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Poll & Prediction: Autonomous Car Equipment at 5k by 2019


Mallette

Autonomous Vehicles: Good or Bad  

49 members have voted

  1. 1. Are autonomous vehicles a good witch, or a bad witch?

    • Good
      20
    • Bad
      28


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On 12/1/2017 at 9:18 AM, dwilawyer said:

Don't forget to multiply that by at least 4.....

 

Marketing ploys to boost stock prices.

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Anyone here ever driven a modern Volvo or Land Rover for any length of time? They love having all sorts of features in their cars, and sensors to let you know when they're working....and they fail all the time. It's almost comical how bad it gets.

 

There's a lot of debate about how good a perfectly working autonomous vehicle might be, but what happens after a few winters and stuff starts failing? What do you do about the camera that gets snow flung up on its lens, or the sensor that gets internal condensation causing it to slightly misread? Y'all proclaim the wonderful merits of cars working together in unison, with following distances much closer than humans could achieve safely. But even without that, it's not intrinsically safe for a car to just stop in the middle of the road - and how does it pull over to the shoulder when its sensors aren't functioning? Never mind the whole detection complexity.... these aren't things that you "just program". That's the myth of leaving it to software....this is a real hardware problem with no always works solution.

 

The only way around that is what the airline industry does....which is massive amounts of maintenance overhead on every single component and sensor, and redundancy when possible. Your average car driver can't even change their own tires and brakes. Who here is going to be qualified to test all the sensors in their vehicle?

 

I was just moving my stuff into the city yesterday...driving a 26ft box truck through tight narrow alleys. It was not possible to maneuver this vehicle and follow all the rules of the road. We had to stop and move items in the way, drive the wrong way down one-way streets, etc... We don't do it often (well most of us don't), but moving is a part of life and our existing infrastructure is not built to support automation of transportation. The reason the driver-less forklifts work is because the infrastructure is in place to control all the necessary variables. Could you imagine trying to move into a new home with an autonomous vehicle? Or use a vehicle to pull out a tree stump? We live in a real world, with real existing infrastructure. You don't change that in a few years. Totally anecdotal example, but it plays out in every facet of understanding our infrastructure.

 

Btw, Travis....what do you consider truly autonomous? I think the definition of "driverless" is what most people understand to be autonomy....the car can perform all transportation functions without anyone in the car. I don't think Level 4 lets me put a pair of speakers in my car and have them delivered to my friend without me in the car....

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17 minutes ago, vasubandu said:

@DrWho Commercial airliners and military y aircraft largely are controlled by computers these days, and they are not falling out of the sky.

 

That's because in some cases there are triple backups with almost NASA spec parts. This happening in the auto world doesn't compute.

JJK

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56 minutes ago, vasubandu said:

@DrWho Commercial airliners and military y aircraft largely are controlled by computers these days, and they are not falling out of the sky.

Right - and my point is that their success rate is attributed to the incredibly rigorous maintenance plans that have been put in place. Their methods and success rates are so good that it's been cause for all sorts of research into how those methods could be applied to other industries.

 

Do you really think we're prepared for that level of maintenance across the entire automotive industry? The automotive mechanics I run into barely know ohms law, and complain about how complicated OBD-II can get...

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Not sure what sort of maintenance we are talking about.  Electric motors don't need much, if any.  Computers either work, or don't.  No question there will be at least one, if not two redundant systems to bring the vehicle to a safe halt in the evident of a major systems error or impending mechanical failure.  Predictive maintenance was already becoming coming on mechanical systems when I retired from the oil field.  Extremely accurate.  

 

I've been amazed at the naysayers on this, perhaps the most important paradigm shift of my lifetime.  Maybe that's the issue...such a massive change in the world as we know it.  

 

I was lying on the sofa in my TV area musing on the 120 inch image on the screen.  It occupies the place where the bed was when I grew up in this house.  I distinctly remember turning off the 23", 1954 RCA TV one night and then musing on how wonderful it would be to have a palm size projector I could lie in bed with and project a color image on the ceiling.  Didn't have a clue how a CRT could be made that small or projected...but somehow felt it would be done.  It was, years ago.  And so much more I never dreamed of...including AVs.  But they are here and they will change our world in ways that are hard to even conceive of.  I, for one, and thoroughly enjoying the experience.  Now, with the type 1 diabetes cure in the pipeline, I could hardly be happier...except to make it long enough to ride that BFR into space.  Also, on the diabetes cure, when I was diagnosed I asked the doctor if there were ever those who were cured, and he said no, and that I would never be cured.  Looks like he was wrong and he was certainly more qualified to predict on that than a chip maker CEO is on automobiles.  

 

Life is GOOD for us dreamers!   

