Caught the end of some documentary somewhere in the never regions of sky the other day. It covered self driving cars for motorway use, eg cars driving at 100mph+ speeds within feet of each other moving apart to filter in new cars and closing up gaps when cars left.
Who here would be interested in cars that did that, forgeting about all the logistical problems. Eg Leave home drive towards M25 choose destination, somewhere along the entry ramp the car then self drives itself towards its destination, when coming to the required exit ramp the car gradually gives control back.
Thoughts?
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......but that would take all the fun out of tailgating....
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I know i said forget about the logistics problems, but just figured what probably would happen
The system would calculate the safest speed to be 90, and it would troop every car past a speed camera set at 70.
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this is being pioneered in California and experiments have been done for years now. One of the problems is that they think that dedicated lanes would be needed.
If my computer and the number ot times it crashes is anything to go by, I would be a little concerned about travelling at 100mph+ on auto-pilot.
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Your computer is just trying to tell you to switch to Linux
Phil I
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Think it was california where they showed the demo.
I think its feasable considering you can get a plane to takeoff, fly across the atlantic and land without human intervention.
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Don't you ever fly?
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On the same programme they showed a 777 flying from chicago to london and the pilot didn't need to do anything. Apparently the landing was perfectly smooth.
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Well, the distance thing is available now; top-of-the range Mercs know how far they are from the car in front and can automatically maintain that distance. Steering would be the hard part to do and that I think needs markers burried in the road (which is how they do the demo you saw). You could put an extra lane on motorways for it, but how would you stop ordinary cars using it?
The problem is that you can't retro-fit it to al the cars in the world at once. I am reminded of that system one car company (VW?) developed in their test labs, an automatic parallel parking system. You drive up next to the space, press a button and the car gets itself in, using radar to measure the distances to the cars. Worked perfectly, but they never put it onto a production car for the unexpected reason that it was too darn good; it could get the car into gaps that a human would consider impossible, with the result that the cars in front and behind (with human drivers) couldn't get out!
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THe biggest problem with a self steer car would be that nobody would buy one!
I did some work in image recognition once aimed at highlighting the road in front.
I came to the project with the words 'I supose the ultimate would be to take over the role of driver'. I was told this wasn't the case and that no demand existed for self drive cars.
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These are my own opinions, and not necessarily those of all Toads.
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I remember seeing a program demonstrating a car that could automatically follow the car in front. However at one of the road junctions it lost sight of the car in front and ended up part way up someones driveway. Talking of computers running things, I'd be quite wary, the american navy had a aircraft carrier stranded after it's NT operating system crashed.
Steve.
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Large passenger aircraft frequently land unaided and if you have ever been on the flight deck of a Cathay 747 landing at Hong Kong's old Kai Tak airport when that last minute final right bank at about 600 feet threatened to remove the washing from the blocks of flats in the flight path (this is 15 years ago too!) if you know that part of the world then you will have marvelled at what is possible.
But motoring is different, it involves the self and the personality. It is an extension of the individual. May be harder to take that away.
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I don't like driving anymore. I'd rather get in a car and get to where i want to be reading a book or something. Not have to wait for a train/bus/etc at whatever time our overlords deem it approprite to travel.
But i do also a drive when theres no where particular to go, just out for the hell of it.
So what i want is a self driving car for weekdays and a fun car for the weekend, also i'd want it in a selection of colours ;)
(Best go watch a tommorows world car a the future documentary, its the only way one of these is going to happen)
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Tone, may years ago your preference was alive and well in the form of the railways.
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The main reasons for having pilots on board a plane these days are primarily not in case anything goes wrong (as it is likely there would be little they could do that the computer couldn't), but the general flying public would never get on a plane knowing it was flying itself.
It's easy to apply technology of this nature to a plane though - all it has to do is take off, fly along a pre-determined route, maybe altering co-ordinates slightly with information from air traffic control and then land itself, a feat the computer is 99.9 times out of 100 better than any pilot. Frequently the only pilot input (mate works for Britannia airlines, I have this on good authority!) is type in the reference number of the airport along with which runway the plane is to land on. But even though airports like Heathrow are busy, the plane still has plenty of time to work out what it wants to do and it's environment. Also whilst flying the nearest other plane would several hundred yards away.
Contrast that with your average driving experience. I second what Growler says about your car being an extension of you - But look around you in busy rush hour traffic, say on the motorway. You can have cars inches away from you on all sides at high speeds and people moving lanes and wanting different junctions. I wonder myself how I have managed to get home in one piece some days, I sure as hell wouldn't be wanting to trust a computer to be doing it.
I can see it now whilst rummaging around in the back of my car, trying to locate a CD whilst at 70mph on the M1...
*ALERT ALERT ALERT* Windows CAR has experienced an Abnormal Program Termination error. Please reboot your car. If you continue to receive this error please contact Microsoft.
HOLY **** - AAAAAARRRRRGGGGGHHHHHHH.....................!!!!!!!
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To prove the point, download and watch this :) Make sure it's full screen...
www.punchbaby.com/media/laters/clips/funny/blueScr...v
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Imagine that famed Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) on Win98 SE coming up at 85 mph on the M25 on a rainy winter's night!
"You can press Alt+Ctrl+Del to restart your computer or you can press any key and wait to see if the system responds".
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I\'d be quite wary, the american navy had a aircraft carrier stranded after it\'s NT operating system crashed.
Ah, that reminds me:-
www.honestjohn.co.uk/forum/post/index.htm?=7468&m=...e
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