Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with
Speaker 1: how Stuff Works, and I heart radio and I love
Speaker 1: all things tech and I mentioned a few weeks ago
Speaker 1: that I was planning a suite of episodes about driverless cars,
Speaker 1: including the history of developing them, the challenges we face
Speaker 1: in implementing them, the potential benefits that autonomous vehicles could have,
Speaker 1: and how long it might be before we see truly
Speaker 1: driverless cars deployed on a wide scale basis, also whether
Speaker 1: or not they'll hit the road before they're ready. Now, today,
Speaker 1: we're going to start that journey by talking about a
Speaker 1: time when the idea of driverless cars was mostly science fiction. Also,
Speaker 1: I think it's important to understand that the development of
Speaker 1: self driving cars is not a linear your story with
Speaker 1: a solid narrative. It's not a leads to be leads
Speaker 1: to see a lot of people have worked on developing
Speaker 1: the technology independently, sometimes from very different perspectives and philosophies,
Speaker 1: but all heading towards a common goal. These projects can
Speaker 1: sometimes overlap each other in time without having any direct
Speaker 1: connection between them, so you could have independent studies happening
Speaker 1: throughout the world. So I'm just gonna cover some of
Speaker 1: the big, really important ones, but just no, there were
Speaker 1: a lot of people working on this at various times
Speaker 1: throughout our history. I'm gonna stick as close to a
Speaker 1: chronological timeline as I can, but it will involve jumping
Speaker 1: around a little bit in time, just because otherwise I'd
Speaker 1: be saying, meanwhile, blah blah blah was happening, and then
Speaker 1: so and so was doing this, and it was just
Speaker 1: turned into a really hackneyed kind of like radio mystery.
Speaker 1: I don't want that to happen. So picking a starting
Speaker 1: point is actually pretty darned tricky too, because the technology
Speaker 1: of autonomous cars spans lots of different fields. You could
Speaker 1: go into all sorts of technologies and talk about the
Speaker 1: development and how the evolution of those technologies eventually found
Speaker 1: their way into autonomous cars, and if I dug too
Speaker 1: deep in that rabbit hole, this series would last maybe
Speaker 1: thirty episodes. We'd be talking about the development of the automobile,
Speaker 1: we'd be talking about development of cameras. I kind of
Speaker 1: like how Wired did it? In a piece that was
Speaker 1: published in twenty sixteen titled quote a brief history of
Speaker 1: autonomous vehicle technology end quote. And as that name suggests,
Speaker 1: that article went beyond self driving cars, and the first
Speaker 1: item on that list actually dates all the way back
Speaker 1: to fifteen hundred or thereabouts, and a famous turtle named Leonardo.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, tari Is tar is telling me that's the throng. Leonardo.
Speaker 1: Leonardo was not actually a turtle, but apparently some sort
Speaker 1: of renowned renaissance artist and proto scientists. Okay, Leonardo da Vinci. Okay,
Speaker 1: all right, I was was way off base there, Thanks Harry. Anyway,
Speaker 1: the story of his invention comes to us courtesy of
Speaker 1: the Codex Atlanticus, Folio eight twelve r, in which da
Speaker 1: Vinci describes the creation of a cart that would use
Speaker 1: springs and gears. The springs would store energy, and the
Speaker 1: gears and the cogs would drive the wheels and steering mechanisms,
Speaker 1: so that this cart, once wound up and quote unquote programmed,
Speaker 1: could travel and steer on its own power. So you
Speaker 1: would change these settings around, and that would allow the
Speaker 1: cart to not just travel across a distance, but also
Speaker 1: turn left or right, depending upon the settings that you
Speaker 1: had selected. I imagine this was largely done through various
Speaker 1: gears that once it hit a certain point of its revolution,
Speaker 1: it would engage the steering mechanism, But honestly, I don't
Speaker 1: know the full details. Uh If da Vinci ever built
Speaker 1: one of these for real z s. The working model
Speaker 1: did not survive the passage of time, but modern enthusiasts
Speaker 1: have attempted to recreate this self driving cart, which we
Speaker 1: now believe was intended for use in theatrical productions. It
Speaker 1: wasn't meant to do practical work on like manual labor
Speaker 1: or anything like that. It was meant to be part
Speaker 1: of a show that you would have this cart go across,
Speaker 1: perhaps as an effect, maybe it's carrying some sort of
Speaker 1: piece of scenery or an actor or something. But Da
Speaker 1: Vinci's drawings and designs, we're not step by step instructions,
Speaker 1: and so any recreation of this invention has to be
Speaker 1: done with a healthy dose of interpretation on the part
Speaker 1: of the builders. They have to start kind of filling
Speaker 1: in the gaps and making, you know, best guesses. But
Speaker 1: some people, such as the staff at Wired, point to
Speaker 1: this as an early example of a vehicle that can
Speaker 1: drive itself. Though to be fair, da Vinci's design required
Speaker 1: some humans to pre set the device so that it
Speaker 1: would do what it was supposed to do. So you
Speaker 1: couldn't just, you know, tell the cart I need you
Speaker 1: to cross upstage left. You would actually have to quote
Speaker 1: unquote program it. Now, no discussion about the early days
Speaker 1: of driver less cars would be complete without acknowledging the
Speaker 1: accomplishments of someone known as Francis P. Houdina. He is
Speaker 1: credited in various articles as being an electrical engineer for
Speaker 1: the Army, and once he left the service, he founded
Speaker 1: a company called the Houdina Radio Control Company. I'll have
Speaker 1: more to say about Francis in a second, but let's
Speaker 1: get to the heart of the matter as far as
Speaker 1: autonomous cars go. Back in ninet, the Houdina Radio Control
Speaker 1: Company engaged in a major publicity stunt. It happened on
Speaker 1: July when a car dubbed the Lendrick in Wonder, though
Speaker 1: sometimes it is credited as the American Wonder, roamed the
Speaker 1: streets of New York City without a driver behind the wheel.
