I think this is one of those technologies that will go from "science fiction" to "everyone uses one every day" very, very quickly.
Until a few months ago, I had no idea that the technology was as far along as it is; it seems like they've cracked the hard problems already. That means it's a social problem now - and there's reason to believe that the biggest motivator in adoption of automobile technology (and related public policy) is the insurance industry. As soon as these cars are statistically safer than human drivers (and my expectation is that they may already be safer - humans are crap at driving) then there will be strong incentives to get them to the public.
I think you're right about insurance companies playing a big role, we've already seen 20% discounts for having Adaptive Cruise Control in Europe. But I don't think this will be a quick change.
First, people take awhile to replace their cars. I don't know the stats for this, but 10-year old vehicles don't seem atypical. The good news is that gives a chance for reducing costs. It was back-of-the-envelope calculation based on parts only, but one article I read estimated 5-10k would be added to Cadillac's self driving car if they introduced it by 2015. [1]
Second, there are still some hard problems to solve. According to Thrun, they don't have a solution for snowy roads that block the car's vision of the lane markers, and Cadillac's vehicle has the same problem. That'll also be a problem in areas of construction where line markers aren't accurately marking the road.
There's also some major regional challenges. In Pittsburgh, per a convention known as the Pittsburgh Left, a driver stopped at a red light will pause after the light turns green to allow the “first driver in the oncoming traffic... to make a left turn.” Thrun's team is working on collecting massive amounts of data to overcome niche issues like that, but is that something every car manufacturer will have access to?
I think we can also expect some legal barriers to be a problem. I don't have the best grasp on this, but from a RAND report I read it sounds like state tort law, combined with the complete lack of state or federal laws concerning autonomous cars, could create liability issues for manufacturers. Maybe that would necessitate some lobbying and court battles before manufacturers risk masses of autonomous cars? It's hard for me to tell how important these issues are because the biggest player, Google, isn't focused on the market now.
Ultimately you're clearly right, autonomous cars are definitely the future, but I'm feeling more of a gradual shift as problems are ironed out and the prices of sensors are reduced.
I think you're making OP's point quite well albeit inadvertently.
Personal ownership of a self-driving car is a ridiculous concept. Why would the car have to wait around in the parking lot all day while you're at work? It could easily keep running around ferrying people places. And yet many people will want to own one simply because they think they should own a car.
I think the real future is a market for renting car time. Prices will be high during peak periods (morning and evening commuters) but cheap during the mid-afternoon.
I live in a city, as do pretty much all my friends. I walk almost everywhere and occasionally take a taxi when going out in the evenings. On rare occasions a friend with a ZipCar membership will ferry us out of town if we're going somewhere far. None of us actually own a car. We're the target market for the self-driving cars since we've already made the social adjustments.
On the flip side, I'm a parent of four who would jump on this as a way to reduce from two to one cars while also reducing the pain of ferrying kids around to school, lessons, practice, recitals, etc.
True self-driving (as opposed to "licensed driver paying attention but not needing to hold the wheel") will be adopted very quickly.
You bring up an interesting point. Would you, as a parent, be happy with a driverless car going to collect your child from school/wherever? At what age of the child would you be happy with that?
Eventually, yes, but not until they are of an age that they can reliably recognize their own car and are comfortable being alone forthe trip (sevenish, probably, but also depends on how long the trip is), though I can easily imagine some simple tools that would help pair child and car and comfort the child (nothing like watching videos to keep Tommy entertained on a drive).
Note: We already have had that in Switzerland for several years now, it's quite popular: http://mobility.ch/en/pub/index.cfm. They have self service rental cars all over the 'bigger' cities here (Note: Biggest inner city in Switzerland = ~0.5M). The major downside: You always need to bring back the car to where you took it. Automatic vehicles will make that concept even more viable. Designing a central scheduling agent would be quite a fun task. Traveling salesman problem here we come! ;)
It's been around in the US for at least four years, or at least that's when I remember first using ZipCar in Los Angeles. Hertz also has a competitor IIRC.
> Why would the car have to wait around in the parking lot all day while you're at work? It could easily keep running around ferrying people places.
Yes those are called buses and taxis. :) they already exist. they're dirty. and they're not always available when you need them.
One advantage to what you're proposing though is that unlike buses and trains you wouldn't have to put up with dirty, dangerous or rude people near you in the same vehicle.
Why would there need to be other people in the car? It would most likely work just like cabs, but without a driver. You tap a button on your mobile and a car pulls up already knowing where you are going.
The first car CD player (Philips DC-085, for the curious) cost $800 in 1987, or ~$1600 today dollars. Who knows how much money they spent on the prototypes.
These things will become affordable if the demand is there.
Random question, but if every car was driven by a robot, would that mean we could start building cars that don't have to follow safety as much? Like, could I have a wooden box and shove some wheels on it and let that drive me around? I know there'll still be accidents, but interesting thought nevertheless.