 

Dave

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BTW...on maintenance issues, I think the AVs would be a 100 times (or more) safer with little or none.  People don't do everything they should anyway as it is.  Certainly the fleet cars will be maintained like Enterprise or other rental cars are and checked out regularly.  And those rental cars are still bargains even with all that attention.  

 

Dave

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28 minutes ago, vasubandu said:

You do know that the computer in your phone is more powerful than the computers in the space shuttle, right?

I rather suspect many phones have more computing power and more data than all the computers that existed on the planet when Apollo was launched.  Those that guided the LEM to safe landings (though one pilot took control when he feared they were landing on a large rock) were less powerful than a 4 function calculator...and worked perfectly.  

 

Dave

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2 hours ago, Mallette said:

Not sure what sort of maintenance we are talking about.  Electric motors don't need much, if any.  Computers either work, or don't. 

Well crap, if we only needed motors and computers for an AV then we'd be all set!

 

What about all the sensors?!? You do realize sensors are the most common repair to vehicles, right? You also realize that the main limitation to anything automated is heavily based on the sensory system? And we don't need to maintain those systems? Seriously?

 

This isn't about holding onto the horse and buggy. It's about telling the emperor he has no clothes.

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@DrWho The point you are making is valid, and perhaps the predictions are overly optimistic, but the miles they have racked up are impressive, and the people behind this seem to have thought of everything.  Some of those parts would be self-healing, and the vehicles would detect any problem immediately.  People really just do not understand what the combination of artificial intelligence and quantum computing are going to do.  I remember the days of the i486 processor and everyone said that we were done, that we had as much processing power as we needed.  A 486 was capable of 50 million operations per second.  Nvidia's latest process, the Pegasus can do 320 trillion operations per second.  Maybe to but it in better perspective, the current top Intel processor, the i7-8700K can do 5.733 billion floating point operations per second and 22.15 billion integer  operations per second.  Let's give it the benefit of the doubt.  The Nvidia Pegasus is 14,000 times faster than the fastest desktop processor.  

 

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1 hour ago, vasubandu said:

 

You do know that the computer in your phone is more powerful than the computers in the space shuttle, right?

 

Yes, now if I could only see that tiny screen to view things. I have trouble reading a #6 font. There are also too many tiny buttons. My thumb covers three of them at a time. Then again I have no cell phone and have no reason to call anyone because all my friends are dead or dying. I had cell phones in the car a while back. Went to use them 3 months later and the batteries were dead so I threw the phones away. I think my attitude is negative. I don't know why I have rebelled because all of my schooling was in electronics and heavy radar and communications. Military search and fire control radars and 100K klystron transmitters. Western Electric carrier equipment and microwave line of sight systems. I would consider a cell phone with three buttons---one for 911, one for the tow truck, and one for everything else with no screen.

JJK

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@JJkizak You really ought to think about a flip phone.  They were the perfect design. Fit in your pocket without pressing buttons, worked as a phone since that what phones are.  I prefer some of the older ones, which you can get sharply on eBay.  for a long time, I went back and forth between a flip phone and a smart phone with the settings, but they changed it so now i have to call customer service, and I quit.

 

If you care, this site lists what is out there right now.

https://www.wirefly.com/guides/best-flip-phones

 

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1 hour ago, DrWho said:

You also realize that the main limitation to anything automated is heavily based on the sensory system? And we don't need to maintain those systems? Seriously?

Mike, I may not be in your IQ territory but I did get my grad degree with a 3.8 and honors.  I have a 70.00 surveillance camera that's worked flawless for a long time.  I just retired a Garmin GPS unit I used for 17 years without a burp.  Wish humans were a 1000th as reliable.  I'll let you worry over the electronics.  I am quite satisfied that if the OEM is willing to sell...and take the responsibility for liability that is a "comes with" for such tech...it will be fine.  Heck, I'd put a Tesla on full auto right now though, as I am sure you do, it isn't the sensors that are not where they need to be but the CODE that has had enough million hours testing to fully rely on.  Unlike the dumb schmuck who let his car drive right into a semi I'll still keep an eye on the road for a while.  The airline industry is nearly perfect, but it took a good 4 decades to get from "safe" to "safe as you can be anywhere."  It won't take AVs remotely that long due to the amount of data that will be generated.   Issues will be found, and corrected, and never happen again.  But even in that guy's Tesla he was safer than under human control except he didn't pay attention to basic common sense.  "Trust, but verify."  Good words, and I'll follow them.  But by a couple of years from now I'll be able to suck a bong, crack a beer, or take a nap in complete security while my auto takes me where I want to go.  Sheesh, forgot about the travel savings on motels.  They are going to take a beating...  But other businesses will be created.  All will be well.  

 

Dave

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