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THE Self-Driving Car / Ridesharing Thread

Discussions of conventional and alternative energy production technologies.

Re: THE Self-Driving Car / Ridesharing Thread

Unread postby ennui2 » Sun 25 Sep 2016, 10:10:57

Outcast_Searcher wrote:
pstarr wrote:You have never argued a case well outcaste. Always angry. I almost have you on ignore, but I don't bother.

And you should tell me this because you argue cases well? LOL

And I get the ignore thing. Ignoring everyone outside your echo chamber would make this site seem much more agreeable, I'm sure.


It's worse than that. He's deluded himself into thinking that his positions represent some official stance of the forum and anyone who doesn't subscribe to it is a "troll".
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Re: THE Self-Driving Car / Ridesharing Thread

Unread postby vox_mundi » Sun 25 Sep 2016, 13:37:54

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pstarr
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Re: THE Self-Driving Car / Ridesharing Thread

Unread postby Outcast_Searcher » Sun 25 Sep 2016, 14:47:47

pstarr wrote:You fanboys present no evidence that a driverless car will ever navigate a city street, on a dark night, in the rain. Or even in daylight during a sudden thunderstorm. You guys/gals live in an echo chamber with Siri, Hal and a talking Cabbage Patch Doll. Not me lol

The entire EV and self-driving car industry is an epic fail - because pstarr thinks so. Just like the economy, BTW. Any evidence from actual experts, people in the industry, people actually building and, increasingly, driving the things are to be ignored because, pstarr doesn't like them.

And anyone who actually follows the mainstream news and all the evidence documenting how these things are progressing is delusional.

Well, the argument speaks for itself. 8O
Given the track record of the perma-doomer blogs, I wouldn't bet a fast crash doomer's money on their predictions.
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Re: THE Self-Driving Car / Ridesharing Thread

Unread postby ennui2 » Sun 25 Sep 2016, 15:49:59

Outcast_Searcher wrote:
pstarr wrote:You fanboys present no evidence that a driverless car will ever navigate a city street, on a dark night, in the rain. Or even in daylight during a sudden thunderstorm. You guys/gals live in an echo chamber with Siri, Hal and a talking Cabbage Patch Doll. Not me lol

The entire EV and self-driving car industry is an epic fail - because pstarr thinks so. Just like the economy, BTW. Any evidence from actual experts, people in the industry, people actually building and, increasingly, driving the things are to be ignored because, pstarr doesn't like them.

And anyone who actually follows the mainstream news and all the evidence documenting how these things are progressing is delusional.

Well, the argument speaks for itself. 8O


Yep, the only news worth reading is:

GlobalResearch
ZeroHedge
OurFiniteWorld
FleeingVesuvius
ShadowStats

Everything else is just TPTB trying to sell us on consumerism! After all, I saw it in a movie!

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Re: THE Self-Driving Car / Ridesharing Thread

Unread postby ralfy » Sun 25 Sep 2016, 23:20:40

Outcast_Searcher wrote:The entire EV and self-driving car industry is an epic fail - because pstarr thinks so. Just like the economy, BTW. Any evidence from actual experts, people in the industry, people actually building and, increasingly, driving the things are to be ignored because, pstarr doesn't like them.

And anyone who actually follows the mainstream news and all the evidence documenting how these things are progressing is delusional.

Well, the argument speaks for itself. 8O


It will be an epic fail because it will still require extensive levels of material resources and energy, just like the present car industry, and something called "peak oil" (as part of limits to growth) won't allow.

Mainstream news will generally not raise this point because that's not what corporate sponsors want to hear.
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Re: THE Self-Driving Car / Ridesharing Thread

Unread postby ennui2 » Mon 26 Sep 2016, 00:37:18

ralfy wrote:something called "peak oil" (as part of limits to growth) won't allow.


Last time I checked, something called peak oil has taken a snooze lately.

ralfy wrote:Mainstream news will generally not raise this point because that's not what corporate sponsors want to hear.


Or, more likely, they're not raising the point because there is no point, since we're in an oil glut.
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Re: THE Self-Driving Car / Ridesharing Thread

Unread postby Tanada » Mon 26 Sep 2016, 10:16:41

I would like to know how these self driving cars will handle the zillions of pot holes in the road that are created every year. We can't seem to find funds to maintain the roads we have now, yet self driving car lane markers and such will be appearing any day now, as if by magic.
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Re: THE Self-Driving Car / Ridesharing Thread

Unread postby ennui2 » Mon 26 Sep 2016, 10:23:47

I would like to know how these self driving cars will handle the zillions of pot holes in the road that are created every year.


Like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T9yfp7ACCR0
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Re: THE Self-Driving Car / Ridesharing Thread

Unread postby Tanada » Mon 26 Sep 2016, 11:35:54

ennui2 wrote:
I would like to know how these self driving cars will handle the zillions of pot holes in the road that are created every year.


