

Google demos driverless cars - martythemaniak
http://www.engadget.com/2011/03/03/googles-self-driving-cars-take-ted-attendees-for-a-wild-ride/

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orangecat
If Google plays their cards right over the next several years, this could
easily produce more revenue for them than ads do.

~~~
ippisl
There are quite a few teams working on driveless cars. for example six won the
last DARPA challenge , a european funded vehicle won did a 8000 miles trip
from italy to china , israel is using similar technologies for military
purposes, and GM and folksvagen is working on systems.

from the other side , google's total investment in the project is a yearly $15
million ,which is not unsourmountable.

I don't have a very deep knowledge about this , but my guess is that the big
competitive barriers here are gaining enough real life experience , legal and
regulatory barriers , and branding.

The companies that would make most the money from this technology would have
those strengths. this looks more like a big car company than google.

~~~
laut
You can buy cars today that can almost drive by itself. Adaptive cruise
control. Automated parking. Lane assist. Automatic braking to avoid accidents.
BMW has demonstrated a driverless racing lap on Top Gear before can be seen in
the link I posted in another comment.

I was downvoted for asking what this Google car did that other companies
haven't already demonstrated. No answer though.

~~~
lanstein
it doesn't 'almost drive by itself'. it drives by itself.

~~~
laut
Car companies have made cars that do that too.

No completely autonomous car is on the market though. Not from Google nor
anyone else.

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jrockway
The iPhone has been able to drive cars since version 3.0.1. Google should
really be focusing on making lists more springy at their ends instead of this
sort of trivial thing.

~~~
nolok
Is this a serious post ? How does an iphone "drive" a car ? If you think GPS
and turn by turn instructions is the same thing has actually controlling the
car on a road, you couldn't possibily be more wrong ...

Your second point is strange too, do you actually think that a big tech
company like google should not try to research new stuff outside of its
comfort zone ? Or because one of their product is imperfect, they shouldn't
work on another even if they have the ressources ?

I hope this was a joke that I didn't get ...

~~~
iron_ball
It was sarcasm. The point was that the iOS vs. Android wars pale in comparison
to potentially world-changing research like this.

~~~
kiba
The ubiquitous spread of smartphones throughout the world is not world
changing?

We're talking about platforms that struggle for mastery over an emerging
market that will be bigger than the PC revolution.

~~~
izendejas
"Android vs. iOS wars" refers to all the senseless flame _wars_ that often get
more attention here at HN. That's not to imply smartphones aren't world-
changing devices.

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endtime
Tight turns look cool, but they're not especially useful. When they can
demonstrate robust resilience to pedestrians, consistently don't think a bird
or pebble flying in front of the car is another car, etc., then we'll have
something to celebrate.

I'm not saying they're not a lot of the way there already - they probably are
- I'm just saying that that's the demo video that would be really exciting.

~~~
joshu
So, I took a test drive in one of these today.

They can do the hard stuff but the tight turns make for a more interesting
demo.

I will try to post a video later.

~~~
endtime
Awesome, thanks, please do.

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rfolstad
Is it feasible to see free google taxi cabs in major cities that display ads
give you internet and keep street view up to date in the next few years?

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zitterbewegung
I would really like this on top gear and compare it to the other drivers on
their closed course. I wonder how well it would do in their celebrity
challenge that they do every episode?

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staunch
If tuned to a single track it should be completely unbeatable, right?

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zitterbewegung
Not necessarily there might be latency concerns or even other unknown factors
that would hinder it. Also what if its wet or other weather concerns? I don't
work on the project so I wouldn't know what exactly would be involved.

~~~
josh33
I do! Oh wait, and then I woke up.

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Jach
If anyone can make this work out to be used by the public, Google can. They
seem to be fairly good at pissing off established business. (Though they're
still learning as Android shows.) Demos are great, just reinforces that Google
is really an AI Company.

Where my pessimism lies for this reaching the public even if it's technically
sound is that there are a lot of established multi-billion dollar businesses
to contend with. Insurance is a big one, traffic tickets are another.

