Where is my driverless car?

[xelasnave]

Once I would have rejected the idea of a car driven by a computer but now I really want one.

Imagine walking into the garage saying " good morning car" or some pet name you give it and telling it to take you to Bintel or up the coast.

Please stop at Newcastle for breakfast and order before we get there and reserve that table near the window that I like.

And while you are at it "car" select some nice place near Taree to recharge while I have lunch and order that beef roast.

No more pulling over for a life saving nap or wasting concentration in traffic when I reach Grafton.

When will we get our driverless cars...or would you rather not have one?


Alex

[xelasnave]

Heck imagine one with a sleeping compartment...sleep all the way.
Alex

[JA]

Sleeping? .... not so much
http://digg.com/2018/tesla-crash-aut...-investigation

or ....

Click here to load the video

Loading...

Best
JA

[AndyG (Andy)]

Originally Posted by xelasnave

When will we get our driverless cars...or would you rather not have one?
Alex

I recently misused a "semi driverless" car in the form of a 2018 Commodore, which we drove from Townsville to Cairns.

It featured lane edge avoidance, cruise control with obstacle awareness, and auto braking. Having set the cruise control at 100km/h, the vehicle automatically nudged the streering wheel left and right, based on marked lines, and barriers - even around corners. If someone slowed down in front, the cameras saw them, and slowed down to follow (with appropriate braking distance calculated). I literally drove to cairns half asleep, with 2 fingers on the wheel. Coupled with the 4 cylinder diesel, that with 8 gears never exceeded 1500 RPM - I was thoroughly anaesthetised.

These safety features for every day people combined to mentally knock me out. I did not feel involved. I ENJOY driving, and riding bikes. The fave activity on wheels for me would be a 2 stroke dirtbike. Anyone who's done similar would know the process of keeping the a 2 stroke at it's best RPM in order to get anywhere... It's "involving". This Commodore was the total opposite.

I wouldn't mind a totally autonomous car, as long as it has a manual mode, and that manual mode delivers an engaging experience. If money wasn't an issue, Something like the turbine powered Jag CX-75, with the AI of KITT (Knightrider) would be the ticket. Bonus points for having an attitude like TARS. Especially if the car itself can endulge/assist me in some (verbal only) road rage.

In the meantime, we have a gulf between Alex's vision, and the "semi-auto" driving of current models. I put forth the idea that these "driver assists" may be counter-productive for safety amongst some poeple, as it actually promotes sleep driving, due to prolonged mental dis-engagement.

[Atmos (Colin)]

I’m thinking that fully driverless cars are still a good 10-15 years off for the general person. We are already pretty much there in the way of technology but legislation is going to take a long time to implement. Also driving laws such as who is culpable in a fatal accident and trying to train the cars to be able to drive through the mayhem that is roadworks which can be anything from no line markings to four different sets in two different colours and then a new set of the small road reflectors which are being over ridden by the reflective cones today

I do agree with Andy. At the moment we are in the transition period where in some cars we still have to concentrate for when something goes wrong but in some cases not actually drive anymore.

[GrahamL]

maybe its a trust thing .
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IBCr-XBWZaQ

[DarkArts]

"Where is my (driverless) car"? In other words, "where the hell did I park"?

These are words you may never have to utter again, once driverless cars are available.

Think about it ... you will no longer worry about getting to work early to avoid parking too far away for an easy walk to the office. The car will drop you off like a school run, then go and park itself. Pick up is the same in reverse.

Apartments will no longer need to include parking spaces, just a pick up/drop off/loading zone. The car park can be some multi-storey maybe a kilometre or more away, shared by many apartment blocks (and it doesn't even have to be ugly, it could be concealed any way you like since humans don't have to be able to find it).

Even if long-distance/highway driving is too much of a stretch, being able to get home from the restaurant on the other side of town when you're over 0.05 is a boon, so navigation aids and safety systems limited to cities and towns might be enough to reap the major benefits. But no doubt major highways would get appropriate systems anyway.

And city-wide traffic optimisation in concert with lights, lanes that change direction on demand and intersection behaviour that changes according to time of day (and modelled/monitored traffic flow) would reduce congestion ... and stress.

The drive home is when you could catch up on the news, social media, etc. even more so than the bus or train due to increased privacy and lack of annoyance to fellow passengers, which is a time-saver. (And you don't have to hold in a fart ... oh, come on, we all do it ).

No more being blinded from overly bright oncoming headlights. Or restricted vision due to heavy rain.

No more screaming at all the morons on the road (except you, of course ... you're the good driver and everyone else is a moron ...).

And when all cars are driverless, does it really matter if you own a car? Communal cars would be relatively more popular, and efficient.

Yup, driverless cars will be good (when they actually get them to work properly and reliably).

[AndrewJ]

The car will drop you off like a school run, then go and park itself.

I doubt that side of things, as once implemented, i am pretty sure "private" ownership will be banned, and it will be treated / controlled as "public transport".
There will just be cars that run all day until they have to get serviced, so no requirement for ANY parking spaces other than at service depots.
Only downside is if you are lucky enough to get a car that has just been vacated by a pig, who has left it a complete mess.


