Brad Ideas - Robocars are the future - Comments

Away from coal

brad — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 22:47:30 -0800

Coal generated electricity is indeed a problem that must be solved. But using 1/10th the energy is still a win. Instead of 10 gallons gasoline it means the coal equivalent of half a gallon of gas and the NG equivalent of 1/5th of a gallon of gas.

And how do you generate

drill now — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 14:44:59 -0800

And how do you generate electricity? The efficiency of generation is about 60%, plus variable losses in transmission. Over 50% of electricity is generated by coal, so don't give me all this crap about "saving the planet".

i totally agree, i would

Anonymous — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 08:59:45 -0700

i totally agree, i would love robotic cars in certain areas say in an electric bus lane, but i would like to drive my own 911 when i own it thank you!

its amazing that people are thinking about giving up thse things, technology is there to guide us not to take over a gps and detailed map is good enough but why robots?

Where do retired boomers

MattYoung — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 14:44:46 -0700

Where do retired boomers live and where to they go? Much of it is from gated communities to controlled private strip malls. These are controlled traffic situations, and we have automated traffic solutions for these today. Automated taxis are being deployed in airports; and factories have automated delivery around the factor campus.

Now, what is the public road between the strip mall and the gated community? Most of it is about a quarter mile of public roads. That is the constraint, how to deal with the bureaucracy on that quarter mile.

Matt

Great for those who cannot drive

Alec C — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 06:06:07 -0700

Having seen how much my parents lives closed down when they ceased to be able to drive, I am strongly hoping that robocars come along by the time I cease to be able to drive (maybe another 20 years, if I am lucky).

Also, I have several friends who cannot drive (epilepsy, seriously impaired vision) and have their lives significantly restricted by this. Robocars would give them a freedom the rest of us enjoy.

Finally, as someone who enjoys a beer or three, I would be very pleased not to have to have the "who is not drinking tonight" discussion. While I don't get drunk, I certainly go far beyond the safe level for driving (essentially, none) and an inexpensive robotaxi would be wonderful. (Yes, there are taxis here, but a manned taxi home can double the cost of the evening).

But, local traffic is the economic constraint

Mattyoung — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 09:22:10 -0700

We are in a depression precisely because the economy cannot find a path that reduces the cost of suburban shopping. The fixed transportation cost of a grocery shopping trip is about $50 when the consumer pinches pennies to save his suburban home. The suburban home owner has elastic substitutes, for his commute, even in suburbia. But the home owner only has one method to pick up groceries, the automobile. So, when money is short, he uses other methods for his commute, his car sits in the driveway at $300/month in fixed costs and he uses it oly five times a month when gas prices are high. So we can see why Detroit is dead.

Right now, we are actually suffering this deepening depression because our local politicians will not allow us to automate home delivery. It is the essential constraint of our time, either automate suburban streets or abandon suburbia.

Main benefit on the highways

Scott — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 07:57:53 -0700

The main benefits will come from robocars on the highways. This is where the high speed accidents occur, and thus the majority of fatalities, as well as where most of the traffic congestion is. Once the majority of cars on the highways are computer controlled, traffic accidents will be greatly reduced, and the resulting congestion reduced as well. Fewer cars slowing down to rubberneck, and fewer erratic drivers will also help to reduce congestion.

Your ideas about robocars on city streets and the resulting improvements to society are interesting and well thought out, but I think this is much farther down the road. By the time it becomes practical, many things will have changed which we simply cannot predict. In addition, I think there will be a great deal of resistance of people to completely giving up control of their vehicles.

Highway-only robocars, however, may be viewed as just an extension of the current cruise control, so people may be more willing to accept them. You could drive yourself onto the freeway and activate the computer control. You then relax or attend to other business while the car navigates through the freeway interchanges, and then lets you know when it's close to the exit that you need to take. You then take over control, exit the freeway, and continue to your destination. This is a much easier problem than dealing with intersections and city streets. And we're much closer to that reality now, with adaptive cruise control and lane sensing technology, so it's easy to see this happening in the near future. And it could also become mandatory for people wishing to talk on a cell phone while on the highway to put their car under computer control.

