Thursday 29th September 2011

Google Pushing Driverless Car Tech

'We should be the catalyst' says Google founder

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There's little doubt that 'driverless' car technology is inching ever closer to becoming some form of reality.

But while Ford is busy imagining auto-piloting you into an EV-only lane on your morning commute via the Evos concept, and BMW is actually testing out 'autonomous' 5-series cars an actual, real-live motorways, nobody's putting a date on when cars will start to drive us rather than the other way around.

If Google has anything to do with it, however, that sci-fi future could soon become a genuine reality.

The internet giant has been pushing the concept of the driverless car hard for a while now, and reckons it could save up to a million lives a year by doing so. It also feels that it has to be the organisation to push the concept of the driverless car into reality.

Speaking at the recent Google Zeitgeist, company founder and CEO, Larry Page, explained how he feels it is Google's job is to push tricky technologies to market.

"We asked people who were working in that area why don't we have an automated car? Why can't I buy one?" He said. "They said 'We can't actually figure out how to do it. There are regulatory issues and all these other kinds of things'.

"So I think part of our role as a catalyst is to make sure that some of these things actually start up and happen and make sure we push through the difficult issues to make it real."

"They [driverless cars] will work substantially better than an average person and get better from there, and continue improving. You'll get a software update and your car will be safer which is great."

All very noble, Mr Page, but who's going to sell the software, we wonder...? Page is also keen to help remove the waste that is the daily commute. "They could be doing useful things in that time," (hich is true), "or watching TV," (which is hardly productive) "or looking at ads," (ah, now we come to the nub of it...).

Save a million lives a year. And sell a heap of ad space at the same time. Ain't capitalism wonderful?

[thewheelman]

With the amount of bad drivers on the roads, i'm not sure if this is so bad.

[Chicane-UK]

Likewise. Have quite liked the thought of driverless cars for commuting purposes for some time.. it'd be pretty awesome to be able to climb into your car, and drink coffee and read a paper whilst you were driven to the office.

Would also help prevent all "human induced" problems such rubbernecking, being half asleep / preoccupied at the lights, etc..

[Ex Boy Racer]

'Google expecting to make money out of their initiatives' shock!!
Why else would they do it???

[E38Ross]

as long as there is the option to be able to drive the car yourself when you want to then i'm all for this. driving around town etc is never fun.

[MX7]

Great idea. It should also make traffic flow much smoother, as it can slow down for things like traffic lights before you can even see them.

[kambites]

E38Ross said:

as long as there is the option to be able to drive the car yourself when you want to then i'm all for this. driving around town etc is never fun.

Initially there will be, but how long that will last, who can say? I could certainly see human controlled cars being banned from the motorway in my lifetime - the increase in traffic throughput could be huge.

[anonymous-user]

I like the title, very subtle.

[Perd Hapley]

Get a train or a taxi or something you lazy... passengers.

[ajhmini]

I'm not keen on handing over complete control of my car to a computer... buuut, I can see it will have massive benefits in acceident prevention if the 'computer' is able to take over when a crash is imminent.

I also can see it has the potential to improve congestion in major cities, but surely the next step in cities is more effective traffic monitoring to adjust the flow of traffic (through traffic lights etc)rather than handing over complete control of the car.

[J4CKO]

I think it would be fantastic, there will of course be reluctance to hand over to a machine and of course there will be accidents as the technology matures but we have had carnage on the roads for 100 plus years and we have accepted that without question, I would perhaps trust a few gigahertz worth of processing power, GPS, sensors, cameras with built in redundancy and failsafes over a lot of the drivers I see as it wont get angry, upset, drunk, tired, agressive or try to text on a mobile phone at 80 mph.

[The Black Flash]

Perd Hapley said:

Get a train or a taxi or something you lazy... passengers.

Good insult.

[J4CKO]

Imagine going to the pub, driving the car, having six pints and a curry and then the car drives you home, all legally !

Well, potentially, opens a whole legal and legislative can of worms, imagine the insurance claims or your car being awared six points, people getting off because they claim the car was driving at that time, would have to have rigourous logging/telemetery.

[thewheelman]

J4CKO said:

Imagine going to the pub, driving the car, having six pints and a curry and then the car drives you home, all legally !

Well, potentially, opens a whole legal and legislative can of worms, imagine the insurance claims or your car being awared six points, people getting off because they claim the car was driving at that time, would have to have rigourous logging/telemetery.

