On 10/11/10 17:15 , Alexey Zinger wrote:
There are some interesting implications to this technology for
consumers. In a way, we're already quite removed from direct
operation of a car. I happen to ride motorcycles, and also own a
manual pick-up truck, an old (1963) British sports car, and an
automatic modern sedan. There is a striking difference between
required awareness and "user-friendliness" of the sedan. While it's
significantly faster than the sports car, it is also much safer and
easier to drive. We have things like ABS, stability control, and now
with an automatic in cruise control, the car will not stop until I
expressly tell it to (arguably, this is more dangerous than a
computer-controlled car that IS aware of its surroundings). The
sports car is much closer to a modern motorcycle, where with all the
technology, we still have to be 100% aware and skillful.
Point is though, I don't think these robot cars will be marketed as
fully automated vehicles. It's simply too much of a legal nightmare
in the short term. Rather, these will be packaged as driver aids
(remember the Lexus that can now park itself?). They won't require
drastic changes to the laws. And most importantly, they won't require
a lot on the part of the general public to accept them. Think about
it, it's one thing to convince a pilot or a train operator that this
automatic system will do the right thing for them, it's quite another
to convince a prospective car buyer as well as millions of other
drivers they share the road with that the system will not harm them,
especially when you're not the one making the decision to buy such a
car, but are merely driving along next to one. But undoubtedly we'll
get to a point, where enough people will be comfortable with their
robot cars and the presence of the steering wheel will be little more
than a formality much of the time. This gets us to an interesting
dilemma. At what point do we actually no longer want the human to be
able to take control? What if the person is sleeping or impaired or
can't see too well? Or what if they're just not a very good driver?
There is a fighter plane control system that was developed within the
last decade that allows the plane to fly extremely fast and low,
following the grade of the terrain (to avoid radar detection). Like
many kinds of automated control systems, it was designed to relinquish
control the moment the pilot made any kind of input. During testing,
there were a number of casualties, where the system was put under
significant stress on approach to a very steep hill or even a mountain
and the test pilots thought they were in trouble, when they thought
the plane was not going to ascend and pulled on the stick. Problem
was that at that point they were beyond their capability as a pilot
(and these were very experienced people) and promptly crashed into the
side of the mountain, when had they stayed off the controls, the plane
would have been fine.
Very good points. The last one points me to the thought that Google is
probably thinking of military applications too, in addition of augmented
safety civilian cars. The DoD & related agencies (which some engineers
of the Google car seem to come from) have been issuing contests for
unmanned ground vehicles for years.
--
Fabrizio Giudici - Java Architect, Project Manager
Tidalwave s.a.s. - "We make Java work. Everywhere."
java.net/blog/fabriziogiudici - www.tidalwave.it/people
[email protected]
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