost daily during parts of the year, the streets can flood in a matter of minutes, with water over the curbs so you couldn't see the edge of the roadway. I have not seen any data on how the autonomous systems can handle that situation. Maybe they can, but I haven't heard about it.

I agree, again. Places like Phoenix and SoCal are prime for these vehicles; I just don't see them being used extensively in other parts of the country unless there is a dramatic change in the technology they use for navigation.

 

That's just it, though... they are not relying solely on LIDAR. They will employ a combination of LIDAR, radar, cameras, car to car / car to X communication, etc.

Taxis, shuttles, and delivery trucks within cities will be first adopters -- fleets. This is where it starts, and as older vehicles (and people) go out of service, we will see adoption of the tech by the general public. The vehicles for private owners without driver controls are certainly further out, because we all know that private owners often ignore dash lights for failing sensors.

Cue up Rush's "Red Barchetta"...

 

A couple of good reads on this topic.

https://www.vox.com/2016/4/21/114478...nges-obstacles

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/all-w...-tero-heinonen

 

I have to point out that the first link is 2.5 years old. That's a LONG time when it comes to engineering, especially in regards to this technology. Even the 2nd one is over a year old.

Anyway, exciting times for the automotive community. I'll still be using my cars to drive up north to the lake for a long time to come, but perhaps down to one daily driver sooner than I would have thought a couple of years ago.

 

GM investing $3 billion to produce all-electric trucks, autonomous vehicles

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/27/gm-i...ic-trucks.html

 

The clear and obvious answer is to make the vehicle manufacturer including the software developers responsible.

Thus ends the inherent threat to life, liberty, and property posed by "autonomous" vehicles.

 

That is why we will never see them on the current road system; no company would assume that liability in an open system. What we may see is a closed system, where you surrender control of your vehicle to a central command and it can track everything on the road and
allow only centrally controlled vehicles there. This would eliminate the problems of false positives and false negatives of a single vehicle, as it would "know" if there is a vehicle there even if it can't see it, as the system would tell it that there is another car there.

That may occur. What absolutely won't occur is full autonomous vehicles on the roads we have today. Let us recall something. Ten years ago, a tier one automotive company had to go before Congress and testify that we would work ever so much harder to fix
a problem that wasn't there, and was never, ever, recreated. What that problem was was that an idiot, driving a Toyota product, had his foot on the wrong damn pedal, or he entrapped it with a floor mat, something that has been a common occurrence since the
foot feed was invented, and wrecked his car, killing himself and his family. He did not think to: put it in neutral; turn it off; hit the brakes; hit the parking brake; check and see why the pedal was stuck. He didn't do any of that, and this wasn't a race car. Full brake
application would have brought even a car under full throttle to a stop shortly.

Instead, we now hook our mats. The accelerator pedals are now miniscule to avoid entrapment. There is now software to cut the signal from the gas pedal when you hit the brakes. But, no one drives any better. After a few years of absolute junk science,
the best minds could not replicate the "unintended acceleration," even by cutting into the system and inserting fake signal. I don't think Toyota will ever advertise on ABC due to their unethical journalism from that event.

This sort of **** is why we won't see autonomous vehicles by a major manufacturer in any area where people can just be. Our world now sues product manufacturers for the fault of being purchased and used by idiots, instead of properly blaming the idiot himself.
"I was running across the highway to take a shortcut and Google's Car 188574 ran my friend over right in front of me!!!" Never mind the fence, the no trespassing signs, the warnings; Google still would lose millions to a case like that.