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Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with text stuff dot com.

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Speaker 1: Hey there, everyone, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm Jonathan

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Speaker 1: Strickland and now today I'm joined in the podcast studio

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Speaker 1: by my esteemed colleague, the co host of Car Stuff,

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Speaker 1: Scott Benjamin Scott welcome. Thank you very much. Thanks for

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Speaker 1: having me. I appreciate it. Yeah, and Scott, you you

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Speaker 1: this is your first time on tech Stuff. It is

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Speaker 1: first guest by Yeah. Ben's been on several times. Uh,

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Speaker 1: he spoke highly of you, thank you, So I have

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Speaker 1: I have high expectations. Uh. If you guys have not

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Speaker 1: listened to Car Stuff, you definitely need to go and

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Speaker 1: check that out. I know I've recommended it multiple times.

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Speaker 1: When we did our transmissions episode, I was silently hoping

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Speaker 1: that Scott was not sitting at his desk cringing in horror,

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Speaker 1: just from psychically understanding that we were completely in mistating

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Speaker 1: how they worked shocks. You're just saying, editor, I probably

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Speaker 1: couldn't poke too many holes in the in the narrative. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: we were. We were I think pretty consistent, uh and

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Speaker 1: and more correct than not. So that was good. And

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Speaker 1: I you know, we kind of were talking about what

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Speaker 1: was going to be the subject, you know, I said, well,

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Speaker 1: we could pick any topic you want, and we talked

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Speaker 1: about autonomous cars being the subject, the idea of, uh,

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Speaker 1: you know, the whole history of autonomous cars, the technology

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Speaker 1: that more or less is allowing autonomous cars to work,

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Speaker 1: and how that technology is finding its way into cars

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Speaker 1: you can drive today, and not not autonomous cars, not

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Speaker 1: driverless cars, but that technology is making the cars we

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Speaker 1: do use either easier or more safe. And so I

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Speaker 1: thought I'd start off by saying, Scott, the first autonomous

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Speaker 1: car story I could come up with was from fourteen

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Speaker 1: seventy eight. Yeah, that goes way farther back than I

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Speaker 1: had anticipated. Although you said it, I remembered what you're talking. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I mean as soon as I said I thought it

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Speaker 1: was really good. I I said, before we came in here,

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Speaker 1: and I thought I was gonna really catch you off guard.

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Speaker 1: And you said, Leonardo da Vincius, dang, Yeah, he he

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Speaker 1: sketched out an idea for a driverless cart. You're not

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Speaker 1: gonna stump me on Leo too often, because we talked

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Speaker 1: about Leo so many times in the early days of

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Speaker 1: car stuff. I think we've talked about just about every

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Speaker 1: invention the guy's ever had, which again maybe not because

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Speaker 1: you know thousands, it seems like it happens for thousands

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Speaker 1: of things that patterns, but ideas for thousands of things, right,

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Speaker 1: tons of sketches, some of which were ideas that ultimately

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Speaker 1: had no way of working, and a lot of which

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Speaker 1: had you know, some real, some real great thought behind it.

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Speaker 1: And this is one of them. That was a pre

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Speaker 1: programmed clockwork cart. So it's not autonomous in the sense

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Speaker 1: let it could you could set it down on a

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Speaker 1: road and it would just be able to follow the road.

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Speaker 1: It would follow a predetermined pathway and it did so.

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Speaker 1: It had a had a cam that you could put

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Speaker 1: cam stops on, which would tell it tell essentially the

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Speaker 1: steering mechanism win to turn left or right along its pathway,

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Speaker 1: and a spring that you would wind inside the cart

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Speaker 1: gave it the the energy needed to propel itself forward. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and uh so if you knew that I needed to

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Speaker 1: travel forward approximately this far because approximately because you're gonna

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Speaker 1: get and then turn left, you could put the camp

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Speaker 1: stop in the right spot and then it would do that.

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Speaker 1: But that's it. It would have to be the predetermined path.

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Speaker 1: And now it's just the one you can refresh my memory. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I don't think that this was ever built in his time.

