Google Unveils New Self-Driving Car Prototype 90
colinneagle writes In May, Google released a teaser image showing a mock-up of the autonomous vehicle it planned to build. Today, the company followed up with an image showing the finished product. Google says the first edition of its self-made self-driving car will feature "temporary manual controls as needed while we continue to test and learn." When Google introduced its prototype back in May, the company claimed its self-driving cars "won't have a steering wheel, accelerator pad, or brake pedal because they don't need them." Apparently, it still has yet to reach that point. The development is an important step forward for Google's driverless car efforts, which have been deemed impractical by many of late. Last year, the Financial Times reported that Google had difficulty finding manufacturing partners that would build vehicles featuring the self-driving capabilities used in its Prius. In that light, maybe Google's willingness to build its own hardware just to get the technology on the road means that its self-driving car team knows something the rest of the industry doesn't."
The Oatmeal Review (Score:5, Informative)
The Oatmeal posted a review of the car and state of Google's technology in general:
http://theoatmeal.com/blog/goo... [theoatmeal.com]
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The unfortunate part of something this transformative is the inevitable, ardent stupidity which is going to erupt from the general public. Even if in a few years self-driving cars are proven to be ten times safer than human-operated cars, all it’s going to take is one tragic accident and the public is going to lose their minds. There will be outrage. There will be politicizing. There will be hashtags.
It’s going to suck.
Perfect response to this:
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it." -- Agent K.
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The "people are dumb" meme doesn't seem to match reality though. We have had driverless trains for decades, and a few accidents. People still use them. When an aircraft goes down people don't say "I bet it was auto-pilot failure", they assume human failure first.
Self driving cars are already getting a "soft" introduction with things like automatic lane-keeping and Tesla's auto-pilot. People will have plenty of time to get used to a degree of automation before fully antonymous cars are widely available.
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I don't know about the oatmeal, but you're probably spot on for the car.
controls (Score:4, Informative)
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And while they may, indeed, somebody be able to get rid of them, it won't be for a generation or more, and that has far more to do with insurance and liability than safety.
So Tiny Car (Score:1)
Butt Ugly (Score:4, Insightful)
Why Google? WHY? Why does every manufacturer of cutting edge vehicles, like EVs, have to make them so damned ugly? Why can't we get a car flavored car?
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It is because the early adopters want something unique and eye-cancery. They tend to want something weird to flaunt and a normal looking car just doesn't cut it for their hipsterism.
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No, it's because they want to make the cars look friendly and un-threatening for users who might be disconcerted by not having a steering wheel. By making the front look like a fact it seems as if the car has some kind of personality and "mind", rather than being a cold calculating computer that people associate with frequent failures and sci-fi horror movies.
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(not a shill for ford, promise.) But the fusion energi/hybrid editions are comprable to the prius in terms of MPG and look pretty good, car like even.
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Apparently Google did that with this particular fleet because the current design is intended to psychologically make other drivers less likely to road rage against the machine. Literally. And it makes sense too, because these only drive about 25 mph, and given that they're putting them on public roadways, it's easy to see how that might piss somebody off.
Re:Butt Ugly (Score:5, Informative)
Electric vehicle range is hugely affected by aerodynamic drag, particularly a highway speeds. What looks aerodynamic is surprisingly unrelated to the drag coefficient. So modern car designers do things to actually improve drag, which seem weird and ugly to you.
The Ferrari F40, a triumph of car design in the late 80s, has a drag coefficient of 0.34. The Koenigsegg CCX has a Cd of 0.30. A 2001 Toyota Camry has a Cd of 0.29. And my Nissan Leaf has a Cd of 0.28.
My most notably odd feature on the Leaf is the big bug eye headlights. At highway speeds, those headlights create a bubble of low pressure around the side view mirrors, significantly decreasing drag. I'm a function over form kind of guy, so I think it's awesome.
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Re:Butt Ugly (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Butt Ugly (Score:4, Informative)
It should just be Fd...
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Quite true...