Like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T9yfp7ACCR0


Proof positive you have never driven on the streets around Detroit Michigan.
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Re: THE Self-Driving Car / Ridesharing Thread

Unread postby ennui2 » Mon 26 Sep 2016, 11:53:51

Tanada wrote:
ennui2 wrote:
I would like to know how these self driving cars will handle the zillions of pot holes in the road that are created every year.


Like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T9yfp7ACCR0


Proof positive you have never driven on the streets around Detroit Michigan.


Who cares? You can't sell Teslas in Michigan anyway.
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Re: THE Self-Driving Car / Ridesharing Thread

Unread postby Tanada » Mon 26 Sep 2016, 12:23:20

ennui2 wrote:
Tanada wrote:
ennui2 wrote:
I would like to know how these self driving cars will handle the zillions of pot holes in the road that are created every year.


Like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T9yfp7ACCR0


Proof positive you have never driven on the streets around Detroit Michigan.


Who cares? You can't sell Teslas in Michigan anyway.


Moving the goalposts again, this thread is bout self driving cars, NOT just Tesla Motors.
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Re: THE Self-Driving Car / Ridesharing Thread

Unread postby ennui2 » Wed 28 Sep 2016, 14:23:40

OK, back on topic, then.

Researchers Think We're Nearing Peak-Car

And no, not because of oil-scarcity.

if it’s right — something that, to be sure, can be questioned — then we would be on the verge of an energy and technology transformation to rival the sudden decline of the coal industry.
...
as the trend becomes widespread — with fleets of autonomous vehicles, owned by companies or cities, on the road and not running on gas — our greenhouse gas emissions will plunge
...
The study suggests a major decrease in gasoline demand and, as a result, a major increase in electricity demand, and a plummeting of transportation-sector greenhouse-gas emissions. Walker said the reduction could be as large as 800 million tons per year in the U.S. by 2035, a huge contribution to fighting climate change.


Now I hope people realize that I am not manufacturing future outlooks out of thin-air. This is a plausible scenario.
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Re: THE Self-Driving Car / Ridesharing Thread

Unread postby Tanada » Thu 29 Sep 2016, 08:18:27

Longer article with many details at link below the quote.

Americans prefer the option to drive, even in a world where cars can drive themselves.

A new study from Kelley Blue Book shows how Americans’ affinity for driving could slow the adoption of driverless vehicle technology in the United States. Rather than fully autonomous vehicles, Americans prefer cars equipped with self-driving capabilities, but with the capability to butt-in as desired.

That’s a striking conclusion for those preparing for a fully driverless future. Lyft recently expressed its belief that private vehicle ownership would be phased out in major cities by 2025, largely because of self-driving cars.

New research from Kelley Blue Book shows how dramatically self-driving cars could alter the landscape of car ownership by 2020. By then, 6 in 10 consumers will be interested in buying cars that are at least partially autonomous — ranging from “autopilot”-equipped Teslas that garner so much amazement today, to fully autonomous cars with no human drivers.

But the findings also show that people are wary of such technology. Among the conclusions: More than half of respondents preferred to have full control of their vehicles, even if it means roads are less safe. Respondents see full autonomy mostly as a service for mobility-limited drivers, such as senior citizens, and a mobility option for outings involving alcohol. And more than 6 in 10 consumers don’t think they’ll live to see a world where all vehicles are self-driving.

Experts said it’s possible developing countries could move toward full vehicle autonomy faster than the United States.

“When you think about the infrastructure that’s being created in places like China and India, they can actually plan and build for autonomous vehicles, where we are retrofitting everything here in the states,” said Rebecca Lindland, senior director of commercial insights for Kelley Blue Book. “In the U.S., we are a driving culture. Everybody has a car …whereas in some of these other places, if you only know ridesharing, if you never own a car and you only rideshare, that’s going to be perfectly normal for you.”


https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/dr- ... americans/
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Re: THE Self-Driving Car / Ridesharing Thread

Unread postby vox_mundi » Thu 29 Sep 2016, 18:38:51

US self-drive car guidelines backed at G7

US Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx says his counterparts in the Group of Seven nations welcomed US guidelines on regulating self-driving cars and have agreed to work together on creating such standards to maintain safety.


Komatsu's self-driving dump truck doesn't even have a cab

Image

Video - Komatsu's latest dump truck is a bit different -- it doesn't even have a cab for a human operator to sit in. The company calls it the Komatsu Innovative Autonomous Haulage Vehicle. It's a 2,700 horsepower autonomous truck designed to increase productivity by taking drivers out of the equation. Specifically, the company is trying to eliminate the three-point turn by developing a vehicle that doesn't need to see where it's going.