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Speaker 1: I believe that some engineers created it later for a

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Speaker 1: museum pieces that right, that's right, the the original one

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Speaker 1: was probably never built in Leonardo's time, which is not

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Speaker 1: a big surprise. A lot of his inventions were again

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Speaker 1: just the realm of the sketch book. They were never

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Speaker 1: actually built. But it was Mark Rossheim who made a

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Speaker 1: working model of it. He also made I did an

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Speaker 1: episode with Josh Clark about humanoid robots. He also made

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Speaker 1: a clockwork mechanical night based on Leonardo da Vinci's design,

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Speaker 1: which supposedly was built during da Vinci's time. But we

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Speaker 1: just have a written account of it existing as opposed

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Speaker 1: to an actual example of it. So it may that

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Speaker 1: that story maybe apocryphal, but the actual design worked interesting,

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Speaker 1: So it's fascinating that it would work. You know, these

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Speaker 1: these drawings of his that finally came to life, you know,

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Speaker 1: hundreds of years later, and and they truly do work. Yeah. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: we have the story from I believe you said about

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Speaker 1: a radio controlled full size car, not not a not

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Speaker 1: a radio control car like a toy car. We're talking

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Speaker 1: about a full sized car being controlled by radio. That

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Speaker 1: is amazing to me. How granted that's TELA operated right. Again,

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Speaker 1: it's not autonomously controlled, so a little different from a

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Speaker 1: car that drives itself. A little bit different. Yeah, I

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Speaker 1: guess so. Um, you know you said that it would

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Speaker 1: be controlled by someone outside the vehicle. I guess it's

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Speaker 1: you could consider it the earliest remote controlled or radio

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Speaker 1: controlled full size car ever. And it was tested in

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Speaker 1: a very difficult situation too. It was New York City

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Speaker 1: during a traffic jam. So we're talking about driving up

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Speaker 1: Broadway and down Fifth Avenue in heavy traffic in you

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Speaker 1: can I measure what that was like. And that's a

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Speaker 1: pretty rigorous first test. Yeah, I'm amazing to think that.

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Speaker 1: You know they were doing this in n I mean,

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Speaker 1: but again, look what we're look where we're at now. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: So we get science fiction author David H. Keller, who

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Speaker 1: wrote a story called the Living Machine in the anthology

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Speaker 1: Wonder Stories. Keller's story involved lots of different things, but

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Speaker 1: had a description of driverless cars that took all the

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Speaker 1: stress out of the commute. You just jumped in. You

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Speaker 1: can put the kiddies into the into the car. It

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Speaker 1: would take them to school, and you wouldn't have to

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Speaker 1: worry about, you know, a chauffeur making a wrong turn.

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Speaker 1: I did mention a show fair, which I thought was

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Speaker 1: meant that the story must have been for a very

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Speaker 1: specific audience. But uh, in nineteen thirty nine, we have

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Speaker 1: the infamous World's Fair. This, this is a World's Fair.

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Speaker 1: I wish I could travel back in time and visit myself.

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Speaker 1: You're talking about GM's Futurama exhibit, right, this is amazing. Yes,

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Speaker 1: that's exactly what I'm talking about. But this particular World's

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Speaker 1: Fair had tons of science fiction a ee kind of ideas,

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Speaker 1: as most of the World's Fairs did, but the ones

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Speaker 1: that this one had really excite me because there was

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Speaker 1: everything from robots to the these this idea of the

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Speaker 1: smart highway system in the Futurama presentation. And I actually

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Speaker 1: watched the film that was shown back at the nineteen

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Speaker 1: nine World's Fair, and it's pretty interesting their approach. You know,

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Speaker 1: they they foresaw a smart highway system in place by

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Speaker 1: nineteen sixty that's what they were predicting in nineteen thirty nine.