Many people think that big trucks must be bricks in the air, but the reality is very different.
My 2015 Yukon XL has a drag coefficient of 0.379, nearly as good as that F40.
What is equally impressive is that it will do 0-60 in just 6.2 seconds, for a truck that is over 3 tons in weight.
Gas mileage still sucks however, no matter what GM does to make it sound "not as bad as before".
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Keep in mind Cd is multiplied times frontal area to get drag. Thus your quoted numbers have nothing to do with drag or MPG for a given engine efficiency.
Re:Butt Ugly (Score:4, Insightful)
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It's intended to look cute as an anti-road rage measure.
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The Oatmeal review I linked (looks like as first post) includes a discussion of a similar scenario, which the car handled better than many people would.
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That same article stated outright that it can't handle construction zones... so I wouldn't say "better than many people would" quite yet.
I love the idea of self driving cars, and I believe they will be better drivers than humans are. I don't for a moment believe we are at that point today. There are just too many situations like construction zones (or for that matter, rain and snow were also mentioned as un-navigable) to call this "ready" yet.
I hope they keep working, and I hope they get there, but if anyth
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Sure, machine logic has strange seemingly obvious gaps. The pedestrian trying to cross though was spot on, and half of humans would just pull out without seeing him at all.
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The gaps are obvious. And not in the sense of "should be easy" but I'm the sense of "it's obvious that a machine can't do this yet"
it's "easy" to get a machine to interpret road signs, follow pavement markings, identify and anticipate the location and trajectory of many moving objects simultaneously, and act accordingly (ok, not easy, but no real truly new problems here)
What's hard is figuring out what to do when the road markings contradict a guy in a uniform telling you what to do, or figuring out where t
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On my way to lunch today I was driving on a residential street, and the gas company had the road dug up. There was a guy there with a 'slow' sign indicating that the 'road' was now a few pieces of plywood on someones lawn. How do you prepare for something like that?
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the routing accounts for all those weird situations.
Except if the construction was on a street without another exit. There will be situations where routing will not work.
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Did you just say it is an anachronism to do what every living creature does - react? Maybe computers are not quite as advanced as you think.
I'm sorry Dave, I can't let you go home now. Someone is working on your street and I am too stupid to work around that unless someone gives me an alternate route. Too bad I am so much more knowledgeable than you.
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Don't be silly. They can't even get Google Maps to quit crashing.
Liability? (Score:2, Insightful)
So if I buy a production Google car without controls, and the vehicle runs off the road and kills 20 kids in a playground, who is at fault?
A. Me (for owning it)?
B. Google (for shoddy programming)?
C. The state (for allowing driverless cars)?
D. The Kids (because they should have gotten out of the way)?
Related question - do I need to carry insurance to use one of these cars as I am not driving, I'm merely riding?
Essentially, what is the model for this type of vehicle - am I the 'driver', or am I 'passenger' (l
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The last thing I'd want to be liable for in this litigious, passive aggressive, soccer mom ridden culture is a free range roving robot programmed by the same company that designed android's security and reliability.
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You, for owning and running it. You may then have a claim against Google if you can find fault or negligence. And yes, you'll have to have insurance just like you do now. If you lend your car to your friend to drive, you're still on the hook to insure the car for damage it can do to others, you just might have a legal claim to recoup from the friend.
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Yeah, and I'd totally be able to afford and prevail in a legal battle with Google.
So this is a big tall glass of FuckNo for me. The hipster Glassholes can be the early adopters and hash through the class action suits when these things do take out a schoolyard of kids. We'll see how things settle out after that shitstorm sweeps through
It would be interesting if a couple of dozen Glassholes have problems with these cars and have the video to prove it.
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Yeah, and I'd totally be able to afford and prevail in a legal battle with Google.
That's the biggest reason to have insurance. That way, you don't have to deal with it, your insurance company will. And they will fight tooth and nail because Google has very deep pockets.
