A few months ago, I wrote about self-driving cars. At the time, the last information publicly available came from 2007, in which the DARPA Urban Challenge demonstrated the possibility of cars that could safely navigate through a city without human interference. At the time, only 6 of the 11 autonomous cars that competed in the challenge were able to complete a course in a makeshift "city" on an unused military base. The vehicles traveled extremely slowly (about 13 miles per hour) and the course was only 50 miles long. There were no tricks, surprises, or unusual circumstances...the vehicles just had to drive themselves and react to normal traffic.I was excited at even this rudimentary amount of progress in 2007, so I was even more delighted when the New York Times provided an update on self-driving cars yesterday. The technology has progressed immensely in the last three years, much more quickly than I would have guessed. Google has secretly been testing autonomous vehicles, working with none other than Sebastian Thrun, the lead engineer of the Stanford Racing Team, which took second place in the DARPA Urban Challenge, and first place in the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge. The cars have been driving on actual highways, city streets, and rural roads in California, navigating their way through real traffic. There is always a human sitting behind the wheel who has the power to override the self-driving computer, just in case something goes wrong. In the last year, the Google Cars have driven over 1,000 miles on the streets of California without any assistance, and 140,000 miles with only minimal human assistance. They no longer travel at crawling speeds; Google has programmed the speed limits of all the relevant streets into the system and the vehicles are capable of traveling at the speed limit. In the Google Car fleet, there has only been one minor mishap in the last year: when another driver rear-ended a Google Car at a stoplight.The New York Times article implies that it will be about eight years before self-driving cars are publicly available. Given the unpredictable nature of technological roadblocks and legislative paralysis, I'm opting to be a little more conservative, standing by my previous estimate: they'll be on the roads no later than 2020.The NYT is quite bullish on their prospects, implying (via technologists and futurists) that "they can transform society as profoundly as the Internet has." That may be a bit of an exaggeration, but only because the Internet has transformed so much of our society. I do not think it is an exaggeration to say that self-driving cars will fundamentally alter the way in which we design cities, will reduce the annual automobile fatalities nationwide from approximately 40,000 to approximately zero, will greatly reduce traffic and pollution, will help alleviate poverty by eliminating the need for most people to own a personal car (instead you could summon one to pick you up like a taxi, but available in non-urban areas and without the high fees), and will allow us to enjoy our commutes more by freeing up our time to do things other than watch the road.PREDICTIONS:By 2020 - Driverless cars are commercially-available and street-legal somewhere in the United States.By 2027 - New driverless cars outnumber new cars requiring at least some human control, in the US market.By 2035 - Driverless cars are widely perceived as safer than human drivers. Somewhere in the United States, it is illegal for humans to drive.
In 2007, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) sponsored an event called the Urban Challenge. Recognizing the utility of self-driving vehicles for military purposes, DARPA invited 11 teams from universities and corporations to build vehicles that would be able to navigate a course through a makeshift city without any human interference. Furthermore, the teams would have to obey all the traffic laws and avoid any collisions with other vehicles, buildings, or obstacles. Six of the teams were able to complete the contest, led by Carnegie Mellon University.
The most successful self-driving cars use cameras and lasers mounted on every side of the car to “see” their surroundings, and send the images to a computer in the car to process them in real time. The technology has already advanced to the point where computers can read road signs, detect other fast-moving objects (like cars), and generally obey the traffic laws. General Motors has announced that they will start testing driverless vehicles in 2015, and hopes to have them on the road by 2018.The biggest technical obstacle that still needs to be overcome involves dealing with unexpected situations. The driverless car prototypes, such as Carnegie Mellon’s vehicle “Boss,” are fairly good at recognizing and obeying stop signs and traffic lights. However, these vehicles are built with the assumption that all other cars on the road will obey the laws as well. Most humans can hit the brakes if another car runs a red light or if an animal runs out in front of our car, but unfortunately the driverless cars are not quite there yet. However, with the speed at which driverless technology is progressing, it seems very likely that this problem will be overcome in the next few years, and self-driving cars will be able to react at least as well as human drivers.The impact that driverless cars will have on society will be nothing less than transformative. The biggest revolutions will occur in safety and lifestyle.In the United States, over 40,000 people are tragically killed each year in car accidents, 95% of which are due to human error. Driverless cars thus offer us the opportunity to save 38,000 lives every year. When the technology matures, the computerized systems in our cars will have reflexes thousands of times quicker than human drivers, and will be able to scan all around the car at all times to identify any potential dangers.Driverless cars will also improve our lifestyle, by reducing commute times. Driverless cars will be able to identify any road delays via the internet, and plan an alternate route to avoid getting stuck in traffic. Furthermore, when driverless cars become ubiquitous, there will be no need for individuals to own cars. When cars can drive themselves, why would I spend thousands of dollars on a car that will sit unused in a garage or parking lot for most of the day? It would be much more efficient for cities to develop networks of public cars that could drive themselves to pick people up as needed. If I needed to go across town, I could use my phone to order the nearest car to pick me up. If I needed a car to pick me up at the same place and time every day (such as for my morning commute to work), I could schedule this as well. These networks of driverless cars could operate similar to taxi cabs, but much more efficiently, safely, and cheaply.The biggest long-term obstacles to driverless cars are liability laws. While driverless cars could save up to 38,000 lives per year that would otherwise be lost due to human error, what happens if 1,000 lives are lost due to computer error? Under our present liability system, the auto manufacturers would lose their shirts. Unless these laws are changed, it will be extremely difficult from an economic standpoint for auto companies to roll out self-driving vehicles in the United States for commercial use.I am optimistic that this problem can be overcome. As soon as the utility of driverless cars becomes clear (probably by 2015-2020), there will likely be a legislative push to limit the liability for auto manufacturers. When that happens, we will enter the era of automated transportation and the world will be forever changed.PREDICTIONS:By 2020 - Driverless cars are commercially-available and street-legal somewhere in the United States.By 2027 - New driverless cars outnumber new cars requiring at least some human control, in the US market.By 2035 - Driverless cars are widely perceived as safer than human drivers. Somewhere in the United States, it is illegal for humans to drive.
A few months ago, I wrote about self-driving cars. At the time, the last information publicly available came from 2007, in which the DARPA Urban Challenge demonstrated the possibility of cars that could safely navigate through a city without human interference. At the time, only 6 of the 11 autonomous cars that competed in the challenge were able to complete a course in a makeshift "city" on an unused military base. The vehicles traveled extremely slowly (about 13 miles per hour) and the course was only 50 miles long. There were no tricks, surprises, or unusual circumstances...the vehicles just had to drive themselves and react to normal traffic.
