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#71
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DRIVERLESS ELECTRIC CARS
On 10/10/2017 12:49 PM, Jeff Liebermann wrote:
On Mon, 9 Oct 2017 11:20:58 -0700 (PDT), Frank Krygowski wrote: On Sunday, October 8, 2017 at 11:32:54 PM UTC-4, Jeff Liebermann wrote: Now, back to my question. How much are you willing to relinquish for the privilege of riding your bicycle on the driverless highway of the future? Are you ready for robo-bike? I'm not willing to relinquish my right to travel by bicycle. - Frank Krygowski I didn't say you couldn't ride your bicycle. I said that you couldn't ride if safely on the highway of the future. At worst, all it would require is that you carry or attach several thousand(?) dollars in technology so that the driverless vehicles would be able to detect and avoid hitting you on your bicycle. I just don't expect that situation to arise. Again, I doubt most streets will see any infrastructure changes at all, simply because the cost would be almost infinite. There are too many streets to retrofit. So the capability will almost entirely be built into the cars. Those working on the cars know that they must detect pedestrians, including kids on bikes. I can't imagine a social environment that would allow laws requiring several thousand dollars of equipment on a $99 Wal-mart kids bike. So bikes will have to be detected by other means. -- - Frank Krygowski |
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#72
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DRIVERLESS ELECTRIC CARS
On 10/10/2017 1:10 PM, Jeff Liebermann wrote:
On Mon, 9 Oct 2017 14:55:03 -0500, DougC wrote: I think eventually self-driving cars will be a lot more efficient than what we have now... Maybe. Personally, I see some initial problems where a line of self-driving vehicles proceed at the speed of the slowest vehicle. Even if a passing algorithm is perfected, there will still be a tendency for similar speed vehicles to "clump" together in traffic. My guess(tm) is that the self-driving vehicle will be the equivalent of filling the highway with very conservative drivers, that follow every driving regulations, never go past the speed limit, and are courteous to other vehicles to the point of paranoia. Sounds nice! ;-) -- - Frank Krygowski |
#73
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DRIVERLESS ELECTRIC CARS
On 10/10/2017 1:10 PM, Jeff Liebermann wrote:
On Mon, 9 Oct 2017 14:55:03 -0500, DougC wrote: I think eventually self-driving cars will be a lot more efficient than what we have now... Maybe. Personally, I see some initial problems where a line of self-driving vehicles proceed at the speed of the slowest vehicle. Even if a passing algorithm is perfected, there will still be a tendency for similar speed vehicles to "clump" together in traffic. My guess(tm) is that the self-driving vehicle will be the equivalent of filling the highway with very conservative drivers, that follow every driving regulations, never go past the speed limit, and are courteous to other vehicles to the point of paranoia. Regarding "clumping": That can be beneficial on freeways. Especially if they communicate, self-driving cars can draft each other, forming a de facto train on the pavement. Car occupants could relax and read, work, look at scenery, whatever. Gas mileage (or electricity consumption) would be reduced. Yes, travel time might slightly increase, but the difference would be small. For freeways, it's easy to calculate. Driving 70 miles at 70 mph saves only about 5 minutes over driving at 65. And this scheme would remove one of my personal frustrations. I use cruise control on freeways, but it seems most drivers do not. (I guess a system with four buttons is just too complex.) Anyway, very frequently my car on cruise will approach a slower car, so I'll move left to pass. But as soon as the driver notices me, he's reminded that he can indeed drive a bit faster. So he speeds up, often matching my speed and keeping me stuck next to him in the left lane. In some cases, he'll speed up and pull ahead; then when he loses concentration he slows back down. Rinse and repeat. If everybody just locked into a convoy, that annoyance would go away. -- - Frank Krygowski |
#74
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DRIVERLESS ELECTRIC CARS
On Tue, 10 Oct 2017 14:15:30 -0400, Frank Krygowski
wrote: On 10/10/2017 12:16 PM, Jeff Liebermann wrote: On Mon, 9 Oct 2017 22:37:43 -0400, Frank Krygowski wrote: I wasn't doubting that auto-cars will exist and become popular. I was doubting that the government will "shove them down our throats." Well, let's pretend that the "Smart Driverless Highway of the Future(tm)" is funded with our tax dollars, in order to provide a suitable arena for testing driverless vehicles. But they're testing these things now on ordinary streets. They're attempting to make the cars, not the highway, "smart." That's only temporary. Today's driverless cars need to squeeze into the existing infrastructure because it would be too expensive to upgrade the roads. For example, how difficult would it be to bury a single wire down the middle of every lane so that driverless cars could follow the wire instead of trying to guess where the lane lines are located from optical recognition (which fails in the rain) to GPS (which fails if the DOP (dilution of position) is too large)? After a few regrettable incidents, such aids to