That may seem like an odd practice to eliminate, but it makes a lot of sense -- human drivers can only pilot a vehicle by looking out of the front window, requiring them to turn around once they get to a dump site to deposit materials. A self driving hauler doesn't have that setback: it can simply reverse course without turning. The autonomous design is also more balanced than a normal truck, with the load equally distributed on its four-wheel drive chassis. The company is hoping the balanced load will help the new hauler better negotiate slippery terrain.


Seniors React to Driverless Cars

Self-driving cars will have to pry the steering wheel from our cold, dead hands, poll says

Image

Video - The biggest issue for every generation surveyed except Gen Z is control. In fact, KBB defined the sweet-spot for self-driving cars not as full autonomy — Level 6 on their scale — but as human-plus-autonomy, or Level 5. If this predicts anything, it's that steering-wheel suppliers might not have anything to worry about, at least not right away.

The survey also revealed that plenty of people still love to drive. In fatc, 62% of respondents still love to drive and 80% want to have the option of driving their vehicle, even if it has autonomous capability.

The idea of fully autonomous cars, with no steering wheel, no pedals, and no way for a human to intervene, is also something most Americans are unwilling to embrace. One-third of respondents to the poll said they would never buy a Level 5 autonomous vehicle, where there is no option for human control, while 16 percent said they would buy one the moment they were available.

KBB also surveyed attitudes about ride-sharing and autonomy and found that respondents were notably more comfortable with autonomy in this environment than in an ownership framework. This is an early vindication of the strategies of companies such as Uber, which recently rolled out a small self-driving fleet in Pittsburgh, and General Motors, working with Lyft and creating a new business unit — Maven — to explore ride-sharing opportunities.

pstarr: "You can have my steering wheel when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers."
AI: "Your proposal is acceptable."


Volvo Plans To Sell Self-Driving Car In 5 Years

Volvo Car Corp. plans to sell a self-driving vehicle to consumers in five years.

Volvo CEO Hakan Samuelsson says the car will have a steering wheel, but consumers can pay $10,000 extra for a full autopilot system that will let them relax while the car drives itself.

Samuelsson says Volvo is already making early versions of the vehicles. They’ll be tested on public roads in Sweden next year and in London and China in 2018.


Self-driving car lane envisioned for commute between Vancouver and Seattle

Seattle-based venture capital organization Madrona Venture Group created a report on incorporating driverless cars into the I-5 interstate between Seattle and Vancouver, British Columbia. Their report includes details for a lane entirely dedicated to self-driving cars.

Madrona Venture Group went one step further, writing as self-driving cars mostly replace the cars of today, manually operated cars could even be barred from I-5 except at certain hours when less vehicles are on the road. The entire process could take place over “ten to fifteen years.”


NVIDIA Doubles Down On Self-Driving Cars With Xavier AI Chip

Image

The supercomputer, called Xavier, is a system-on-chip (SoC) design that features both CPU and GPU on a single chip. Nvidia worked hard to shrink the silicon down to minimize space and maximize efficiency.

Xavier features eight Nvidia CPUs and 512 CUDA Cores. It's those CUDA Cores that allow a specialized programming language to leverage the GPU to perform tasks with greater performance, which are needed for the complex systems in a self-driving car. The chip includes a pair of 8K resolution video processors to help chew threw video feeds from a self-driving car's camera system. Much of the processing will happen on an integrated 512-core Volta GPU.

Volta will also have a speedier NVLink 2.0 interconnect. The GPU will be paired with IBM’s upcoming Power9 chips in the U.S. Department of Energy’s Summit supercomputer in 2018. IBM has said that each NVLink 2.0 lane will communicate at 25Gbps (gigabits per second), which would be 7 to 10 times the speed of PCI-Express 3.0.

Xavier also has a custom eight-core CPU and a new computer vision accelerator. It’s the most advanced chip ever built by Nvidia, the company said in a blog post.

Xavier delivers 20 TOPS (trillion operations per second) of computing power while consuming only 20 watts of power. It has seven billion transistors and is made using the 16-nm chip process. Those specs hint big gains in performance and power efficiency for the Volta GPU.

“A single Xavier AI processor will be able to replace today’s Drive PX 2 configured with dual mobile SoCs and dual discrete GPUs—at a fraction of the power consumption,” Nvidia said.

The Drive PX 2, which was introduced at CES in January, has 12 CPU cores and two Pascal GPUs. It was the equivalent of having “150 MacBook Pros in your trunk,” said Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang.


Udacity's self-driving car engineering degree lures over 11,000 hopefuls

Silicon Valley online education platform Udacity has already received more than 11,000 applicants for its so-called nanodegree in self-driving car engineering, Udacity president and Google X founder Sebastian Thrun said.

The high number of applicants - for 250 spots in the course - underscores the pressing need for talent by technology leaders such as Alphabet's Google and Apple, traditional car companies and automotive start-ups, as they race to develop production-ready autonomous-driving vehicles within the next decade.

