Will a “14-year-old from Indonesia” one day be able to hack into self-driving cars? It might sound outlandish, but Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee asked on Wednesday.
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It’s no secret that Google has been working on autonomous vehicles for quite some time, and now Tesla CEO Elon Musk is considering adding that technology to Tesla’s vehicles.
At the 2013 Consumers Electronics Show (CES), Audi is showing off its autonomous driving tech, which is essentially a suite of technologies that provide drivers with assistance while behind the wheel.
Today at CES 2013, Toyota is showing its new advanced active safety research vehicle, that is designed to help the Japanese automaker make new strides with safety technology.
Audi just became the first automaker to obtain a license to test its autonomous cars on public roads in Nevada.
Lexus will be unveiling a new suite of autonomous vehicle technology at next week’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, and today the brand released a very short clip showing off a driverless Lexus LS.
Motorists in the U.K. are still skeptical of autonomous cars with forty percent of drivers saying they would never even consider one according to a new survey undertaken by the Institute of Advanced Motorists (IAM).
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It might have seemed like science fiction a few years ago, but NHTSA is already preparing standards for self-driving cars.
Experts at IEEE believe that 75 percent of the cars on the road in 2040 will be autonomous, and now the state of California is well on its way to getting there.
Expert members at the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), the world’s largest professional association for the advancement of technology, believe that by 2040, 75 percent of cars on the road will be autonomous.
Autonomous cars are instruments of the Devil and they need to be kept off the road. They commit wicked acts like driving blind people on errands.
Google is adding the Lexus RX450h to its self-driving car lineup as it looks toward testing in different environments and terrains, pushing ahead with developing its technology.
Autonomous vehicle technology may be a reality in cars by 2015, and General Motors is one of the leaders in the new technology.
You might have wondered what it would be like to have our vehicles drive themselves, but seeing how it could affect roadways as we know it is, well, terrifying.
One of the biggest impacts autonomous cars would have is at intersections. With driverless cars controlling themselves, the need for traffic lights and even stop signs would disappear, streamlining travel. Imagine a world where traffic constantly flowed and we would never get stuck at a traffic light simply because vehicles would communicate with one another to avoid an accident.
Peter Stone, a computer scientist at the University of Texas at Austin explored this idea and with the aid of his researchers, came up with a video showcasing just this concept. “There would be an intersection manager,” Stone says, “an autonomous agent directing traffic at a much finer-grain scale than just a red light for one direction and a green light for another direction.”
Since we don’t live in a perfect world where everyone would suddenly own autonomous cars, the video depicts a mix of both driverless and driver-controlled vehicles on the roadway. The driver-controlled cars are yellow and those people would have to wait for a signal that is based on what everyone else is doing. Stone mentioned that the system could be designed with the flexibility knowing that not all driving decisions will be made by computers.
It’s an interesting thought, but as with all things technology, we can’t even imagine the utter chaos that would ensue if something broke down, never mind the countless other variables that could come into play.
Watch the video after the break.
[Source: The Atlantic Cities]
California seems to be the next in line to legislate standards for autonomous vehicles after California Sen. Alex Padilla took a ride to the state capital to introduce a new bill.
He took that ride in one of Google’s autonomous Toyota Prius fleet vehicles and seemed wowed by the trip.
“It was pretty amazing when Google’s vehicle went into self-driving mode,” he said. “The drive was smooth and safe. It worked flawlessly,” he said to Autopia.
The bill wouldn’t specifically legalize self-driving cars, which already have a presence on California roads among other states. Instead, it would follow in Nevada’s footsteps to establish regulations and standards to tell law enforcement how to treat this technology.
The senator sees opportunity for California as a home for autonomous car development and as such, seems enthusiastic to put the framework in place to encourage such progress.
“California is uniquely positioned to be a global leader in this field,” he said.
Several projects have already, or are currently taking place in California to develop autonomous cars, including Google’s fleet which claims more than 200,000 total miles of autonomous driving between the vehicles. In 2010 Volkswagen worked with Stanford University to develop an Audi TTS capable of climbing Pike’s Peak driverless, home of the Pike’s Peak Hill Climb.
Padilla’s bill is specifically targeted at fully autonomous cars, meaning vehicles that self-park or feature adaptive cruise control won’t be affected.