While robotic cars have very little reason to crash into each other, there will still always be some non-robotic things on the roads -- wildlife and drunken pedestrians for one.
But while some cutback in safety features would be possible, I honestly think that the society will take the other option. Robots have no trouble making driving reasonably safe at much faster speeds than humans can. The advantages to society for raising normal road speeds past 200mph vastly eclipse that of reducing the cost of manufacturing the cars. So I think the future will perhaps see even sturdier cars than today, just to be able to survive hitting a deer (or even a cat) at high speed.
Its not that robots can drive faster, its that they can drive more consistently. I used to drive the infamous Washington DC beltway to work and I can tell you, I'd much rather have a constant 35 than the brief periods of 80 followed but an hour of 7.
When it becomes mostly robots on the road, it will be possible to "program out" a lot of the emergent behaviors of traffic in congested areas.
Very good point. A fascinating study in driver behaviour is to go to a high point where you can observe a congested freeway. The Getty Centre above the 405 Freeway in Los Angeles is an excellent example.
The way I would describe it is watching fast-flowing water. Then block it with a piece of wood, and lift it again, then watch the wave pattern flow down the water.
That's exactly what traffic looks like from above. A couple of slow moving cars, someone doing a stupid lane move, and everyone touches the brakes. This ripples down the flow until, much further down the road, people are all stopped and they have no idea why.
Every road, for a given level of traffic, has an optimum speed that the traffic will flow the best. If robotic control could read that value, and stick to it, you would see Freeways flowing much better.
However, that's all a long way off. I'd settle for widespread fitting of adaptive cruise control and getting people to actually use it.
Keep in mind that the reason for 55mph speed limits is not about safety so much as it is about energy efficiency (set during the oil crises of the 70s, never raised again in many places). Going faster increases energy loss due to drag with the cube of the speed, so I don't think we're going to see 200 MPH speed limits until we get something much more energy efficient.
This could make some of the political problems with upping the speed limit that much go away, though.
Absolutely, but even if you go beyond 55 mph, I think that self-driving cars would still be a net benefit in terms of conserving energy. Traffic jams, which are a tremendous waste of energy, would be eliminated if every car was self-driving.
Yeah, potentially, but you're not going to reach the efficiency of a train as long as you have individual cars with a bunch of different use cases/designs.
I never opted to take any courses in aerodynamics, unfortunately, but my understanding is that establishing a laminar flow ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laminar_flow ) is vital at those kinds of speeds, which requires a surface that the air can flow along smoothly. With a biggest-in-front arrangement, you get some slipstream benefit, but you also get a whole mess of turbulence, and there's no way you're going to rival the speed of a bullet train without a lot more energy spent. You want a mostly smooth/unbroken surface that the air can flow along.
I doubt we'll see road speeds increase any time soon. For one, a car that travels at 200 mph will wear down significantly faster, and get drastically reduced fuel efficiency. Imagine a tire blowout at 200 mph. There are also still human drivers on the road, and it might be difficult to enforce (or even pass) a law that says "human drivers must drive slower than robot drivers".
Excellent point about the non robotic obstacles. I really would just like to add mechanical failure. A perfect robot driver with a working car is one thing, but can that driver handle hydroplaning/tire blowouts/transmission failures?
> A perfect robot driver with a working car is one thing, but can that driver handle hydroplaning/tire blowouts/transmission failures?
Much, much better than any human. Robots fail only once. A single robot being programmed ("getting practice") for a failure case is all robots getting that practice for a failure case. Also, robots are always vigilant and ready for failures, and are capable of doing emergency decisions in fractions of a second, before the humans would likely even know something is wrong.
Isn't cost a problem? I think that these cars have hundreds of thousands of dollars of hardware. Surely mass production can bring costs down, but how far? Are there any solid estimates out there?
There was an article recently (one version at http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2012/04/27/self_driv...) that talked about a study asking folks if they wanted a self-driving vehicle if it cost $3K more - which supposedly was based on Ford and GM estimates of what it would add to the cost of a mass-produced model. Personally I'd pay twice as much to have it today, but I appear to be in the minority...
I think it would be fairly sizeable minority. There are so many benefits to this:
- Safety. CPUs don't get distracted.
- Far less stress. You wont worry about being cut off when you're reading.
- Imaging able to go to sleep and wake up in a new city. Your ride is extremely smooth.
- More time. Your trips are much quicker, because each path around each of the corners is perfectly optimized.
Until a few months ago, I had no idea that the technology was as far along as it is; it seems like they've cracked the hard problems already. That means it's a social problem now - and there's reason to believe that the biggest motivator in adoption of automobile technology (and related public policy) is the insurance industry. As soon as these cars are statistically safer than human drivers (and my expectation is that they may already be safer - humans are crap at driving) then there will be strong incentives to get them to the public.