Udacity's nanodegree course, which costs $2,400 for three 12-week terms, begins in October. Its curriculum was developed with contributions from automaker Mercedes-Benz, chip maker Nvidia Corp and self-driving truck startup Otto, now part of Uber.

The average salary of a self-driving car engineer is $138,000, according to Paysa.com, which studies market salaries.


Uber testing self-driving cars in San Francisco

Black Ford Fusion Hybrids with roofs loaded down with sensors and doors emblazoned with the ride-sharing company's logo are making the rounds in order to collect digital situational data to make the robotic cars drive smarter.


An Algorithm for Taxi Sharing

Researchers in Uruguay have developed an evolutionary algorithm to allow a smart city to facilitate efficient taxi sharing to cut an individual's transport costs as well as reduce congestion and traffic pollution. Details are outlined in the International Journal of Metaheuristics.

Transportation planning will play a critical role in the design and development of the smart cities of the future especially in light of the "sharing economy" of consumer-to-consumer services such as ride-sharing schemes and home and office rental schemes. In the absence of sufficient car-sharing schemes, there will remain a need for hired personal transport in the form of taxis. Now, Renzo Massobrio, Gabriel Fagúndez and Sergio Nesmachnow of the Universidad de la República in Montevideo, have found a way to route shared taxis more efficiently. Tests on real GPS data for taxi journeys shows that the algorithm can reduce delays and travel costs for the group of passengers.


How the Uberization of work is rooted in the cult of 'shareholder value'

It's getting easier to tote up the damage from the Uberization of the U.S. economy -- especially by Uber itself. The victims include taxi drivers and owners, whose business is being cannibalized, and Uber drivers themselves, who struggle against competition from other Uber drivers, the cost of their own gas and maintenance, and rate-cutting by Uber.

The biggest casualty may be the cherished notion of the big corporation and the valiant entrepreneur as "job creators." As Jerry Davis, a professor of management and sociology at the University of Michigan, observes in a wide-ranging piece published just before New Year's by the Brookings Institution, they're not. And economic policy will be much better off if we stop thinking they are.
Creating shareholder value and creating good jobs are largely incompatible. Corporations are 'job creators' only as a last resort

The corporate trend has been to shift employment "from the career, to the job, to the task," Davis writes -- from long-term corporate employment, to outsourcing of certain functions, to the labor-on-demand paradigm of Uber. "Creating shareholder value and creating good jobs are largely incompatible," he writes. "Corporations are 'job creators' only as a last resort."

Image

By the turn of the 21st century, a company's overall market value was no longer tied to its payroll. In 1962, the largest corporation by market capitalization was AT&T, with 564,000 employees; in 2012, it was Apple, with 76,000 employees. Big employers are now typically retailers and food service firms, which employ armies of part-time and low-wage workers; the largest employer among big companies today is retailer Wal-Mart, with 2.2 million workers.

But our political structure hasn't kept up. We're still talking about corporations and entrepreneurs as "job creators," and still assuming that they'll be the chief providers not only of solid wages but long-term benefits such as healthcare and pensions.


The 'uberisation' of work is driving people to co-operatives
Last edited by vox_mundi on Thu 29 Sep 2016, 19:11:26, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: THE Self-Driving Car / Ridesharing Thread

Unread postby vox_mundi » Thu 29 Sep 2016, 18:55:35

HERE makes bold play to define common language for self-driving cars

Whoever Owns the Maps Owns the Future of Self-Driving Cars

Image

... For self-driving cars to gain real market acceptance, they need to have "anytime, anywhere capability" .

That's why the technology to map our world—not just on Google Maps, but in full 3D—is such a hot commodity. In December 2015, for example, BMW, Daimler, and Volkswagen's Audi acquired the digital mapping company HERE for $3.1 billion. Last week I met with HERE chief executive Edzard Overbeek in the company's Berlin office, his first interview with outsiders since taking the company's reins nearly four months ago. It's no coincidence that Overbeek, a 30-year IT veteran, was hired based on his experience in the last 15 years as a top executive at Cisco, the world's largest networking company. Overbeek envisions the three-dimensional rendering of the real world as the world's next great digital network. He calls it the "location index."

What Overbeek wants to dominate is the index for locations: how self-driving cars derive meaning from lane markings, traffic signs, and the entire built environment. It's something that goes way beyond the street names, intersections, and points of interest in today's navigation systems. It becomes the essential platform for getting around. "If you think about cars, drones, or advanced robotics, all these things that need to move from A to B, you need navigation technology" Overbeek says.

Crowdsourcing real-time data picked up by BMW, Mercedes, and Audi cars will help advance HERE's digital maps in a way that can't be done when only one automaker is contributing the data. HERE plans to eventually pull data from other automakers aside from just BMW, Mercedes, and Audi.