Nevada is first state in the U.S. to approve the legal road use of autonomous vehicles, perhaps due to the long stretches of straight desert roads that can be found in the Silver State.
Such approval isn’t without provisos: any self driving vehicle on the road must be indicated with a red license plate. Red, usually the marker for danger, is meant to alert all other drivers on the road that the car is without a driver.
Autonomous cars sold at mass quantities are still in the somewhat distant future, but this legislation shows that it’s more than a fad. These new regulations are helping to usher in a new age of cars that drive themselves. Despite not needing hands at the “ten and two” position we were all taught, road rules still apply to Nevada drivers. The pilot of an autonomous vehicle is still prohibited from texting or talking on a cell phone while in the drivers seats.
We are still behind the times, but they are swiftly changing.
[Source: RGJ]
Google isn’t alone in its plan to bring autonomous cars to roads near you. There is now at lest one other major player, with the National University of Defense Technology in China having built a self-driving project of its own.
Working with China’s First Auto Works, the university researchers took a Hongqi HQ3 sedan and fitted it with cameras, sensors, and a computer that enabled the vehicle to start, navigate and stop its way through a 154-mile trek without the help of a driver. Oddly enough, the technology doesn’t utilize GPS to figure out where it is or where’s it going but rather uses the cameras and sensors to obey speed limits, watch traffic and make lane changes. We’re still a little confused as to how the car knew where to go, or how to get there – or if they just simply put it on a busy freeway to go straight without incident.
The technology isn’t very advanced, however, as this autonomous vehicle can’t “see” at night and hasn’t quite logged the same number of miles Google has on their Prius models. But clearly when there’s a will, there’s a way and it’ll be interesting to see who else throws their name into the ring in battle autonomous car.
[Source: Cartech Blog]
Years from now you’ll remember reading this article. It will be the first time you ever heard about Volkswagen‘s new Temporary Auto Pilot, a technology that lets a car essentially drive by itself.
Science fiction? Hardly, VW claims its far closer to rolling this auto pilot option in production models that you’d expect.
Anyone who’s been paying any attention to the development of autonomous cars will likely have heard of Google’s driverless ones. While those vehicles are a somewhat distant reality, cars using Volkswagen’s TAP system could be on the road soon, thanks to the use of technology already in place in production cars. In a statement released following the debut of the system, Volkswagen claims that, “TAP is based on a relatively production-like sensor platform, consisting of production-level radar-, camera-, and ultrasonic-based sensors supplemented by a laser scanner and an electronic horizon.”
Revealed at the HAVEit (Highly Automated Vehicles for Intelligent Transport) conference in Boras, Sweden, VW research director Dr. Jürgen Leohold described it as “An important milestone on the path towards fully automatic and accident-free driving.”
The Temporary Auto Pilot function, which can be switched on or off by the driver, will allow what VW calls “semi-automatic” driving at speeds of up to 130 km/h, or roughly 86 mph. It bundles features like adaptive cruise control, and a lane assist system allowing the vehicle to stay centered in a lane and maintain a constant distance from the vehicle ahead. Added innovations include the ability to reduce speed in a corner, as well as the ability to recognize speed limits.
After secretly testing a fleet of autonomous cars in California, Google is now looking to shift driverless ‘driving’ into gear in Nevada, lobbying state officials to allow the vehicle to be legally driven on public roads.
To achieve their goal, and the dream of the projects creator and former Stanford professor Sebastian Thrun, Google has hired LAs Vegas lobbyist David Goldwater to alter existing Nevada state laws. Two key changes need to be made, the first would be a bill allowing for the licensing and testing of autonomous cars, while a second would then deal with issues of distracted driving, essentially allowing for the ‘driver’ of the car to text while driving as he or she really wouldn’t be in control of the vehicle anyway.
Thrun has been a vocal proponent of autonomous cars, claiming they would cut down on pollution and drastically reduce the number of road fatalities caused by human error.
Currently Google’s fleet of driverless cars totals seven and includes six Toyota Prius hybrids and one Audi TT. The cars are distinguishable by a large laser range finder on the roof, with other camera and radar sensors on the front and sides of the car.
[Source: NYTimes]