
BMW shows off 'drifting' self-drive cars - alsutton010203
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-25653253
======
datawander
Last time I checked this was Hacker News, not Reddit, and I am getting sick of
articles like this making it to the front page (as I am aware other commenters
have noted).

I didn't even need to click on the article (but did in a vain hope) to know
that there was absolutely no information as to what they actually did from a
technical perspective that deserves notice on HN. The most technological it
gets is "Using 360-degree radar, ultrasonic sensors and cameras, the cars
sense and adapt to their surroundings.", but then what does it do that is
different from what the Google Car and other autonomous cars do? Is it any
different from the Audi that drove itself up Pike's Peak as quickly as it
could?

The rest is offtopic, but as a long time read-only user, I must come out of
the woodwork and make my first comments (other than a few days ago) to be to
beg of submitters and upvoters to please only submit/upvote stuff that is
actually relevant to what should be the audience of Hacker News, not the
general reddit population...

I got sick of reddit and 'general' news years ago and don't want to go back to
it.

~~~
sk5t
I agree this is a very superficial article, although it is somewhat relevant
to folks interested in self-driving vehicles. Despite regular procrastination
on Jalopnik, I hadn't previously heard about self-driving tech applied to
anything in the motorsports arena.

Nevertheless you raise a good point re. the fluff content here and encroaching
redditification. Lately a lot of "witty one-liners" have appeared up in the
comment section, and downvote-enabled HN users should feel a duty to
discourage them.

~~~
wtallis
Audi has been doing autonomous sports cars for years. In 2010 they had a TTS
climb Pikes Peak, albeit almost three times slower than the human-driven
record for that course.

------
Volscio
Here's a promo video of it:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IL_enMPWT7s](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IL_enMPWT7s)

~~~
ableal
I think I spotted an overturned cone at the 55 second mark ...

Wired magazine had a small piece about the presentation, including that video:
[http://www.wired.com/autopia/2014/01/bmw-builds-self-
driftin...](http://www.wired.com/autopia/2014/01/bmw-builds-self-drifting-
car/)

~~~
weaksauce
a lot of time in racing with cones they will lay one down next to another to
indicate which direction to go.

source: I did a lot of autocross racing.

edit: looking at it again I'd be extremely surprised if it was anything but a
direction marker.

------
michaelt
Stanford have done some interesting work on this:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gzI54rm9m1Q](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gzI54rm9m1Q)

IIRC Stanford's motion planning relies on blending from a plan based on a
physics model to a choice of learned operations programmed into the car by a
stunt driver. Makes sense for demos, but I don't know how well it would work
if surfaces or driving conditions were different from when the operation was
taught.

------
dcc1
This is bad news (despite being a BMW owner)

In future driving will no longer be fun, if you want to drive "non-automated"
car or disable "auto-pilot" your insurance company will automatically jack up
your premium, since they would consider self driving cars "safer"

~~~
imgabe
If you want to have fun, there will no doubt be private tracks where you can
go and drive in a fun way. As someone who just gave up commuting about 1
traffic-laden hour each way, driving stopped being fun long, long ago.

Too many of my commutes were made an unnecessary 50% or more longer because of
drivers who were probably having a lot of fun until they caused an accident
and backed up the road for everyone else.

~~~
Pxtl
At the same time, the entire continent is finally pushing _back_ on that
1-hour commute. People are returning to cities, transit and infill and dense
construction are becoming political issues, etc. Part of the impetus for this
re-urbanization is the misery of commute.

Beyond commuting woes, density is also more efficient for providing services
and for environmental concerns.

So I'm slightly worried that a move towards self-driving cars will allow us to
backslide on this progress. Obviously I _want_ the technology - it will be
safer, more efficient, and healthier - but I'm worried about how culture could
shift around it.

~~~
joosters
When did people leave cities then? Which cities were shrinking but now aren't?

~~~
theatraine
This article gives a good overview in the USA:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Largest_cities_in_the_United_St...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Largest_cities_in_the_United_States_by_population_by_decade)

~~~
joosters
I can't see any cities there that significantly shrank and then grew again.
Care to name some if you know of any?

~~~
bskap
New York's population was steady from 1950-1970 before dropping about 10%
between 1970 and 1980. Considering that the US population increased by about
50% between 1950 and 1980, I'd consider that a rather significant decrease.

------
melling
Wonder when Google will have their self-driving fleet taking people from the
Las Vegas airport to their hotels during CES? It would be a great publicity
stunt.