HERE has a three-decade head start in mapping roadways and points of interest, with that data served up to the cloud and licensed to automakers. If you've used a car's onboard navigation system in recent years—to find a destination, or locate the closest gas station or coffee shop—then HERE is probably the company that tracked down that information, made sure it's accurate, and put it into a form that your car can use. Nearly 30 brands of vehicles, representing about 80 percent of the market, access HERE's data for use inside navigation systems designed by the auto manufacturer. In 2015, Jaguar Land Rover became the first car company to have HERE design the user interface for its navigation system in addition to supplying the data.

Image

HERE deploys about 400 vehicles equipped with a tower of spinning sensors to map the roadways of the world. These vehicles use lidar (laser-based radar), GPS locaters, and cameras capturing 16.8-megapixel images to produce data point clouds with uncanny two-centimeter precision. Altogether, HERE says, it collects 700,000 data points per second. A team of nearly 3,000 specialists, based mostly in Mumbai, India, cull and correct the data used in HERE maps, which the company shares with third-party tools and sells to companies like Garmin, Yahoo, Facebook, and Amazon. There engineers process lidar data into three-dimensional renderings of the road with the centimeter-level accuracy needed for a car to confidently drive itself.

... Overbeek said that HERE's automotive shareholders are willing to reach into their deep pockets to invest in these location technologies. "They realize this is a disruption," he says. The human-piloted car in your driveway today will give way to tomorrow's network of connected, automated, and electrified vehicles that will rely on maps. "It will come their way whether they like it or not."


HERE unveils next generation real-time data services for automotive industry

Image

HERE, the Open Location Platform company, today announced next generation vehicle-sourced data services for the auto industry aimed at making driving safer and more enjoyable for billions of people around the world.

Ahead of this week's Paris Motor Show, HERE outlined how its Open Location Platform intends to harness real-time data generated by the on-board sensors of connected vehicles to create a live depiction of the road environment.

Drivers will be able to access this view of the road through four services that provide information on traffic conditions, potential road hazards, traffic signage and on-street parking at high quality.

HERE will start by sourcing sensor data from Audi, BMW and Mercedes-Benz cars, with plans to later expand to include data from other brands.

HERE believes these services will also support the automotive industry's broader market introduction of advanced driver assisted systems and, later, autonomous driving solutions.


Uber plans self-flying drone taxis to beat city traffic

Image

f you summon an Uber in 10 years’ time, you will probably get a car that drives itself. But then again, you may not be travelling in a car at all.

The taxi-hailing app is working on technology that would allow airborne passenger drones to fly its users short distances around cities, it has emerged, raising the prospect of a future in which skylines are dotted with Uber aircraft shuttling commuters back and forth.

Jeff Holden, Uber’s head of product, told technology website Recode that the company is researching “vertical take off and landing” (VTOL) technology. Instead of the helicopter-style rotor blade drones, VTOL aircraft have fixed wings like planes, enabling them to fly silently, while taking off and landing vertically.

Holden said Uber wanted to “offer our customers as many options as possible to move around” and that the technology could be available within a decade.

“It could change cities and how we work and live,” Holden said, pointing out that moving traffic from the road to the air could dramatically cut down on congestion and the time it takes to cross cities. He said he envisages aircraft taking off from and landing on the roofs of buildings.

The Pentagon is in the process of designing a drone rather like the one Uber apparently is working on, but the military’s drone is still very much in the concept phase - Video.
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Re: THE Self-Driving Car / Ridesharing Thread

Unread postby vox_mundi » Fri 30 Sep 2016, 14:02:06

Forget Self-Driving Cars. Self-Driving Chairs Have Arrived

Image

Video - Nissan, the Japanese automaker unveiled a high-tech, battery-powered autonomous chair it says is designed to make waiting in line "easy and fun." The ProPilot chair transports passengers along fixed paths without any instruction from the user.

The ProPilot chair "drives" on a predetermined path. The chair's embedded cameras detect distance to the chair ahead of it. When one chair moves, the next one follows, maintaining a fixed distance. When the passenger reaches the front of the line and stands up, a weight sensor notices and the chair automatically navigates to the back of the line, Nissan says.

Nissan first ventured into the world of autonomous chairs earlier this year by adapting its intelligent park assist technology into an "Intelligent Parking Chair." Designed to eliminate the tedious task of arranging office chairs, these clever chairs roll themselves to predetermined positions in response to hand clapping.

Image


Chevy Assembly Line Workers Ride Around on Wall-E-Style Floating Chairs

Remember those floating chairs that our uber-lazy future offspring rode around on in the movie Wall-E? Chevrolet just installed the real-life version in two of its assembly lines. Meet the fully-automated, gesture-controlled Ergo-Chair.

