Fully automated vehicles - 'not in our lifetime'?

GreatApe

HAMISH_MCTAVISH wrote: »

Exactly.

Aviation is decades ahead here with automation and arguably has a much easier task to do than self driving cars have - no pedestrians in the sky, just take off, fly to destination, and land, with very few objects up there to hit - but we still have pilots....

In fact we have a global shortage of pilots.

Aviation is very different

2 men fly 500 passengers.
If they get paid say a combined £500 for a 10 hour flight its about 10p an hour per customer to have the human. Even less of a cost for trains.

In a taxi the human labor cosy per passenger is closer to £10 per hour per customer

So there us a 100x bigger human cost per passenger hour in cars than on planes.

There is little need to automate the pilots away.
At most a £300 ticket cost falls by £1 or just 0.3%

But in a taxi automating the human will more than half the cost from £1 a mile to less than 50p a mile.

GreatApe

HAMISH_MCTAVISH wrote: »

Exactly.

Aviation is decades ahead here with automation and arguably has a much easier task to do than self driving cars have - no pedestrians in the sky, just take off, fly to destination, and land, with very few objects up there to hit - but we still have pilots....

In fact we have a global shortage of pilots.

You also miss the obvious

In aviation the human pilot cost is less than half of one percent of the cost of a ticket
In taxis the human pilot cost is closer to 70% of the cost of the ticket

There is also the cost of the vehicle too. A £50k pilot to potentially protect a £150 million flying machine. A £25k taxi driver only potentially protects a £15k car.

Self drive will first take taxis and HGVs
With taxis so cheap people will very rapidly abandon second cars and then main cars too

Even if self drive taxis were twice as dangerous as humans people would take the robot taxi for £5 rather then the Hunan for £15. But its more likely to be the robot taxi is twice as safe and only a third the price and available much quicker

GreatApe

ilovehouses wrote: »

So it's done by reducing proximity risk by having lower maximum speeds or bigger distances between vehicles. Nobody worries that the lives of Stansted shuttle train users might be a lower priority than those on the Singapore metro. That's an extreme obviously but the software just doesn't need to worry about who is more important.

I doubt the technology is going to be sufficiently advanced anytime soon that we need to be concerned about Tony Blair having a God version of the software.

The VIP passengers will just have more road space. So maybe no vehicles 50 meters before or after that vehicle.

I think the idea that the car will have to decide to kill someone over another is ridiculous
Your thinking in human terms.
The robots will just avoid altogether silly situations like no speeding no falling asleep no drink driving and won't move until the seatbelts are used

Will we still have deaths. Probably but I suspect 1/100th as much
Just the faster reaction times and the better decision making will reduce fatalities a huge amount.

There are also huge policing advantages.
How will the moped gangs operate when all vehicles are tracked all day and can be switched off or even a cars doors locked and the criminals driven straight to an police station

There is also simple competition
If nation A says OK to self drive vehicle's it makes them about 10% more productive which meqs country B has pressure else of falls behind

antrobus

GreatApe wrote: »

....
With taxis so cheap people will very rapidly abandon second cars and then main cars too...

Studies from the USA suggest that what cheap taxis do is persuade people to abandon public transport.:)

One promise of ride-hailing companies like Uber and Lyft was fewer cars clogging city streets. But studies suggest the opposite: that ride-hailing companies are pulling riders off buses, subways, bicycles and their own feet and putting them in cars instead.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/bluesky/technology/ct-uber-lyft-congestion-20180225-story.html

Perhaps we should be rather focussing on fully automated trains and buses and making them 'so cheap'. Of course, I suspect that any attempt to do so would bring forth the wrath of the RMT, ASLEF, Unite et al, and therefore be even harder to implement.

GreatApe

antrobus wrote: »

Studies from the USA suggest that what cheap taxis do is persuade people to abandon public transport.:)

One promise of ride-hailing companies like Uber and Lyft was fewer cars clogging city streets. But studies suggest the opposite: that ride-hailing companies are pulling riders off buses, subways, bicycles and their own feet and putting them in cars instead.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/bluesky/technology/ct-uber-lyft-congestion-20180225-story.html

Perhaps we should be rather focussing on fully automated trains and buses and making them 'so cheap'. Of course, I suspect that any attempt to do so would bring forth the wrath of the RMT, ASLEF, Unite et al, and therefore be even harder to implement.

These taxis will replace most intercity trains, some domestic flights, most buses and yes some walking and cycling too.

But cars themselves will change or how cars are used will change.
Right now the median car journey is probably 1 person in a 1.5 ton car.
If people abandon their cars and mostly use self drive taxis it will mean you wait only seconds for a self drive taxi and self drive taxis could pick up 4 customers per trip. Imagine a normal car but with all four seats separated by a wall. Or even 6 persons per people carrier.