Speaker 1: In fact, there was no one in the car whatsoever.
Speaker 1: There was someone standing on the sideboard of the car,
Speaker 1: the running board so they were perched on the outside
Speaker 1: where they could reach in and grab the wheel, but
Speaker 1: no one was actually sitting in the driver's seat Ellie,
Speaker 1: and no one was apparently in control, at least not
Speaker 1: directly behind the wheel. But as the name of the
Speaker 1: company would indicate the line, Rick in Wonder was a
Speaker 1: radio controlled car like a toy r C Cards, just
Speaker 1: instead of being a toy, it was a full sized automobile.
Speaker 1: Circuits connecting to motors would control the movements of the gearshift,
Speaker 1: the accelerator, the brakes, the steering wheel. Actual control of
Speaker 1: the vehicle came from an apparatus inside a following car,
Speaker 1: So you'd have a car operated by a regular human
Speaker 1: driver sitting in the driver's seat. In the passenger seat
Speaker 1: would be the operator for the radio controlled car that
Speaker 1: would travel in front of them. So the car was
Speaker 1: not truly driverless because the driver did exist. It's just
Speaker 1: the driver was in another vehicle. While researching this episode,
Speaker 1: I found a New York Times article that described the event,
Speaker 1: and it doesn't sound like it was a complete success.
Speaker 1: From that article, these are quotes. A loose housing around
Speaker 1: the shaft to the steering wheel in the radio car
Speaker 1: caused the uncertain course as the procession got underway, as
Speaker 1: John Alexander of the Houdina Company, riding in the second car,
Speaker 1: applied the radio waves the directing apparatus attached to the shaft,
Speaker 1: and the other automobile failed to grasp it prop really.
Speaker 1: As a result, the radio car careened from left to
Speaker 1: right down Broadway, around Columbus Circle and south on Fifth Avenue,
Speaker 1: almost running down two trucks and a milk wagon, which
Speaker 1: took to the curbs for safety. At Street, Houdina lunged
Speaker 1: for the steering wheel, but could not prevent the car
Speaker 1: from crashing into the fender of an automobile filled with cameramen.
Speaker 1: It was at Fort Street that a crash into a
Speaker 1: fire engine was barely averted. The police advised Judina to
Speaker 1: postpone his experiments, but after the car had been driven
Speaker 1: up Broadway, it was once more operated by radio along
Speaker 1: Central Park drives. And uh, here's that bit about Francis
Speaker 1: Judina I was mentioning earlier. You may have noticed that
Speaker 1: the name bears some passing resemblance to that of Harry Houdini,
Speaker 1: who was alive at that same time. He was the
Speaker 1: famous escape artist and magician Now, according to the story,
Speaker 1: and there are at least some court documents to back
Speaker 1: this up, the post office was sometimes in the habit
Speaker 1: of delivering some of the mail meant for the Houdina
Speaker 1: Company to Houdini the magician, including bills, and Houdini was
Speaker 1: not crazy about getting the bills from some other company
Speaker 1: and he felt that it was encroaching upon his name.
Speaker 1: So he marched on over to the Houdina Radio Company
Speaker 1: headquarters and a scuffle broke out after he started raising
Speaker 1: a fuss. The head of the office, a guy named
Speaker 1: George Young, filed charges against Houdini for disorderly conduct, but
Speaker 1: on the day that Houdini was to appear in court,
Speaker 1: Young failed to show up, and so all charges were dismissed.
Speaker 1: Now there's a guy named Dean Carnegie who posted a
Speaker 1: few years ago that he had been contacted by the
Speaker 1: son of the person who called himself Francis Houdina, and
Speaker 1: that Judina was a pseudonym. And further, he says that
Speaker 1: the son of Houdina revealed that this scuffle was all
Speaker 1: just a publicity stunt, that Houdini had thought it up
Speaker 1: and they had all worked on it together. I do
Speaker 1: find it odd to have gone through all this trouble
Speaker 1: to take on a pseudonym, establish a company, create a
Speaker 1: demonstration of a radio controlled car, and all in an
Speaker 1: effort to set up a big PR stunt with a magician.