Image
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Re: THE Self-Driving Car / Ridesharing Thread

Unread postby vox_mundi » Sat 01 Oct 2016, 15:29:31

C8 wrote:
vox_mundi wrote:So how does this differ from exploding airbags or gas tanks. Or airplanes falling out of the sky.

The car companies and airlines seem to have weathered those catastrophes fairly profitably. They're all still in business.

Its the scale of the accidents that matter- those airbags and gas tanks were rather few in number- a software issue could cause thousands of accidents- you are smart enough to know this is a very real possibility

Yesterday 105 people were killed in human caused auto accidents in the U.S.; the day before that, another 105 people were killed in human caused auto accidents; last month over 3100 were killed in auto accidents: last year over 38,000 died.

Globally, there were 1,300,000 road traffic deaths last year. Equal to the death of every man, woman & child in Dallas or San Diego - in one year.

Where is the outrage?

Why aren't these murderous vehicles being taken off the streets?

Death by self-driving cars = 1

C8 wrote:
vox_mundi wrote: That's what commercial insurance (and class action lawsuits) are all about. That's why Swiss Re and Munich Re are there as a backstop.

I am not sure even re-insurers want to touch this

Too Late. It's already a done deal. They've figured out their risk exposure and will charge accordingly. It's their business model; it's how they make money.

SwissRe: The autonomous car 2015: Risks and opportunities for the re/insurance industry

MunichRe: Autonomous Vehicles: Considerations for Personal and Commercial Lines Insurers

SwissRe: The autonomous car: the way ahead for the re/insurance industry

SwissRe: How the autonomous car will upend auto insurance

C8 wrote:
vox_mundi wrote:Based on current implementation, the systems are driving way better than humans. They still have 5-10 years of technical improvement (2-4 generations of computer hardware and software upgrades) before even 20% of vehicles on the streets are self-driving.

But those humans are sued individually- a software company will get hammered with all the lawsuits- and juries like to give really big nasty punitive penalties out to corporate America


Common Question of Law

... When can lawsuits be consolidated? Cases that are similar enough in fact or in the legal issues presented can often be grouped together and heard at the same time. That's what's happening with more than 80 lawsuits alleging economic injury from GM's ignition-switch recall.

Cases which share a common question of law are often consolidated in the interests of justice and efficiency. A question of law is one that can be decided simply based on interpreting the law and court opinions, and does not ask the court to play fact-finder in a case.

In the GM lawsuit consolidation mentioned above, various GM car owners have filed similar cases, claiming that the company owes them for economic losses linked to a recall. These suits all present the common question: Is GM liable for economic damages as a result of failing to fix an ignition switch defect? With most of the facts not disputed, these consolidated cases have a common question of law that a single court is now set to decide. https://www.law.cornell.edu/rules/frcp/rule_42

Lawsuits against VW to be consolidated in California

Toyota asks panel to consolidate lawsuits in Calif


C8 wrote:
vox_mundi wrote:... Based on your criteria the Wright Brothers would have never gotten off the ground because their risky business model might fail eventually.


Way off base. Airplanes don't start to collectively fall from the sky as a group due to software issues b/c the Wright Bros. didn't use software. I am speaking of a systems failure- the kind that brought Delta Airlines to its knees.

I'm not sure you understand how self driving software works.

Delta's OS was a bloated 30 year old legacy centralized system with thousands of dumb terminal attached. Any loss of communication with the central system and your looking at the blue screen of death.

A self-driving car operates on a locked down version of AI instructions. These AI instructions are static - they do not change between software updates. (... the vehicle acts like a standalone PC. If your neighbors PC crashes, it doesn't mean that yours automatically does. Does it?)

All data from the vehicle is streamed to the central system to train the AI for the next update. Once the system is trained, the new AI instructions are tested. Then the AI instruction set is locked down and uploaded like each new Version of Windows.

The AI references a 3-D street map from the cloud, however, a significant (city-scale) local map can be stored in onboard memory. This means that the vehicle will not crash simply because of an internet interruption. It also has routines for alert and hand-off to the human driver.

C8 wrote:... The reality is that air travel is much safer with software than street travel. Planes are kept apart by air traffic controllers- if a mechanical or software malfunction occurs there is a large cushion of sky that gives a trained pilot time for a recovery. Planes are safe b/c they are in such a remote, forgiving environment.

Are you sure?

Applying Artificial Intelligence Techniques' to Air Traffic Control Automation

Singapore’s $300-Million Air-Traffic Automation System Unveiled

DARPA advances artificial intelligence program for air traffic control (2008)

Airliner accidents and incidents caused by pilot error - The following 200 pages are in this category, out of 252 total. This list may not reflect recent changes

C8 wrote:...On the road it is a different story- hundreds of vehicles are streaming at high speeds only feet (or inches?) apart from each other. A one second error can lead to a horrible chain reaction which will lead to a massive class action lawsuit. Computers have never been asked to manage such a dangerous, random, unpredictable environment before.

