[lesmore49]

I've been reading a lot about vehicles of the near future and not just EV ....electric vehicles..but autonomous vehicles. Significant change in the type of vehicles seems to be coming and also who and/or what (ie; autonomous) will be driving our vehicles.

Autopilot Lets Drivers Eat, Sleep and Work

I guess this is what is meant by a brave , new world.

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Last edited by Racer X 69; 07-01-2018 at 05:17 PM.

[LensBeginner]

Something wrong with the link, even removing the extra "http://" at the beginning.
Ah that's it, the colon was missing in the path, this should work better: article.

Reading that now, thanks for posting

[lesmore49]

Something wrong with the link, even removing the extra "http://" at the beginning.
Ah that's it, the colon was missing in the path, this should work better: article.

Reading that now, thanks for posting

Thanks for fixing.

[PDL]

Well, when someone can demonstrate a autonomous vehicle that can drive through a white out at night on ice covered roads, then I will be impressed. Having grown up where it was almost "normal" to encounter such situations at least once a year that is one of my criteria for a real world situation. I know that there are current tests going on in Wisconsin, but there have not been many reports on how those tests are going.

I would love to have autonomous vehicles. Depending on how they are distributed, it would be nice to not have to really care about traffic or maintenance or storage. However, when a autonomous car has a flat tire, gets stuck in the mud/snow just how is it going to get back on the road?

[LensBeginner]

Well, when someone can demonstrate a autonomous vehicle that can drive through a white out at night on ice covered roads, then I will be impressed. Having grown up where it was almost "normal" to encounter such situations at least once a year that is one of my criteria for a real world situation. I know that there are current tests going on in Wisconsin, but there have not been many reports on how those tests are going.

I would love to have autonomous vehicles. Depending on how they are distributed, it would be nice to not have to really care about traffic or maintenance or storage. However, when a autonomous car has a flat tire, gets stuck in the mud/snow just how is it going to get back on the road?

I don't think driving on slippery surfaces should be a particular challenge for autonomous vehicles, after all both visibility (night & whiteout) and slipperiness (ice) are easily measurable quantities.
Only issue I see, is that the car has to be programmed to take those values into account... otherwise it can easily put itself in a situation it can't get out of, without knowing it, e.g. perfect acceleration in a straight line, on ice, thanks to the traction control up to say 50 m.p.h., then a sharp turn it was not prepared to encounter and straight into the ditch it goes...

[PDL]

Since you are not telling us where you are from and the contents of your argument, I assume that you do not know what white out means.

I have driven through snow storms where the wind is driving the snow horizontally about two feet above the road and the road itself is covered in white ice. I have also driven in show at night where the snowflakes appear to be flying at you in a way similar to the old Windows 3.0 stars screen saver but the number of white things flying at you is a order of magnitude or two or three higher. Having a computer system that is fast enough and smart enough to detect several million moving objects that appear to be coming straight at you would be a challenge, it was a challenge to drive through too. (There was also a foot and a half of Rocky Mountain powder on the road, no strips, no shoulder markings and only cats eye reflectors, also white, every 20-40 yards.) Visibility in these situations varies from 10 feet to 30 feet - 50 miles an hour is going to get you off the road and buried under the snow. Also remember that snow = water that absorbs GPS signals like you would not believe.

Anyway, show me a company that is testing under those conditions (Southern California, Texas, Nevada etc. rarely have those conditions) and we will talk. The Uber car that killed the pedestrian had some of it's basic systems turned off and you can see what happened. What is going to determine that an autonomous car will be able to deal with good conditions and bad conditions. Will they be regulated? Who will certify them as safe. (I worked for Boeing and Philips Healthcare and I know a little bit about certification across multiple jurisdictions) I do think it is possible that autonomous vehicles will come to pass, I just don't want to be among the dead people who are considered "proof of concept".

[monochrome]

Autonomous cars cannot handle the randomness of human-driven cars. They all have to be linked together to have the speed, processing power, experience and wisdom of a mature human driver, but only relative to each other. Introduce randomness into the autonomous vehicle system and it breaks down.

Therefore, human-driven cars will be mandated illegal by 2035 in order to allow the autonomous system to work. Turn it in to the salvage shredder. By government fiat. Eminent Domain taking will govern.

Further, ownership of an actual autonomous car will be prohibitively expensive; autonomous cars will be call service cars (Uber on steroids) and charges will be on a peak-use Time basis. Regular work at an’office’ will go away because people won’t be able to afford peak pricing at rush hour. Things you run errands to get will be delivered, etc.

Future society will be much, much more disconnected, localized, lonely, and monitored. Independence fundamentally will no longer exist. In less than twenty years. “Beyond Freedom and Dignity” is actually coming in the tangible future.

[lesmore49]

Autonomous cars cannot handle the randomness of human-driven cars. They all have to be linked together to have the speed, processing power, experience and wisdom of a mature human driver, but only relative to each other. Introduce randomness into the autonomous vehicle system and it breaks down.

Therefore, human-driven cars will be mandated illegal by 2035 in order to allow the autonomous system to work. Turn it in to the salvage shredder. By government fiat. Eminent Domain taking will govern.

Further, ownership of an actual autonomous car will be prohibitively expensive; autonomous cars will be call service cars (Uber on steroids) and charges will be on a peak-use Time basis. Regular work at an’office’ will go away because people won’t be able to afford peak pricing at rush hour. Things you run errands to get will be delivered, etc.

Future society will be much, much more disconnected, localized, lonely, and monitored. Independence fundamentally will no longer exist. In less than twenty years. “Beyond Freedom and Dignity” is actually coming in the tangible future.

I'm afraid you're right. George Orwell was on to something. Unfortunately.

