[Quietcars] FYI FW: [nfb-talk] Fw: Guided by Computers and Sensors, a Smooth Ride at 60 Miles Per Hour

Mon Oct 11 01:22:33 UTC 2010

Hi Michael,

Here is another excellent article on these vehicles:

http://techcrunch.com/2010/10/09/google-automated-cars/

Unlike ordinary vehicles, hybrids come with electronic power steering, computerized brakes and electronic accelerators. This makes hybrids, the Prius, especially adaptable to automation including accident avoidance, lane keeping, and automatic cruise control. 

The Prius owners who have these high-end systems report they are very effective. Unfortunately, nearly $8,000 of useless, luxury items have to be purchased including leather seat covers, high-end audio, larger diameter wheels, and LED headlights have to be bought before these cost-effective, $2,000 safety systems can be ordered.

Bob Wilson

> From: info at michaelhingson.com
> To: quietcars at nfbnet.org; caps at nfbnet.org
> Date: Sun, 10 Oct 2010 11:58:36 -0700
> Subject: [Quietcars] FYI FW: [nfb-talk] Fw: Guided by Computers and Sensors,	a Smooth Ride at 60 Miles Per Hour
> 
> Something to publish?
> 
> 
> The Michael Hingson Group, INC.
>      “Speaking with Vision”
>                  Michael Hingson, President
>                          (415) 827-4084
>                    info at michaelhingson.com
>                    www.michaelhingson.com
> 
> 
> for info on the new KNFB Reader Mobile, visit:
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> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: nfb-talk-bounces at nfbnet.org [mailto:nfb-talk-bounces at nfbnet.org] On
> Behalf Of Ed Meskys
> Sent: Sunday, October 10, 2010 8:26 AM
> To: nfb-talk
> Subject: [nfb-talk] Fw: Guided by Computers and Sensors, a Smooth Ride at 60
> Miles Per Hour
> 
> This is an interesting complement to our own efforts...Ed Meskys
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Louis Gosselin" To: "'Ed Meskys'" <edmeskys at roadrunner.com>; Sent: 
> Sunday, October 10, 2010 11:08 AM
> Subject: Guided by Computers and Sensors, a Smooth Ride at 60 Miles Per Hour
> 
> 
> SMARTER THAN YOU THINK. Guided by Computers and Sensors, a Smooth Ride at 60
> Miles
> Per Hour.
> NY Times Sunday, 2010_10_10
> By JOHN MARKOFF. MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. -- As we merged with freeway traffic 
> on
> Highway
> 101, one of Silicon Valley's busiest freeways, Christopher Urmson, the man 
> in
> the
> driver's seat, gestured, not touching the steering wheel.
> Mr. Urmson is a Google engineer, and last Wednesday, I sat belted in the 
> back
> seat
> as he talked and as the car, a Toyota Prius equipped by Google with radar,
> video,
> motion sensors and a GPS device, drove itself at 60 miles an hour.
> My eyes were glued to the 22-inch three-dimensional color display in front 
> of
> Dmitri
> Dolgov, an artificial intelligence researcher at Google who was riding 
> shotgun.
> It
> showed the world around us in great detail, down to painted lane markers, 
> stop
> signs,
> traffic lights and a sliding green column that indicated our path. A blocky
> yellow
> object representing a car was coming up behind us in the lane we were 
> entering
> as
> the robotic, female voice of the Prius announced, 'Preparing to change lane.
> Don't worry, we have plenty of room,' Dr. Urmson said.
> We followed a 12-mile planned route in a vehicle that looks different from 
> the
> striking
> Google Street View cars, which are distinguished by a 
> six-and-a-half-foot-tall
> camera
> mast.
> Instead, Google's autonomous Prius has a more modest if no less striking 
> sensor
> mounted
> in the center of the vehicle's roof. Known as Lidar, or Light Detection and
> Ranging,
> it provides a continuously updated three-dimensional map of the world at
> centimeter
> accuracy extending for more than 230 feet around the car.
> The Lidar is supplemented by four standard automotive radars with less
> resolution
> and greater range, three in front and one in the rear. Inside the car,
> positioned
> next to the rear-view mirror, is a high-resolution video camera to detect 
> street
> lights and moving obstacles like pedestrians and bicyclists. The Prius also 