And landing on the moon and back was a walk in the park?

C8 wrote:... On the road drivers face flash showers, tire treads ripping off trucks, fog, cars changing lanes too quickly (we aren't going to outlaw self-driving).

See Self-driving car lane envisioned for commute between Vancouver and Seattle article above.

There are plans to ban all cars in the city centers of Oslo, Madrid, Brussels, Paris, Dublin, and Milan. Even New York City has placed "pedestrian plazas" smack dab in the middle of the tourist hell squeeze that is Times Square.

C8 wrote:... This isn't just a baby step from computer assisted airplane travel- it is a giant leap- the biggest challenge software has ever faced in its history by far.

So? Since when have we stopped doing Giant Leaps?

There is a thing called technological progress.

Many Canadians see self-driving cars as a licence to behave badly: survey

The image of drivers texting, dozing or sipping a martini while they sit at the wheel and let their autonomous vehicles do all the work prevails among a significant number of Canadians.

That’s a troubling finding from a survey of Canadians about self-driving vehicles by the Traffic Injury Research Foundation, a non-profit road safety organization. The survey of more than 2,600 Canadians found that 9 per cent of those surveyed said they would drink and drive; 10 per cent would sleep or nap; and 17 per cent would do something unrelated to driving.

“These results are disturbing and illustrated that at least some drivers mistakenly believe that these vehicle technologies do not require driver input or attention at all times,” the foundation said in a report on the results, which will be released Thursday.

Another 35 per cent of those surveyed said that if they were late, they would disengage self-driving technology in order to drive faster and 13 per cent would take over so they could run red lights.

The survey results indicate that autonomous vehicles, sporting cutting-edge technology and designed to make the roads safer, may have the opposite effect.

“This has considerable potential to increase crashes due to driver error and underscores that drivers may negatively modify their behaviour and decrease their safety because they do not understand the limitations of these technologies or how to use them correctly,” said the foundation, which is based in Nepean, Ont.


Will You Need Auto Insurance for a Self-Driving Car?

Some automakers are designing driverless cars with no steering wheels, eliminating any human control. They say they’d take full responsibility if their technology fails and causes a crash.

Other automakers are engineering cars that would require humans to take control from the autopilot under certain conditions.

In either case, some consumers are slamming the brakes on the conversation, asking if the car is driving itself all the time or most of the time then why should I have to get insurance or have as much coverage as I do now?

... “Insurance companies see this as a big business opportunity for them to get more and more data, and perhaps use that data for other lines of insurance to tell them about how responsible we are in keeping up our homes,” said Consumer Watchdog President Jamie Court.
“There are three classes of people: those who see. Those who see when they are shown. Those who do not see.” ― Leonardo da Vinci

Insensible before the wave so soon released by callous fate. Affected most, they understand the least, and understanding, when it comes, invariably arrives too late.
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Re: THE Self-Driving Car / Ridesharing Thread

Unread postby vox_mundi » Sat 01 Oct 2016, 16:21:47

California approves unmanned self-driving car trials

Almost four years to the day since driverless trials on public streets were first approved, a new bill, AB1592, has been signed off by Governor Jerry Brown that permits autonomous car tests without a human passenger overseeing proceedings.

Rather than applying throughout the Golden State, the bill is specific to a pilot project headed by the Contra Costa Transportation Authority. At San Ramon's Bishop Ranch business park, EasyMile's 12-seater shuttles will ferry workers around the site, which will include travelling on some public roads. The approval also covers GoMentum Station: A ghost town within the Concord Naval Weapons Station where Honda has been testing its driverless car technologies. Recently, Uber-owned Otto also signed up to test self-driving trucks on the site.

Google and Apple have also expressed interest in the naval base testbed, according to the transport authority. Apple's autonomous plans are still the subject of much speculation, but in the immediate future, Google seems like a natural partner. Manual controls including a steering wheel and pedals are not required in test vehicles under the new bill (since there won't be anyone on hand to use them), but for safety's sake cars must not exceed 35MPH during trials.


Meet the VW ID electric car: 300-plus mile range in 2020, self-driving by 2025

Image

The VW ID motor configuration will be arranged like the BMW i3 (and unlike the Nissan Leaf and Chevrolet Bolt), with the engine driving the rear, not front, wheels. The lithium-ion battery pack will be mounted under the passenger compartment, lowering the center of gravity.

You might think putting something heavy up front, such as the motor, is good for crash protection, like having more armor on the glacis plate and turret face of a tank. The opposite is true. With nothing in front (other than your sacrificial luggage), engineers are freer to create a crumple zone on a vehicle just 13 feet (157 inches) long. It also means the wheel wells can be wider, allowing for a city-friendly 32.5-foot turning circle.