Well without a doubt it would be a ban. As technically you'd still be breaking the law. Just as people have been banned for even getting in a car while over the limit & had no intention of driving. Personally i think drink drivers should be banned for life.

[Rusty-C]

Even to a petrolhead this almost makes sense, I struggle to find any enjoyment in modern driving 50% of the time. Although, strangley, I'd rather drive than be a passanger.

[cosdog]

J4CKO said:

would have to have rigourous logging/telemetery.

This is going to be quite a tricky one, which has come up before. Records of where you are at a particular time is a murky issue when it comes to Human Rights and little things such as an individual's freedom. This will no doubt open up a massive can of worms at some stage, one of many with implementing such a technology in an environment where the responsibilty has been firmly with the driver since the inception of the automobile. Merging the two together on a transport network that will also have to accomodate older cars without this tech is going to be challenging.

Driverless cars are in my opinion more closely related to public transport than they are to a traditional car when it comes to responsibility. If the "driver" of such a car is encouraged to do something else other than drive, then he is merely a passenger and cannot be axpected to be responsible for salvaging a situation which might require split second reactions (emergency brake for instance). This renders the the "driver" (or "user" which seems like a more appropriate title) a mere passenger, and therefore not directly responsible for the vehicle's actions.

So where does this leave us? I'm sure many entities will discuss this in the coming years, but one option is to own your "car", where you input destination and thats it. If its operation is then governed by integrated software interfacing with the transport network (think automated landing systems in planes) the responsibility for what happens between you inputting the destination and you arriving could well lie with the network operator (think network rail). So you buy the "car", and then pay a fee of X for it to be used on the network.

Theres no denying that the magitude of change here and its integration is simply mind boggling. Whatever happens, the end result is something that anyone who enjoys driving and the sense of freedom and fun it brings would consider nightmareish. So much for picking up your keys in a flight of fancy and letting the road decide where you end up.

[Twincam16]

Dreadful idea. Far too much reliance on technology for my liking. OK, so the geeks will no doubt say 'but people are fallible too', but at least they know when they're tired/drunk etc.

Problem with this sort of thing is, when it becomes widespread, controlling governments will see that, as all motoring amounts to is moving from A to B, there's actually no point in controlling your own car at all.

Then they'll effectively ban driving, and entrusting driving to a human will be considered shockingly, unforgiveably dangerous.

And we'll just continue to drift towards a Wall-E world where we drift through life interacting with everything virtually, cocooned from reality at all times, sponsored by Google, Apple, Microsoft and Amazon.

And I'm afraid I don't see any point in living in such a sterile, awful world. Predict festering, overflowing pits of suicide cases if the march of the computers continues.

[J4CKO]

thewheelman said:

J4CKO said:

Imagine going to the pub, driving the car, having six pints and a curry and then the car drives you home, all legally !

Well, potentially, opens a whole legal and legislative can of worms, imagine the insurance claims or your car being awared six points, people getting off because they claim the car was driving at that time, would have to have rigourous logging/telemetery.

Well without a doubt it would be a ban. As technically you'd still be breaking the law. Just as people have been banned for even getting in a car while over the limit & had no intention of driving. Personally i think drink drivers should be banned for life.

Ok, it would have to have a system where it tests your breath like they give to persistent drink drivers and if you are over the limit it prevents you from taking control.

All very hypothetical though until the technology actually appears.

[thewheelman]

Obviously my guess is as good as others here, but i'd imagine the cars of the future would be more in the way of the cars from iRobot, where you can still override the system & drive yourself, or when stuck in traffic just put it into auto-drive.

[thewheelman]

J4CKO said:

thewheelman said:

J4CKO said:

Imagine going to the pub, driving the car, having six pints and a curry and then the car drives you home, all legally !

Well, potentially, opens a whole legal and legislative can of worms, imagine the insurance claims or your car being awared six points, people getting off because they claim the car was driving at that time, would have to have rigourous logging/telemetery.

Well without a doubt it would be a ban. As technically you'd still be breaking the law. Just as people have been banned for even getting in a car while over the limit & had no intention of driving. Personally i think drink drivers should be banned for life.

Ok, it would have to have a system where it tests your breath like they give to persistent drink drivers and if you are over the limit it prevents you from taking control.

All very hypothetical though until the technology actually appears.

That would be a damn good idea.

[Fetchez la vache]

Johhny Cab said:

Damn it, another 3 points on my license