[Keith_McClary]

Can I buy a suction cup mounted steering wheel to hold onto

In Google colours, even.

[Graeme]

Typical luddite responses for a prototype. Did anyone actually read other issues raised in link?

[efarmer]

We exploited the personal and family automobile and affordable liquid fuels to build a huge suburban sprawl in the US. Mass transit other than ICE busses were lobbied against and the easy motoring paradigm made it easy to just sprawl out and not even set aside easements or corridors if we ever did need light rail or some other more efficient mass transit backbone. Inefficiency and traffic flow management need central controls, via a corporation or a government agency usually. To me this is a solution by having the consumer pay for the transit vehicle, insure it, fuel it, maintain it, and pay a new bill for navigation and control to a corporation to manage the vehicle during use. This bill from the corporation will also get taxed by the government. Will people buy into it? I have no idea Dear Graeme.

[Graeme]

You didn't read the link:

Who would use it?

There are use case scenarios for everyone. Not only could the self-driving car streamline commutes — from the grocery store and the office to long road trips — but it could also help transport the elderly, kids and the blind. Taxi and bus companies could also utilize the technology and bring individualized transportation to non-car owners.


Who are Google's partners?

It's unclear as of right now who Google has partnered with to built the car, but one thing is evident: companies want in.

Uber cofounder and CEO Travis Kalanick said during the Re/Code conference on Wednesday in San Francisco that he sees practical use for Google's self-driving cars in Uber's business.

"The magic [of a self-driving uber car] is, the reason Uber could be expensive is because you’re paying for the other dude in the car [the driver]," Kalanick said. "When there isn’t another dude in the car, the cost for taking a road trip becomes cheaper."

[Rabbit]

It's my understanding that right now self driving cars are allowed to drive on streets only if a licensed driver is in the car and has the ability to take over control. These prototypes don't have the necessary controls to allow that. I wonder if they anticipate changes to self driving car laws. I noticed that the cars have full internal roll cages that look very strong. These prototypes look like they could be used on the streets in the future. Apparently the 25mph limit is a temporary software limit.

[Keith_McClary]

This would be great if ALL vehicles were self-driving. Then you could dispense with stop lights, signs and lane marking lines - all that info would come virtually from the network. You could do lane reversals "on the fly" depending on traffic.

[Pops]

1,000 points to eFarmer!

[Graeme]

Whenever new tech is introduced, there is never universal agreement. Here are two contrasting views mixed in both reports:

Can Google Keep Its Self-Driving Car From Re-Igniting More Suburban Sprawl?

For climate change and urbanism concerns, self-driving vehicles have been a source of some anxiety. The current trend is away from private vehicle ownership, toward more dense communities where public transportation, biking, and walking can serve most transportation needs. And that’s important, when automobiles are among the leading emitters of greenhouse gases. But the self-driving car could halt this progress.

thinkprogress

Google Unveils Its 1st Completely Self-Driving Car, To Build 100 Prototypes

What does the future of transportation hold? Flying cars? Self-driving cars? An all-electric transportation world?

Of course, I think the latter is on the way, but I also think self-driving cars will be a great complement to electric cars and are another inevitable. Actually, two of the biggest cleantech leaders in the world, Elon Musk and Carlos Ghosn, are both aiming to bring the first “driverless” or “autonomous driving” vehicles to market.

cleantechnica

[basil_hayden]

You didn't read the link:

Who would use it?

There are use case scenarios for everyone. Not only could the self-driving car streamline commutes — from the grocery store and the office to long road trips — but it could also help transport the elderly, kids and the blind. Taxi and bus companies could also utilize the technology and bring individualized transportation to non-car owners.


Who are Google's partners?

It's unclear as of right now who Google has partnered with to built the car, but one thing is evident: companies want in.

Uber cofounder and CEO Travis Kalanick said during the Re/Code conference on Wednesday in San Francisco that he sees practical use for Google's self-driving cars in Uber's business.

"The magic [of a self-driving uber car] is, the reason Uber could be expensive is because you’re paying for the other dude in the car [the driver]," Kalanick said. "When there isn’t another dude in the car, the cost for taking a road trip becomes cheaper."

In other words, it's for ferrying drunks from pub to flat then back.

[Graeme]

Roush Enterprises, The Company Building Google’s Self-Driving Cars (We Think)

Aside from the points Chris highlights on Gas2 (and in the repost below), the insider also told Jalopnik that “Roush employees have been making their way back and forth between Mountain View and Michigan as of late.” Also worth noting is Google’s response to Jalopnik: “These vehicles are a collaboration between the automotive talent of Michigan and the software and sensor expertise of Silicon Valley. The vehicles themselves have been assembled in a facility in Michigan — the self driving high tech parts are being assembled here in California. We are working with a number of top-notch automotive suppliers and technology companies. (We are not naming them at this point.)”