Speaker 1: It seems to me like that's an awful lot of
Speaker 1: trouble to go through before you get to a point
Speaker 1: where you can hold this PR stunt. But I guess
Speaker 1: if someone was going to do it, it would be Houdini.
Speaker 1: I am highly skeptical that it was in fact a
Speaker 1: publicity stunt, only because, as I say, it's an awful
Speaker 1: lot of trouble to go through in order to do it,
Speaker 1: and it wouldn't necessarily bring good publicity, I would imagine.
Speaker 1: I just thought I would share the story because when
Speaker 1: I was doing the research, it kept popping up. Now,
Speaker 1: this Houdina radio controlled vehicle was not the only one
Speaker 1: of its kind. There were some other people who also
Speaker 1: built full size radio controlled apparatus for cars. There were
Speaker 1: a few in the twenties and thirties, and in general
Speaker 1: people would start calling these phantom cars because they appeared
Speaker 1: to be driven by an invisible phantom, but all of
Speaker 1: them were actually controlled by a remote driver. Those controls
Speaker 1: might not resemble those of a typical automobile, but they
Speaker 1: would end up controlling motors that would affect the automobiles
Speaker 1: regular operations, and according to various accounts, some of these
Speaker 1: would be controlled by follow cars, sometimes by someone on
Speaker 1: the street, sometimes by someone following in a low flying aircraft.
Speaker 1: It all just depends upon the account. In nineteen thirty nine,
Speaker 1: at the New York World's Fair, General Motors presented an
Speaker 1: exhibit called Future Rama And it was not a and
Speaker 1: aimated series by Matt Graining. It was something else. It
Speaker 1: was a vision of the far off future of nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty and the General Motors exhibit was a ride. Essentially,
Speaker 1: visitors would get on these cars, these chair cars, and
Speaker 1: be pulled through this exhibit, where there was an enormous
Speaker 1: scale model. One part of this vision, which encompassed lots
Speaker 1: of different thoughts about the future, was the Motorway of
Speaker 1: the future, and the vision included a sort of driver
Speaker 1: assist system in cars. They described an electro magnetic breaking
Speaker 1: system that would engage if one car were to get
Speaker 1: too close to the car ahead of it, and cars
Speaker 1: would be traveling down lanes that would have raised walls
Speaker 1: on either side, sort of like guiding slots. So it
Speaker 1: sounded like GM was pretty sure cars would still be
Speaker 1: under the control of human beings even in the far
Speaker 1: off future world of nineteen six team, but there would
Speaker 1: be some automated elements that would find their way into
Speaker 1: vehicle operation. And these days we would say that that
Speaker 1: vision of the future was pretty much on the money,
Speaker 1: except for the part about it being nine, because it
Speaker 1: took a little longer than that. Norman bell Getz, who
Speaker 1: designed this exhibit for General Motors, described a couple of
Speaker 1: possible methods for controlling traffic in the future using radio waves,
Speaker 1: and in one he envisioned a system that would include
Speaker 1: numerous broadcast towers along the side of the road, and
Speaker 1: so cars would maintain contact with these broadcast towers. But
Speaker 1: another version, he suggested the possibility of an electrical conductor
Speaker 1: embedded in the road itself for direct control, and that
Speaker 1: would be a method that a lot of different people
Speaker 1: would look into over the next few years. Today we
Speaker 1: would say that such an enormous system is probably unlikely
Speaker 1: because of the huge investment it would require an infrastructure
Speaker 1: that would come along with it. But back in the
Speaker 1: nineteen thirties, the US highway system was still developing, it
Speaker 1: was still being built across the country, so it's probably
Speaker 1: seen as more of a possibility. After all, we were
Speaker 1: already connecting distant parts of the country to each other,
Speaker 1: so couldn't we just go to the extra effort to
Speaker 1: wire all of that in some way. I have more
Speaker 1: to say about this version of autonomous cars and how
Speaker 1: that evolved into what we think of as an autonomous
Speaker 1: car today, but first let's take a quick break to
Speaker 1: thank our sponsor. In nineteen thirty six, a magazine called
Speaker 1: Modern Mechanics published an article about a different method for
Speaker 1: autonomous control of a vehicle. This version would include building
Speaker 1: cars that had special photo cells on them to detect
Speaker 1: specific frequencies of light. The car it self would project
Speaker 1: this light. It would have a projector of some sort
Speaker 1: on the front of the car, and then in the
Speaker 1: road itself would be steel mirrors that could reflect the
Speaker 1: light back at the car, and the photocells would pick
Speaker 1: up that light. The article pointed out that cars were
Speaker 1: already approaching the limits of human reflexes. This idea that
Speaker 1: we were starting to drive faster than we could react. Um,
Speaker 1: I guess, uh you know, good old uh Jack of
Speaker 1: the Pork Shop Express would say he never, he never
