[nfb-talk] Fw: Yes, Driverless Cars Know the Way to San Jose.

[christopher nusbaum]

This thing is still in prototype, so that will probably change. Thanks
for the clarification, Bryan!

Sent from my iPhone

On Oct 28, 2012, at 5:49 PM, Bryan Schulz <b.schulz at sbcglobal.net> wrote:

> hi,
>
> apparently that statement is not completely true as the car can really only drive itself on the highway.
> Bryan Schulz
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Ed Meskys" <edmeskys at roadrunner.com>
> To: "sandy meskys" <smeskys at roadrunner.com>; "nfb-talk" <nfb-talk at nfbnet.org>
> Sent: Sunday, October 28, 2012 1:23 PM
> Subject: [nfb-talk] Fw: Yes, Driverless Cars Know the Way to San Jose.
>
>
>>
>>
>> Yes, Driverless Cars Know the Way to San Jose.
>> NY Times Sunday, 2012_10_28
>> By HENRY FOUNTAIN. MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.
>> THE 'look Ma, no hands' moment came at about 60 miles an hour on Highway
>> 101..
>> Brian Torcellini, Google's driving program manager, had driven the white
>> Lexus
>> RX
>> 450h out of the parking lot at one of the company's research buildings and
>> along
>> local streets to the freeway, a main artery through Silicon Valley. But
>> shortly
>> after
>> clearing the on-ramp and accelerating to the pace of traffic, he pushed a
>> yellow
>> button on the modified console between the front seats. A loud electronic
>> chime
>> came
>> from the car's speakers, followed by a synthesized female voice.
>> Autodriving,' it announced breathlessly.
>> Mr. Torcellini took his hands off the steering wheel, lifted his foot from
>> the
>> accelerator,
>> and the Lexus hybrid drove itself, following the curves of the freeway,
>> speeding
>> up to get out of another car's blind spot, moving over slightly to stay well
>> clear
>> of a truck in the next lane, slowing when a car cut in front.
>> We adjusted our speed to give him a little room,' said Anthony Levandowski,
>> one
>> of
>> the lead engineers for Google's self-driving-car project, who was monitoring
>> the
>> system on a laptop from the passenger seat. Just like a person would.
>> Since the project was first widely publicized more than two years ago,
>> Google
>> has
>> been seen as being at the forefront of efforts to free humans from
>> situations
>> when
>> driving is drudgery. In all, the company's driverless cars --
>> earlier-generation
>> Toyota Priuses and the newer Lexuses, recognizable by their spinning,
>> roof-mounted
>> laser range finders -- have logged about 300,000 miles on all kinds of
>> roads.
>> (Mr.
>> Torcellini unofficially leads the pack, with roughly 30,000 miles behind the
>> wheel
>> -- but not turning it.)
>> But the company is far from alone in its quest for a car that will drive
>> just
>> like
>> a person would, or actually better. Most major automobile manufacturers are
>> working
>> on self-driving systems in one form or another.
>> Google says it does not want to make cars, but instead work with suppliers
>> and
>> automakers
>> to bring its technology to the marketplace. The company sees the project as
>> an
>> outgrowth
>> of its core work in software and data management, and talks about
>> reimagining
>> people's
>> relationship with their automobiles.
>> Self-driving cars, Mr. Levandowski said, will give people 'the ability to
>> move
>> through
>> space without necessarily wasting your time.
>> Driving cars, he added, 'is the most important thing that computers are
>> going to
>> do in the next 10 years.
>> For the automakers, on the other hand, self-driving is more about evolution
>> than
>> revolution -- about building incrementally upon existing features like smart
>> cruise
>> control and parking assist to make cars that are safer and easier to drive,
>> although
>> the driver is still in control. Full autonomy may be the eventual goal, but
>> the
>> first
>> aim is to make cars more desirable to customers.
>> We have this technology,' said Marcial Hernandez, principal engineer at the
>> Volkswagen
>> Group's Electronics Research Laboratory, up the road in Belmont, Calif. How
>> do
>> we
>> turn it into a product that can be advertised to a customer, that will have
>> some
>> benefit to a customer?
>> With all the research efforts, there is a growing consensus among
>> transportation
>> experts that self-driving cars are coming, sooner than later, and that the