I like this blog, and can't

MattYoung — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 22:12:53 -0700

I like this blog, and can't wait for a response, so I reply to myself. But I am reading the comments.

The Home Delivery Vehicle is a benign creature. It has wide, ovals vinyl bumpers atop inflated air and they travel about 20 MPH or less through the neighborhood. They do the reverse waste pick-up, and drop boxes of consumable on your curbside.

Delivery Bots don't prefer all electric or hybrid, but they do 90% of the last mile for freight on electric if asked. There is always a human operated diesel electric ready to convoy the delivery bot from warehouse to home, so the bot need only auto-route for two miles or less.

The delivery bot and the taxi bot remove about $200 in fixed cost for consumer freight. They are a great efficiency gain, and available today in factories, airport, demonstration rallys, competitions, etc.

The bot vehicles would like a little green paint and a cooperative DMV. These two supports would put the bots in gated communities and some adventurous communities next year.

That reduction of $200 in fixed expenses, and probably another $100 savings in variable costs, all related to transportation, represents the gain in utility of the American home over the utility or human operated vehicles. So, due to technology gains, homes should indeed be more valuable, especially in America where asphalt roads are the standard fare.

The green paint is an agreement between the human vehicle and the bots. It identifies likely places where bots might make a left turn, follow a lane, leave a box of groceries, or maneuver in a parking lot.

Bots are benign to light weight, lower speed vehicles, like smaller electric cars, scooters ad bicycles. Hence we might see greater efficiencies of use if we provide cocrete barriers for this class of silicon and light weights. Thus, lowering the total fixed cost of moving stuff drtops again as the utility of light weights gains along with the bots. Some commuter lanes in major freeways would be protected for the lightweights and bots.

Once communities try it out, they will like it; and the general consensus will provide a 15 year growth engine for America as we re-purpose out asphalt roads to efficiency multipliers in the rage of 3 to 7.

Home Delivery

Matt Young — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 19:35:21 -0700

The killer app. The idea is to make the self-checkout stand at the grocer mobile. Order over the Internet,wait an hour, and the robovan shows up at your curbside.

A variant of the idea is the autonomous electric cargo van. The cargo van can guide itself for a mile using battery, but for long hauls, the cargo vans align themselves,and electrically connect. Then diesel electric hauler powers the convoy up and moves them down the road, to the next freight switching lot. Any parking lot becomes an automated freight yard. Cargo vans can be dropped off at the grocer where they drive themselves to the unloading dock.

Old or new?

brad — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 23:02:30 -0700

Robocars will be one of those junctures that often turns industries upside-down and brings in new companies. There have been many barriers to entry in the car biz for some time, keeping it in the hands of big players. Time might be ripe for change.

I see more distributed manufacturing, because electric cars are much simpler and easier to make modular. Get a chassis from one place, motors from another. Get somebody to fab your body. Connections are no longer so mechanical, they are either digital (for controls and sensors) or high-power electrical (for main power system connection to wheel motors and batteries.) This makes it easier to make parts that can be interchanged. Drop in things you like on a dashboard, get seats from anywhere.

The main barrier is getting the whole thing safety certified. That is the one factor that big manufacturers will try to control so that they can retain their positions. They will lobby the government to make it hard to get certified, using safety as their excuse.

Can robo-cars save the car manufacturing industry?

Stuart Lynne — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 18:38:00 -0700

The current condition of the various car manufacturing companies world wide and the impact of that on the rest of various economies is illustrative..

Assuming that huge public investment in mass transit could effect a huge change in car ridership, this is the impact that would have on these industries and various service sectors.. for better or worse.

RoboCars on the other hand could be (probably will be) manufactured by the existing car manufacturers, serviced by the same service sector, on roads built by the same contractors... etc. It provides a way to move most of the current industry and service sector employment forward into new areas with the least disruption. And as pointed out without huge public investment (that mass transit requires).

Robocars are also useful everywhere... not just in areas where sufficent density exists to justify mass transit.

