Self-driven vehicles

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Caporegime
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Volvo have tested a convoy of self-driven cars, which successfully navigated 125 miles across Spanish motorways at 52mph.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-18248841

Some of you will remember the hilarious clip of the 'self-braking' Volvo that ploughed straight into a lorry that it was meant to avoid, but I still think it's got mileage (hah).

Now they still had to follow a 'slave' vehicle, which presumably had to obey fairly particular driving characteristics, but it's more the concept of not having to drive yourself that I found exciting.

I'd love to be able to relax and read a paper like on the train, except without other people. Sleep, watch TV, use the internet, abuse yourself...anything rather than having to concentrate on the road and other road users at 8am. Then when I fancied driving myself, it would hopefully be a matter of a simple flick of a switch.

I'm very excited about this, even if it is years and years from becoming a reality on British roads. Combine with a nice quiet electric motor and you have the ultimate in relaxed no-stress commuting. In fact I envisage a vehicle that you can step straight out of bed into, then get ready for work inside it while it drives you to your office.
 
Yeah, could I point out:

Robbie G said:
Now they still had to follow a 'slave' vehicle, which presumably had to obey fairly particular driving characteristics, but it's more the concept of not having to drive yourself that I found exciting.
Click to expand...

Disco Boy said:
Not really at all self driven. This is self driven:
http://www.robots.ox.ac.uk/~mobile/wikisite/pmwiki/pmwiki.php?n=Main.WildCat
Click to expand...

Impressive :eek:.

So the main point, what do people think about being driven to work by a robot? Will it become normal in 20 years? Would you like it or drive yourself all the time?
 
Robbie G said:
So the main point, what do people think about being driven to work by a robot? Will it become normal in 20 years? Would you like it or drive yourself all the time?
Click to expand...

My biggest problem on the road is other people. You have no way of predicting what they will do. Having the car drive itself doesn't change that so I wouldn't want to be driven unless everyone else was too.
 
A computer driving a car will be many times safer than a human doing it.
The issue is with safety testing the software as an auto-driven car running a child over will be a VERY expensive court case and get massive negative media coverage.

A good idea, if implemented well. I can only image how long doing a practical FMEA would take - I did one on an automatic gearbox for some construction equipment (won't say who but they are global) and it took me over 6 weeks just for that!

I will watch the video later as I haven't yet :).
 
OpenToSuggestions said:
A computer driving a car will be many times safer than a human doing it.
Click to expand...

Yeah of course, but only for that car. If the majority of other cars around are still human controlled then it offers added complexity and unpredictability that a computer simply cannot (yet) account for. Human beings and therefore their reactions are unpredictable and illogical.

A road exclusively for self driving cars would be the best bet. Especially if they are all wirelessly communicating with each other.
 
I like driving but a "self driven" robot whatever car sounds cool, I just hope they can be made self aware enough to avoid normal human drivers.
 
I wonder how big the PC/Control systems would be in a production version. They seem to take up most of, if not all of the space at present.
 
I have to say that I personally see this as being very much a key set of technology.
My hope is that a driver will be able to:
1. Drive normally locally
2. Drive onto a motorway and finds an existing roadtrain
3. The "roadtrain" talks to his car via wireless links, advises that it's going 80% of the way towards his destination, so the driver hits a button to "join roadtrain"
4. The car takes over, feeds in part way to the road train, then maintains a 2m gap to the car in front and behind.
5. The roadtrain maintains a steady and sensible speed. Because the cars are closely packed, there's big benefits to fuel consumption because of reduced drag. As the train "talks" to every car within the train, the "concertina" effect is mostly eliminated, reducing the amount of kinetic energy wasted by most drivers during braking.
6. The roadtrains are so popular that 75% of drivers use them regularly. Motorways have single lanes dedicated to the roadtrains and overall congestion is massively reduced because of the cars making much better use of road space.
7. Drivers get to relax whilst in the train, watch TV, sleep etc. When it's their time to peel off from the train, they're advised in advance and the car neats drives out from the group, the car reverts to normal operation

Being serious about this, if you could have the majority of your boring motorway journeys done on auto-pilot, and with both cost and time savings, wouldn't you say yes?
 
What happens if the car in the middle breaks down/has a tyre blowout/something else goes wrong with it that would ordinarily cause the driver to pull over to the hard shoulder?
 
Pro-Active Vs Re-Active

Now use reality and put that wagon behind the cars, then add the muppet who like Vtec and doesn't want to be behind a wagon....

Hmmm

Lots of other "real life" scenarios to contend with as well.

Does anyone really think motorists will press the button to disable their superior, shiddy attitudes ?
 
What happens when a hacker breaks the wireless encryption and send syou to Aberdeen instead of Cardiff :eek: (There is nothing wrong with either Aberdeen or Cardiff BTW :) )
 
So the current tech still needs a lead vehicle with a driver.

Isn't this how motoring started all those years ago?
 
Unless you're Google, in which case you don't need a driver involved at all, and have recently got a license for their cars to drive completely driverless in California (as opposed to a driver sitting in the car 'just in case' and for legal reasons).
 
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