Driverless Cars

[Wayno]

I'll be using it to get drunk more often.

Likewise.

And, without a driver, who'll be there to enforce the soiling charge?

[Wayno]

Introducing the Microsoft Bing driverless car...

https://youtu.be/5R4KJAGqd1Q

[rev]

Introducing the Microsoft Bing driverless car...

https://youtu.be/5R4KJAGqd1Q

I wonder how many bugs it comes with, and how many bugs the updates will cause

[Vee]

Interesting infographic on some problems to be overcome with the concept of driverless cars.

Via Holy Kaw:
http://holykaw.alltop.com/6-problems-dr ... nfographic

[stumpjumper]

It will be interseting to see a convergenece of Uber and driverless cars. A large proportion of a taxi or hire car fare goes to pay the driver.

[Wayno]

And away we go...

http://www.news.com.au/national/south-a ... 7450687099

DRIVERLESS cars will hit Adelaide’s Southern Expressway in November as part of an Australian-first trial of technology predicted to change the face of motoring.

Premier Jay Weatherill today announced the trial, which will be overseen by the Australian Road Research Board Group in partnership with Swedish car giant Volvo.

The car trials will be conducted on the Southern Expressway on November 7 and 8, with multiple vehicles undertaking actions including overtaking, lane changing, emergency braking and the use of on and off ramps.

A driverless car developed by internet company Google hit US streets in 2012 following the passing of specific legislation in Nevada. Three other states and Washington DC now have laws permitting their use, and SA aims to become the first Australian state to follow.

Other manufacturers developing driverless cars include General Motors, BMW, Audi, Ford, Mercedes and Renault and they are also currently being trialled in the UK.

Advocates say the cars, which use sensors to measure distances between other vehicles, obstacles and traffic conditions, can be safer than those with human drivers and ultimately lead to more efficient use of roadways and faster transit.

Mr Weatherill said the technology to be used in Adelaide would bring a vehicle from Sweden that is being used in its Drive Me project that aims to begin commercial sales in 2017.

He said the technology promised to improve safety, reduce congestion and lower emissions.

“This trial presents a fantastic opportunity for South Australia to take a lead nationally and internationally in the development of this new technology and open up new opportunities for our economy,” Mr Weatherill said.

“It’s predicted that within just 15 years, the international driverless car industry will be worth $90 billion, so we want to encourage other global businesses to come to South Australia to develop and test their technologies.

“Driverless cars have the ability to revolutionise transport in this country and we want to be at the forefront.

“It is our ambition to be a test bed for innovation across a whole range of areas.”

Transport and Infrastructure Minister Stephen Mullighan said the trials would coincide with an international conference on driverless cars, to be held in Adelaide.

“The conference will provide an opportunity for experts from across Australia and the world to discuss new ideas and explore possibilities for partnerships and innovation,” he said.

“We know that about 90 per cent of all crashes are caused by driver error and driverless cars have the potential to see far fewer deaths and injuries on our roads in the future.”

South Australian road laws would have to be changed to shift focus from the driver of a car to the operator of the driverless software, such as Google.

Mr Mullighan said after a trip to the US this year where he saw driverless vehicles being tested that the Government would release a discussion paper and aim to introduce the necessary legislation late this year.

ARRB Group Managing Director Gerard Waldron said automated vehicles are “far from science fiction, but rather a short-term reality that Australia needs to be prepared for”.

The RAA said it was proud South Australia would be the first state in Australia to test the technology.

The organisation said driverless cars had the potential to solve many of the state’s transport issues, particularly congestion on city streets.

“By 2020 all cars that come off the production line will have some ability to drive themselves, and we need to prepare,” said public affairs manager Penny Gale.

“By applying international research in these trials, we can work towards understanding what is required to make driverless technology suitable for our local road conditions and to keep road users safe.”

Ms Gale said the technology had the potential to be “a real win” for road safety and mobility in SA.

“Removing the need for a driver will open up a whole range of transport opportunities for many of our members, particularly people with disabilities and the elderly,” she said.

“While removing the reliance on human behaviour will undoubtedly save lives.”