Speaker 1: drives faster than he can see. But we know that
Speaker 1: human reflexes have their limits. So this article mainly focused
Speaker 1: on the link between the photo cells and the steering
Speaker 1: mechanism for the car. That leaves a lot of questions unanswered,
Speaker 1: such as how the car would accelerate or break, would
Speaker 1: there still be a human responsible for those operations, and
Speaker 1: the only thing that would be taken off the plate
Speaker 1: of the human driver is steering the car. One also
Speaker 1: wonders exactly how any one car would deal with the
Speaker 1: presence of other cars on the road that are similarly outfitted. Right,
Speaker 1: So if you have a whole bunch of cars that
Speaker 1: use this technology and it's dependent upon light being reflected
Speaker 1: back at them, what happens when you start getting the
Speaker 1: signals from one car picked up by another, or what
Speaker 1: happens if you're driving on a really sunny day or
Speaker 1: in really bad weather like fog or rain. But the
Speaker 1: point is people were already thinking about alternatives to radio
Speaker 1: controls even in the thirties. In nineteen fifty three, Arthur
Speaker 1: mac Barrett created what he called a driverless vehicle he
Speaker 1: mounted a wire in the ceiling of a warehouse, and
Speaker 1: he had a specially outfitted vehicle. In this case, it
Speaker 1: was a towing tractor that could follow that wire, and
Speaker 1: in later versions he would bury the wire within the
Speaker 1: floor of a facility. And he called this system the
Speaker 1: guide O Matic. Now this was not meant for cars necessarily,
Speaker 1: but it was based on similar principles to some of
Speaker 1: the more sci fi ideas that were proposed in the
Speaker 1: nineteen thirties. So we started seeing it actually being put
Speaker 1: to use in the fifties, and in fact, this kind
Speaker 1: of system is still used to this day, but obviously
Speaker 1: with a much more sophisticated equipment than what was available
Speaker 1: in the fifties. In Disney Studios produced a segment titled
Speaker 1: Magic Highway USA as part of The Wonderful World of Disney,
Speaker 1: and the piece included some humorous gags about what the
Speaker 1: future of driving could be, just based off jokes really,
Speaker 1: but after that was a more measured look, a more
Speaker 1: thoughtful look at the future of driving. Still had some
Speaker 1: pretty far out ideas in it. Now it did include
Speaker 1: some practical stuff that has in fact come to pass.
Speaker 1: For example, the idea that signage is going to need
Speaker 1: to be larger and simpler so that motorists traveling at
Speaker 1: great speed can read and understand the road signs in general.
Speaker 1: That did come to pass. It also predicted a road
Speaker 1: system that would be able to retain heat to keep
Speaker 1: it dry even in snowstorms. That has not happened. It
Speaker 1: does sound a lot like some of the smart road
Speaker 1: systems that were being peddled no no pun intended around
Speaker 1: a few years ago. You may remember those the smart
Speaker 1: highways that we're supposed to be made up of photo cells,
Speaker 1: solar cells essentially, and they could soak up light, generate electricity,
Speaker 1: and even be warmed so that snow and ice woulden
Speaker 1: form on them. Those have not really panned out so well,
Speaker 1: at least not in any widespread application. However, some of
Speaker 1: the other bits in that magic Highway section included predictions
Speaker 1: similar to GPS and rear mounted cameras on cars, so
Speaker 1: we do have those, although the one that was proposed
Speaker 1: in the piece was more of a full time rear
Speaker 1: view camera, so instead of having a rear view mirror,
Speaker 1: you would have a rear view screen that you would
Speaker 1: consistently looked to for information about what's going on. Behind
Speaker 1: the car. Some of the other predictions did not pan
Speaker 1: out in any way, shape or form, such as tunneling
Speaker 1: by atomic energy. Yeah, the actual special suggested that we
Speaker 1: use an enormous like atomic ray cannon essentially that would
Speaker 1: melt a hole through the side of a mountain when
Speaker 1: we needed to build a tunnel for a highway. That
Speaker 1: clearly has not happened. But the special then goes on
Speaker 1: to suggest that in the future will get in our
Speaker 1: family vehicles and with a push of a few buttons,
Speaker 1: which in the specials depicted as physical slighter controls kind
Speaker 1: of like you would see on a on a stereo
Speaker 1: or a soundboard, we would select our destination and an
Speaker 1: electronic system incorporating the vehicle and the road itself, so
Speaker 1: it would be a system that has both internal components
Speaker 1: in the car and external components in the environment would
Speaker 1: take care of everything else. So again this vision hinges
Speaker 1: on that sort of smart highway concept, the idea that
Speaker 1: a lot of this work is being done by the
Speaker 1: infrastr ructure, not just the vehicle. Disney was just one
Speaker 1: company to promote this kind of idea. America's Electric Light
Speaker 1: and Power companies ran an advertisement in the Saturday Evening
Speaker 1: post in the nineteen fifties with an illustration that showed
