
Altruistic Autonomy: Beating Congestion on Shared Roads - whoisnnamdi
http://ai.stanford.edu/blog/altruistic-autonomy/
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karmakaze
This model is overlooking some aspects of traffic flow. The most important one
is that flow does not increase and decrease smoothly. As density increases
there starts to be shock waves that bounce longitundinally[0].

It would also makes sense to also distribute some autonomous vehicles along
the train to minimize these shock waves. A much simplier solution is to
autonomously centre between the vehicle in front and rear[1]. Doing so
smoothly is simple local logic which may improve flow rates dramatically but I
don't know if it's been implemented anywhere.

    
    
      [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Suugn-p5C1M
      [1] https://www.insidescience.org/news/fluid-dynamics-explains-some-traffic-jams

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jimnotgym
On my commute all of the possible routes are congested. I can be as selfish as
I like, but I won't get home any faster. I think we need more roads and more
pubic transport and more work-from-home schemes. Autonomous cars may may allow
me to chill a bit more in the gridlock I suppose...

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dsfyu404ed
This. We need more everything. Infrastructure improvements of all kinds have
not kept pace with population increases.

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repsilat
Funny what apparently simple differences in mathematical models can imply.

I studied an old-school "Wardrop model" of traffic flow in one class in
school. In that model, your speed along a road segment is a function of the
flow (vehicles per hour), and it's usually assumed to be monotonic (or at
least non-decreasing.) In the article, the images _never_ show increased
throughput coinciding with longer travel times.

In the Wardrop model, equilibrium traffic levels are unique, and in TFA's
model they aren't. (The diagrams make this clear in a really nice way, I like
them a lot.)

I wonder whether/when each model is a better description of reality. It's hard
to imagine the road in that Office Space clip demonstrating especially veh/hr
flow...

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jacques_chester
In my reading, this says that autonomous cars, if they all behave
cooperatively, can be more efficient road users than manual cars driven by
individuals acting selfishly.

While it works out in the Nash equilibria they describe, I don't see it
working at any sort of scale. It's too easy to defect from the better
equilibrium: drive the car yourself, or buy that aftermarket app which
disables the cooperative driving mode.

~~~
epberry
If there were safety advantages with cooperative driving and ultimately
efficiencies I bet a public relations campaign could convince people. Or
having dedicated lanes for cooperative driving. I would certainly turn this on
for interstate driving.

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pewdiepotpie
I think the PR campaign makes people aware there is a problem, but when people
are intoxicated, the access to good [nondestructive] decision making is
inhibited. I would wonder if ALL vehicles should have some sort of
breathalyzer interlock that could also prevent junior from "fixing" mommys car
so the little green light comes on again.

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black-tea
I drove to work for a while and it was awful. I wished that there was some way
to tell everyone what the average speed of the road currently was and limit
their speed to that. Instead I found that people moved their cars forward to
the next place to stop as quickly as they could every single time. It was
infuriating.

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eveningcoffee
What actually happens with human drivers is this: everyone wants to get
home/work so the distance between the cars will decrease below safe levels
when more cars are added to the road.

So the breaking latency of the autonomous cars must be better than this to fit
more cars onto roads.

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HillaryBriss
> _...when a modest portion of the autonomous cars are altruistic, it is
> possible for majority of the cars to use the shortest route without causing
> congestion. This can significantly (in fact, unboundedly) decrease the total
> latency._

how could it decrease the total latency unboundedly? I mean, doesn't the lower
bound have to be zero?

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Misdicorl
They're probably talking about a division style of 'unbounded' (dividing by
your 0). But they're still bounded by the speed of light in that case. Trash
article is trash.