navigation will need to be done, but not immediately. I guess I should mention that the first automobiles ran on dirt roads, full of potholes and ruts, that were originally intended for horse trails. This video might be enlightening. "Magic Highway, U.S.A. (1958)" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7icGIHPOviQ It's not just the highway that needs to be "smart". The same can be done to obvious road hazards, cyclists, and pedestrians. Fast forward to the vehicular Nirvana of future, where driverless cars will never crash into another driverless car, because they have transponders. It would not take much to design a personal transponder for pedestrians, joggers, skateboarders, and cyclists. If you're cheap, some pattern that the optical recognition system would recognize as a human, brick wall, manhole, or telephone pole, would be a big seller if not a survival requirement. Simply stenciling the word "HUMAN" on your riding jacket will serve as a talisman to protect you from being clobbered by a driverless vehicle. However, these ideas are in the future, where the number of driverless cars can justify their existence. For right now, the designers are doing their best with what they currently have to work with. -- Jeff Liebermann 150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558 |
#75
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DRIVERLESS ELECTRIC CARS
On Tue, 10 Oct 2017 14:28:13 -0400, Frank Krygowski
wrote: On 10/10/2017 12:49 PM, Jeff Liebermann wrote: On Mon, 9 Oct 2017 11:20:58 -0700 (PDT), Frank Krygowski wrote: On Sunday, October 8, 2017 at 11:32:54 PM UTC-4, Jeff Liebermann wrote: Now, back to my question. How much are you willing to relinquish for the privilege of riding your bicycle on the driverless highway of the future? Are you ready for robo-bike? I'm not willing to relinquish my right to travel by bicycle. - Frank Krygowski I didn't say you couldn't ride your bicycle. I said that you couldn't ride if safely on the highway of the future. At worst, all it would require is that you carry or attach several thousand(?) dollars in technology so that the driverless vehicles would be able to detect and avoid hitting you on your bicycle. I just don't expect that situation to arise. Again, I doubt most streets will see any infrastructure changes at all, simply because the cost would be almost infinite. There are too many streets to retrofit. So the capability will almost entirely be built into the cars. It certainly will take a long time to add navigation aids to the streets, roads, and highways, but the cost is not infinite if spread over a fairly long period. 40 years ago, when I first moved into the area, we had one defective traffic light on Hwy 9. Today, we have 5 signal lights and several push button pedestrian crosswalks. The cost of the added signals were about $150,000 each. However, without proper justification, none would have been built. Unfortunately, the only justification that could get the attention of the State was to kill off a few kids at each intersection, thus justifying the expenditure in the name of safety. My guess(tm) is that the streets with the most driverless vehicle accidents and fatalities, will be the first to be retrofitted with navigation and recognition aids. It may be 50 years before all the streets are modernized, but like wheel chair ramps at intersection, pedestrian walk buttons, signal lights everywhere, computerized traffic management, and emergency vehicle bypass, upgrades will happen. Those working on the cars know that they must detect pedestrians, including kids on bikes. I can't imagine a social environment that would allow laws requiring several thousand dollars of equipment on a $99 Wal-mart kids bike. So bikes will have to be detected by other means. My guess(tm), is I can build a mm wave transponder for about $20. Retail cost would be about $70. If the design is standardized and the quantities sufficiently large, it would cost much less. If that's unacceptable, I mentioned a pattern or word printed on clothes or a striker that would help the driverless car recognize pedestrians. Last resort might be an LED flashlight, that transmits a flashing pattern that the vehicle recognizes as "don't run over me". -- Jeff Liebermann 150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558 |
#76
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DRIVERLESS ELECTRIC CARS
On Tue, 10 Oct 2017 14:44:23 -0400, Frank Krygowski
wrote: If everybody just locked into a convoy, that annoyance would go away. Way back in college daze, I took a traffic engineering class in which me ran computah simulations of various traffic patterns. The tailgaters convoy, where everyone drives very close together and at the same speed works great as long as nobody enters or leaves the convoy. When that happens, one part of the convoy will need to speed up or slow down to accommodate the addition or reduction in length. The reaction time of each driver or vehicle is different resulting spacing variations. Eventually, the convoy starts to look and act like an accordion. I've confirmed this behavior when talking to friends who regularly attend mobile home and camper trailer rallys. Please note that it is quite likely that driverless vehicle will be programmed to rigorously follow traffic laws which are designed to be more stringent than practical. For example, speed limits are often 10 mph below what would be considered safe, on the assumption that everyone drives a few mph faster than the speed limit. The problem is that if everyone actually followed the speed limit, traffic flow would come to a halt. -- Jeff Liebermann 150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558 |
