Google's Self-Driving Cars: Fun Facts
http://www.roboticstrends.com/photo/5_things_you_might_not_know_about_googles_self_driving_cars/0
Has a face, but no driver controls!
Has a face, but no driver controls!
Comments
"Here I am, brain the size of a planet, and you ask me to take you to the mall. Call that job satisfaction, 'cause I don't."
If you looked at the car and thought the Google engineers purposefully made it look like it had a face, you were right. Their intention was both to make it cute to spiritually disarm other drivers.
I'm guessing you have to see it running you over in a parking lot to fully understand how the flat mouth and droopy eyes are disarming.
(caution: Arnie bad language humor ahead)
What happens if i accidentally drop my cell phone out the window and have to jump out of the car to pick it up, will the car just drive away when the light turns green?
Are we there yet?
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-driverless-cars-might-hit-road-so-fast-scott-nyquist
On the flip-side, a computer doesn't get distracted, can look more than one direction at once, can "see" in infra-red and radar, and can have millisecond reaction times. I'd be more inclined to trust one than the average driver.
Dave
They're probably paying more attention than the average driver, and NHTSA is all over this stuff. Driverless cars won't hit the road until they meet a fairly high safety bar in closed testing, then real-world testing, so yes, actually I do.
I'm not crazy about an elevator taking control.
Something here just looks like it cheapens the human, to have a robotic vehicle cart a large group of people around.
But a capsule and a tube to travel in, was a dream of mine as a kid though.
Elon Musk is doing that in Dubai:
You guys worry too much!
The current generation of self-driving cars tends to be safer than human driven cars:
https://www.cnbc.com/2015/10/29/crash-data-for-self-driving-cars-may-not-tell-whole-story.html
They were involved in more accidents than people were, but not a single one was deemed their fault. Another study suggests that because they're more conservative than a typical driver, aggressive humans expect them to, for example, run a yellow light, and rear-end them, at twice the rate of human drivers. If you want to make driving safer, unless the human is Mario Andretti, they shouldn't be in control. :-)
Don't get me wrong - I really *like* driving, but watching other people in traffic (and myself) has made me decide that we can't really be trusted any more. We're too inattentive.
+1
If it wasn't for distracted drivers being responsible for taking out the non-distracted drivers, I'd just say survival of the fittest
But alas, I have to side with the autonomous cars here too. But I agree that the security of these things needs to be watched as closely if not MORE closely than the driving algorithms. You'd like to think that big companies have the money and resources to ensure their cars are secure, but it seems they jumped into the tech world way too soon in some cases.
A Tesla of course likes to call home. But now his Tesla calls to a server in his home.
What is that server? A Raspberry Pi !
Riding the famous Wreckla :
They say these new Veolodyne units will be $500 in 2018 (about $6500 cheaper than what they've been using on experimental cars), and $50-100 by 2023. At these prices, you'll be able to put one on your bike, and convert it to self-peddling!
In other news, I heard today of a company moving forward with plans for WiFi between self-driving cars, and possibly between cars and intersections. I'm reminded a bit of the tattle-tell taxi Corbin Dallas drives in The Fifth Element, but I suppose all this is inevitable. At the intersections cars will get a secondary birds-eye-view via the cameras and Lidars mounted there. The lives that alone could save might be worth the intrusions everywhere else.
There's peddling and there's pedaling; I've done plenty of both. Pedaling my bike by day and peddling my Chinese Ebay deals by night.
I could do both simultaneously if I start selling some of the bikes and parts that's filling the OTHER half of my garage.
There's nothing like a good joke, I always say. And that was nothing like a good joke. (Uncle Albert, Mary Poppins, 1964.)
While we're on the subject of bikes, and in the interest of keeping this related to electronics: The other week I saw a man on a electric bike-like bicycle treadmill. It moved as he walked on a conveyor-like belt. That belt was connected to what I imagine was a generator and battery, and the whole thing zipped down the road at more than 20-25 MPH.
Is this a thing now? I have to get out more often.
Yep.
https://lopifitaustralia.com.au/single-post/2016/06/27/The-Lopifit-Treadmill-Bike-WalkRide-Your-Way-To-Better-Health
No argument from me on that.