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Speaker 1: And GM has been on this in this bandwagon for

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Speaker 1: a long long time. I mean probably prior to nine,

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Speaker 1: to be honest with you, I mean the development of

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Speaker 1: that system alone. And this is the one that showed

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Speaker 1: showcased electric cars that were powered by circuits that were

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Speaker 1: embedded in the roadway. So this is a an infrastructure system,

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Speaker 1: as we'll talk about in this episode, but this was

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Speaker 1: also a radio controlled system. Yeah. And they had there

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Speaker 1: their highways were like trenches, so you would have a

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Speaker 1: lane that was essentially a trench. You could not change

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Speaker 1: lanes because you had these barriers on either side, individual

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Speaker 1: lanes or trenches. Yeah, and the idea was that you

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Speaker 1: would you would get there would be open spots where

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Speaker 1: you would get into the correct lane depending upon what

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Speaker 1: your destination is, but otherwise you stay on target in

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Speaker 1: the death Star lane. And uh. It also had radio

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Speaker 1: communication between vehicles to make sure that the vehicles were

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Speaker 1: maintaining the proper distance from each other. The ideas were incredible. Now,

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Speaker 1: most of this was infrastructure that was built into the

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Speaker 1: road system itself. So we're talking smart roads, smart highways,

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Speaker 1: and uh, we're not talking so much about smart cars, right.

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Speaker 1: The cars themselves didn't have as much of that technology

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Speaker 1: built into them because the the thinking at the time

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Speaker 1: was that this is a system that's going to require

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Speaker 1: an infrastructure to support it. It's going to be an

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Speaker 1: external system that operates the vehicles that that operate within

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Speaker 1: that system. I got I got it. And the cars

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Speaker 1: have to be able to read the system communicate with

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Speaker 1: the system that's outside the vehicle. I got it. I've

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Speaker 1: got a lot to say about that in a little while,

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Speaker 1: because there's some interesting things that happened mid nineteen nine

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Speaker 1: or so. Yeah. Yeah, that's where some some big thinking

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Speaker 1: started to kind of shift from this, because this was

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Speaker 1: the predominant approach for the idea of a driver less system,

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Speaker 1: or at least automated car system was that you would

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Speaker 1: have the the the largest part of the system built

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Speaker 1: into the landscape, not of the vehicle. The vehicle would

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Speaker 1: be a receiver and the landscape would be the transmitter.

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Speaker 1: And it makes sense, I guess when you think about

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Speaker 1: the size of the I guess, for lack of better

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Speaker 1: way to say this, you can correct me on this,

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Speaker 1: but the electronics that are required the cars simply couldn't

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Speaker 1: handle that big. Yeah. Yeah. The for a very long time,

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Speaker 1: the the technology that would allow a vehicle to be

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Speaker 1: autonomous was so huge that you couldn't put in a

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Speaker 1: commercial vehicle, in a moving vehicle. Yeah, you needed to

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Speaker 1: have it as something that was all along the side. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: with the transistor wasn't even developed till the nine So

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Speaker 1: we're talking about time where you're looking at electro mechanical circuitry,

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Speaker 1: vacuum tubes, actual moving parts to complete circuits. Uh, that

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Speaker 1: is enormous and you would not be able to fit

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Speaker 1: that and it would make a vehicle so heavy as

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Speaker 1: to make it impractical. And it's so so different now

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Speaker 1: because they're actually you know, those components are actually saving

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Speaker 1: weight in vehicles over the versions of the technology that

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Speaker 1: we used prior to that, the mechanical versions. So it's

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Speaker 1: just amazing that way this thing is advanced. Yeah, And

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Speaker 1: like I said, you know, all the way through the

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Speaker 1: nineteen fifties, there was still the look at the smart

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Speaker 1: highway system. In fact, there were companies that worked on

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Speaker 1: technology that would have brought this into reality even as

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Speaker 1: early as the late nineteen fifties if we had chosen

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Speaker 1: to pursue it. But that kind of system requires massive

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Speaker 1: buy in across multiple companies, and no company really wants

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Speaker 1: to hand over the keys to their Kingdom to some

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Speaker 1: other standard. So you don't want If I'm developing cars

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Speaker 1: and I know that my competitor is also developing cars

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Speaker 1: and is proposing this highway system that my cars are

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Speaker 1: going to have to conform to, I'm not going to

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Speaker 1: be really crazy about that system. We see this in

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Speaker 1: technology everywhere, not just in cars, but every kind of technology.