This will be VW’s first use of its MEB, modular electric drive kit, or Modularer Elektrifizierungsbaukasten. (And you thought fahrvergnügen was a long word.) This means the chassis configuration can be scaled up or down to build bigger EVs — for the US, perhaps — and even smaller vehicles for space-constrained mega-cities.

In Paris, Volkswagen brand CEO Herbert Diess said, “In 2020 we will begin to introduce an entire family of electric vehicles on the market. All of them will be based on a new vehicle architecture [MEB], which was specially and exclusively developed for all-electric vehicles. Not for combustion engine or plug-in hybrid vehicles. The I.D. stands for this new era of all-electric vehicles, for a new automotive era: electrical, connected and autonomously driving.”

Image

Five years after the first MEB EVs from VW in 2020, there will be self-driving EVs. The ID’s steering wheel will retract into the dashboard by pressing firmly on the center of the wheel. That will make the car more spacious for the front-seat passengers. That means the self-driving car can be driven, by humans, on roads that aren’t 3D-mapped. That is how most experts see the early years of self-drive cars playing: The cars will work from an exacting map of streets, signs, traffic signals, median berms, driveway cutouts, railroad crossings, and bridges. The car’s lidar and radar sensors will position the car relative to the map data and track other cars, cyclists, pedestrians, and animals. That’s how, for instance, the autonomous Ford Fusion shown last month in Dearborn, Michigan, was able to navigate public roads.

VW sees the car using cable-free inductive charging, if it’s ready by 2020, with a fallback to traditional plug-in chargers.


Autonomous Vehicles Will Mean the End of Traffic Stops

Various predictions envision a driverless society within 10 to 30 years. That means police departments must begin to develop tactics and equipment that aren’t dependent on cruising and pulling people over. They haven’t done so.

... “I think you would see the end of traffic stops,” Joseph A. Schafer, the criminal justice department head at Southern Illinois University, says of the coming of driverless cars. “It radically changes police-public encounters.”

Officials have become more aware but still haven’t begun serious planning, Schafer says. “I’m dealing with people in the second half of their career,” he says. “Most assume they won’t be in law enforcement by the time it becomes an issue. Some are banking on it: ‘Man, this is going to be a headache. I’m glad I won’t be around to take care of it.'”
Other innovations also are poised to make cruising obsolete, including cameras at stoplights and speed monitors that offer 24/7 traffic enforcement at a fraction of the cost of humans officers and that already capture video of more serious crimes as they occur. Schafer says patrol drones might be the next stage.

... Yet like Dillinger, expect criminals also to embrace driverless technology. “A cop will tell you very quickly, ‘Gee, what you have now done is create a wonderful system for the transport of contraband,'”

If authorities know which vehicle carries the suspect , it could be disabled remotely (or for that matter, the car could be instructed to lock its doors from the inside and drive itself to the police station.)

Another futurist paints a more chilling picture, where the driverless world intersects with terrorism.

The FBI actually put out a warning bulletin two or three years ago on what are called VBIEDs” — vehicle borne improvised explosive devices, says Marc Goodman, a global security consultant and author of Future Crimes. “Take the suicide bomber out of the mix and now you can have that very same threat delivered to your doorstep autonomously.”

Image

Not everyone is looking forward to the age of autonomy. One potential loser? Local governments.

Once the car’s in charge, it’s a safe bet we won’t do things like speed, run reds, park illegally, or drive drunk. And that means we won’t be fined for doing those things. That’s going to put the squeeze on city budgets, according to a Brookings Institution report.
Local governments have viewed their sources of revenue and planned around revenue from the perspective of, ‘We can tax people in a very structured and predictable manner,'” says Kevin Desouza, a professor at Arizona State University and one of the report’s authors. They can count on catching us breaking the law often enough to keep the money flowing. But once that’s passed, “they’re going to lose out in the long run.

On top of that, if the theory that self-driving cars will lead people to own fewer cars holds up, revenue from registration fees will drop as well.

Meanwhile, we’ll still expect our cities to pay to keep the roads in good shape, since no matter who’s driving, potholes stink.

There is good news here for government bean counters. Car crashes are an expensive business, and we all pick up the tab. According to a NHTSA report, “public revenues paid for roughly 7 percent of all motor vehicle crash costs [in 2010], costing tax payers $18 billion in 2010, the equivalent of over $156 in added taxes for every household in the United States.” Radically fewer accidents means radically more dollars that can be spent on nicer things.


A look back at the history of the future of cars
“There are three classes of people: those who see. Those who see when they are shown. Those who do not see.” ― Leonardo da Vinci

Insensible before the wave so soon released by callous fate. Affected most, they understand the least, and understanding, when it comes, invariably arrives too late.
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