
Volvo’s first self-driving cars now being tested live on public roads in Sweden - taivo
http://www.kurzweilai.net/volvos-first-self-driving-cars-now-being-tested-live-on-public-roads-in-swedish-city
======
augustl
I own a 2013 XC60 and as a programmer, I'm amazed at how well their current
automation works in practice. The car reads road signs to show me the current
speed limit in the dash (actual OCR, not a GPS database). It works amazingly
well, except when it's very dark in the winter. Adaptive cruise control
flawlessly follows cars based on radar, even in somewhat dramatic full stops,
e.g. when there's suddenly heavy traffic ahead. I always have my foot on the
break pedal just in case, but I'm yet to have to intervene.

~~~
thematt
Why would it bother OCR'ing road signs? That seems much more error prone and
needlessly complex. That data is readily available from a data sources based
on your GPS location, I know TomToms and other navigation devices have it.

~~~
mkempe
Maybe because their goal is to steadily build a car system that can read the
environment and adapt speed and direction based on the actual situation? a map
is not the territory.

The latest models also detect pedestrians, bikes, and even animals -- and the
car sets off an alarm and brakes so that we don't run over them. High beams
are politely turned off when meeting another car, as well as when passing near
pedestrians. The software also performs lane detection, shows you where you're
heading when moving in reverse, signals to the driver when another vehicle is
close by to the left or right, even if you can't seen them in the rearview
mirrors.

Volvo has a goal of preventing or mitigating accidents to such an extent that
by 2020 nobody will die in a Volvo when there is a car accident. Their
commitment to the safety of car passengers was such that they let everyone
freely use their patented seat-belt system when they improved it. They've been
running a team in Sweden for decades that travels to every single car accident
involving a Volvo, so that they can understand the causes and consequences of
the accident, sometimes even repeat the event in lab conditions -- and they
can improve the cars accordingly.

Yes, we own a (new) Volvo -- we picked it up at the factory in Sweden, drove
around Europe for a few weeks, and returned it for them to ship it over to our
US address.

~~~
brownbat
I wonder what happens to speed limits when self driving cars are ubiquitous...
I mean, once there are no more revenue from violations, and cars know ideal
speeds far better than legislatures, should we just let the computers figure
out what speed they want to go?

~~~
toong
Currently, 'recuding accidents' are the primary driver for speed regulations
(at least in Europe)

There are a lot of other variables to optimize for, both on individual basis
(fuel, travel time, battery life, ...) and collective basis (congestion
locallity, total time lost in congestion, emissions, ...)

I guess legislatures - over time - will try to optimize some variables for
'the greater good' instead of minimizing your travel time :-)

~~~
riffraff
do you mean _reducing_ accidents (is the primary driver..), or are "recuding
accident" a category of accidents?

~~~
toong
I meant the first thing, yes.

I'm not sure what you mean with the other option ?

------
jareds
I wonder what the first country that will allow completely automated cars with
no human driver is? As a blind person I wonder if that would be enough to have
me consider migrating from the U.S. depending on the country.

~~~
simonebrunozzi
I've been talking about this for years with friends. I bet on Singapore. (I
lived there 2.5 years and know the place a bit).

~~~
31reasons
That will be interesting since Singapore hates car use. That shows in their
incredibly high tax on cars. A typical car costs more than $100k. Since
automated cars can reduce city cruising for parking space and increase car
utilization they may actually welcome the automated cars and perhaps ban
manual cars altogether.

~~~
sanoli
100k for a typical car?? What's the minimum wage there?

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bluthru
Has anything been said about an open protocol for inter-car communication?
What about sharing point cloud data?

I have a bad feeling that Google is going to keep everything sealed in Google
Maps. The industry would benefit from sharing all of their data with
OpenStreetMap.

~~~
toomuchtodo
> The industry would benefit from sharing all of their data with
> OpenStreetMap.