>> potential
>> benefits -- in crashes, deaths and injuries avoided, and in roads used more
>> efficiently,
>> to name a few -- are enormous. Already, Florida, Nevada and California have
>> made
>> self-driving cars legal for testing purposes, giving each car, in effect,
>> its
>> own
>> driver's license.
>> Richard Wallace, director for transportation systems analysis at the Center
>> for
>> Automotive
>> Research, a nonprofit group that recently released a report on self-driving
>> cars
>> with the consulting firm KPMG, said that probably by the end of the decade,
>> 'we
>> would
>> be able to have a safe, hands-free left-lane commute. In 15 to 20 years, he
>> said,
>> 'literally from the driveway to destination starts to become possible.
>> Despite their differing goals, the approaches of Google and the car
>> companies
>> have
>> much in common. They each rely on sensors to gather data about the car's
>> environment,
>> processors to crunch the data, algorithms to interpret the results and make
>> driving
>> decisions, and actuators to control the car's movements.
>> Most of the sensors are already in widespread use. Radar, for example, is
>> used
>> for
>> features like adaptive cruise control, measuring the distance to the car
>> ahead
>> so
>> that a safe interval can be maintained. Cameras are used in lane-keeping
>> systems,
>> recognizing lane stripes on the road so the car can be steered between them.
>> Digital encoders, specialized sensors that precisely measure wheel rotation,
>> have
>> been employed for years in antilock brakes and stability-control systems.
>> Accelerometers
>> have been used to measure changes in speed, particularly for air bags.
>> GPS devices are useful for self-driving systems, but only in giving a
>> general
>> sense
>> of the car's location. More important is knowing the car's position in
>> respect
>> to
>> other vehicles and objects in its immediate environment -- information the
>> other
>> sensors provide.
>> You use the sensors in the vehicle to very precisely place you locally,' Mr.
>> Hernandez
>> said.
>> In the move toward more autonomous vehicles, one tendency is to integrate
>> the
>> data
>> from different sensors. Camera recognition systems may be fooled by shadows,
>> for
>> example, thinking they are objects, but radar is not readily tricked.
>> Some automakers are developing a feature known as traffic jam assist, which
>> combines
>> the information from radar and cameras to allow hands-off driving on the
>> highway
>> at speeds of about 30 m.p.h. or less.
>> We're taking the adaptive cruise control and the lane-keeping and bringing
>> them
>> together,'
>> Mr. Hernandez said.
>> Traffic jam assist is a step toward more autonomy, but the car is still far
>> from
>> self-driving; it won't change lanes, for example.
>> A lot of this is getting people comfortable with the technology, showing
>> people
>> a
>> benefit,' Mr. Hernandez said. The idea is the driver is always in control --
>> the
>> vehicle is there to help you.
>> Google's fleet of about a dozen vehicles adds the rooftop laser units to
>> gather
>> a
>> more useful data stream than the cameras and radar systems alone can do.
>> Laser
>> range
>> finders, known as lidar units, have been used by some automakers to provide
>> distance
>> measurements for their adaptive cruise control systems.
>> But Google's lidar is far more complex, consisting of 64 infrared lasers
>> that
>> spin
>> inside a housing atop the car to take measurements in all horizontal
>> directions.
>> (Lidar systems like this are also very expensive -- about $70,000 a unit --
>> so
>> cost
>> and complexity will have to come down before they can be widely used.)
>> The units take so many measurements that, when combined with information
>> from
>> the
>> radar and cameras, a moving map of the car's surroundings can be created in
>> the
>> onboard
>> computer, a fairly run-of-the-mill desktop. It's a highly detailed map --
>> the
>> lidar
>> can distinguish, for example, a pickup truck carrying something on a rack
>> from a
>> similarly sized, but boxier, delivery van.
>> We like lidar because it is actually the most rich sensor you can put on a
>> car,'
>> Mr. Levandowski of Google said. It helps you separate out people from bushes
>> behind