"Currently California, Florida and Nevada have licensed autonomous vehicles to
be tested on their public roads, and Google's fleet of 24 robot Lexus SUVs
(sports utility vehicles) have clocked up about 500,000 miles of unassisted
driving so far without any reported mishaps."

~~~
seiji
Can you imagine the emergency procedures they have in place to cover up any
mishaps?

A few payoffs here, a few altered records there... no mishaps!

~~~
angersock
Do tell, how is one to search for news about a mishap? I think the Googlebot
may have difficulty recalling such articles.

------
TulliusCicero
Insurance won't have higher premiums for manually driven cars, because in the
future, manually driven cars will be banned.

It's absurd to insist that some people's enjoyment of driving overrules
others' right to life. If you want to enjoy driving, you can do it on a
private track where you only risk your own life and the lives of others who
want to drive for fun.

------
darklajid
I thought about this over and over. As it is usually the case with these
articles (same with Google cars etc.) there's a group of supporters, usually
with the 'It will be safer for the whole mankind' argument, sometimes with
more mundane 'I would like to work in my car and let the thing drive itself'
car-as-single-person-bus thrown in. And a group of people that firmly believe
that this development takes away their freedom to (drive|steer|joyride).

I guess I should've put a disclaimer that states that I sympathize more with
the latter kind of people, but try hard to find out why that is the case. For
me, assisted driving is a no-brainer. My wife hasn't ever driven a car where
the steering wheel is unsupported. Nor a car without ABS and related/improved
technology. In my world that's a good thing. The car already, today, decides
that it has to take control in a number of ways.

Further down in this thread I described my company car and its assistance
systems. Most of those are nice to have and useful. I configured that car
myself and included all those 'Let me help you here..' systems. This is not a
matter of pride, no 'People that use assistance systems cannot really drive a
car' attitude.

I guess for me the conflict starts when we talk about giving up _all_ control.
For me the perfect solution would feel like a car today. It behaves as I
expect it to, if I kick down the car responds. BUT I would be totally fine
with more and more assistance systems that prevent me from screwing up. Not
the 'Let the car drive' future, but rather a 'Let me drive (potentially
optional), but step in if necessary'.

The result is more or less the same, but one feels like giving up something (a
freedom, a privilege, a thing I enjoy), the other sounds like a reasonable and
intriguing improvement.

I don't really want a self-driving car. I want an intelligent car that
prevents me from causing trouble.

~~~
bane
I'd rather have a car I can drive if I want to, or hit a button and have it
just autopilot there instead.

~~~
sukuriant
I am all for this system as well. I don't think you and the grandparent are in
disagreement, either. It looks like what they're saying is "give me varying
levels of automation, including but not limited to full automation --- as long
as I can have as much control as I want at the time." similar to a car with an
option to disable traction control.

~~~
darklajid
This sounds a bit like the car in I-Robot (which happens to be Audi built..).

~~~
qbrass
The movie where the hero is blamed for causing an accident because he turned
the autopilot off to avoid being killed by two large driver-less trucks sent
to kill him.

------
joshu
Drifting is suprisingly hard. I took a class and after two days was only able
to do a little:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-lN_jhvpqQ](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-lN_jhvpqQ)

I am thinking about how to organize an autonomous race in 2015 so this is
pretty exciting for me.

------
Tomdarkness
Does anyone know if it was pre-programmed with the course and made minor on
the fly corrections or was able to complete the course independently in real
time?

------
dkokelley
_" One 2013 study by the Eno Center for Transportation suggested that if 10%
of cars on US roads were autonomous this could reduce fatalities by about
1,000."_

This doesn't quite seem right. How does a 10% shift towards autonomous
vehicles only equate to a 2% decrease in fatalities? Why wouldn't this scale
linearly?

~~~
jules
Who says it doesn't scale linearly? That certainly can't be concluded from the
sentence you cited. Are you assuming that self driving cars result in 0
fatalities?

~~~
dkokelley
Roughly, yes. I'm assuming that at 100% autonomous cars there will be ~0
fatalities. From the article, at ~0 autonomous cars, there are 50,000
fatalities annually. I guess I'm just curious as to the curve that dictates
the relationship between autonomous car adoption rate and annual vehicular
fatalities.

I found the study referenced, but I haven't quite found their methods.

