Autonomous Next Year

[Elio Amazed]

GM unveils autonomous Bolt EV without steering wheel or pedal, aims to bring it to market next year
Today, GM unveiled the first image of its upcoming autonomous fourth-generation Bolt EV-based vehicle.
The first without a steering wheel or pedal. The automaker also says that it filed a petition...
Asking the DOT permission to deploy the vehicle as soon as next year.

https://electrek.co/2018/01/12/gm-unveil...eel-pedal/

 

[BilgeRat]

I can see benefits to this, living in a college town. The phone fiddlers could then fiddle endlessly while in the car and the rest of us would be safer.

 

[johnsnownw]

I do hate to contradict Electrek, but the first vehicle without a steering wheel, and presentable self-driving capability, was the Google Car. Secondly, Google/Waymo is WAY a head of GM/Cruise with real world self-driving miles, and thus validation of their technology.

GM is jumping the gun a bit with this announcement, and it is incredibly unlikely that they'll have a meaningful amount of these vehicles tooling around on the roads next year.

Self-driving vehicles are definitely on the way though, and it's mind-blowing how quickly they've managed to deploy these systems.

 

[Rickb]

For some odd reason I don't trust GM to do it.

 

[Mel]

Still a lot of questions about autonomous cars. My driveway is 600 feet long and not on Google or any other maps. Without a steering wheel, how does it recognize my driveway? It may be gravel or it may be grass. If I just want to go for a drive, how do I tell it where to go? How does it know about dross traffic if view is blocked?

 

[Made in USA]

How about these considerations:

Will they know to stop for a school bus?
Will they yield for a funeral procession?
Will they refuse to move if the weather is bad?
Will they pull over for emergency vehicles?
What about tow trucks? (Is it a funeral or a tow truck?)

The answers at the moment are all NO because the infrastructure is not in place to address the above.
While cameras can detect colored flashing lights, different states use different colors for fire and police.
In addition, funeral cars include family and friend vehicles that do not have flashing or yellow lights.
Communication between vehicles is what is required. In other words, none of the vehicles driving around right now will be considered safe around the new breed about to be introduced in the next few years.

Expect taxes to go up to accommodate cities becoming "smart".

 

[Rob Croson]

How about these considerations:

Will they know to stop for a school buss?
Will they yield for a funeral procession?
Will they refuse to move if the weather is bad?
Will they pull over for emergency vehicles?
What about tow trucks? (Is it a funeral or a tow truck?)

The answers at the moment are all NO because the infrastructure is not in place to address the above.
While cameras can detect colored flashing lights, different states use different colors for fire and police.

I think you have a lot of unfounded assumptions here. Some of these are traffic laws that all vehicles are required to comply with. (School buses, emergency vehicles) I would be shocked if these full autonomous test vehicles did not already comply with these regulations. So, each state uses different lights. So what? Wouldn't be hard to look them up and pre-program the car with them all. The car alread knows where it is due to GPS. Also, I doubt that the variation is all that significant. "Flashing red and/or blue? Pull over." That probably solves 99% of the variation. School buses also shouldn't be all that hard to detect.

In addition, funeral cars include family and friend vehicles that do not have flashing or yellow lights.

As for funeral processions... They are required to have headlights on and have that flag. If you don't have that, you're not part of the procession. I've seen plenty enough drivers that already ignore these. It's uncommon enough that lots of people don't recognize it for what it is. I'd think autonomous vehicles would already be better at it than humans.

 

[Made in USA]

What would you think if in the future, a hacker configures his car to look like a high priority vehicle so that all the lights turn green giving them right-of-way all the time? Or maybe a cop car that can take control of yours? A murder mystery novel might become reality when the car is taken over by a terrorist group, the doors locked, and then driven into the water to drown the occupants. Safeties can be bypassed.

 

[BaldGuy]

Tesla's method of it taking over for you on the freeway is ok with me, but that one with no controls is too much for me. Thanks, but no thanks.

 

[RSchneider]

What would you think if in the future, a hacker configures his car to look like a high priority vehicle so that all the lights turn green giving them right-of-way all the time? Or maybe a cop car that can take control of yours? A murder mystery novel might become reality when the car is taken over by a terrorist group, the doors locked, and then driven into the water to drown the occupants. Safeties can be bypassed.

I have a working title, Maximum Overdrive 2.0: Autonomous machines take over.