Ms Gale said the RAA understood many of its members were hesitant in embracing the concept of a driverless car, with a survey revealing just 23 per cent felt safe in a car that drove itself.

“This trial will help us gauge the opportunities and issues road users might face, and help us better prepare our members for the future of transport that is rapidly approaching,” said Ms Gale.

“Who knows, one day not too far from now, common problems like finding a car park or dealing with peak-hour congestion could become a thing of the past, and Adelaide will have led the way by embracing and testing this new technology.

“Hopefully our involvement in the trial will also put the state in a great position for South Australian companies to create business opportunities in this area.”
Originally published as Driverless cars to hit SA roads

[Vee]

And away we go...
....
http://www.news.com.au/national/south-a ... 7450687099

Thanks, Wayno. Yes, away we go.
We (SA) need to investigate, be prepared.....

Like the potential for the disabled and the elderly... And the opportunity for business partnerships / innovation / spinoffs arising from the International Conference, major trial and government support.

(And we need to ramp up preparations and alliances for electric vehicles, charging stations etc. and continue the movement towards clean energy public transport.)

The ARRB site includes more information on the driverless cars initiative, including links to downloadable reports and an interesting public opinion survey (from UK, USA and Australia).
ARRB:
https://www.arrb.com.au/Transport/Self- ... icles.aspx

[serca]

Interesting topic indeed.

Not in our lifetime? Not for 20 years? C'mon fella's this is going to happen in the immediate future, they have been testing these cars in the US for years with great success. Most topics concerning Artificial Intelligence is morally and ethically f@%ked. It is predicted by many edumacated people that since the 1940's Artificial Intelligence (AI) is doubling at a rate of every 18 months. Do the math on that and it's scary. These edumacated peopel agree with the use of their fancy calculators and bic ball point pens that in 25 years time there will be AGI's which are infact as smart as a human, yes even on a rational cognitive level. This is probably another topic but putting it in perspective drive less cars are not far away from being mainstream IMO. One they legislate the morals and legalities all go be a goer. And I will drink to that and then use that car I am drinking to, to get home rather intoxicated yet safely.

[monotonehell]

Interesting topic indeed.

Not in our lifetime? Not for 20 years? C'mon fella's this is going to happen in the immediate future, they have been testing these cars in the US for years with great success. Most topics concerning Artificial Intelligence is morally and ethically f@%ked. It is predicted by many edumacated people that since the 1940's Artificial Intelligence (AI) is doubling at a rate of every 18 months. Do the math on that and it's scary. These edumacated peopel agree with the use of their fancy calculators and bic ball point pens that in 25 years time there will be AGI's which are infact as smart as a human, yes even on a rational cognitive level. This is probably another topic but putting it in perspective drive less cars are not far away from being mainstream IMO. One they legislate the morals and legalities all go be a goer. And I will drink to that and then use that car I am drinking to, to get home rather intoxicated yet safely.

Have you been reading Tim Urban?

[serca]

Interesting topic indeed.

Not in our lifetime? Not for 20 years? C'mon fella's this is going to happen in the immediate future, they have been testing these cars in the US for years with great success. Most topics concerning Artificial Intelligence is morally and ethically f@%ked. It is predicted by many edumacated people that since the 1940's Artificial Intelligence (AI) is doubling at a rate of every 18 months. Do the math on that and it's scary. These edumacated peopel agree with the use of their fancy calculators and bic ball point pens that in 25 years time there will be AGI's which are infact as smart as a human, yes even on a rational cognitive level. This is probably another topic but putting it in perspective drive less cars are not far away from being mainstream IMO. One they legislate the morals and legalities all go be a goer. And I will drink to that and then use that car I am drinking to, to get home rather intoxicated yet safely.

Have you been reading Tim Urban?

Wait but why ? haha well played mono

[monotonehell]

Interesting topic indeed.