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The person in the car may own it, but they aren't in control of it. You can't even call them a driver if they can't drive the car. I wouldn't have have much of a problem with self-driving cars so long as I can grab the wheel and gain instant control when needed. But Google's removal of the steering wheel, brakes, and gas pedal made them look ridiculous and places them squarely in the position of complete liability.
What really bothers me is the over-confidence in Google software on this board. I'm I the only
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Re: Liability? (Score:1)
Liability and FUD (Score:2)
>> maybe Google's willingness to build its own hardware just to get the technology on the road means that its self-driving car team knows something the rest of the industry doesn't
Or...that the rest of the auto industry doesn't want to get tagged with the "first death caused by an automated car."
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Or maybe the rest of the industry doesn't see a car that has a max speed of 25mph, can't drive in the rain or snow, and can't navigate a construction zone as a viable product?
These things are orders of magnitude less likely to kill someone than a normal vehicle. But they're also much less likely to get you to your destination.
Google knows something? (Score:2)
Or maybe the rest of the industry isn't willing to risk the liability for when something goes horribly wrong. Fear of litigation is a real impediment to innovation. But in this case, there is a huge amount of risk. Dealing with the real world happing around you while you're trying to make the computer drive the car has a ton of non-trivial potential disasters waiting to be exposed.
Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer's 2011 concept car sketch (Score:3, Interesting)
Marissa Mayer's 2011 concept car sketch for BMW vs. Google's 2014 built vehicle [staticflickr.com]
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More here: Is Google CEO's "Tiny Bubble Car" Yahoo CEO's "Little Bubble Car"? [slashdot.org]. Thought it was interesting that the no-frills bubble car Google came out with in 2014 was closer to Mayer's 2011 vision, and quite a departure from the modded Priuses and Lexuses that Google had shown off in the past. Your mileage may vary. :-)
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Whilst she may be Yahoo's CEO, back in 2011 she was working at Google.
"Haven't reached that point yet" (Score:2)
No. I fully believe that the cars HAVE reached that point.
The thing is, many people (including legislators and insurance underwriters) don't trust such a system yet. Thus, the car has conventional controls as a "failover to manual" in cases of catastrophic systems failure.
Honestly, while I believe that you can build self-driving cars. And that they can be safer. *I*, personally, don't want one.
Put simply, I refuse to relinquish that level of control over my driving experience. Ever.
Well, maybe when I'm
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For that very reason, as soon as self-driving cars reach a critical point of safety over normal drivers (perhaps at least 25% lives saved?), it's a GOOD idea to implement it ASAP. I like controlling cars too, but the roads are not for joyrides.
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Belief is irrelevant.
No we haven't (Score:2)
No. I fully believe that the cars HAVE reached that point.
It does not matter what you believe we factually have not reached that point yet. Google themselves have admitted that their vehicle does not work well in rain, snow or fog. There is also the issue that every road would have to be scanned and manually gone over for current technology cars to drive on them. I have yet to see a valid test of a vehicle driving into a random, unaugmented parking lot and parking.
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Google themselves have admitted that their vehicle does not work well in rain, snow or fog.
Which means, they're usable about 10 day of the year around here.
Re: "Haven't reached that point yet" (Score:1)
YMMV.
MY driving experience is anywhere from 2-4 hours of solid bumper to bumper traffic every day. Why yes I could move closer to work if anyone wants to toss 1M my way to afford to live inside the Metro area :/
At this point I don't want a high dollar super car so I can idle in traffic at 10mpg. Don't care how ugly the damn thing is, once it can handle freeway speeds ( when you finally get clear of the traffic ) I'll be happy to have one.
Driving is far from the amazing-wind-in-your-hair-top-down-private-c
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No. I fully believe that the cars HAVE reached that point.
LOL this car doesn't even have windshield wipers because the designers know there isn't even a prayer they'll ever be able to drive in the rain. It's only got daytime running lights because it'll never run at night either. But AI cars are like here, today, man! Yeah, right.
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Put simply, I refuse to relinquish that level of control over my driving experience. Ever.
