
Ford and Google Move Forward Together Towards Consumer Self-Driving Cars - Oxydepth
http://stemmatch.net/blog/2015/december/23/google-to-move-ford-with-self-driving-cars/
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bostonpete
As someone who commutes 35 miles twice a day, I can't wait to have a self-
driving car. But I don't see how a car with no steering wheel is viable given
today's infrastructure. What happens if I'm in a snowstorm and the lame
markings are occluded? What happens if I need to drive down a dirt road or
driveway? It seems like most drivers will need some way to take over from time
to time...

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increment_i
As a commuting Canadian I'm interested in this being addressed as well, as I'm
sure millions of others are. All the self driving lab work seems to be taking
place in California. If I value my life, shouldn't I want to buy a self
driving car that was designed in Michigan or Wisconsin? Who can even answer
that question right now? Perhaps its a matter for self driving car v2.0 to
address?

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ocdtrekkie
Honestly, my prevailing theory is that this highlights how much further we
really are from practical self-driving cars than Google's marketing department
wants us to think. I think the self-driving car project needs to always sound
'a little over a year away' as good PR for Google, though they know it's much
further from being truly serviceable.

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pixelcloud
A year away in California and other states with good weather.

I have a suspicion we will see some amazing demos of self driving cars in the
snow and rain, once they are good at it. It's brought up every time we talk
about being these cars to consumers, if Google or whoever have truly mastered
these situations I think they would like people to know.

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Animats
This makes sense. GM is partnered with CMU for self-driving technology. VW,
BMW, and Mercedes have in-house efforts. Ford has had an in-house effort, but
needs better technology. Google doesn't want to build and operate auto plants;
the margins are low and their stock would decline.

Chrysler's head of engineering once said "We will have steer by wire and brake
by wire over my dead body".

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curiouscat321
It's interesting that you put GM's partnership with CMU at the same level as
Ford and Google.

I don't think any major automaker has an in house effort anywhere close to
Google. Most of them rely on suppliers like Bosch for their driverless car
tech.

I think this shows that Ford is the only automaker that currently understands
the shifts that the industry is about to undergo. None of the automakers or
their suppliers can act like a software company in comparison to Google.

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csours
Disclosure: I work at GM; these are my opinions only; I don't work on SDCs,
just very interested in them.

I don't think it's the tech (as such) that matters so much. I think the
attitude, approach, and discussion matter much more.

For instance: Google has said, for now, we can't have drivers in the loop and
call it a self-driving car (see Tesla etc videos[1]). That makes a lot of
sense, but its also very limiting.

Airbus et al have not figured this one out (Air France 447[2]) - Perhaps
automotive scale will provide more effective tools for managing attention and
skill.

There are so many difficult non-technical discussions to overcome in this
market - liability, user tracking (location history and habits), information
leakage, failure modes (should I honk and flash lights if my human doesn't
take control), aggressiveness settings (if the car is not going fast enough,
the user will take control back), and many more, I'm sure.

Technical issues are going to be easy compared to the human issues. I think
Google is addressing this by having an explicitly limited approach for now.

1\. [http://www.cnet.com/news/this-is-the-stupidest-misuse-of-
tes...](http://www.cnet.com/news/this-is-the-stupidest-misuse-of-teslas-
autopilot-yet/)

2\.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_447](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_447)
\- Junior pilot did not understand that he was in a stall, possibly due to
very low actual controlled flying time.

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Animats
Let's look at the problems:

\- Liability: the CEO of Volvo says that the manufacturer is liable if the
vehicle crashes in autonomous mode. That's probably the way this will work
out. That's a good thing; it means the manufacturer has every incentive to
avoid crashes. Manufacturers will insure against this and build that into the
price.

\- User tracking: OnStar has that now. The next question is whether Big Google
will permit you to opt out. Urmson, Google's head of automatic driving, says
they don't need car to car communication. It's better to use sensor data. Lots
of things on the road won't be equipped to talk, anyway.

\- Information leakage: what's the question? Security, or privacy?

\- Failure modes: there needs to be enough backup capability to get the
vehicle stopped without a collision after any single component failure, and
enough fault detection to detect any single component failure. It's probably
sufficient to have two forward-facing radars with a backup computer monitoring
the second one, dual actuators for steering and brakes, and backup throttle
cutoff. The other side of failure is driving into a situation that the system
can't handle. But that's usually a problem that appears slowly, as with heavy
rain or fog, rather than all at once.

\- Aggressiveness settings: this hasn't been a big problem for Google, other
than having to edge into intersections in some situations. Self-driving cars
have an edge in that they can look in all directions simultaneously, which
means they can merge more precisely instead of more aggressively.

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throwaway287391
Smart of Ford to partner with Google on this IMO. Besides Tesla who seem to
know what they're doing, I find it pretty strange that most(?) other auto
companies seem to be basically going it alone on autonomous driving with an
(understandable) complete lack of know-how when it comes to software (think,
e.g., Toyota with its 80K or however many global variables).

I was listening to a radio program (KQED's Forum [1]) where they discussed the
California DMV's new proposed regulations for self-driving cars, and from the
point of view of someone who isn't insanely arrogant about humans' ability to
safely operate cars, they seem quite draconian and luddite-ish. Google made a
statement about these proposed regulations that echoed my feelings, but Audi
was on the program defending the regulations and claiming anything approaching
fully autonomous driving was a couple of _decades_ away. This seems to
indicate that they are at least a decade behind Google who claim they're
already there or will be within ~5 years, so it sort of blows my mind that
they wouldn't be trying hard to partner with them or another firm (perhaps
Uber?) that actually understands software (and particularly AI).

[1]
[http://www.kqed.org/a/forum/R201512180900](http://www.kqed.org/a/forum/R201512180900)

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cperciva
_complete lack of know-how when it comes to software (think, e.g., Toyota with
its 80K or however many global variables)._

They might have more know-how than you realize. When you're writing safety-
critical software, things like "dynamic memory allocation" and "local
variables" become dangerous due to the risk of memory leaks and stack
overflows.

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throwaway287391
You could be right, but somehow I'm skeptical that's really why they were
using thousands of global variables. I'd certainly be interested in hearing
any more educated takes on Toyota's use of global variables specifically or
the auto industry's capabilities in software more generally; I have no first-
hand knowledge and am making a lot of assumptions (hence the throwaway,
downvote away ;) based on generalizations I've heard about non-software-
focused companies that end up having to write some code for their physical
products.

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ForestBiker
As an employee of another car company all I can say is:

Damn!

Similiar to Tesla, Apple and Google are quite far away from the degree of
industrialisiation the automotive industrie has today. Without this you can't
build millions of cars cost effectivly. Also, cars are immensely complex in
all the small things that need to be engineered deligently. So, that move
makes greatest sense.

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Oxydepth
Guys, this will be coming sooner than we think! I know a lot of other schools
and companies are doing research towards this. I shared this one because I
feel like it's most likely to happen the soonest.

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la6470
Why does google not open source their self driving car software?

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wcummings
Then they couldn't use it to sell you shit.

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knughit
Google open sourced TensorFlow

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theseok
This is legit.