[http://www.enotrans.org/wp-
content/uploads/wpsc/downloadable...](http://www.enotrans.org/wp-
content/uploads/wpsc/downloadables/AV-paper.pdf)

------
IBM
If a car company has their own self-driving technology, will they ever pay
Google for theirs?

~~~
gaius
Of course, why would they?

The interesting thing is the motivation. BMW want to make a better car, to
sell more cars. Google want self-driving to free up driver's time to consume
media, which will be covered in advertising - exactly the same as releasing
Android to drive mobile Internet usage. But just as Google acquired Motorola,
which automaker is in their sights? GM?

~~~
michaelt
Google could be hoping to diversify away from "everything free but ad
supported" as they are with things like App Engine.

They could plan to license the technology to car manufacturers for a per-car
fee or subscription; along with the detailed road condition data gathered by
streetview cars and android phones.

------
dockd
It would be nice if the auto manufacturers spent the effort on making their
existing products better before they distract themselves with these projects.

Case in point? My car uses 1 quart of oil every 1000 miles (123K on the
odometer) with a perfect maintenance record, and the manufacturer say this is
Normal. Raise your hand if you like to stop in the middle of a family outing
to pour a quart of oil into your car.

Or the power window motors that failed every 60K miles. Or the vinyl drivers
seat that cracked to pieces. Or the traction control that engages on wet
manhole covers. Or...

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _It would be nice if the auto manufacturers spent the effort on making their
> existing products better before they distract themselves with these
> projects._

Actually, any effort expended on bringing closer the time human-controlled
cars are banned from public roads is a _Good Thing_. As in, lots of fuel, time
and human lives saved. Can't wait.

------
angersock
So, as a cyclist that commutes to work everyday on my bike--are any of these
manufacturers making sure that their vehicles don't squish pedestrians, or
even worse, people on bikes?

~~~
JshWright
They will, in fact, do a much better job of it than a human driver.

An automated car will detect the obstacle faster, make a better decision on
evasive maneuvers (based on a much better understanding of the current
conditions), and apply that decision _much_ faster than a human driver could.

I mentioned this elsewhere in the thread, but a modern car processes a
collision _very_ quickly. It detects it, decides what to do about it (which
airbags to fire, which seatbelt pretensioners to deploy, etc), and implements
those safety measures _before the driver is aware the collision has occurred_.
Apply that same processing latency to evasive maneuvers and you'll see just
how much safer automated cars can be.

------
redact207
So what will be the point of laying down a tonne of cash for a "BMW - Sheer
Driving Pleasure" if you can't drive it?

~~~
JetSpiegel
Pleasure for BMW, not for the drivers.

------
snake_plissken
There is all this talk about safety but isn't drifting your car inherently
dangerous? It's not like you're drifting your car around turns on your way to
work. And if you are, you're a jackass and putting everyone else at risk.

~~~
ohazi
The benefit comes from automated driving systems being able to handle
emergency out-of-control situations safely and predictably, not in regularly
being driven around like this.

Let's say you're in a self-driving car and get pegged and flung across a
highway by another car going 20 mph faster than you. In this case, a driver
with high performance training would be better able to land the crash than an
average driver that panics and makes unsafe corrective inputs.

You want the self-driving car to be able to respond like the high performance
driver, which means knowing how to safely drift.

------
jonas_b
Anybody know if self-driving cars can distinguish between safe and unsafe
object; say a big stuffed animal, and a rock in the middle of the road. Would
they make big maneuvers to avoid both?

~~~
JshWright
Human beings aren't especially good at that either...

~~~
pestaa
Tell me about it. I am constantly surprised by how close I need to get to the
target in low light conditions to realize it is really not what I earlier
recognized it to be.

It usually makes me wish I could enable some sort of Splinter Cell heat
sensor.

------
scotty79
Yes! That's how robots should behave. Robot cars drifitng and bipeds doing
backflips and pushups when handstanding on one arm.

------
VladRussian2
"Fast and Furious 1X" will be starring self-driving cars i guess.

------
davrosthedalek
Things like this make me rethink my decision to stay in academia.

------
thirdsight
Great. They taught computers to drive like a dick as well now...

------
jackmaney
0_o Why don't we work on self-driving cars that drive correctly, first? Then
the "HERP-DERP, I'MMA DRIVIN' SIDEWAYS!" enthusiasts can work on their own
cars (hopefully on their own closed tracks and roads).

~~~
cjensen
Being able to drive sideways may be tech that applies to recovering from an
emergency situation like black ice.