> has
> a
> GPS receiver and an inertial motion sensor.
> The same, or very similar, sensor array was used on many of the cars that
> competed
> in the 2007 Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency Urban Challenge, a
> competition
> for autonomous automobiles held on the grounds of a former Air Force base.
> What has changed -- in addition to the use of public roads -- is the 
> computing
> power
> available to the designers and the artificial intelligence software. 
> Designers
> have
> made advances in detecting pedestrians, street lights and lane markers, as 
> well
> as
> in resolving conflicting sensor data and in motion planning to avoid 
> obstacles.
> A
> traffic-cop program monitors all the car's processes.
> One main technique used by the Google team is known as SLAM, or simultaneous
> localization
> and mapping, which builds and updates a map of a vehicle's surroundings 
> while
> keeping
> the vehicle located within the map. To make a SLAM map, the car is first 
> driven
> manually
> along a route while its sensors capture location, feature and obstacle data.
> Then
> a group of software engineers annotates the maps, making certain that road
> signs,
> crosswalks, street lights and unusual features are all embedded. The cars 
> then
> drive
> autonomously over the mapped routes, recording changes as they occur and
> updating
> the map. The researchers said they were surprised to find how frequently the
> roads
> their robots drove on had changed.
> Unsolved problems remain. Sebastian Thrun, a Google engineer and head of the
> Stanford
> Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, said the design team was stumped by how 
> to
> train
> its system to follow the hand signals that a human traffic cop or crossing 
> guard
> might make.
> Despite its limitations -- and they are significant -- the Google car's
> abilities
> occasionally gave me goose bumps, particularly compared with previous rides 
> in
> autonomous
> vehicles. In 2005, I was in such a vehicle with Dr. Thrun and two others 
> when it
> swerved off a gravel road at more than 20 miles per hour. Unlike the newer
> Google
> cars, the only way to wrest control from that car was to hit a large red 
> button
> on
> the driver's console, and Dr. Thrun was simply unable to push the button 
> quickly
> enough to keep the car from driving into the brush.
> For me, the tour de force of the new car came when the vehicle halted at a 
> stop
> sign
> to make a right turn. It waited patiently for a vehicle in front of it to 
> turn,
> then
> inched forward. A car was approaching from the left, but the Prius pulled 
> into
> the
> far right lane, and I realized that it 'knew' the other car was not in our 
> lane
> even
> though it was passing close to us. There was no need to hit the red button.
> PHOTO: A car driven by computer hardware recently attracted the attention of
> 
> a
> bicyclist
> in Mountain View, Calif. (PHOTOGRAPH BY RAMIN RAHIMIAN FOR THE NEW YORK 
> TIMES) .
> SMARTER THAN YOU THINK. Look Officer, No Hands: Google Car Drives Itself.
> By JOHN MARKOFF. MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. -- Anyone driving the twists of 
> Highway 1
> between San Francisco and Los Angeles recently may have glimpsed a Toyota 
> Prius
> with
> a curious funnel-like cylinder on the roof. Harder to notice was that the 
> person
> at the wheel was not actually driving.
> The car is a project of Google, which has been working in secret but in 
> plain
> view
> on vehicles that can drive themselves, using artificial-intelligence 
> software
> that
> can sense anything near the car and mimic the decisions made by a human 
> driver.
> With someone behind the wheel to take control if something goes awry and a
> technician
> in the passenger seat to monitor the navigation system, seven test cars have
> driven
> 1,000 miles without human intervention and more than 140,000 miles with only
> occasional
> human control. One even drove itself down Lombard Street in San Francisco, 
> one
> of
> the steepest and curviest streets in the nation.The only accident, engineers
> said,
> was when one Google car was rear-ended while stopped at a traffic light.