So, yes, Roush is very likely involved, but so are several other “top-notch” auto companies. For such an innovative car, this isn’t too surprising, is it? I’ll turn you over to Chris now

cleantechnica

[efarmer]

You set up this corporate vehicle control industry and let them donate for campaigns from local to national. Let them trade off involuntary locking and routing for law enforcement for zone expansion, and video and audio data logging and mining for tax breaks. Let them lobby against mass transit for protection of their industry against any possible comer with the pols in their pockets. Adorable is indeed the word.

[ralfy]

How should one see this news in light of peak oil, i.e., given the energy and resource cost of manufacturing vehicles and their practical use given lower energy and material resource supply issues?

[Keith_McClary]

Driving in Circles - The autonomous Google car may never actually happen.

Another problem with maps is that once you make them, you have to keep them up to date, a challenge Google says it hasn't yet started working on. Considering all the traffic signals, stop signs, lane markings, and crosswalks that get added or removed every day throughout the country, keeping a gigantic database of maps current is vastly difficult. Safety is at stake here; Chris Urmson, director of the Google car team, told me that if the car came across a traffic signal not on its map, it could potentially run a red light, simply because it wouldn't know to look for the signal. Urmson added, however, that an unmapped traffic signal would be "very unlikely," because during the "time and construction" needed to build a traffic signal, there would be adequate opportunity to add it to the map.

But not always. Scott Heydt, director of marketing at Horizon Signal Technologies, says his company routinely sets up its portable traffic signals at road construction sites. Frequently, they are simply towed to a site and turned on. "We just set one up like that in New Jersey," said Heydt. "You can be driving to work and everything is normal, but on your way home, discover a new traffic light." (Of this possibility, a Google spokesperson said, “We will have to be ready for that.”)

Noting that the Google car might not be able to handle an unmapped traffic light might sound like a cynical game of "gotcha." But MIT roboticist John Leonard says it goes to the heart of why the Google car project is so daunting. "While the probability of a single driver encountering a newly installed traffic light is very low, the probability of at least one driver encountering one on a given day is very high," Leonard says. The list of these "rare" events is practically endless, said Leonard, who does not expect a full self-driving car in his lifetime (he’s 49).
...
Because it can't tell the difference between a big rock and a crumbled-up piece of newspaper, it will try to drive around both if it encounters either sitting in the middle of the road. (Google specifically confirmed these present shortcomings to me for the MIT Technology Review article.) Can the car currently "see" another vehicle's turn signals or brake lights? Can it tell the difference between the flashing lights on top of a tow truck and those on top of an ambulance? If it's driving past a school playground, and a ball rolls out into the street, will it know to be on special alert? (Google declined to respond to these additional questions when I posed them.)
...
We tend to lionize computer researchers, forgetting that they've made some colossally bad predictions over the years. When 2001: A Space Odyssey premiered in 1968, MIT's Marvin Minsky assured the public that machines like HAL would indeed be possible in 30 years. Perhaps one day tech enthusiasts will be able to visit a Museum of the Future That Never Was, where the Jetsons’ hover car and the Google super-robocar will sit side-by-side as showcase exhibits. Expect long lines for both, because the demos will be sensational.

[careinke]

Good post, Keith.

To be able to handle the everyday stresses and strains of the real driving world, the Google car will require a computer with a level of intelligence that machines won't have for many years, if ever.

Ha, the singularity will be here before you know it.

[dinopello]

Beyond just autonomous machine understanding of sensor data (the rock from a paper or shadow), which is a daunting technical problem to get right even 90% of the time, there is the decision-making layer.

You are driving down the road and a person with a baby carriage steps out in front of you, crossing illegally (not at a crosswalk) to your right is a line of trees or poles that you would crash into and to your left is oncoming traffic or perhaps some other obstacle. What do you do ? Every persons reaction in the split second might be different - One might freeze up and plow through the baby carriage, another might instinctively swerve left or right. But whatever - if you survive, you will be a human in a court explaining. An algorithm in a car would tell exactly what it was thinking and why it did it. Is this a good thing ? And what would it be programmed to do ? Plowing through the baby carriage might be the most logically legal thing to do since it was an illegal crossing. Swerving right into trees/poles would with the most certainty cause the most self-damage. Swerving left into oncoming traffic could cause even more self damage and potentially damage other law-abiding cars. What should it's reasoning process be ?

[basil_hayden]

Rockets to enter the vertical dimension of course! Sheesh.

[Keith_McClary]

person with a baby carriage steps out in front of you

Or is that a shopping cart? Do I have a subroutine for that?

[dinopello]

person with a baby carriage steps out in front of you

Or is that a shopping cart? Do I have a subroutine for that?

Exactly, and does it matter ? A homeless person with a shopping cart or a mother with a baby stroller - it might matter to a jury. But, in any case I suspect the car manufacturer (say google) would make the passenger take full responsibility for engaging the auto-drive system and anything stupid it might do. The current driving assistant technology does this. I rode in a (Honda I think) that had a mode to warn you if drifting out of lane (without your blinker on). Boy was it annoying - but it made you acknowledge that any accident wouldn't be its fault. Technology is one thing but the lawyers are another and whether they try with auto-drive or not, the lawyers will get theirs.