Not in our lifetime? Not for 20 years? C'mon fella's this is going to happen in the immediate future, they have been testing these cars in the US for years with great success. Most topics concerning Artificial Intelligence is morally and ethically f@%ked. It is predicted by many edumacated people that since the 1940's Artificial Intelligence (AI) is doubling at a rate of every 18 months. Do the math on that and it's scary. These edumacated peopel agree with the use of their fancy calculators and bic ball point pens that in 25 years time there will be AGI's which are infact as smart as a human, yes even on a rational cognitive level. This is probably another topic but putting it in perspective drive less cars are not far away from being mainstream IMO. One they legislate the morals and legalities all go be a goer. And I will drink to that and then use that car I am drinking to, to get home rather intoxicated yet safely.

Have you been reading Tim Urban?

Wait but why ? haha well played mono

I saw his fingerprint in the ideas you have assimilated. Interesting stuff.

[Vee]

Driverless Cars in the news ahead of the Conference in Adelaide.

1. Adelaide will host the International Driverless Cars Conference on 5 and 6 November 2015.

This two-day conference is the first international driverless car conference to be held in the Southern Hemisphere.

.. First on-road driverless car trials
Saturday 7 November: In collaboration with Volvo and as part of the Australian Driverless Vehicle Initiative...
... Australia’s first on-road demonstration of automated vehicles.

Volvo XC90s will demonstrate lane keeping, adaptive cruise control and active queue assist in a fully automated mode.
(Closed event)

Conference Info:
http://www.driverlesscars.sa.gov.au/

And....
2. Cohda announces V2X-Radar for driverless cars

Australian technology company Cohda Wireless will use this week’s International Driverless Car Conference in Adelaide to demonstrate its advanced new V2X-Radar system.

V2X, or ‘vehicle-to-everything’ is the catch-all term for systems that utilise vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) communications technologies, which will play a crucial role in allowing autonomous vehicles of the future to ‘see’ their surroundings.
...
SA Premier Jay Weatherill highlighted Cohda’s technologies as a key mover for the state’s future vision.
“SA is leading the world with its driverless vehicle trial, so it’s great to see a smart South Australian company like Cohda Wireless leading the world with its innovative technology."

Caradvice:
http://www.caradvice.com.au/393177/aust ... y-weather/

[Vee]

Driverless cars could be reality in Australia within a decade.
Update from Renew Economy, quoting several University researchers, at a media briefing ahead of the Adelaide Conference.

Australia is likely to be an early adopter of driverless cars, and they could be on its roads in as little as 10 years’ time, according to some of the nation’s leading researchers in autonomous vehicle technology and policy.

Speaking at an online media briefing ahead of Australia’s first on-road trial of driverless cars in South Australia this weekend, researchers involved in the initiative said that, based on a combination of manufacturers’ predictions and Moore’s Law, we might expect to see fully autonomous vehicles driving on Australian roads somewhere between 2025 and 2030.

And they even foresee a time in the not-too distant future when it will be illegal for humans to drive cars themselves in most on-road situations.
But, of course, there are a multitude of factors that will need to fall into place – laws changed, public confidence gained, technology improved, bugs ironed out, etc – before this can happen.

To this end, South Australia last month became one of the few states in the world – the US states of California and Nevada are others – to pass legislation allowing the trial of autonomous vehicles on public roads.

It’s all part of the Australian Driverless Vehicle Initiative – a huge project involving many different stakeholders, including SA’s Flinders University, the state government, the Australian Road Research Board, Bosch, Volvo and representatives from the Swedish transport administration.

So why are driverless cars such an important development for society – and such an investment priority for tech giants like Google and emerging companies like Uber? And what will it take to get them on our roads?

Law changes, community acceptance

As Professor Rocco Zito – Head of Civil Engineering at Flinders University and developer of two autonomous vehicles – has noted, we actually already have autonomous vehicles on our roads.

In fact .... most of the world’s major auto makers currently have models with some level of autonomy, ranging from collision avoidance, to lane departure warnings, and automatic parallel parking. .....
“We have the technology,” "It’s not really a technology question any more, it’s really an integration question.

“We need vehicle to vehicle communication and vehicle to infrastructure communication – that is, vehicles talking to each other and talking to the infrastructure.