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Speaker 1: If I want to have an interconnected kitchen where my

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Speaker 1: refrigerator talks to my stove, I have to get them

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Speaker 1: from the same manufacturer, because no one wants to build

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Speaker 1: their stuff that to work with other people's stuff. It

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Speaker 1: means you can't sell more of your things. So we

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Speaker 1: never saw this smart road smart highway system take off

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Speaker 1: the way the visionaries back in the late thirties were imagining.

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Speaker 1: It just never happened. And they always seem to promise that,

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Speaker 1: you know, in twenty five years, we're gonna see this

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Speaker 1: as the standard, this is the way it's gonna be,

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Speaker 1: or in twenty years sometimes and even now, you know,

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Speaker 1: even now, when we see the autonomous cars that um

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Speaker 1: auties rolling out in other companies, they're's still saying it's

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Speaker 1: a decade away, it's fifteen years away, and it's always

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Speaker 1: been the case. It's been the case ever since, you know,

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Speaker 1: the nineteen thirties. Yeah, yeah, it's all well, I mean,

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Speaker 1: that's that's kind of like a running joke in twenty

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Speaker 1: to fifty years or in ten to fifteen years. Uh.

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Speaker 1: And then you look at the people who are suggesting,

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Speaker 1: whatever the technology is, it will be here in ten

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Speaker 1: to fifteen years, and you go back five years and

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Speaker 1: those people are saying it will be ten to fifteen years,

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Speaker 1: and you go back another Eventually you get to a

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Speaker 1: point where you realize it's always ten to fifteen years away,

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Speaker 1: and you wonder if that tend to if that's just

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Speaker 1: if that tomorrow is always going to be tomorrow and

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Speaker 1: never today. Um, but we're along the way. We're seeing

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Speaker 1: some really cool developments. In the sixties, we had labs

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Speaker 1: at Stanford and other facilities begin to work on robot

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Speaker 1: controlled vehicles, which weren't cars. They were vehicles meant to

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Speaker 1: go into space, like space probes, but these robot controlled

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Speaker 1: vehicles that were meant to allow a a probe to

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Speaker 1: continue on a pathway and make corrections on its own,

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Speaker 1: because you know, the further way you get from Earth,

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Speaker 1: the longer it takes for information to pass between the

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Speaker 1: probe and Earth. Information can only go so fast as

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Speaker 1: the speed of light, and eventually those probes go far

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Speaker 1: enough where that becomes a factor. Then you had to

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Speaker 1: have a system that can make minor corrections on its

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Speaker 1: own rather than have to relay the problem back. Then

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Speaker 1: you have to do all the math. Al Right, well,

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Speaker 1: we have to fix the problem not for right now,

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Speaker 1: but for forty five minutes from now, because that's when

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Speaker 1: the probe will get our response. And it's just it's

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Speaker 1: too complicated too. Yeah, No, no one wants to do

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Speaker 1: that much, especially when all you have to rely on

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Speaker 1: our slide rules. Uh. So then we see that kind

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Speaker 1: of technology start to filter into other areas, and uh

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Speaker 1: that's when we started to really think about what are

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Speaker 1: the elements that are necessary to let a car navigate autonomously.

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Speaker 1: This involves sensing the environment, so it has to be

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Speaker 1: able to detect where it is in relation to the road,

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Speaker 1: to other vehicles, to other possible obstacles, whether that's people

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Speaker 1: or animals or whatever it might be. It has to

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Speaker 1: be able to process the information that it receives so

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Speaker 1: that it has a way of making sense of all

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Speaker 1: that data. Just just picking up the data isn't enough, right,

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Speaker 1: You have to be able to say what does this

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Speaker 1: data mean? And then it has to react to it.

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Speaker 1: It has to have a way of responding to that information.