Andrew

[DarkArts]

Originally Posted by AndrewJ

i am pretty sure "private" ownership will be banned,

That's seems like a quite narrow view. And good luck to the government that wants to ban private car ownership.

The economic and social forces would seem to point to greater use of transport services and reduced private ownership, but I definitely don't see banning private ownership at all, any more than banning private ownership of homes and making everybody a social housing renter.

[AndrewJ]

That's seems like a quite narrow view.

I hope its wrong, but the only way to safely make this work in the time frames they want is to absolutely control all the vehicles and their systems, and as such remove "random" errors caused by pesky humans.

Cant have "hoons" modifying their vehicles and creating mayhem.


I personally cant see these automated vehicles working well in anything but large cities for quite a while, and if they can't ban ownership of private vehicles, they would probably just ban where you can use them.
Same thing in the end if you live inside the city.


Andrew

[silv (Annette)]

individual transport is too resource intensive. Imagine people in the emerging economies becoming wealthier and, without alternative transport concepts, billions will want their own cars.

I don't want it to develop that way. I'd rather see some form of trains and tracks everywhere instead of roads and billions and billions of cars. Tons of steel, kilos of toxic material in batteries, on top of the contaminated land from extracting the chemicals per car? Nah. Wrong turn.

Trains are perfect: you can sleep, eat, read in them and look out the window.

I sometimes wonder what trains could be like if engineers weren't constricted to compatibility with the inherited train track and other related infrastructure. But then: in emerging economies, where old infrastructure isn't a show stopper, even in rural AUS, engineers could invent really cool stuff to transport goods and people. Just imagine!

[DarkArts]

Originally Posted by silv

Trains are perfect: you can sleep, eat, read in them and look out the window.

I like trains, but I wouldn't call them perfect.

I can't imagine every suburban street operating with trains/trams/light rail. At some threshold, individual/family/small group-oriented transport becomes necessary if we're to have local (i.e. in your work or home locality) transport at all.

Originally Posted by silv

Tons of steel, kilos of toxic material in batteries, on top of the contaminated land from extracting the chemicals per car?

And what exactly are the trains and tracks going to be made of, and run off?

Trains are perfect: you can sleep, eat, read in them and look out the window.

That is pretty much the same argument as for driverless cars.

[silv (Annette)]

"And what exactly are the trains and tracks going to be made of, and run off?"

The amount of material needed per transported kilo of goods and people from A to B is less.

[DarkArts]

Originally Posted by silv

The amount of material needed per transported kilo of goods and people from A to B is less.

The problem being that they all have to depart from the same A and arrive at the same B, at the same time.

Trains are fine, but they have their (significant) limits.

[silv (Annette)]

Speaking of limits... "The 1.42 billion cars on the road in 2018 need a set of new tires about every 2 years, or 2.84 billion tires annually, and those 2.84 billion tires consume over half of the earth's rubber production, which of course burns even more fuel and cause even more pollution."

Now multiply that with the number of tires on additional individually owned cars from wealthier people in the emerging economies.

And think ahead, if you can, to the year 2050 and 10 billion people alive, many of which might be climate [war] refugees but most will hopefully live in agreeable circumstances. The limit is: the planet's resources and the inhabitable and agriculturally workable land.

Megacities, they're a given by 2050, need different transport concepts for goods and people. By 2050, 85% of the population will live in cities and go about their business from A in suburbia to B and from B to C and so forth. Better to envision sustainability and a sustainable level of quality of life than to backward focus into a tunnel.

That future starts today. With genius engineers who can think out of the 4 wheeled 2-seater box.

[xelasnave]

There is plenty of land if we irrigate the deserts.
How do we irrigate the deserts?
With water of course☺
Alex

[LewisM]

Driverless cars....no thanks. I wouldn't mind at least a fighting chance in a crash rather than being asleep and going head on/ side on into a kangaroo or cow that wonders out before "George" can react (aviation nuts know who George is)

[xelasnave]

What really got me interested in the idea Lewis was the fact that there will be a time when I will not be able to drive ...old on crook legs...I am confident all the bugs will be sorted by the time I need one as things always seem to work out☺
Sure there will be problems but it will arrive I just know it.
Alex

[AndrewJ]

Gday Alex

I am confident all the bugs will be sorted by the time I need one

Dream on.
I just look at the time and money spent to automate aircraft
and they still cant get it to a point where they will run "passenger" aircraft without pilots. ( Who cares if a freighter crashes )

Running cars in the suburbs of a city, let alone an unmaintained rural area is going to have an order of magnitude more problems to solve, ( and get it right 100% of the time ) than running in a well mapped/instrumented/maintained city.

Andrew

[Shano592 (Shane)]

Adding a dose of Marty McFly into the mix...

Where is my self-driving hover-car?

(Aaaand throwing in a Star Wars reference, too!) Like on Coruscant, vehicles travelling in different directions could fly at differing altitudes. I don't mind if they are controlled centrally, to ensure that they stick to a lane. Maybe when they sort out quantum computers properly...

I would like to see one in my lifetime, even if I don't end up owning one.