And we need law changes, Zito adds. “Driverless cars is not the only technology today that is at least one step ahead of policy."
Then there is community acceptance. What do we need to do to convince drivers to take their hands off the wheel – which, by the way, is still currently illegal under the Vienna convention?

And then there’s the coordination of it all, which, says Zito, is what the stakeholders in the Australian Driverless Vehicle Initiative are trying to get happening.

Human factor

According to Professor Michael Regan – chief science officer for the ARRB ......
“This is the demonstration phase, where we work out what needs to be done to prepare Australia for driverless vehicles; including in the department of public acceptance – to gauge how people feel about these vehicles.

To Regan, the human factor will be one of the big challenges in the uptake of autonomous vehicles: after all, it will be the humans who still need to take over control of the cars if they fail or reach the limits of their control.

So there are issues of driver inattention, skill degradation and even increased incidence of motion sickness that need to be addressed.
The bottom line is, fully autonomous vehicles don’t quite work 100 per cent yet. Sure, Google’s driverless car has clocked up 1 million miles of testing “virtually incident free”, but as UniSA research professor Anthony Finn wonders, is 1 million miles enough? .....

“The cars are better at operating in some areas than others,” .....
Their mapping systems alone, he says, would require a sort of “google street view on steroids.”

“They don’t really discriminate between dangerous and harmless situations. They don’t interpret the intent of people – and humans are rather good at that.
“And they’re not very good at making ethical decisions; obviously there is a sliding scale of what to do in an accident. …These are all deficiencies (in the technology).

“We have to work out what it will take to convince average people to get into one of these cars and allow it to drive you from here to Sydney – or would you put your kids in there?” Finn said.

AI, safety, sustainability

But Professor Toby Walsh, a UNSW expert in artificial intelligence, thinks driverless vehicles will be very much welcomed by society, for the reasons of safety and sustainability, and will be transformational in these areas.
“I think we will one day look back and wonder why we let people drive such dangerous cars in the past,” Walsh predicts. “I suspect people will only be allowed to drive cars themselves on race tracks,” or other specially designated areas.

Another intelligent transport expert, Victoria’s Swinburne University of Technology, Hussein Dia believes the mass adoption of driverless cars could be disruptive on many levels and to many sectors.

He quotes a study conducted in the Portuguese capital, Lisbon, the results of which suggested that driverless vehicles used in peak hours could deliver the same level of mobility – that is, the same number of car trips – using only 35 per cent of the number of vehicles.
In a 24-hour scenario, the study found you would need only 10 per cent of the existing number of vehicles to achieve the same amount of mobility – but only if you had a high penetration of efficient public transport.

Uber, Apple, Google etc

“Why is Uber investing in driverless vehicles? Apple … is rumoured to be moving into this space as well. Why is Silicon Valley interested in this space? Why is Google investing in the shared mobility spaces?

“This will transform our society in a major way,” Dia said.
Not least of all, the insurance industry. Driverless vehicles could reduce accidents by 90 per cent, says Professor Dia, and thus reduce car insurance premiums by as much as 75 per cent.

Predictions

As to when all this will happen in Australia, the consensus seems to be somewhere between 2025 and 2030.
“Manufacturers are saying around 2030, maybe,” said Zito. “it will depend on when we get vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure communication happening.”

“Australia will be an early adopter,” said Walsh. “We have an ageing workforce of truck drivers, high unemployment rates. We’re likely to be adopting these technologies very early on.

To Regan, public acceptance will be a key barrier. But in the end, “it will happen fairly quickly, where we will have more and more situations where vehicles can drive fully autonomously.”
And Professor Finn agrees: “When it happens, it will happen quite quickly. Using Moore’s Law as a guide, perhaps 2025-2030.”

Renew Economy:
http://reneweconomy.com.au/2015/driverl ... cade-22637

[monotonehell]

Still a lot of work to do and a lot of problems to solve (most of them regarding human factors) . But I'm all for SA to be a centre of development.

[Will]

As someone who enjoys driving, I am baffled why we as a society need this. It is like sex without another person, or eating without food.