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Speaker 1: That's critical because what's going to react to it. Is

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Speaker 1: it going to be the driver? Is it going to

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Speaker 1: be the system itself and it is going to just

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Speaker 1: alert you with a a noise or light or is

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Speaker 1: it something that is going to take control and do

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Speaker 1: it itself exactly? And uh, and there we've seen lots

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Speaker 1: of different approaches with that. Sometimes, Uh, you know, you

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Speaker 1: could argue that the progress has mostly been going from

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Speaker 1: the most simple implementation to the more complicated implementations that

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Speaker 1: have become possible as technology has improved. But sometimes it's

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Speaker 1: just you don't not everyone wants a car that starts

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Speaker 1: to respond on its own because they start to feel

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Speaker 1: like they're no longer in control of their own vehicle,

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Speaker 1: which for some people is a real issue. Uh. In

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Speaker 1: the nineteen eighties, there was a guy named Ernst Dickmans

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Speaker 1: who created an autonomous driving system using a Mercedes van

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Speaker 1: called the VaMoRs Mercedes Van. Have you heard of this?

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Speaker 1: It's the vision guidedstem yeah, yeah, yeah, this this was

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Speaker 1: a really incredible thing to look at. So it's it

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Speaker 1: was a van that had an enormous amount of electronic

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Speaker 1: equipment inside it. And again this is we're talking about

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Speaker 1: the nineteen eighties. This is a vehicle that could autonomously

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Speaker 1: navigate down highway systems. Yeah. They called this a robotic van. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and in fact, three different generations of robotics went through

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Speaker 1: this one van. They do a system, they gut the system,

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Speaker 1: they would rebuild it and do a second generation. They

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Speaker 1: did it again for a third generation, and it could

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Speaker 1: do things like maintain its distance from the vehicle that's

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Speaker 1: ahead of it, It could maintain its position in the lane,

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Speaker 1: it could maintain its speed and uh. It was really

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Speaker 1: a groundbreaking approach that a lot of the technology and

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Speaker 1: um and processes that were used and that have filtered

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Speaker 1: into the autonomous cars we were talking about today. Sure,

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Speaker 1: this is the beginning of what we call adaptive cruise control. Yes, yeah,

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Speaker 1: we'll talk about that a little bit more later too.

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Speaker 1: So super cool. And there are videos online of this

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Speaker 1: the Vamours Mercedes v A M O R s uh,

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Speaker 1: and you can actually see this thing like cruising down

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Speaker 1: the road with the guy sitting in the back of

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Speaker 1: the van looking at the electronics that again are just

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Speaker 1: taking up shelves of space in the van. So unless

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Speaker 1: you happen to have a van with lots of shelves

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Speaker 1: of space, that's not the best implementation. But it did

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Speaker 1: show the promise of the techno. I wonder why they

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Speaker 1: didn't do with their two seat sports car. Yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: just carrying behind a trailer with cables connecting to the car. Uh.

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Speaker 1: In ninety four you had the Eureka Project Prometheus. Now

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Speaker 1: the Eureka Project was out of Europe Um and they

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Speaker 1: had three Mercedes Benz cars with systems that allowed their

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Speaker 1: cars to make autonomous lane changes, which was a first

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Speaker 1: in vehicles. They could detect where the lanes were. They

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Speaker 1: could detect up to six other vehicles, three in front

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Speaker 1: and three behind. Essentially the car that's directly in front

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Speaker 1: of them, the car that's to the lane and the left,

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Speaker 1: the car that's to the lane in the right, and

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Speaker 1: then the ones that are behind them as well. And

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Speaker 1: if all the parameters were right, if none of those

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Speaker 1: cars were too close or were moving uh laterally across lanes,

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Speaker 1: then it could make an autonomous lane change on its own,

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Speaker 1: which was a big deal. That's still a big deal

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Speaker 1: now even right. I mean when you think about it,

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Speaker 1: some of the modern vehicles, that's still a big selling

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Speaker 1: feature is uh, you know, lane warning detection devices things

