Fully automated vehicles - 'not in our lifetime'?

Out,_Vile_Jelly

The predictable thing about technology is that it is not as predictable as people like to think. I re-read some classic 50s scifi recently, and it was striking how big the concepts were (faster than light rockets allowing colonisation of the galaxy!) compared to everyday detail (messages within an intergalactic spaceship on paper sent by message boy in one Asimov novel). What comes out in the wash as both popular and practical is often not what's expected.

So anyone making confident predictions about the extent and timescale of any new technology is likely to look foolish IMO.

Cash-Strapped.T32

Truffle_Snuffler wrote: »

Will Tesla be putting that in their ads??

It'd be funny if they did - after all, any car advert that says "our safest yet", or anything similar, basically just means "kills fewer people than our last attempt" - but the laws of PR and consumer self-deception prevents them from saying that out loud.

Herzlos

Truffle_Snuffler wrote: »

Another problem is trying to use a new system on existing infrastructure. No effective segregation of traffic & non-traffic and roads that have 90 degree turns to get in & out of side streets which slows or stops the traffic behind every few yards. The real way to make it feasible would be for the new system to be completely separate from the old.

With driverless EV's there's no reason a car has to point in the forward direction all the time. You could easily have rotating hubs & cabin to navigate in/out of spaces or round junctions without any curves. The passengers will barely notice the sideways movement whilst the cabin catches up with direction of travel unless they have particularly aggressive acceleration.


Mechanically, kicking human drivers off the road to replace them with a robot fleet would result in massive efficiency improvements in most aspects of travel. The only things holding it back are:
1. Psychology. People will resist these things for as long as possible. They like having their own personal space.

2. The technology isn't quite there yet. Give it another 20 years.
3. The cross-over would be horrendous. You'd probably need to spend 10 years with overlapping human/robot drivers before you can start optimizing the infrastructure.




In terms of collision space; the cars would hopefully identify most mechanical problems and warn their neighbours in plenty of time to allow them to back off until it can park up and await recovery. For external issues like a jaywalker, all cars on that street would be able to brake more or less in parallel so should be able to avoid running into each other.

AnotherJoe

Out,_Vile_Jelly wrote: »

The predictable thing about technology is that it is not as predictable as people like to think. I re-read some classic 50s scifi recently, and it was striking how big the concepts were (faster than light rockets allowing colonisation of the galaxy!) compared to everyday detail (messages within an intergalactic spaceship on paper sent by message boy in one Asimov novel). What comes out in the wash as both popular and practical is often not what's expected.

So anyone making confident predictions about the extent and timescale of any new technology is likely to look foolish IMO.

Indeed. Worth watching a 15 minute youtube on "the Norden bombsight"

westernpromise

Out,_Vile_Jelly wrote: »

The predictable thing about technology is that it is not as predictable as people like to think. I re-read some classic 50s scifi recently, and it was striking how big the concepts were (faster than light rockets allowing colonisation of the galaxy!) compared to everyday detail (messages within an intergalactic spaceship on paper sent by message boy in one Asimov novel). What comes out in the wash as both popular and practical is often not what's expected.

So anyone making confident predictions about the extent and timescale of any new technology is likely to look foolish IMO.

Before WW1 it was confidently predicted that torpedoes spelt the end of all surface warships. Here we are 100 years on. The fighter plane was going to be made obsolete by the SAM in the 1950s; here we are 70 years on. In the 1990s there was some Soviet missile that again spelt the end of all surface warships.

Nuclear reactors were going to provide electricity too cheap to meter.

And so on.

AnotherJoe

And the current one is that AI will fix everything because it can just learn from all the accidents and they wont happen again but it doesn't seem to work, especially with fire trucks, maybe they need to see every possible position a fire truck could be in before they stop hitting them?
"oh yes but in the last accident the fire truck was 1 inch to the left plus you were travelling 01.mph slower so this is a new situation"

kabayiri

You could come up with dozens of plausible reasons as to why we should never try and extract power using nuclear methods.

It still went ahead. Why? Because people believed that the potential rewards exceeded the risks.

It will be the same with things like automated transport.

HAMISH_MCTAVISH

kabayiri wrote: »

You could come up with dozens of plausible reasons as to why we should never try and extract power using nuclear methods.

It still went ahead. Why? Because people believed that the potential rewards exceeded the risks.

However the nuclear cheerleaders of the 1950's were busily predicting nuclear powered aircraft, nuclear powered cars, and nuclear powered homes in the media of the time.

In reality those cheerleaders massively over-estimated how quickly the technology would progress and massively underestimated the costs and risks of it.

It will be the same with things like automated transport.

Well it seems like the technology cheerleaders of today are making exactly the same mistakes anyway...

kinger101

kabayiri wrote: »

You could come up with dozens of plausible reasons as to why we should never try and extract power using nuclear methods.

It still went ahead. Why? Because people believed that the potential rewards exceeded the risks.

It will be the same with things like automated transport.

I have no doubts automated driving will become more prevalent in the future. We already have cruise control (sometimes adaptive) and various parking assist technologies.

My doubts are that taxi fleets will replace personal car ownership. The reasons for needing a car (or not) are highly dependent on where you live and work, whether you have a family, and how you spend your leisure time. For many, cars are a status symbol too. I don't see how technology will change that.

kabayiri

kinger101 wrote: »

I have no doubts automated driving will become more prevalent in the future. We already have cruise control (sometimes adaptive) and various parking assist technologies.

My doubts are that taxi fleets will replace personal car ownership. The reasons for needing a car (or not) are highly dependent on where you live and work, whether you have a family, and how you spend your leisure time. For many, cars are a status symbol too. I don't see how technology will change that.

I've said before. There isn't really a good reason why UK should trail blaze this technology.

There are plenty of places around the world which will provide more suitable proving grounds.

All the objections raised so far have been about risky trials. Well, it's a harsh truth but other societies are willing to take more risk.