#77
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DRIVERLESS ELECTRIC CARS
On 10/10/2017 4:42 PM, Jeff Liebermann wrote:
On Tue, 10 Oct 2017 14:44:23 -0400, Frank Krygowski wrote: If everybody just locked into a convoy, that annoyance would go away. Way back in college daze, I took a traffic engineering class in which me ran computah simulations of various traffic patterns. The tailgaters convoy, where everyone drives very close together and at the same speed works great as long as nobody enters or leaves the convoy. When that happens, one part of the convoy will need to speed up or slow down to accommodate the addition or reduction in length. The reaction time of each driver or vehicle is different resulting spacing variations. Eventually, the convoy starts to look and act like an accordion. I've confirmed this behavior when talking to friends who regularly attend mobile home and camper trailer rallys. That sounds like a problem that a good physics and software team could solve in a day. Please note that it is quite likely that driverless vehicle will be programmed to rigorously follow traffic laws which are designed to be more stringent than practical. For example, speed limits are often 10 mph below what would be considered safe, on the assumption that everyone drives a few mph faster than the speed limit. The problem is that if everyone actually followed the speed limit, traffic flow would come to a halt. ??? -- - Frank Krygowski |
#78
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DRIVERLESS ELECTRIC CARS
On 10/10/2017 1:16 PM, Radey Shouman wrote:
Frank Krygowski writes: On Tuesday, October 10, 2017 at 1:19:43 AM UTC-4, John B. wrote: On Mon, 9 Oct 2017 22:37:43 -0400, Frank Krygowski wrote: On 10/9/2017 3:13 PM, Jeff Liebermann wrote: On Mon, 9 Oct 2017 11:30:40 -0700 (PDT), Frank Krygowski wrote: I wasn't doubting that auto-cars will exist and become popular. I was doubting that the government will "shove them down our throats." I wonder whether they will ever become popular given that they quite obviously will be more expensive, perhaps much more expensive, I am reading numbers as large as $75,000 for Google's autonomous driving vehicle. Didn't SMS recently post something about buying a new car? I seem to remember numbers in the range of a third of that value. I imagine you're right, that in the short term these things will be expensive. But I expect that long term the price difference will be greatly reduced. (I imagine the phone in my pocket would have been worth ten thousand dollars 10 years ago, if it existed at all.) But what do you get for this money? After all probably everyone reading this is capable of driving an automobile so what advantage does this, rather expensive, self-driver provide? Well: To my astonishment, I find that I'm driving long distances much more often since I retired. It's not just retirement that influenced that (although it enabled it); there have been family matters that have arisen, new obligations and avocations, different circles of friends, etc. But driving an hour each way is now far, far too common. And sitting behind a steering wheel always seems damned unproductive. Even if self-driving worked only on limited access freeways, it would ease a lot of frustration. I think it would make the experience of freeway driving much more like the experience of riding a train in a private compartment. The couple times I've done that, I found it to be fairly pleasant. Another problem that might arise. Will a self-driver work if one visits Canada, or Mexico? I guess it would depend on whether the system required a two-way communication network. If so, Canada might achieve that before the U.S. did. (I assume a bunch of U.S. states would declare this to be a muslim or communist conspiracy and refuse to buy into it.) With current technology recognition of traffic signs is still very brittle, see for example: https://spectrum.ieee.org/cars-that-...ing-algorithms or https://arstechnica.com/cars/2017/09...-driving-cars/ An octagonal red sign may scream "stop" to you and me, even if it actually says "alto" or "pare", but we're not machine vision programs, which are "taught" to recognize signs without anything like understanding of the concepts human beings use. For example, flat surface, road sign, octagon ... I suspect that if the powers that be (not all strictly government) desire widespread autonomous vehicles that some system of transponders not intelligible to unaided human beings will be required, and pedestrians and cyclists and drivers of antique vehicles will have to adapt or be squashed. To many of those powers this is a feature, not a bug. Fleet drivers in 2017/2018 18-wheelers are already experiencing troubles such as random panic braking by computer where no danger exists. The first complaint I heard was last spring from a driver who came near a lane split sign: http://www.trafficsignstore.com/merc...0001/W12-1.jpg and the truck brakes locked up, followed ten seconds later by a call from dispatcher, "Why did you brake?" -- Andrew Muzi www.yellowjersey.org/ Open every day since 1 April, 1971 |
#79
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DRIVERLESS ELECTRIC CARS