What is the barrier to entry for an open platform for people to submit this
same data to OpenStreetMap. Precise Positioning + GoPros + data processing on
the backend.

~~~
Qworg
All of those things? Plus the new StreetView cars are running LIDAR as well.

Major projects like this have a ton of hardware limitations.

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ommunist
This will probably not work in Britain. Especially at one particular
roundabout on the Isle of Dogs. [http://goo.gl/8AqnLE](http://goo.gl/8AqnLE)
<~ See for yourself.

~~~
squidsoup
Can't help but think some of the traffic engineers in the UK are a little
bonkers, see Swindon's Magic Roundabout
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_Roundabout_(Swindon)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_Roundabout_\(Swindon\))).

~~~
lmm
Americans are always awed/terrified by the Magic Roundabout, but it's actually
very practical (turning right is much easier than on a single big roundabout,
and the whole thing moves better), and straightforward to use even for
newcomers (well, assuming you've used roundabouts at all - I understand
America doesn't have many of them?)

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amckenna
Watching the video it struck me that the lights embedded in the barriers
between lanes are a really good idea. It provides illumination of the road and
the barrier without large poles lining the road which block the view and are
expensive.

~~~
mkempe
In Sweden the national traffic authority is responsible for steadily improving
the road conditions and environment in order to make road traffic safer (for
everyone). What you noticed is one example of their many improvements.

~~~
mkempe
Here are a couple of interesting pieces on road safety in Sweden:

\- Why Sweden has so few road deaths [1]

\- Vision Zero (fatalities and serious injuries on highways by 2020) [2]

[1] [http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-
explains/2014/02/ec...](http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-
explains/2014/02/economist-explains-16)

[2]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vision_Zero](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vision_Zero)

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chiph
No rotating laser dome on the roof?

~~~
nabla9
LIDAR does not work in rain, on wet roads or in the snow.

Google car drives only in good weather in California for a reason. In Sweden
they could drive maybe a week in a year.

    
    
        ... Sommaren är kort   
        de mesta regnar bort ..

~~~
threeseed
Apparently LIDAR does work in rain albeit with degradation in it's
effectiveness.

Regardless I wasn't aware of this before. Why would Google chose this
technology ? It's bizarre.

~~~
nabla9
There is nothing else that gets the accuracy Google needs. Sensors are
currently unsolved problem. Multi wavelength radars don't yet have the
accuracy and they don't work well with nonmetallic objects (There is limit of
how much radar can use power (safely) and how expensive it can be. What works
for F-22 don't work for Google)

Google is not planning to monetize this technology anytime soon, despite the
hype.

The difference between crude human/animal intelligence and top notch AI-
research is still huge. If people would need the accuracy that Google's car
needs to move reliably and do split second decisions, we could never leave our
house. We operate using just two cameras and accelerometers. The clear picture
and spatial recognition is done using top notch heuristics in the unconscious.
With self driving car it's the opposite. They need millions of very accurate
distance measurements per second to drive. Driving like Google car does with
cameras only is not happening yet.

~~~
jacquesm
> They needs millions of very accurate distance measurements per second to
> drive.

I was with you up to there.

~~~
nabla9
LIDAR Google uses takes more than a million measurements per second and has
~11 cm resolution.

~~~
jacquesm
Right, my camera takes more than a million measurements in 1/100th of a second
and has a spatial resolution comparable to that or better depending on the
distance.

'A million measurements' sounds really impressive but it does not have much to
do with anything. What's a measurement? A single distance measurement in front
of the car? Ok, at what opening angle, how many returns, how many pulses /
second and so on.

As it stands that's just a 'big number' but those are not impressive at all
without context.