Speaker 1: the stereotypical nineteen fifties American family depicted as it was
Speaker 1: at that time in the medium, which is to say
Speaker 1: it was a white upper class or upper middle class
Speaker 1: at least family. There was a father, mother's son, and daughter,
Speaker 1: so that kind of stereotypical family. All four of those
Speaker 1: family members are inside a car that has sort of
Speaker 1: like that big glass bubble kind of approach, sort of
Speaker 1: what you would see in something like the Jetsons, and
Speaker 1: they're all facing inward toward each other. A couple of
Speaker 1: them are playing dominoes, they're having conversation. No one's having
Speaker 1: to drive right, the car itself is doing it. And
Speaker 1: the ad talks about how the electric age will lead
Speaker 1: to automation and efficiency in all sorts of areas, including
Speaker 1: stuff like flat TV screens and vehicles control by quote
Speaker 1: electronic devices embedded in the road end quote. Now keep
Speaker 1: in mind again this is in the post World War
Speaker 1: two era. This is an era in which America's industry
Speaker 1: was a key component of national identity. It was part
Speaker 1: of what people thought of when they were asked the
Speaker 1: question what is it to be American industry and innovation
Speaker 1: were very much, really important components of that identity. And
Speaker 1: these weren't just concepts. These weren't just artists and advertisers saying,
Speaker 1: let's come up with some sort of wild idea. There
Speaker 1: were engineers who were actively building cars and test roads
Speaker 1: to work out the actual details. Joseph Bidwell and Lawrence
Speaker 1: Hofstad who were researchers with General motors outfitted in nineteen
Speaker 1: Chevrolet with pickup coils to work with a road that
Speaker 1: had embedded electrical wire in it. The coils were connected
Speaker 1: to motors that could adjust the cars steering so that
Speaker 1: can continue to follow the wire below, very much much
Speaker 1: like the guide Oh Manic that talked about earlier. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: over at our c A another smarty pants was working
Speaker 1: on this challenge. This would be Vladimir Zwarakin, which some
Speaker 1: of you people may know as one of the pioneers
Speaker 1: who played a really big part in the development of television.
Speaker 1: In fact, depending upon whom you ask, it was Warrikin,
Speaker 1: not farms Worth who was pioneer of TV. But honestly,
Speaker 1: it's a very complicated story, and I've talked about before
Speaker 1: on tech stuff so I'm not gonna go into it here,
Speaker 1: but back to driverless cars. His concept included embedding circuits
Speaker 1: in the roads that would be able to sense vehicles magnetically,
Speaker 1: and his vision had the circuits identifying the speed and
Speaker 1: position of vehicles, which would provide information to a centralized
Speaker 1: system that could then send out instructions to specific cars
Speaker 1: in order to manage traffic. And his idea turned out
Speaker 1: to be impractical for widespread deployment for autonomous cars. However,
Speaker 1: it did becomes sort of the foundation for car sensing
Speaker 1: loops that are under many intersections. They're used to help
Speaker 1: control traffic lights. Those loops that can detect if there's
Speaker 1: a vehicle on top of it through the electromagnetic effect
Speaker 1: and thus send a signal to the traffic lights that
Speaker 1: they should switch over soon so that they change the
Speaker 1: direction of traffic. That's pretty cool. A key component in
Speaker 1: many of these concepts was that the system for control
Speaker 1: lay outside of the vehicle itself. It required some sort
Speaker 1: of larger centralized system to handle things, and the cars
Speaker 1: would respond to commands from that system. A car might
Speaker 1: have some components abort it to help with this, but
Speaker 1: for the most part, the important elements were external to
Speaker 1: the vehicle. So why was that? Why were we thinking
Speaker 1: outside the car? Well, keep in mind that before we
Speaker 1: did not have transistors, so electronics were very large and bulky,
Speaker 1: and even the seven transistor was not a practical component
Speaker 1: that you would incorporate into a finished product. So it
Speaker 1: would be a few years before transistors would really play
Speaker 1: an important role in consumer technology, and mentorization was just
Speaker 1: getting started in the fifties and sixties, so computers were
Speaker 1: enormous machines that would take up at least a desk,
Speaker 1: but sometimes an entire room. So driving, because it's such
Speaker 1: a complicated task, meant it wasn't really practical to create
Speaker 1: a fully autonomous car. The computer you would need to
Speaker 1: calculate all the different decisions that would be made in
Speaker 1: order to drive a vehicle would be bigger than the
Speaker 1: car was. It made more sense to look outside the
Speaker 1: vehicle for the components that would be needed for a
Speaker 1: driverless automobile and send commands to a car that would
Speaker 1: be more like a dumb terminal would be for a supercomputer.
Speaker 1: Experts recognized the potential for autonomous systems. In particular, many
Speaker 1: engineers believed a good system would save lives and prevent injuries.