[clackers]

Because obvious human error is the single biggest cause of accidents, having only autonomous vehicles on the road will result in a massive drop overall in deaths and the economic costs of driving to a society. We can see that with autopilot technology in passenger aircraft.

But here and there, they will make errors that a mature, skilled, sober and clean human driver never would.

[Just1MoreDave]

My guess is that autonomous vehicles will have some weather monitoring ability and decide that they just can't handle certain conditions. Also at some point, the cars will pay attention when the governor or other official declares a snow emergency and travel ban. Today I can just ignore that but the car won't let me in the future. I can see the car knowing there are 48000 miles on the tires and the manufacturer's traction data, and just not moving.

Weather forecasting isn't really good enough for this to go perfectly. Someone will have to consider what the car should do if it's on the road and encounters a sudden weather change.

[abruzzi]

A few general comments. I am generally skeptical about autonomous vehicles and how far along they are:

- remember human vision is pretty limited in terms of frequency and detection. We’re on a photo forum, so I assume you’ve all had the experience of dragging a slider to reveal detail in an image that you couldn’t see before. So while extreme weather is a huge challenge that probably needs to be surmounted, radar, lidar, IR, UV, and whatever else may eventually allow AVs to “see” in conditions we can’t.

- as someone who works in software development, I have a lot more fear about bad code. Tesla recently got a low score in a review due to braking distance. Within a week or so, Tesla pushed out a software update in response that significantly improved braking distance. A lot of people on the tech universe applauded this as the new way car companies can work when they are really tech companies. My first though was can you really make a modification that significant, and do a full battery of safety and reliability test on something as important as the braking system in that amount of time? My second though was are they really shipping a car with beta quality software and fixing it after they deliver? None of that has anything to do with AV tech, but AVs are going to be far more dependent on software, and I would fear these tech companies taking their ship it, then fix it attitude and applying it to two tons of steel hurtling down the highway at 70 mph.

- I don’t think real, general purpose fully autonomous vehicles are nearly as close as the media seems to think. There are a lot of complex improvisations that take place on the roads where I live that AVs are going to need to learn. For example most of the streets in the town I live in are barely wide enough for two vehicles to pass each other, but there are also always cars parked on one side or the other of the street. So, you’re weaving your way between parked cars, and if there is a car coming the other direction, it is eye contact and hand signals that mediate who goes and who waits out of the way for the other guy to go. Additionally almost none of our roads have lines painted, you frequently have to drive on the curb, some of the roads are dirt, and lots and lot of other stuff. Humans improvise in those situations, computers need to be programmed.

- as an avid motorcyclist, and off-road explorer, I doubt I’ll ever want an AV unless I’m 85 and getting my license revoked, but I do see that for some people it will be a meaningful improvement in their life. Me, I love driving, to the point that I can’t stand being in a car when someone else is driving. I don’t think you can backseat drive an AV.

[lesmore49]

A concern about autonomous vehicles is the decision making process is out of the hands of the driver...or the human who would be sitting in the driver's seat. Programming installed in the vehicle would decide what happens if a dangerous driving situation arises...say a bus with many people aboard, goes out of control and is collision course towards an autonomous vehicle with say only a 'driver' and a passenger . Lives are at stake and the autonomous vehicle would be programmed to make an 'ethical' decision on what to do in the situation.

http://https://www.uml.edu/News/stories/2017/SelfDrivingCars.aspx

I like to make my own decisions. What about you ?

[LensBeginner]

Since you are not telling us where you are from and the contents of your argument, I assume that you do not know what white out means.

I have driven through snow storms where the wind is driving the snow horizontally about two feet above the road and the road itself is covered in white ice. I have also driven in show at night where the snowflakes appear to be flying at you in a way similar to the old Windows 3.0 stars screen saver but the number of white things flying at you is a order of magnitude or two or three higher. Having a computer system that is fast enough and smart enough to detect several million moving objects that appear to be coming straight at you would be a challenge, it was a challenge to drive through too. (There was also a foot and a half of Rocky Mountain powder on the road, no strips, no shoulder markings and only cats eye reflectors, also white, every 20-40 yards.) Visibility in these situations varies from 10 feet to 30 feet - 50 miles an hour is going to get you off the road and buried under the snow. Also remember that snow = water that absorbs GPS signals like you would not believe.

Anyway, show me a company that is testing under those conditions (Southern California, Texas, Nevada etc. rarely have those conditions) and we will talk. The Uber car that killed the pedestrian had some of it's basic systems turned off and you can see what happened. What is going to determine that an autonomous car will be able to deal with good conditions and bad conditions. Will they be regulated? Who will certify them as safe. (I worked for Boeing and Philips Healthcare and I know a little bit about certification across multiple jurisdictions) I do think it is possible that autonomous vehicles will come to pass, I just don't want to be among the dead people who are considered "proof of concept".

I'm not sure what you mean by "not telling the contents of your argument".
I pictured a scene similar to the one you described, and figured that if sensors on a car can get no visibility, the car will slow down or downright stop if programming is good enough.
I'm not saying it will happen "tomorrow" either, and I was talking in abstract, test-like conditions as well.

But I can program a car so that its speed is linked to visibility, grip, visibility of horizontal markings etc.
If the programming is very, very conservative, it the worst-case scenario it will simply stop moving.

[clackers]

Complex, isn't it? "The whole situation is muddy and confused, and it might be impossible to understand it in the abstract, before legal precedent is set."

Who Is Liable for a Death Caused by a Self-Driving Car? - The Atlantic

[pentaxfall]

Self driving car needs structured roads. In many countries roads does not meet that standard. They will be used but not everywhere.