If the median car goes from 1 person to 3 persons then traffic will fall irrespective of land taxis taxing some market share from planes trains buses and walking

vivatifosi

I heard an interesting article on vehicular automation a few months back. I think it was on R4.

The expert made the comment that there are 5 incremental moves towards full automation. Companies such as Uber are trying to go straight to level 5 as they see a potential first mover advantage, whereas others are taking the incremental route.

There's an article as to what the levels are, here:
https://www.techrepublic.com/article/autonomous-driving-levels-0-to-5-understanding-the-differences/

Reading around the subject, it looks as though Audi are heading to level 3, while Ford is aiming for level 4.

Interesting points regarding liability and insurance though, thanks Hamish.

Another interesting point that the programme made is that at some levels (can't rememher whether 3 or 4) there is a problem with human behaviour. This is because the level of involvement is so mundane, that people switch off and don't pay enough attention. Or alternatively, they watch so intently for that particular event that driving becomes more, rather than less stressful.

GreatApe

kabayiri wrote: »

Indeed.

Autonomous vehicles offer the opportunity to change the ownership and usage model.

The country that masters the self drive road network can sell that expertise to any of the major cities around the world.

Transport is one of the largest sectors of the economy perhaps the largest single sector overall.

If self drive tech improves transport productivity by 50% that would be nation chaining.

In the UK alone transport is in excess of a £100 billion a year industry. If productivity improves 50% so it costs only £50 billion a year that is £50 billion a year of people/capital that could for instance instead go into the NHS or energy or housing or whatever

It is imo going to be the biggest economic stimulus of our generation. My bet is that it will be out and common within the 2020s and the results are going to be a huge economic boost perhaps as much as the introduction of mass electricity post around 1950

GreatApe

vivatifosi wrote: »

I heard an interesting article on vehicular automation a few months back. I think it was on R4.

The expert made the comment that there are 5 incremental moves towards full automation. Companies such as Uber are trying to go straight to level 5 as they see a potential first mover advantage, whereas others are taking the incremental route.

There's an article as to what the levels are, here:
https://www.techrepublic.com/article/autonomous-driving-levels-0-to-5-understanding-the-differences/

Reading around the subject, it looks as though Audi are heading to level 3, while Ford is aiming for level 4.

Interesting points regarding liability and insurance though, thanks Hamish.

Another interesting point that the programme made is that at some levels (can't rememher whether 3 or 4) there is a problem with human behaviour. This is because the level of involvement is so mundane, that people switch off and don't pay enough attention. Or alternatively, they watch so intently for that particular event that driving becomes more, rather than less stressful.

Level 5 filly autonomy is needed, everything else before that point is just an interesting toy

People seem to think human level intelligence is needed for a self drive car, that isn't true its closer to mouse or rat level intelligence. Sure a mouse cant drive a car but a mouse can navigate its surroundings avoid preditors and more or less get from where it is to where it wants to be in a safe way.

How close are we to mouse level AI?
I think we are already there the companies just need a few billion miles of driving to feed their AI self learning programs. Once its out and partially usable they will gather exponentially more data and the AIs will get exponentially better at self driving. Tesla is already doing this, their cars gather human driving and learn from it. In theory they will just get better and better and better. At some point it will be at least twice as safe as humans then turn it on and gather more data and continually improve the AI

This is going to be the first wave of AI that truly changes the economy and makes us much richer and much more productive. Its as big as the electricity revolution which took us from 90% poverty to 90% wealth

HAMISH_MCTAVISH

GreatApe wrote: »

. My bet is that it will be out and common within the 2020s

I'm prepared to bet there won't be a single commercially available fully autonomous car (end to end journey, no human intervention or oversight, no human driver required) for sale to the general public in the UK that also has the required legislative consent for fully autonomous use and is insurable for fully autonomous driving for at least the next 2 decades - and more likely 2050.

GreatApe

HAMISH_MCTAVISH wrote: »

I'm prepared to bet there won't be a single commercially available fully autonomous car (end to end journey, no human intervention or oversight, no human driver required) for sale to the general public in the UK that also has the required legislative consent for fully autonomous use and is insurable for fully autonomous driving for at least the next 2 decades - and more likely 2050.

We are so far apart on this.

My guess is by 2050 we will have super intelligence. That means not only computer driven cars but AI bots that do more or less everything literally everything including inventing. Super human androids super human warehouses of servers and humans machine hybrids.

You should look into AI especially googles deep mind. AI is already here
It is not at human level and it is not self aware but the moment it gets to that point it just takes a few days to then surpass the sum of all human knowledge

I dont believe god made man, but I believe man is very close to giving birth to a god.

Ray kurzweil a very smart man takes this further and argues this intelligence will spread to the whole planet then solar system then the galaxy and then the entire universe will be awoken as the entire universe awakens as a superintendence.

Extremely interesting and exciting but most likely the end of the human species