Speaker 1: As we became accustomed to travel link at higher speeds,
Speaker 1: there was a legit fear that people were driving too
Speaker 1: quickly to be able to react safely in the event
Speaker 1: of an emergency. In nineteen sixty, Norbert Wiener, a mathematician
Speaker 1: at m I T. He's also known as the father
Speaker 1: of cybernetics, said, quote, by the time we are able
Speaker 1: to react to our senses and stop the car which
Speaker 1: we are driving, it may already have run head on
Speaker 1: into a wall end quote. He was advocating for some
Speaker 1: sort of feedback system that could react in a fraction
Speaker 1: of the time humans can, And he had a point.
Speaker 1: Reaction times can average between a hundred fifty milliseconds to
Speaker 1: three hundred milliseconds, depending upon this stimuli, and that gets
Speaker 1: pretty darn fast, and a hundred fifty milliseconds it's not
Speaker 1: a lot of times, so that's a pretty fast reaction time. However,
Speaker 1: let's say that you're driving in a car that's going
Speaker 1: sixty miles per hour or around kilometers per hour. That
Speaker 1: means you're traveling at eight ft per second. Even if
Speaker 1: your reflexes are on the fast side. That hundred fifty milliseconds.
Speaker 1: It means you travel thirteen ft before you'd even start
Speaker 1: to do anything, you would see something happened to you,
Speaker 1: and by the time you were able to start touching
Speaker 1: the break, you've all already traveled thirteen feet. Also, if
Speaker 1: you're traveling sixty you're in a vehicle. The vehicle has
Speaker 1: a pretty hefty mass. You've got a lot of inertia
Speaker 1: to deal with. Two, You're not gonna stop on a dime.
Speaker 1: It's gonna take you time and therefore distance to stop.
Speaker 1: So the thought was if we could build out vehicles
Speaker 1: that could react for us much more quickly than we
Speaker 1: ourselves can react, and that these vehicles could monitor conditions
Speaker 1: that surround the car at all times, not just what's
Speaker 1: happening at whatever you happen to be focusing on at
Speaker 1: that moment. Wouldn't that be great? And we will revisit
Speaker 1: that idea and a couple of episodes. When we start
Speaker 1: talking about the arguments for autonomous cars, we'll also talk
Speaker 1: about the arguments against them. I've got a lot more
Speaker 1: to say about these early concepts and autonomous cars, but
Speaker 1: first let's take another quick break to thank our sponsor.
Speaker 1: You know it would be great if our cars could
Speaker 1: watch after us. But the researchers, engineers, and mechanics of
Speaker 1: the sixties, we're running into huge design challenges and progress
Speaker 1: was pretty slow. Money for autonomous systems was running low
Speaker 1: as well, as the automotive industry began to dedicate funds
Speaker 1: toward developing technology that would help mitigate human error. So,
Speaker 1: in other words, the tech to take human error out
Speaker 1: of the equation, that is, to make driverless cars was
Speaker 1: really complicated and beyond our ability to to realize at
Speaker 1: that time. So instead companies shifted to, well, human error
Speaker 1: is going to happen. We can't take it out of
Speaker 1: the equation, so let's figure out how to have human
Speaker 1: error make the least negative impact possible. So for that
Speaker 1: reason we saw money instead being dedicated to the development
Speaker 1: of other technologies, stuff like seat belts, airbags, anti lock
Speaker 1: brake systems, and it would stay that way throughout the
Speaker 1: nineteen sixties and nineteen seventies. It really wasn't until the
Speaker 1: nineteen eighties that we started seeing serious work and experimentation
Speaker 1: in driverless systems going again. For land based vehicles. Keep
Speaker 1: in mind, we had had things like you know, automated
Speaker 1: pilots for a long time, that was a relatively simple
Speaker 1: problem to solve compared to cars. Cars continued to be
Speaker 1: a difficult problem. Now. One of the engineers who did
Speaker 1: very important work in the nineteen eighties was a guy
Speaker 1: named Ernst Dickman's from Germany. He ran a lab at
Speaker 1: bundes Verre University in Munich, Germany, and he started out
Speaker 1: as an aerospace engineer, so super smart guy, but he
Speaker 1: had ambitions to work on creating a way for vehicles
Speaker 1: to be able to see their surroundings and then react
Speaker 1: to them. His work would provide the foundation for tons
Speaker 1: of innovation in dynamic computer vision. So in the nineteen eighties,
Speaker 1: he and his research team took a van that was
Speaker 1: manufactured by Mercedes Benz and began to customize it for
Speaker 1: driverless operation. Now, according to Dickmans, the university sort of
Speaker 1: just let him do this because he had a reputation
Speaker 1: of being brilliant, so they said, well, he's a smart guy,
Speaker 1: let him do what he does. So his team refitted
Speaker 1: this van with various systems that would be able to
Speaker 1: control steering, acceleration, breaking. They also outfitted the vehicle with
Speaker 1: a computer system to process information and then sensors and
Speaker 1: cameras to gather information. So you have the sensors and
Speaker 1: cameras that bring in data, send it to a computer.
Speaker 1: The computer processes of the data and then sends commands
Speaker 1: to the various control systems to change the behavior of
Speaker 1: the vehicle. That's your basic concept behind the modern autonomous car.