~~~
lojack
I don't think insurance and traffic tickets are nearly as big of a roadblock
as safety regulations for selling a computer that creates 2,000lb projectiles
with humans inside.

~~~
stellar678
Wouldn't it be fairly simple to run tests for awhile and give the thumbs up if
the average, shall we say, carnage rate is lower than with human drivers?
Seems like it would be a no-brainer.

And when there are inevitably problems (or even deaths) caused by the AI
systems, it's not like car companies don't currently have liability for
malfunctions in their designs. Seems it would be the same...

~~~
HeyLaughingBoy
You obviously don't work in a highly regulated industry :-)

Things that seem like "no brainers" to software developers are absolute show
stoppers to regulatory bureaucracies like the Department of Transportation.

It's not impossible and it will certainly happen eventually, but it will take
years of proposals and studies for a new set of regulations to evolve that
these cars will have to follow. Liability is a separate issue that the car
companies are used to dealing with. Changing minds at the US DOT (for example)
will be a lot harder.

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moblivu
If applied correctly this could solved a lot of traffic problem. I still don't
understand why cars don't have a retractable bar under them. So you normally
drive everywhere, but big roads like highways are in fact rails where your car
gets on.

~~~
alttab
That idea sounds too simple to be true, but I'd file that under "crazy enough
to work"

~~~
moblivu
The craziest ideas are the best ;) and what's crazier: a car on rails or a
self driving Prius from a search and advertising company ?

~~~
alttab
After looking at google maps/earth, especially street view, I would say they
used driving data from that to feed the car driving learning mechanism.

~~~
moblivu
Yeah, you blend your maps data with a bunch of sensors together and you have a
self driving car. It's just a matter of speed and the other drivers + knowing
where your going.

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mayank
This is amazing. I remember an old CMU paper from 1996 about AI driven cars
being one of the reasons I decided to go to grad school. It's a classic IMO,
and a very accessible introduction to the whole problem:
[http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.15.4...](http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.15.4667)
(click the cached pdf icon in the top right corner). I imagine the solutions
have moved on since then though.

Anyone care to hack up a little frontside car camera and steering position
sensors?

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laut
Looks like what BMW had on Top Gear some a few years ago. Just faster.
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0AYCUSAMF9U>

A bonus video about what is more environmentally friendly and economical - a
Prius or a BMW M3: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKTOyiKLARk>

~~~
khafra
Note that, witty and knowledgeable as he is, Clarkson isn't exactly the most
reliable and unbiased source on the merits of cars he dislikes.

Disclaimer: I have an M3, not a Prius. But I average 27mpg.

~~~
laut
It's entertainment. Do you think he said anything factually wrong in the clip,
though?

~~~
Semiapies
"It's entertainment"? Shades of Michael Moore fans.

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mdonahoe
Unless all cars are driven by machine, the driverless car won't make a huge
difference in our lives. You can already experience the magic of not having to
drive by paying someone else to do it for you.

The real gains of automation occur when a machine doing the job can do it
_faster_ than a human. Computers calculate and communicate faster than people,
and factories/robots build stuff faster. A machine driving a car has to obey
the rules of the road and react to other human drivers. This puts a hard limit
on their potential.

Now once all cars are driven by machine, we will see amazing changes. No
traffic lights for starters.

~~~
ChuckMcM
This is wrong of course. Imagine you could hire a driver, now imagine he
worked for free and was always at his best driving ability.

The things that self driving cars will do first, really really well, are: 1)
Drive people around who currently use chauffers because they can use the
driving time productively. 2) Lower the barrier to attending events,
restaurants, etc in urban areas where parking is an issue. (if you car can go
park itself a couple of miles away and you can phone it up when you want to go
home, win) 3) Reduce the number of DUI accidents as people go out, have a good
time, and their car drives them home.

Self driving cars that can drive amongst human driven cars will be a huge win.
Now why a search company would do with that, who knows.

~~~
orangecat
_Now why a search company would do with that, who knows._

Google is an AI company. Search and ads just happen to be the currently most
profitable application.

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Groxx
Not exactly real-world conditions, but a nice demo nonetheless. Maybe this is
how they've been able to Street View so much of the world?

I wonder how long until we see the iDrive. I'd love to not-drive myself
everywhere, it's a massive time-sink IMO, I could be doing better things in
the same time period. I understand some people enjoy it, but I don't.