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Speaker 1: like that and uh and um blind spot detection and

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Speaker 1: you know that that was what they were using then,

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Speaker 1: just a more primitive version, yes, and so now we're

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Speaker 1: starting to see that specific type of technology find its

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Speaker 1: way into consumer vehicles today. Uh. Two thousand four was

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Speaker 1: when DARPA introduced the Grand Challenge. I love the DARPA

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Speaker 1: Grand Challenge. It is the coolest thing to me. They

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Speaker 1: invited a lot of different research institutions, colleges, even private

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Speaker 1: companies to participate in this challenge. The idea was to

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Speaker 1: build a vehicle that could autonomously navigate a course in

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Speaker 1: the desert, the Mojave Desert, uh, and to see if

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Speaker 1: it could get from point A to point b uh.

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Speaker 1: And they have several teams participate, but no one successfully

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Speaker 1: navigated of course that first year, and no prize was

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Speaker 1: awarded that first year. Yeah. I think I think one

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Speaker 1: team got eleven point seven kilometers in and that's the

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Speaker 1: furthest anyone made it I'll give you a little bit

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Speaker 1: of a spoiler. Yeah, the two thousand five five Darper Challenge,

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Speaker 1: and challenge that plays heavily into the development of the

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Speaker 1: Google car. Yes, because the two thousand five challenge had

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Speaker 1: five teams that actually did finish, including one from Stanford,

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Speaker 1: and the people on that Stanford team many of them

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Speaker 1: went on to work for Google. Yeah. In fact, you

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Speaker 1: know the guy that headed the team, I guess, um,

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Speaker 1: Sebastian Thrum. That's the guy that he won the two

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Speaker 1: thousand five Darker Grand Challenge and the two million dollar

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Speaker 1: prize in the US Department of Defense. But he was

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Speaker 1: also the co and this is also the guy that

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Speaker 1: was the co inventor of Google street View. Yes, so

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Speaker 1: he's he's got you know, some some engineering chaps. I

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Speaker 1: guess he's got he's got the credential. Yeah, that's right.

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Speaker 1: So you know, we'll talk about the Google self driving

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Speaker 1: car later. Yeah, yeah, he um. He also gave a

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Speaker 1: TED talk specifically about driverless cars and his personal uh

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Speaker 1: motivation for developing driverless cars, which was a very personal story.

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Speaker 1: As a teenager, he lost a friend in a car accident,

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Speaker 1: and so he said he wanted to develop systems that

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Speaker 1: could save lives, and that's really his driving motivation, not

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Speaker 1: to use a pun to create autonomous cars. So uh yeah,

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Speaker 1: the two thousand four and two thousand five DARPA challenges

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Speaker 1: kind of set the bar for autonomous cars in a

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Speaker 1: large but desert course. Two thousand seven DARPA would up

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Speaker 1: the antie with the Urban Challenge, which is where they

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Speaker 1: were on an I think it was an Air Force

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Speaker 1: base and the cars had to navigate a simulated town environment,

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Speaker 1: including merging into and out of traffic. I remember hearing

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Speaker 1: about some of the cars that would do. Feel like,

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Speaker 1: there's one car that just pulled itself into a parking

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Speaker 1: lot and stopped. I guess it just got overwhelmed. Some

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Speaker 1: of some of these are funny clips to watch. You

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Speaker 1: see them, it's interesting to see how they handle the situation. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I think two of them got into an accident with

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Speaker 1: each other. But there were six teams that finished the

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Speaker 1: course successfully. And you know, when you think about navigating

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Speaker 1: a dynamic system like that with and they weren't told

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Speaker 1: what the route was going to be ahead of time.

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Speaker 1: They were told just as the challenge started. So the

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Speaker 1: idea was that the car had to be able to

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Speaker 1: autonomously do this. They couldn't program everything in pre challenge.