Speaker 1: So they incorporate technology that could detect the steering angle,
Speaker 1: break pressure, temperature, acceleration in both latitudinal and longitudinal directions
Speaker 1: and more. Uh. The camera was actually a pair of
Speaker 1: cameras mounted on swivels that could move along two axes
Speaker 1: in order to focus on specific points within the field
Speaker 1: of view. And they called the experiment v A M
Speaker 1: O R s V mores with a big V, big M,
Speaker 1: big R. So alternating caps and lower case. Sticking a
Speaker 1: camera on a car is one thing, right, anyone can
Speaker 1: really do that. Teaching a computer to interpret images from
Speaker 1: that camera is another thing. Entirely and in the nineteen
Speaker 1: eighties and normally would take a computer several minutes to
Speaker 1: analyze a single image in any meaningful way, and even
Speaker 1: that was fairly limited compared to what we can do today.
Speaker 1: So to be useful in the driving scenario needed something
Speaker 1: dramatically better than that. A computer would have to analyze
Speaker 1: many images per second, like ten images per second, not
Speaker 1: one image every ten minutes. So how do you fix
Speaker 1: that problem? That's an enormous challenge. Well, Dickmon's solution was
Speaker 1: to limit what the car was actually looking at, and
Speaker 1: so he took human eyesight as kind of a source
Speaker 1: of inspiration. You see, we're only really able to focus
Speaker 1: on a relatively small part of our vision. Everything else
Speaker 1: that's in our field of view is there, but it's
Speaker 1: not really in focus. So we concentrate on whatever we
Speaker 1: have deemed to be important at that moment. It might
Speaker 1: be traffic ahead of us, or an incoming soccer ball
Speaker 1: kicked at our heads, or whatever it may be. So
Speaker 1: Dickmon's thought, hey, if I limit what the computer system
Speaker 1: is focused on and I let it ignore everything else,
Speaker 1: then I limit the amount of data that needs to
Speaker 1: be processed and everything speeds up as a result. So
Speaker 1: he focused on finding shortcuts, such as programming the computer
Speaker 1: to only really look at stuff like road markings and
Speaker 1: to ignore other things. His work was dedicated to creating
Speaker 1: an early driverless system that could function on an empty
Speaker 1: stretch of road in the early days, so it wasn't
Speaker 1: really important to worry about other things that your average
Speaker 1: driver would have to worry about, like other vehicles or obstacles.
Speaker 1: He was just concentrating on how can I make a
Speaker 1: system that will reliably follow a road without having a
Speaker 1: driver behind the wheel. He was building the foundational blocks
Speaker 1: at that time. Dackmans also sped up the computation process
Speaker 1: by limiting the need for the computer to save images,
Speaker 1: so it was really just analyzing and responding to each
Speaker 1: image and then conveniently kind of forgetting about them. His
Speaker 1: techniques paid off with some early demonstrations, but they relied
Speaker 1: heavily on predictable and reliable components like those road markings.
Speaker 1: But if the road road markings were obscured or if
Speaker 1: they were absent, then the car would start to drift
Speaker 1: out of its lane. It didn't know quote unquote where
Speaker 1: it was supposed to be, and it might just continue
Speaker 1: to wander on whatever steering direction it was in before
Speaker 1: it lost track of the road markings. And we're talking
Speaker 1: about a five ton van that his team had been testing,
Speaker 1: so that's potentially a real danger now. To be fair,
Speaker 1: they were testing it on unoccupied stretches of road, so
Speaker 1: at least the potential for a catastrophe was severely limited.
Speaker 1: They worked on like the unopened stretches of the Autobahn,
Speaker 1: for example, so it was more safe than what I'm
Speaker 1: making it sound like, especially since this was new road,
Speaker 1: so that the times when the road markings were not
Speaker 1: detectable were rare. Dickman's work would become a part of
Speaker 1: a huge project much bigger than just autonomous cars, called
Speaker 1: the Eureka Framework, and Eureka is still around today, but
Speaker 1: this was sort of a a European Union kind of
Speaker 1: thing before there was a European Union, so it Eureka
Speaker 1: is a pan European research and development funding organization. It's
Speaker 1: meant to make sure that European nations remain competitive with
Speaker 1: other countries, namely countries like Japan and the United States.
Speaker 1: For several years, Dickman's and his team were working on
Speaker 1: refining this driverless car technology, and that culminated in demonstrations
Speaker 1: that happened in nine and n one happened in Paris, France.
Speaker 1: Dickman's had a huge challenge ahead of him. Daimler, with
Speaker 1: whom he was working wanted his team to equip passenger
Speaker 1: cars Daimler passenger cars with this driverless technology, and they
Speaker 1: intended for the team to have one of these cars
Speaker 1: navigate a three lane highway in public traffic, being able
Speaker 1: to make automated changes of lane and everything while carrying real,
Speaker 1: live human passengers, and his team would only have a
Speaker 1: couple of years to accomplish this goal before this demo.