~~~
alexsb92
If you don't enjoy driving, there are alternatives such as public
transportation for short surfaces, and trains/airplanes for longer. And I
don't mean this in a bad way, I'm just saying.

~~~
Groxx
It would take me several hours to get to or from work on the bus, and trains
around me are both far away and quite expensive. Heck, it sometimes took the
buses _two hours_ to get me to school 3 miles away, when they're supposed to
be coming by every 30 minutes.

I would if I could. Honestly. I _want_ to get rid of my car. It's just not
possible here, currently, while still being able to do _anything_ necessary.

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exit
i wonder what proportion of the labor market this will affect. basically
anyone using cars for delivery?

no more taxi drivers, take-out delivery, postal delivery, etc.

~~~
Evgeny
There's still a problem to solve though:

who's going to accept payments, process credit cards, verify signatures etc.

~~~
bryanh
Just like there needs to be people who do that at Amazon, Zappos, etc...
</sarcasm>

Honestly, a taxi with only a Google maps interface and a credit card swiper
would be interesting.

~~~
vnchr
No more tipping!

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tocomment
Does anyone know about the algorithms behind this? Are they still using Neural
networks?

I just can't fathom how a computer can know how to drive.

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freshfey
"Remember the times where we used to drive our cars?"

That looks really cool although I'm also interested in how it works. Any infos
there?

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younata
I, for one, want to stop and thank google for making html5 videos from youtube
embeddable.

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chopsueyar
I want to see how it handles a blowout...in the rain.

~~~
jonknee
I would imagine way better than a human. Computers don't get scared.

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angkec
Instead of scared, they crash :)

~~~
jonknee
The biggest danger is an overreaction, which a computer is much less likely to
do (if programmed correctly of course). Newer luxury cars already save you
from yourself when you try and overcorrect, so I suspect this is already a
solved problem.

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gChinkin
So what OS does it run?

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maeon3
Driverless cars are not going anywhere until they can prove themselves 20%
superior than the average driver in ALL the following conditions:

Dealing with Rain (visibility and deep water on the road),

Hard to see tire eating potholes causing damage,

Ice and snow (on road and caking on instruments),

Snow accumulation ruts, causing car to move unexpectedly,

Evasive driving - cutting across a lawn, (avoiding the pool and coming to rest
over the garden gnomes),

hurricane winds, hailstorms,

ambiguous and contradictory road signs,

unmarked roads,

interstate highway pileups,

white-out snow conditions.

I'm pretty sure your going to need pretty strong AI for all this to happen. By
then we shouldn't be needing to go to work because everyone on earth can go on
vacation and the machines will do everything that needs to be done. AND all
this equipment has to be less expensive then hiring someone to drive around on
your behalf.

Naysaying aside, self driving cars will cause a revolution in how cars are
used, the concept of "owning a car" will disappear and then single passenger
cars will fill the roads instead of 4 door seudans/SUV's.

~~~
sorbus
Interestingly enough, a car which simply refuses to drive in hurricanes,
hailstorms, white-out snow, and so forth would be rather more than 20%
superior to the average driver. So that's easily dealt with - if insufficient
sensory data is available, either hand control over to the driver or, if
possible, pull to the side of the road. The average driver likely does really
horrible in large crashes and pileups, so merely the lowered reaction time
might allow a huge improvement there (humans take a really long time to react,
compared to computers). The average driver doesn't need to do evasive driving
(as well as likely being horrible at it), so that's an unnecessary criteria.
Similarly with tire eating potholes; even a tiny improvement would meet the
20% requirement you propose.

Ambiguous/contradictory road signs and unmarked roads are a navigation
problem; given a sufficiently accurate database, as is likely to be present in
most cities, they would be irrelevant (I expect that initial roll-out of
driverless cars would occur in cities, where most traffic would be low-speed
and highly structured. I may be wrong).

Unexpected car movements (due to snow, mud, or whatever else) I would agree to
be fair things that need to be targeted, but I very much disagree with strong
AI being needed for all of this. However, it's probably going to be quite a
long while until the equipment is less expensive than hiring someone else to
drive (which is a barrier for some group behaviors and sharing of data between
cars). On the other hand, that's not necessarily a consideration which people
factor in when buying extremely expensive cars.

~~~
hessenwolf
Problem is, in twenty years, the car would be handing over to a really
amateurish driver.

~~~
jonknee
If it allows the car to be driven. _I'm afraid I can't let you do that Dave_.