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Speaker 1: It had to be able to handle these situations on

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Speaker 1: its own and obey all traffic laws. So not just

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Speaker 1: merge into and out of traffic, but come to a

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Speaker 1: stop at intersections and be able to read signs. You'd

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Speaker 1: be able to read signs, be able to react to

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Speaker 1: traffic lights, pedestrians. These are all big challenges, right. Any

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Speaker 1: one of these is a huge challenge from an engineering standpoint.

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Speaker 1: I can't remember if they use simulated pedestrians or if

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Speaker 1: it was actual pedestrians, because that would be a dangerous

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Speaker 1: game to play in the middle of the dark urban challenge.

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Speaker 1: I would need to have a guaranteed million dollar prize

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Speaker 1: to be a pedestrian for an autonomous car. Jella guaranteed

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Speaker 1: milk that would do it. Yeah, well, you know, yeah.

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Speaker 1: Maybe it depends also on what if they had capped

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Speaker 1: the UH the speed limit that the cars were all

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Speaker 1: up to travel. If anybody's listening, I'll do it for

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Speaker 1: half that we're pricing each other out all my life

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Speaker 1: and limb is worth two heard of your post? Uh

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Speaker 1: And in two thousand ten, that's when Google revealed that

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Speaker 1: they were working on a driverless car. It had happened already.

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Speaker 1: I had a friend at Google who was joking around

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Speaker 1: that he had this huge, huge, huge thing that Google

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Speaker 1: was working on that I would just die to learn,

399
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Speaker 1: but he wouldn't tell me what it was. And the

400
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Speaker 1: week when this came out, I wrote to him and

401
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Speaker 1: I said, was that it? He's like, bingo you are?

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Speaker 1: He sat on it. I said, you realized, you know

403
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Speaker 1: that you can't. He found out he cannot have a

404
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Speaker 1: conversation with me about his work because of my work.

405
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Speaker 1: So we now joke about that whenever we get together.

406
00:21:54,960 --> 00:21:59,000
Speaker 1: Is you know, like, so, how's your job frustrating? Uh? Yeah,

407
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Speaker 1: well he lie it because he likes to wind me up.

408
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Speaker 1: He likes to you know, man, there's this Oh I

409
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Speaker 1: can't talk about it. I know something you don't know.

410
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Speaker 1: Even when he doesn't know anything. In fact, that's probably

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Speaker 1: his favorite is when he just bluffs thing or something.

412
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Speaker 1: But this was This was a kind of an eye

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Speaker 1: opener because not only did Google have a driverless car,

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Speaker 1: but they had been uh testing it for quite some

415
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Speaker 1: time without anyone being aware of it. Big big shock

416
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Speaker 1: to most of us. Right, Yeah, they had logs something

417
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Speaker 1: like a hundred forty thousand miles in driverless car road miles.

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Speaker 1: It's just crazy, well and relatively unnoticed. Yeah. Now, part

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Speaker 1: of the unnoticed was that they always had someone who

420
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Speaker 1: was sitting at the wheel, even if they didn't have

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Speaker 1: control of the vehicle at that time, because if something

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Speaker 1: did go wrong, they wanted the ability for a human

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Speaker 1: to intervene and stop the vehicle or or drive it

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Speaker 1: off the highway or whatever. Yeah, I think that most

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Speaker 1: of it actually was surface streets. I don't think they

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Speaker 1: were driving on the highway too much with these. In fact,

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Speaker 1: I think that they specifically said they limited the surface streets.

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Speaker 1: Either that or I've got it totally mixed up and

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Speaker 1: it's the other way around. I'm gonna gonna talk about

430
00:23:07,000 --> 00:23:08,920
Speaker 1: the the Google car right now, and you want to

431
00:23:09,080 --> 00:23:10,840
Speaker 1: you want to wait until later, you want to do

432
00:23:10,880 --> 00:23:12,800
Speaker 1: it right now. Let's do it right now, Scott, All right,

433
00:23:12,880 --> 00:23:16,000
Speaker 1: let's do it a vehicle. It is really cool. I mean,

434
00:23:16,119 --> 00:23:19,199
Speaker 1: it's got so many different things going on with it.

