It's Google's no-wheel car. OMG... there aren't any BRAKES Google is building a driverless car that comes sans steering wheel, accelerator pedal or brake pedal, because - it claims - the vehicles don't need those controls. Mountain View said it is currently creating prototypes that will work "safely and autonomously without requiring human intervention". It is so confident about the …
I can see it now. 7.30am your car arrives from its pod, picks you up and drives you to work collecting maybe one other person doing that same exact route.
At 9.30 the cars forms a centipede like train of to head off to central points, ready for mass action.
A car at your hose/work place within 2 minutes of a whistle? The blocker in all of this is, even now, is the switch from oil to electricity. The grid system is simply not ready.
How about this ... As any personal vehicle actually spends most of its time stationary would it make more sense to have the passenger compartment and inteligent chassis as dockable elements? That way 'drivers' still retain their personal space, fluffy dice & boiled sweet mashed into carpet etc and the traction unit can go off by itself to carry somebody else, get serviced, go for fuel or a join a nearby pool of units on charge.
There are already some London boroughs with a speed limit of 20mph on almost all their roads. And in practice, average speed in much of the city is less than that. Based on my trek across town yesterday, from the M3/M25 junction to Hackney, I don't think I managed even ten miles per hour. But I did discover exciting new parts of Acton. Which was nice.
Nope. They will use the "average speed increases as congestion decreases" argument. And "SPEED KILLS. Think of the children..."
This makes perfect sense on paper, however I still maintain that my travel time has significantly increased since all these traffic management measures were put into place. Visiting my parents used to take 2.5 hours there and 2.5 back. It now takes 4 there and 2.5 back. Guess which route has all the traffic calming?
Looks a bit like a Henkel Kabine Though I think it has 3 wheels.
But there were some 4 wheel bubble cars.
The British version of the Isetta was built with only one rear wheel instead of the narrow-tracked pair of wheels in the normal Isetta design in order to take advantage of the three-wheel vehicle laws in the United Kingdom.
i.e. 3 wheels (still?) counted as a Motorcycle + Sidecar for road tax and driving licence.
I think my Dad had the 3 wheel Isetta for a short while.
The Googlemobile looks like a micro car.
I think comparing to a Sinclair C5 is very unfair. Most like this 1984 effort?
49cc petrol
I tell you what worries me about this... The young age of the engineers. I know I sound ageist and all that, but do you think they followed some kind of approved design process for:
a) the overall system
b) the hardware (fault tolerance etc)
c) the software (fault tolerance etc)
I'd love to see the code and apply it to a ISO-61508 review. I mean, seriously, if you are designing a train that can semi-autonomously pilot itself, then you'd have to design it to SIL 2 standards at a minimum (I believe). An under-sea pipeline, SIL3. A nuclear reactor, SIL4. What reassurance do we have that any proper design process was followed such the system can be certified with a certain level of safety?
If the guys in the video were in their 40's and 50's and were all ex transport industry (rail, flight avionics etc) then okay, you'd know that those guys were well versed in their subject and had very probably followed a certifiable design process.
I don't get that feeling from these guys.
"If the guys in the video were in their 40's and 50's and were all ex transport industry (rail, flight avionics etc) then okay, you'd know that those guys were well versed in their subject and had very probably followed a certifiable design process."
You don't think Google might have the money and means to employ appropriate experts? The amount of time and money they've spent on this leads me to believe that they probably did use the brightest and best people with the right skills and experience. I'd imagine the US government was quite keen on that being the case too before letting them loose on the streets.
1) A visual way of knowing that a car is in auto mode, so while on the M1 we don't get alarmed at the sight of a driver slumped against the side window, snoring his face off in the middle lane.
2) A means by which a car can be forced into automatic mode by a vote of the people in the cars in its immediate vicinity.
Just imagine when a tosspot almost wipes out the whole road with idiotic risk taking. The people who are under threat just identify the car and if enough votes are received, the car switches into auto and everyone can relax!
A means by which a car can be forced into automatic mode by a vote of the people in the cars in its immediate vicinity.
Cue angry dude with a baseball bat stepping out of his car coming over to politely enquire about why on earth would you apparently want to scan the identifying QR code on the back of his vehicle with your cell phone.
I've seen a few play chicken with cars on council estates in my time.
Doing it against a human at the wheel though, always has the risk that he'll not stop, either deliberately or by inattention. The computer doesn't have this problem. Which I do appreciate is part of the argument FOR this system.
You'll be there. In your giant, plastic goldfish bowl. Pressing GO. The car will lurch a few inches forward, then stop. You'll repeat this while the kid stands there giving you the finger.
You get out.
He legs it.
You stand looking like an idiot.
You clearly have led a very fortunate life. I have lived in areas where kids would do this routinely, especially if they didn't recognise the car. One area I had to go for work purposes had a gang of adults who would do it - your option was to stop and be verbally abused/have the car damaged/get into a fight you were unlikely to win, or risk hitting the pair in the road (pre-mobile phone, so no easy way to call for help). The ability to do a reverse-flick was the only way to avoid problems, and usually got a round of applause if done well ...