> Autonomous cars are years from mass production, but technologists who have 
> long
> dreamed
> of them believe that they can transform society as profoundly as the 
> Internet
> has.
> Robot drivers react faster than humans, have 360-degree perception and do 
> not
> get
> distracted, sleepy or intoxicated, the engineers argue. They speak in terms 
> of
> lives
> saved and injuries avoided -- more than 37,000 people died in car accidents 
> in
> the
> United States in 2008. The engineers say the technology could double the
> capacity
> of roads by allowing cars to drive more safely while closer together. 
> Because
> the
> robot cars would eventually be less likely to crash, they could be built
> lighter,
> reducing fuel consumption. But of course, to be truly safer, the cars must 
> be
> far
> more reliable than, say, today's personal computers, which crash on occasion
> 
> and
> are frequently infected.
> The Google research program using artificial intelligence to revolutionize 
> the
> automobile
> is proof that the company's ambitions reach beyond the search engine 
> business.
> The
> program is also a departure from the mainstream of innovation in Silicon 
> Valley,
> which has veered toward social networks and Hollywood-style digital media.
> During a half-hour drive beginning on Google's campus 35 miles south of San
> Francisco
> last Wednesday, a Prius equipped with a variety of sensors and following a 
> route
> programmed into the GPS navigation system nimbly accelerated in the entrance
> lane
> and merged into fast-moving traffic on Highway 101, the freeway through 
> Silicon
> Valley.
> It drove at the speed limit, which it knew because the limit for every road 
> is
> included
> in its database, and left the freeway several exits later. The device atop 
> the
> car
> produced a detailed map of the environment.
> The car then drove in city traffic through Mountain View, stopping for 
> lights
> and
> stop signs, as well as making announcements like 'approaching a crosswalk' 
> (to
> warn
> the human at the wheel) or 'turn ahead' in a pleasant female voice. This 
> same
> pleasant
> voice would, engineers said, alert the driver if a master control system
> detected
> anything amiss with the various sensors.
> The car can be programmed for different driving personalities -- from 
> cautious,
> in
> which it is more likely to yield to another car, to aggressive, where it is 
> more
> likely to go first.
> Christopher Urmson, a Carnegie Mellon University robotics scientist, was 
> behind
> the
> wheel but not using it. To gain control of the car he has to do one of three
> things:
> hit a red button near his right hand, touch the brake or turn the steering
> wheel.
> He did so twice, once when a bicyclist ran a red light and again when a car 
> in
> front
> stopped and began to back into a parking space. But the car seemed likely to
> have
> prevented an accident itself.
> When he returned to automated 'cruise' mode, the car gave a little 'whir' 
> meant
> to
> evoke going into warp drive on 'Star Trek,' and Dr. Urmson was able to rest 
> his
> hands
> by his sides or gesticulate when talking to a passenger in the back seat. He
> said
> the cars did attract attention, but people seem to think they are just the 
> next
> generation
> of the Street View cars that Google uses to take photographs and collect 
> data
> for
> its maps.
> The project is the brainchild of Sebastian Thrun, the 43-year-old director 
> of
> the
> Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, a Google engineer and the
> co-inventor
> of the Street View mapping service.
> In 2005, he led a team of Stanford students and faculty members in designing
> 
> the
> Stanley robot car, winning the second Grand Challenge of the Defense 
> Advanced
> Research
> Projects Agency, a $2 million Pentagon prize for driving autonomously over 
> 132
> miles
> in the desert.
> Besides the team of 15 engineers working on the current project, Google 
> hired
> more
> than a dozen people, each with a spotless driving record, to sit in the 
> driver's
> seat, paying $15 an hour or more. Google is using six Priuses and an Audi TT
> 
> in
> the
> project.