Don't you ever go with someone where the other drives?
Re:the rules changed, that's why the manual contro (Score:4, Insightful)
Realistically, if the car has been driving on auto with the passangers not paying constant attention (in which case, why do you have the auto controls? and people are really bad at paying constant attention to something that they can't control), do you really think that having someone grab for the wheel in an emergancy is going to do more good than harm? the big red panic button to stop the car is about all that is meanignful in any case.
The situation they require manual controls for is when you drive into a blizzard/flood, and the car drives until it's unsafe to stop and unsafe to continue. When you give the computer the choice between two bad things, something bad will happen. The regulators would rather that bad choice be in the hands of a human, when the "fix" is to work out as many "unsafe to continue, unsafe to stop" conditions, and improve stopping before them. It's not about the instant hand-over, but the impossible situation.
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The situation they require manual controls for is when you drive into a blizzard/flood, and the car drives until it's unsafe to stop and unsafe to continue.
I can imagine that going over so well with consumers "Hi! It's me, your autonomous car here. You know how I drove you up in the mountains and to this mountain pass? Well now there's a blizzard coming so I quit. Now I know you haven't touched the wheel in a month because I've been doing your commute and I wouldn't drive under these conditions, but you'll probably freeze to death if you don't get down so... best of luck? Toodeloo."
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The only failure I've ever seen anyone focus on with self-driving cars is where the user makes multiple errors "urging" a car into a known unsafe area. The "fix" to that is to remove more power from the driver. If "I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that." were the response to all the stupid human requests, then 99% of comp
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Who said emergency? An emergency is probably exactly when you want a computer to be in control, simply because it can process more information more quickly, and the decisions to be made are trivial and minimal (aka "bring vehicle to a safe stop, right now").
But I would want manual controls on my car of the future because on some weekends I drive into the countryside and I drive on small dirt roads that may or may not be on the map. Or to festivals or other big events where at the end you park on a field. Or
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A driverless car with no pedals and steering wheel doesn't need to be like a normal car. Where's the sleeping area? Where's the flip-down table to work on? I don't want to stare at the road if I'm not allowed to drive.
That's actually where we are quickly headed from a legal stand point.
As much as there is hype around this "self driving" car, it simply can't. It's well know that this car can't handle rare situations like heavy rain, snow, construction zones, or any of a multitude of other situations. and that won't change for decades to come. There are simply too many variables, and one thing that computers are awful at right now is interpreting that sort of thing. What we WILL see instead is the steady introduction of mo
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I'd prefer a steering wheel so I can do stuff that the AI won't let me do, like drive through my backward to drop off heavy things in the garden, etc...
You can probably plug in a USB keyboard and use the arrow keys -- or hjkl in the bad-ass variant.
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Two Words; Seat belts. You will still be a passenger in a small vehicle which could be involved in an accident. Personal restrains will still be required.
Police waving a baton? (Score:3)
Just last week I encountered a cop with a lighted baton who was directing traffic from the side of the road. He would stop traffic, walk to the middle of the road while motioning people across the road with his baton, then walk off the road while waving the baton *behind his back* to signal "go ahead".
Does the self-driving car recognize this sort of thing?
Will it drive when there's snow on the ground?
I think I'd keep the steering wheel and manual control - just in case..
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Recognise gestures - no.
Snow, 200% no, it can't even handle rain.
I'd bet that it'll be well over a decade before they have a car that can drive without the map-every-inch-first system, and it'll still very much be an early prototype.
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Yes and no, in that order.
The cars can recognize pedestrians and their gestures. It can anticipate their behaviour too. The cars drive quite cautiously, and in a test where a pedestrian waited by the side of the road looking like he was going to cross the car waited for him, and then when he didn't move it slowly moved over the junction itself, just like a (good) human driver would.
No, the cars can't drive in snow yet, or heavy rain. That's being worked on.
A steering wheel probably wouldn't help you. Even a
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Yes. It would recognize the policeman as a jaywalker and stop to avoid hitting him.