[Nfbf-l] Hitting The Road Without A Driver

Mon Aug 19 22:17:59 UTC 2013

Hitting The Road Without A Driver
By: Brian Naylor
August 19, 2013

The cars we drive have gotten ever more sophisticated. They can just about 
park themselves; they tell us if we're drifting out of our lane; they can 
prevent skids. Some even automatically apply the brakes if they sense that a 
collision is imminent.

Engineers at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh are developing a car 
that can do all of those things and more - it can actually drive itself. 
Imagine that commute to work.

The car, developed with General Motors, is by all appearances a normal 
Cadillac SRX crossover. That's by design, according to Jarrod Snider, the 
chief engineer on the project.

"We're not using really fancy, really expensive devices all over the car," 
he says. The sensors are integrated into the car, "so when you look at the 
car you don't see a lot of things hanging off of it."

Hidden in the bumper and behind the car's grille are three types of systems 
that guide the car's decision-making - sensors, lasers and cameras. Snider 
says the sensors provide input for the car's software, "so when we see an 
object we can say that's a person or that's a sign or that's a traffic 
light. ... We can actually do some classification of the object."

The car's navigation screen will show and identify pedestrians and bikes, as 
well as traffic lights and some road signs. It also has thermal imaging, 
useful to identify objects at night, beyond the range of the car's 
headlights.

In the back of the car, below the floor where the spare tire would normally 
be, are four computers about the size of Apple's Mac Mini, cooled by an 
air-conditioning system. Snider says the computers are a development 
platform and won't be as big or noisy when driverless cars are commercially 
available.

Inside, the car looks pretty normal, too, with one exception - a big red 
button that sits prominently in the middle of the dashboard. Snider says 
it's there for when engineers are testing a new system. If something goes 
wrong, "we can just push that button and that just turns the car back into a 
stock car, immediately," he says.

Surprisingly, a test ride in the autonomous Cadillac occurs not on a closed 
course, but on busy Route 19, a multilane highway in Cranberry Township, 
outside Pittsburgh. Snider says township officials have been cooperative and 
helpful with development of the driverless car, installing special radio 
transmitters on traffic lights to tell the vehicle when to stop (the car can 
also "read" the lights with a camera positioned over the windshield).

Snider says it's hard to replicate real-world conditions on a closed course. 
People drive in unpredictable ways; they stop suddenly, change directions; 
there are pedestrians jaywalking.

To put the car in driverless or autonomous mode, Snider simply turns a knob 
located near the gear shifter.

"System starting up," a female-sounding computer voice intones. "Autonomous 
driving."

The car pulls out of the parking lot. Though Snider is behind the wheel, 
he's not touching it, as the car stops at a stop sign, waits for traffic to 
clear and then makes a right turn onto the highway.

The car is programmed much like a driver programs a GPS for directions. In 
this case it's heading for a restaurant in a shopping center. We travel 
about a half-mile down the busy road, the car accelerating, stopping at a 
red light and moving into a left-hand turn lane, where it waits for a green 
arrow before proceeding.

The drive is not always smooth. The car tends to wait until the last minute 
before braking and floors it when accelerating to its desired speed. Snider 
says engineers are working on that, but that it's difficult to precisely 
re-create the human touch on the gas pedal and brakes.

Carnegie Mellon's car is not the only driverless vehicle around. Google has 
one as well. Raj Rajkumar, a professor of electrical and computer 
engineering at Carnegie Mellon, predicts that by 2020 the technology needed 
for driverless cars to travel normal roads will be ready. Though he says it 
make take a bit longer for the legal system and insurance companies to catch 
up.

"It has to go through the societal process of acceptance, the legal process 
of laws being in place that allow driverless vehicles on the roads, the 
insurance aspects of liability, the legal things falling into place," 
Rajkumar says.

The federal government has already begun conducting research with an eye 
toward establishing standards for driverless vehicles. Three states - 
California, Nevada and Florida - have passed legislation allowing testing of 
driverless cars on their roads.

View the original story at npr.org