~~~
trhway
>Right, my camera takes more than a million measurements in 1/100th of a
second and has a spatial resolution comparable to that or better depending on
the distance.

now you put second camera near-by and run stereo analysis algorithm to build
3D scene. 10+ years ago (DARPA Grand Challenge - where roots of Google self-
driving car architecture comes from) with 1M cameras and the available
hardware you'd get lucky to get 1 scene/sec and very crude one at that as 1M
is much lower resolution than our eyes, and resolution is the key to
stereovision. With LIDAR you just get 3D point for each measurement, no
processing (beside regular filtering and coordinate transformation)

I wonder (haven't touched it myself for years nor checked the literature) what
stereoprocessing one gets today on 10M-20M cameras on Intel CPUs of today plus
GPU. It should be pretty close to what our eyes do, and what is most important
- using several 20M cameras you can probably do _better_ than our eyes.

~~~
Qworg
You cannot do better than our eyes. The dynamic range of eyes plus the bit
depth are unparalleled in any camera. We're also backed by a very strong
pattern matching algorithm.

That said, stereo runs pretty damn fast these days. On ASICs. TYZX, who was
bought by Intel, sold a stereo camera about 3 years ago that ran ~52 fps with
full point cloud returns. I think those were running 2+ Mpx.

~~~
trhway
>You cannot do better than our eyes. The dynamic range of eyes plus the bit
depth are unparalleled in any camera.

this is one of the reasons why i said about several cameras - each camera,
pair of them, can cover different [overlapping] subranges of light sensitivity
and each do it better than eyes in each respective subrange, and thus the
integrated image may be better than eyes'

------
jotm
I can't wait for self driving tech to be put into use - transportation will
get cheaper and faster (no more 8-10 hours driving limit bs), not to mention
that one or two persons could drive a dozen trucks filled with cargo (though a
lot of truckers will hate that)...

~~~
objclxt
> _transportation will get cheaper and faster (no more 8-10 hours driving
> limit bs)_

Why do you say that? Somebody is still going to need to be awake at the
controls, at least for the first few decades of self driving tech. There's a
reason pilots on planes don't go to sleep when the auto-pilot kicks on.

~~~
hershel
It's not a good comparison: flying vs driving have totally different response
times(minutes vs seconds). One could even say people can't respond in a good
way in seconds , unless they keep full attention at all times, which beats the
purpose of self driving cars.

~~~
trose
We've basically proven that short of a software glitch, the car will always
react faster and more appropriately than a human since a computer can process
more information quicker than a human.

~~~
buro9
There is no such proof at all.

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majidarif
This won't work in our country. Drivers don't follow traffic regulation, the
roads can't even be called roads. Everything is just wrong. Even a very
advance AI can't handle our roads in Philippines.

~~~
jotm
Heh, that's true for most countries. But I'm pretty sure the tech can already
handle motorways - the cars could self-drive there, then let the driver take
over in cities...

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MrClean
“The test cars are now able to handle lane following, speed adaption, and
merging traffic all by themselves,”

This is an important step, although I must say they appear to be far behind
Google. My money is on Google getting to an acceptable deployment phase far
earlier.

~~~
protomyth
Given the driving conditions in Sweden and the years of experience Volvo has
as a car company, I would bet they will be able to deploy and all weather
version before Google.

~~~
haberman
This effort does not appear to be as ambitious as the Google approach. The
cars drive a specific test route around "50 kilometers of selected roads in
and around Gothenburg." That's quite a different thing than a system where you
key in an arbitrary destination and the car drives you there.

~~~
Qworg
Google's system is not yet arbitrary. They prerun the roads the system drives
on.

I'm excited to see more "in the wild" units - more competition and innovation
is always a good thing.

~~~
danielweber
I don't see "Google needs to pre-map the route" as a hurdle at all. Even if
Google had never been in my area, I would not mind one bit having to do my
daily commute manually for a week while the car builds more and more detailed
maps of the route, if it saved me the hassle of the commute for months
thereafter.

Plus, every time the automatic car goes over the road, it's presumably
checking its prior maps and flagging any anomalies from its preset mission. It
still needs to recognize a new stop sign, but if a stop sign disappears, it
will stop anyway while waiting for an answer on "was it was taken out on
purpose, or did some kids steal it?".