On 10/10/2017 1:44 PM, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 10/10/2017 1:10 PM, Jeff Liebermann wrote: On Mon, 9 Oct 2017 14:55:03 -0500, DougC wrote: I think eventually self-driving cars will be a lot more efficient than what we have now... Maybe. Personally, I see some initial problems where a line of self-driving vehicles proceed at the speed of the slowest vehicle. Even if a passing algorithm is perfected, there will still be a tendency for similar speed vehicles to "clump" together in traffic. My guess(tm) is that the self-driving vehicle will be the equivalent of filling the highway with very conservative drivers, that follow every driving regulations, never go past the speed limit, and are courteous to other vehicles to the point of paranoia. Regarding "clumping": That can be beneficial on freeways. Especially if they communicate, self-driving cars can draft each other, forming a de facto train on the pavement. Car occupants could relax and read, work, look at scenery, whatever. Gas mileage (or electricity consumption) would be reduced. Yes, travel time might slightly increase, but the difference would be small. For freeways, it's easy to calculate. Driving 70 miles at 70 mph saves only about 5 minutes over driving at 65. And this scheme would remove one of my personal frustrations. I use cruise control on freeways, but it seems most drivers do not. (I guess a system with four buttons is just too complex.) Anyway, very frequently my car on cruise will approach a slower car, so I'll move left to pass. But as soon as the driver notices me, he's reminded that he can indeed drive a bit faster. So he speeds up, often matching my speed and keeping me stuck next to him in the left lane. In some cases, he'll speed up and pull ahead; then when he loses concentration he slows back down. Rinse and repeat. If everybody just locked into a convoy, that annoyance would go away. What? _five more minutes_? That's just crazy talk! -- Andrew Muzi www.yellowjersey.org/ Open every day since 1 April, 1971 |
#80
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DRIVERLESS ELECTRIC CARS
On 10/10/2017 3:29 PM, Jeff Liebermann wrote:
On Tue, 10 Oct 2017 14:28:13 -0400, Frank Krygowski wrote: On 10/10/2017 12:49 PM, Jeff Liebermann wrote: On Mon, 9 Oct 2017 11:20:58 -0700 (PDT), Frank Krygowski wrote: On Sunday, October 8, 2017 at 11:32:54 PM UTC-4, Jeff Liebermann wrote: Now, back to my question. How much are you willing to relinquish for the privilege of riding your bicycle on the driverless highway of the future? Are you ready for robo-bike? I'm not willing to relinquish my right to travel by bicycle. - Frank Krygowski I didn't say you couldn't ride your bicycle. I said that you couldn't ride if safely on the highway of the future. At worst, all it would require is that you carry or attach several thousand(?) dollars in technology so that the driverless vehicles would be able to detect and avoid hitting you on your bicycle. I just don't expect that situation to arise. Again, I doubt most streets will see any infrastructure changes at all, simply because the cost would be almost infinite. There are too many streets to retrofit. So the capability will almost entirely be built into the cars. It certainly will take a long time to add navigation aids to the streets, roads, and highways, but the cost is not infinite if spread over a fairly long period. 40 years ago, when I first moved into the area, we had one defective traffic light on Hwy 9. Today, we have 5 signal lights and several push button pedestrian crosswalks. The cost of the added signals were about $150,000 each. However, without proper justification, none would have been built. Unfortunately, the only justification that could get the attention of the State was to kill off a few kids at each intersection, thus justifying the expenditure in the name of safety. My guess(tm) is that the streets with the most driverless vehicle accidents and fatalities, will be the first to be retrofitted with navigation and recognition aids. It may be 50 years before all the streets are modernized, but like wheel chair ramps at intersection, pedestrian walk buttons, signal lights everywhere, computerized traffic management, and emergency vehicle bypass, upgrades will happen. Those working on the cars know that they must detect pedestrians, including kids on bikes. I can't imagine a social environment that would allow laws requiring several thousand dollars of equipment on a $99 Wal-mart kids bike. So bikes will have to be detected by other means. My guess(tm), is I can build a mm wave transponder for about $20. Retail cost would be about $70. If the design is standardized and the quantities sufficiently large, it would cost much less. If that's unacceptable, I mentioned a pattern or word printed on clothes or a striker that would help the driverless car recognize pedestrians. Last resort might be an LED flashlight, that transmits a flashing pattern that the vehicle recognizes as "don't run over me". Oh, Jeff you are so naive. A government required unit at $20 mfr base price could easily be several hundred dollars once you factor in the usual graft/corruption/inefficiency, maybe more with some mandated percentage of "free" transponders to targeted groups. There are very good reasons that in The War On Poverty, poverty won. -- Andrew Muzi www.yellowjersey.org/ Open every day since 1 April, 1971 |
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