
UK's RobotCar demonstrated - fraqed
http://phys.org/news/2013-02-uk-robotcar-video.html
======
xedarius
This is great and nice to see some competition for Google. One thing I do like
when I've seen the Google car, is it seems to bomb down the road at top speed.
I've not seen how the Oxford car reacts at high speed. Hats off though, nice
work guys.

~~~
kilburn
Also, the human (non)driver here seems _very_ aware during the whole
experiment, whereas they've always seemed totally confient in google's car
videos.

------
ck2
This one uses off the shelf parts and looks completely normal:

[http://www.wired.com/autopia/2013/02/continental-
autonomous-...](http://www.wired.com/autopia/2013/02/continental-autonomous-
vehicle/)

~~~
kilburn
Highway driving and driving everywhere are two very different problems. This
car seems to try to solve the former only, so it is not really comparable to
google's car or this one.

------
sambeau

      "scientists hope to be able to reduce the cost 
       to as little as £100 (about 150 USD)"
    

Don't you just hate it when they regurgitate stuff like that. I'm sure the
scientists hope for many things. It is a reporter's job to call them out on
that kind of crap.

~~~
robotresearcher
Newman's group has demonstrated cross-country SLAM using a single cheap camera
and a laptop. He is very well known in robotics for his elegant, cheap
approaches that really work. You should take what Paul says very seriously. In
a few years it is very likely that the raw hardware cost will be $150.

The software is very valuable, no doubt. Their business will be either
licensing the software, the IP behind it, or renting access to maps that the
software needs to work. This last one is Google's model, I am sure.
Historically, Newman's stuff does not rely so much on carefully-tweaked maps.

Notice a further lack of crap at <http://www.robots.ox.ac.uk/>

~~~
sambeau
I'm not questioning the validity of the research. I'm questioning that one
statement (a statement similar to one that appears in so many pop-sci
articles).

The £5,000 to £100 estimate is based solely on the hope that the raw component
costs will come down (through bulk-buying and the natural trend of micro-
electronics to get smaller, more powerful and cheaper). Unless I missed
something, this is not because they have some groundbreaking method that will
reduce the number (or price) or components — it's just because there is an
assumption that they will.

Any IT researcher can make similar claims so they are essentially meaningless.
A comparison between the £5000 and the component cost of a rival system would
be more valid and would allow those of us who understand the possibilities for
future component cost reduction to extrapolate.

However, there is no guarantee that component costs will continue to fall
indefinitely. Who knows what wars or shortages may befall us in the future.
Prices may even go up.

As this system relies on an Apple iPad does this price calculation assume that
in a few years Apple will be selling a model for less than $50? I would be
extremely cautious about making such an assumption.

This cost also doesn't take into account the reliability level of the
components that would be required to run such a system on a daily basis. You
can put together a working prototype system for £5000 but as soon as suppliers
are providing components that are mission (and life) critical there is no way
that they will that cheap: the insurance each supplier would need would make a
huge difference to the price. Add to that the high quality control & testing
and the price is unlikely to fall much over the next 10 years.

Common sense also tells us that we'd never be able to buy a system for so
little. $150 is around the price of a replacement battery for my car or two
cheap tyres. I cannot buy a replacement CD/radio for that much. This is for a
car that is 7 years old. Surely over the last 7 years my car parts should have
got cheaper?

Newman and his group know all of this — and you know this — but you choose to
ignore it as it doesn't make a good quote of a Pop-Sci article. Promising
excited less-technical readers a self-driving car for £100 is just too
tempting.

As I said, I don't blame Newman (although I do think it detracts from their
real achievements), I blame the reporter who should have gently called them on
it and clarified what they really meant.

~~~
robotresearcher
The article was pretty normal for its slightly crappy coverage of
science/engineering. But the potential for extreme low cost of the mono-SLAM
approach is actually the news here. It's almost _all software_.

1) You seem to be missing the important point - the approach they are using
uses ordinary cameras and a computer. This really, truly can be very, very
cheap to implement, once we have the (very expensive to develop but near-free-
to-deploy) software. They are trying to see how much of the driving problem
can be solved without using expensive laser rangefinders, etc. Your cellphone
has all the hardware needed, but is not yet fast enough to do it in real time.
OK, it needs more RAM too.

2) You have the prototype vs. production cost exactly inverted. For example,
the iPad is much more expensive than the component cost of a dedicated touch
display, which your new car already has installed for the GPS map anyway.

3) Your car's electronic traction control system is mission critical and uses
very cheap electronics and near-zero-marginal-cost software. It did not add
$5000 to either the build cost or purchase price of your car.

4) When an engineer talks about cost, she is not thinking about retail price.

~~~
sambeau
Traction control cost $100 when it was introduced in 1971 which is ~$567 in
today's money. A new traction control system costs £500-£800. Clearly those
components aren't as cheap as you might think.

When a reporter writes about a cost in a PopSci publication she should be
thinking in terms of retail price as her readers will be unless it is
explicitly stated.

------
rplnt
> the UK team have concentrated on developing their technology using cheap
> components such as sensors to dramatically reduce the cost.

What is this sentence trying to say?

~~~
adamt
That this team has focussed on using cheap off-the-shelf components (such as
their choice of sensors) to make the total cost dramatically lower than most
similar projects.

------
mratzloff
How does an automated car handle a four-way stop sign intersection, out of
curiosity?

~~~
VBprogrammer
I believe the Google car has pretty good intelligence for this, such that it
will begin to creep forward to indicate that it feels its turn has come, in
the same way humans do.

That being said, I don't believe that is a type of intersection we have in the
UK.

~~~
ratherbefuddled
And the magic roundabout in Swindon offers a pretty good test bed for any form
of vehicular intelligence.

~~~
mhandley
Hemel Hempstead also has one: <http://goo.gl/maps/zBZWC>

Had to go round this on my driving test many years ago. The examiner must have
had a death wish.

~~~
ColinWright
That link does not point to the Hemel Hempstead Magic Roundabout.

This does:

[https://maps.google.com/maps?ie=UTF8&ll=51.746299,-0.473...](https://maps.google.com/maps?ie=UTF8&ll=51.746299,-0.473383&spn=0.00171,0.005686&t=h&z=18)

------
Rovanion
I was sitting here thinking it didn't work at all until it dawned upon me that
it was supposed to drive on the left side of the road.