~~~
RogerL
This is the basis of the SLAM algorithms (SLAM = simultaneous localization and
mapping). As you say, if we all had these cars, we'd quickly know about
changes. Of course, the hard problem is finding the new lights, but if this
was to become mainstream I think a lot of things would change. For example, if
a town decides to install a red light, they don't just install one, they
register it in a national database.

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nigekelly
Very interested in this space and how it will end up. We have a big emotional
attachment to cars evidenced by the fact that the annual cost of taking taxis
everywhere is probably cheaper than the annual costs of owning a car if you
live in a city. NYC habitants have probably made this transition already.

SO if we end up with self driving taxis then this form of transport will
become ridiculously cheap as the driver's salary is now eliminated. The
rationale to own a car will become harder to justify.

Also I read recently that our actual usage of cars is very low over a year.
This means huge inefficiency. There is plenty of spare capacity per car to do
alot more journeys. If we all start taking self driving taxis that run 24x7 in
a few years time where does that leave the car companies. One assumes with far
fewer car sales. Are they shooting themselves in the foot?

~~~
peteretep

        > We have a big emotional attachment to cars evidenced by
        > the fact that the annual cost of taking taxis everywhere 
        > is probably cheaper than the annual costs of owning a
        > car if you live in a city
    

I don't think that's true of most cities. Definitely not true of London.

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cscx
How does Subaru EyeSight compare to Volvo's autonomous safety features?

Note: I know EyeSight can't drive the car itself.

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dalek2point3
anyone has any idea where their location data (i.e map) is coming from?

~~~
andrelaszlo
I'm guessing Lantmäteriet (National Land Survey -
[https://www.lantmateriet.se/](https://www.lantmateriet.se/)).

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bra-ket
did they warn the pedestrians?

~~~
mkempe
I know you meant this as a joke.. however, Volvo cars do watch for pedestrians
and automatically stop for them if needs be. In the worst case, there is an
external airbag that will deploy in front of the windshield to avoid the worst
types of injuries based on decades of analysis of car accidents with
pedestrians (in Sweden).

~~~
jpatokal
Except when they don't, as demonstrated in the rather famous fail below during
a PR demo:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lcJ9xgBZJdI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lcJ9xgBZJdI)

The explanation was "The failure of the test was due to the dummy not being
set up properly", which I find rather less than reassuring.

[http://www.drive.com.au/motor-news/volvo-crash-test-goes-
wro...](http://www.drive.com.au/motor-news/volvo-crash-test-goes-
wrong-20100925-15rak.html)

~~~
ptr
That's like Gate's BSOD during the demo of PnP. Works now, doesn't it? ;)

On the 'up side'; if the pedestrian safety air bag fails, it'll be just like
any other car.

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hellbreakslose
"tested live on public roads in Sweden" All I saw was a guy driving that car.
Didn't actually get to see the car driving on its own.~ Can't believe it till
I see it.

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GnarfGnarf
Volvo have stopped selling manual transmission ("stick") cars in North
America. They have lost me as a customer.

~~~
ape4
If you dislike automatic transition I guess you'll not like self driving cars.

~~~
StavrosK
I was quite a fan of the manual transmission, but I got an automatic car for
the first time now (Mercedes A-class), and it's just _so good_ at shifting
that I never even consider it any more. I think of the transmission as another
part of the driving experience to automate away now, like turning lights and
parking brakes on and off.

~~~
squidsoup
Unfortunately you'll also be automating away an element of driving that many
people consider fun.

~~~
StavrosK
It still has paddles, so you can manually shift. Sure, if you don't like it,
it takes away the element of fun, but a few minutes of fun isn't worth the
hours of manual-shifting drudgery during rush-hour traffic for me.