> The Google researchers said the company did not yet have a clear plan to 
> create
> a
> business from the experiments. Dr. Thrun is known as a passionate promoter 
> of
> the
> potential to use robotic vehicles to make highways safer and lower the 
> nation's
> energy
> costs. It is a commitment shared by Larry Page, Google's co-founder, 
> according
> to
> several people familiar with the project.
> The self-driving car initiative is an example of Google's willingness to 
> gamble
> on
> technology that may not pay off for years, Dr. Thrun said. Even the most
> optimistic
> predictions put the deployment of the technology more than eight years away.
> One way Google might be able to profit is to provide information and 
> navigation
> services
> for makers of autonomous vehicles. Or, it might sell or give away the 
> navigation
> technology itself, much as it offers its Android smart phone system to 
> cellphone
> companies.
> But the advent of autonomous vehicles poses thorny legal issues, the Google
> researchers
> acknowledged. Under current law, a human must be in control of a car at all
> times,
> but what does that mean if the human is not really paying attention as the 
> car
> crosses
> through, say, a school zone, figuring that the robot is driving more safely 
> than
> he would?
> And in the event of an accident, who would be liable -- the person behind 
> the
> wheel
> or the maker of the software?
> The technology is ahead of the law in many areas,' said Bernard Lu, senior 
> staff
> counsel for the California Department of Motor Vehicles. If you look at the
> vehicle
> code, there are dozens of laws pertaining to the driver of a vehicle, and 
> they
> all
> presume to have a human being operating the vehicle.
> The Google researchers said they had carefully examined California's motor
> vehicle
> regulations and determined that because a human driver can override any 
> error,
> the
> experimental cars are legal. Mr. Lu agreed.
> Scientists and engineers have been designing autonomous vehicles since the
> mid-1960s,
> but crucial innovation happened in 2004 when the Pentagon's research arm 
> began
> its
> Grand Challenge.
> The first contest ended in failure, but in 2005, Dr. Thrun's Stanford team 
> built
> the car that won a race with a rival vehicle built by a team from Carnegie
> Mellon
> University. Less than two years later, another event proved that autonomous
> vehicles
> could drive safely in urban settings.
> Advances have been so encouraging that Dr. Thrun sounds like an evangelist 
> when
> he
> speaks of robot cars. There is their potential to reduce fuel consumption by
> eliminating
> heavy-footed stop-and-go drivers and, given the reduced possibility of
> accidents,
> to ultimately build more lightweight vehicles.
> There is even the farther-off prospect of cars that do not need anyone 
> behind
> the
> wheel. That would allow the cars to be summoned electronically, so that 
> people
> could
> share them. Fewer cars would then be needed, reducing the need for parking
> spaces,
> which consume valuable land.
> And, of course, the cars could save humans from themselves. Can we text 
> twice as
> much while driving, without the guilt? Dr. Thrun said in a recent talk. Yes,
> 
> we
> can,
> if only cars will drive themselves.
> Smarter Than You Think: Articles in this series are examining the recent
> advances
> in artificial intelligence and robotics and their potential impact on 
> society.
> PHOTOS: Dmitri Dolgov, a Google engineer, in a self-driving car parked in
> Silicon
> Valley after a road test. (A1); A self-driving car developed and outfitted 
> by
> Google,
> with device on roof, cruising along recently on Highway 101 in Mountain 
> View,
> Calif.;
> Computer hardware in the trunk of one of the seven self-driving test 
> vehicles.;
> Autonomous
> Driving: Google's modified Toyota Prius uses an array of sensors to navigate
> public
> roads without a human driver. Other components, not shown, include a GPS
> receiver
> and an inertial motion sensor. (Source: Google) (PHOTOGRAPHS BY RAMIN 
> RAHIMIAN
> FOR
> THE NEW YORK TIMES) (A18) .
> 
> 
> 
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