It would appear The Goog and being very subtle in their program.
1) deliberately choose a small, practical, slow vehichle to refine the software/hardware.
2) Since they are small, using them in companies and theme parks will probably be first.
3) Every single journey they complete is more data...
There is a circular argument regarding the safety of these vehicles, when modern cars driving by humans are colliding in all sorts of unfortunate way.
A potential benefit of these vehicles will be that the liability becomes included in the vehicle, and the drivers insurance is only applicable when the driver is in control.
One of the reasons the CA law is written the way it is, is because this is the intermediate form of the car. It will start with live driver, and eventually 99% of the most common use cases will be captures.
This could be a massive boost for society, in providing the disabled a means of transport.
Just watch the Corps/Gov screw it up for profit.
P.
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What we need is to stop calling these "cars". The future is clearly driverless cars -- we all want all the benefits of personal, door-to-door transport, without the hassle and danger (and inefficiency) of human drivers.
But, to be successful, the industry has to stop calling them "cars". We all have to stop thinking about them as cars -- they are just more sophisticated versions of the people movers at airports.
People don't want someone telling them "you can't drive your car any more". And legislators need to make different laws for these new things -- you can't ask a person to take any responsibility if they have no controls, nor if they are not actively involved second-by-second -- anyone would lose concentration after a few minutes.
Keep cars as what they are now and give these new, driverless things a new name -- for example "pod". Eventually people will stop bothering with cars, governments will make cars less and less attractive (pods won't need personal insurance, only pods will be able to use motorways, go into central London, use bus lanes, ...).
Oh, and we need to get someone to take over from Google. I am looking forward to not having to drive, but I will pay extra not to need to tell any commercial company where I am going.
I most certainly don't want "... all the benefits of personal, door-to-door transport, without the hassle and danger (and inefficiency) of human drivers"! I'd prefer to stick with the ridiculously low chance of an incident that causes death or injury to me or someone else in order to have some freedom and ability to exercise some control over my world. Driving is the most complex and dangerous (despite the tiny risk in most Western countries) thing most people do these days, and life will be diminished by removing it.
That said, I would like the option of having a vehicle with enough room for me to get comfortable (so lots of leg-room) which will get me to a destination 400 miles away cheaply, quickly and using the fewest number of changes, whilst still being able to get some work done. Aircraft, trains and coaches fail on several of those requirements, so a self-driving car might fit the bill - though I still maintain that driving without due care and attention would prevent me working whilst being the nominal controller of the vehicle.
@imanidiot: THAT is why they need to change the word. Of course you don't want to give up your car. I am not sure I do either. But there are so many benefits to society that governments will make it MUCH more favourable for you to use your "pod" for more and more things (commuting, going on holiday, ...) that eventually you will find you haven't driven your real car for three months. At that point you might decide you don't need your car any more.
But to get that point, they need to first sell you a "pod" as a supplement to your car, not as a replacement. Maybe first of all for commuting, where a 25MPH speed limit is fine because most of the commute is spent in traffic jams, and so you aren't worried about safety because the speeds are low, and it is great to be able to drink a cup of coffee and look at the sports pages on the way into work.
I have a car with very basic electronics. Throttle is done by cable (With some electronics for idle valve control and fuel injection. IE not entirely safety critical), brakes don't have esp, just ABS (Which is mostly mechanical in nature), hydraulic power steering (no computer involved), etc. And I'd think twice about buying a modern car that DID have all those mcguffins.
And I fly regularly, albeit with the cables and pushrods kinds of planes. Even on a plane, the basic handling of the plane might be done by the computers, but the actual flying, the decision making, the collision avoidance, the navigation, etc is handled by humans in the more critical phases of flight. I can trust a computer to that point. But once you start mixing in other traffic and pedestrians, I wouldn't trust a computer to drive me around. Let alone fly me around.
(And no, there isn't a single airplane control system out there that could handle 8 planes in close proximity trying to land on the same uncontrolled airfield. A human CAN do that however.)
I don't think humans will have much of a say in where these 'cars' go or what they get up to. One imagines that more often than not ones iGoggle_Fridge-o-matic will instruct the household Drivo-pod thingy (or one of the household fleet of thingies), to nip off down to the Morrisburys Drive-Through-Store and top up with groceries all be-twixt themselves, in a sort of Meals-on-wheels mode. Then, to complete the transaction, one will be pestered by a mobile 'Payment Authorisation Required' alert message, (right in the middle of a thoroughly engrossing planning meeting on migrating umpteen beellion systems to Windows 19), before your tea can begin it's journey home. So long as the fridge-o-matic instructions can be over-ridden by my need to get home from the office, then I suppose it's the way of the future.
But I fancy I might be a bit of a maverick and occasionally take the old motor-car for a spin running on home-brewed ethanol, or sunnink.
"No, I'm sorry sir, but it's quite clear sir, from the Global Live Record of Everything Everywhere, that you weren't texting / browsing enough sir, whilst the car was driving sir. You can accept an on-the-spot fine of 200 Kredits or attend a Global Consum-a-Tron re-education course, which is it to be sir?"
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