Yes, it must be safe first

brad — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 14:39:42 -0800

Only the more forward thinking of those groups will lobby for this. Most of the public will want proof it’s safer than a human before they lobby for it. Certainly it will have trouble going on the roads until then. However, some advanced thinking groups will say, “This looks like it has the potential to be safer than a human driver, so let’s do more R&D on it today, and let the designers know that once they make it safe enough, the law will not stand in their way.”

MAHD

Stuart Lynne — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 12:30:32 -0800

The primary problems appear to be socio-legal... And the primary way to get this done is to get a strong popular advertising campaign going.

Think MAHD - Mothers Against Human Drivers as a follow on campaign for well supported and funded MADD.

The number of people killed by drunk drivers is just a smallish portion of the 40,000 a year people killed..

Eliminating Human Drivers completely gets you all (or at least the vast majority) of the rest..

So this would appear to be a future that the existing MADD group could easily endorse, at least once proof of concept systems exist.

Oh, a great deal more than that

brad — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 15:23:26 -0800

The robocar has to do a great deal more than that. These are fairly simple problems compared to what needs to be solved, like avoiding accidents, pedestrians running across the road when you are being tailgated etc.

Technological success criteria

George McKee — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 13:45:12 -0800

I'll feel safe riding in a robocar when...

1. It can routinely merge into the traffic stream of an uncontrolled freeway that is just at the edge of spontaneous slowdown capacity, like everyone is going 50 mph even though the limit is 65.

2. It can successfully negotiate a left turn thru a 4-way by 4-lanes intersection with an unexpected traffic light breakdown, in traffic with mixed human and robotic drivers, in the midst of a blinding Texas thunderstorm.

Piece of cake for many humans...

Robocars are the future

brad — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 14:34:58 -0700

My most important essay to date

Today let me introduce a major new series of essays I have produced on “Robocars” — computer-driven automobiles that can drive people, cargo, and themselves, without aid (or central control) on today’s roads.

It began with the DARPA Grand Challenges convincing us that, if we truly want it, we can have robocars soon. And then they’ll change the world. I’ve been blogging on this topic for some time, and as a result have built up what I hope is a worthwhile work of futurism laying out the consequences of, and path to, a robocar world.

Those consequences, as I have considered them, are astounding.

It starts with saving a million young lives every year (45,000 in the USA) as well as untold injury in suffering.
It saves trillions of dollars wasted over congestion, accidents and time spent driving.
Robocars can solve the battery problem of the electric car, making the electric car attractive and inexpensive. They can do the same for many other alternate fuels, too.
Electric cars are cheap, simple and efficient once you solve the battery/range problems.
Switching most urban driving to electric cars, especially ultralight short-trip vehicles means a dramatic reduction in energy demand and pollution.
It could be enough to wean the USA off of foreign oil, with all the change that entails.
It means rethinking cities and manufacturing.
It means the death of old-style mass transit.

All thanks to a Moore’s law driven revolution in machine vision, simple A.I. and navigation sponsored by the desire for cargo transport in war zones. In the way stand engineering problems, liability issues, fear of computers and many other barriers.

At 33,000 words, these essays are approaching book length. You can read them all now, but I will also be introducing them one by one in blog posts for those who want to space them out and make comments. I’ve written so much because I believe that of all short term computer projects available to us, no modest-term project could bring more good to the world than robocars. While certain longer term projects like A.I. and Nanotech will have grander consequences, Robocars are the sweet spot today.

I have also created a new Robocars topic on the blog which collects my old posts, and will mark new ones. You can subscribe to that as a feed if you wish. (I will cease to use the self-driving cars blog tag I was previously using.)

If you like what I’ve said before, this is the big one. You can go to the:

Master Robocar Index (Which is also available via robocars.net.)

or jump to the first article:

The Case for Robot Cars

You may also find you prefer to be introduced to the concept through a series of stories I have developed depicting a week in the Robocar world. If so, start with the stories, and then proceed to the main essays.

A Week of Robocars

These are essays I want to spread. If you find their message compelling, please tell the world.