>> them, people from each other, people from crosswalks, and it helps you make
>> a
>> 3-D
>> model of the world.
>> Still, the key to a car being able to truly drive itself lies in the
>> software.
>> The
>> piece that's missing is not better radars or cameras or lasers or whatever
>> we're
>> using,' he said. It's really the intelligence behind them.
>> Google's engineers tweak that intelligence based on the driving experience
>> of
>> the
>> test cars. Safely coping with four-way-stop intersections was really
>> difficult,
>> Mr.
>> Levandowski said, because a certain amount of assertiveness -- moving into
>> the
>> intersection
>> slightly to see how other cars react -- is required.
>> We realized there's subtle communication that goes on,' he said. Once we've
>> come
>> to a stop, we inch forward a bit to signal, hey, we're ready to go. A
>> self-driving
>> car that did not assert itself might wind up sitting at the intersection for
>> a
>> long
>> time as other cars passed on through.
>> Fundamentally, though, the car has to operate safely, Mr. Levandowski said,
>> so
>> if
>> another car tries to enter the intersection out of turn, the self-driving
>> car
>> will
>> yield.
>> The learning is constant. On the way back from the Highway 101 drive, for
>> instance,
>> an extra-long articulated bus turned in front of the Lexus, which was now
>> back
>> in
>> human-driving mode because the software had been optimized for only highway
>> driving
>> that day. But all the sensors were still doing their jobs, so the bus showed
>> up
>> on
>> Mr. Levandowski's laptop screen as a string of red dots that stretched out
>> as
>> the
>> bus rounded the corner.
>> Awesome bus,' Mr. Levandowski said as he typed a note for other engineers to
>> take
>> a look.
>> The system constantly compares the car's map to detailed maps created by
>> Google
>> and
>> downloaded to the car. Those maps provide a lot of additional information
>> that
>> helps
>> with navigation, but they also help the car know when conditions have
>> changed.
>> Perhaps construction barrels have just been set up, closing a lane, or a
>> mattress
>> or other object has fallen onto the road from a car. By comparing maps, the
>> car
>> knows
>> its surroundings have changed, and it has to take some action: continue
>> driving,
>> alert the driver that it's time to take back control or, if all else fails,
>> pull
>> over to the side of the road.
>> The communication is two-way, so in addition to downloading Google's maps,
>> the
>> car
>> can upload its map to Google. If several self-driving cars upload maps
>> showing
>> the
>> new construction barrels, for example, Google can update the map it sends to
>> other
>> cars, letting those cars anticipate the hazard.
>> This connectivity is critical to Google's approach, and is one reason its
>> system
>> is more advanced than other efforts. (For current and planned features like
>> adaptive
>> cruise control, car companies have not needed to consider communication, but
>> as
>> they
>> move toward more fully autonomous vehicles they will have to, experts say.)
>> But even Google acknowledges that its system is not there yet.
>> We think it is going to be feasible for a computer to drive a car safer than
>> a
>> person
>> can in the not-too-distant future,' Mr. Levandowski said. By no means are we
>> there
>> today. We are in the process of learning.
>> If and when it is introduced, there will no doubt be limits. What's nice
>> about
>> these
>> cars is you can actually confine where they operate and how they work
>> because
>> they
>> know where they are,' Mr. Levandowski said.
>> So the system may work at first only on some highways, or in other specific
>> situations.
>> It's not going to be George Jetson from day one,' he said.. PHOTO: ROBOTIC:
>> Aside
>> from the lidar rangefinder unit on its roof, Google's fleet of self-driving
>> vehicles,
>> including this Lexus hybrid, look reasonably conventional. (PHOTOGRAPH BY
>> GOOGLE)(AU4)
>> GRAPHICS: How an Autonomous Car Gets Around: Self-driving cars that are
>> under
>> development
>> will rely on a number of sensors and other digital devices, many of which
>> are
>> already
>> being used for safety and convenience features. (Sources: Velodyne Lidar;
>> Volkswagen
>> of America; Google).
>>
>>
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