Speaker 1: After a brief consideration, Dick Wan's agreed to this challenge
Speaker 1: and he got to work and in October, his team
Speaker 1: picked up several important people at the Charles de Gaulle
Speaker 1: Airport and took them to a highway and then flipped
Speaker 1: the automobiles, not literally, but they flipped them to autonomous mode.
Speaker 1: And both of the cars that were used in this
Speaker 1: demonstration still had human drivers sitting in the driver's seat.
Speaker 1: They still had their hands on the wheel, but they
Speaker 1: weren't putting any pressure on the wheel. They weren't turning
Speaker 1: the wheel. They just had their hands there in case
Speaker 1: something should happen, so they would occasionally take their hands
Speaker 1: away from the wheel to show that the cars were
Speaker 1: in fact driving themselves and that they were just there
Speaker 1: for safety sake. His team took an altered vehicle on
Speaker 1: an autonomous trip from Bavaria to Denmark that's more than
Speaker 1: one thousand miles or seventeen hundred kilometers. The car reached
Speaker 1: speeds of up to a hundred nine miles per hour
Speaker 1: or a hundred seventy five kilometers per hour, so pretty
Speaker 1: impressive for an autonomous car. Now, despite these remarkable achievements,
Speaker 1: the technology was still too primitive for widespread use. It
Speaker 1: depended heavily on predictable factors. Anything outside of that was
Speaker 1: more of a challenge, particularly obstacle detection. They didn't build
Speaker 1: it in to be consumer friendly, so you had these
Speaker 1: large computer systems that were inside the vehicles themselves. So
Speaker 1: it was an exciting advancement in autonomous car technology, but
Speaker 1: it wasn't far enough along for consumer or practical use,
Speaker 1: and so the world would have to wait a bit
Speaker 1: longer for tech to evolve to give autonomous cars another go.
Speaker 1: And this is related to a concept called AI winter,
Speaker 1: which is tied into the idea of hype cycles. And
Speaker 1: AI winter is named that way because it's considered to
Speaker 1: be the funding equivalent of a nuclear winter, and it
Speaker 1: describes the time when there's a growing reluctance to fund
Speaker 1: AI projects. Generally speaking, this is how the pattern tends
Speaker 1: to play out. You get some super smart people making
Speaker 1: some cool advances in artificial intelligence, and those advances may
Speaker 1: one day have practical application in numerous technologies, but early
Speaker 1: on we're talking about truly experimental work that's exciting but
Speaker 1: not necessarily practical at the moment. However, word of that
Speaker 1: work gets around. Maybe the company sponsoring the research releases
Speaker 1: a big press release that implies breakthroughs are closer than
Speaker 1: they really are. Maybe the media picks up the story
Speaker 1: and they run with it. Enthusiasm among the general populace grows,
Speaker 1: and funding gets easier to secure. But as time passes
Speaker 1: and it becomes clear that in reality, these sort of
Speaker 1: things take a lot of time, and they take a
Speaker 1: lot of work, and they take a lot of money
Speaker 1: to make progress in fields like artificial intelligence, then people
Speaker 1: get less enchanted. Typically, starting with the media, you get
Speaker 1: these stories that are the equivalent of where's my flying car?
Speaker 1: And the narrative changes from think about how the cool,
Speaker 1: how cool the future is going to be too? Why
Speaker 1: isn't the future here already? So enthusiasm for the field drops,
Speaker 1: and then funding drops and that in turn sets back
Speaker 1: the field even further, which delays any other big breakthroughs
Speaker 1: in the process. Eventually, this part of the cycle comes
Speaker 1: to an end if you're lucky, and then enthusiasm can
Speaker 1: begin to build again. AI has experienced several of these cycles,
Speaker 1: and we've also seen the same thing in other fields
Speaker 1: as well. Virtual reality is a field that leaps to mine.
Speaker 1: Dickman's work was really exciting, and it had even survived
Speaker 1: one AI winter in the late nineteen eighties uh and
Speaker 1: got all the way through the mid nineties, But at
Speaker 1: that time the funding was really becoming scarce and his
Speaker 1: work had really gone about as far as it could
Speaker 1: go based upon the sophistication of technology at the time,
Speaker 1: and so it kind of came to an end, and
Speaker 1: his pioneer work was largely forgotten for many years. In
Speaker 1: our next episode, we'll look at the resurgence of interest
Speaker 1: in autonomous cars and how the US Department of Defense
Speaker 1: got involved. But for now we're going to conclude this.
Speaker 1: If you guys have any suggestions for future episodes of
Speaker 1: Tech Stuff, or you've got any stories you want to
Speaker 1: share about autonomous cars, or maybe there's some guests I
Speaker 1: should have on the show. Anything like that, let me know.
Speaker 1: Send me an email. The addresses tech stuff at how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. You can go to tech stuff
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Speaker 1: about the show. In other ways to get in touch
Speaker 1: with me, don't forget to go to our store over
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