435
00:23:19,240 --> 00:23:21,320
Speaker 1: I mean, these are features that we'll talk about later,

436
00:23:21,359 --> 00:23:23,080
Speaker 1: I guess. But we mentioned, you know, the development, the

437
00:23:23,119 --> 00:23:25,840
Speaker 1: whole thing. Um. You know, it's a Toyota Prius is

438
00:23:25,880 --> 00:23:27,879
Speaker 1: the first one that we saw. I believe, right, I

439
00:23:27,920 --> 00:23:30,360
Speaker 1: think that they have now expanded that fleet to include

440
00:23:30,840 --> 00:23:34,800
Speaker 1: um like six Toyota Prius vehicles. UM, also an Audi

441
00:23:34,880 --> 00:23:38,520
Speaker 1: T T and I believe they have some Lexus r

442
00:23:38,680 --> 00:23:42,960
Speaker 1: XO models that they're using for quote unquote Google Cars,

443
00:23:43,400 --> 00:23:45,280
Speaker 1: because they don't really make their own car, They just

444
00:23:45,440 --> 00:23:49,880
Speaker 1: modify other manufacturer's vehicles to to work this way. Now,

445
00:23:50,000 --> 00:23:52,399
Speaker 1: the cost of this stuff is really really expensive still,

446
00:23:53,119 --> 00:23:55,879
Speaker 1: UM somewhere in the neighborhood of something like a hundred

447
00:23:55,920 --> 00:23:59,560
Speaker 1: and fifty thousand dollars of equipment in each vehicle in

448
00:23:59,640 --> 00:24:01,399
Speaker 1: order to this all work. And that's not even the

449
00:24:01,400 --> 00:24:03,760
Speaker 1: street price of the vehicle included. That's that's just the

450
00:24:03,800 --> 00:24:06,600
Speaker 1: equipment that makes it possible for it to navigate through

451
00:24:06,640 --> 00:24:10,439
Speaker 1: these these dynamic systems exactly right. And that includes a

452
00:24:10,600 --> 00:24:14,199
Speaker 1: seventy thou dollar lidar system that's light radar. I mean,

453
00:24:14,240 --> 00:24:17,240
Speaker 1: you're sure your audience knows what this is all about, UM,

454
00:24:17,280 --> 00:24:19,720
Speaker 1: but man, it's got this range finder thing that's on top.

455
00:24:19,760 --> 00:24:22,040
Speaker 1: It's probably the dead giveaway that it's Google Car. Even

456
00:24:22,440 --> 00:24:25,359
Speaker 1: that range finder, it's a sixty four bean laser that

457
00:24:25,480 --> 00:24:29,160
Speaker 1: creates a three D map of the entire surrounding environment. So, um,

458
00:24:29,280 --> 00:24:31,600
Speaker 1: I think it's like they call it inch precise in

459
00:24:31,640 --> 00:24:34,320
Speaker 1: the way that it works, it's it's a high definition

460
00:24:34,840 --> 00:24:38,040
Speaker 1: inch precise map of the entire region that this thing

461
00:24:38,119 --> 00:24:40,720
Speaker 1: is traveling through at any given time in real time. Yeah,

462
00:24:40,720 --> 00:24:44,040
Speaker 1: the the visualization of that data is amazing. There's some

463
00:24:44,200 --> 00:24:46,840
Speaker 1: of that and the TED talk I mentioned where they

464
00:24:46,880 --> 00:24:49,680
Speaker 1: show the and it looks almost like a heat signature

465
00:24:49,720 --> 00:24:51,480
Speaker 1: map the way they show it, and whether or not

466
00:24:51,560 --> 00:24:54,320
Speaker 1: that was an artistic choice they made for the purposes

467
00:24:54,359 --> 00:24:56,800
Speaker 1: of the TED talk, I don't know. But you could

468
00:24:56,800 --> 00:25:02,440
Speaker 1: see the actual landscape of the street in real time,

469
00:25:02,600 --> 00:25:05,680
Speaker 1: like there was the the camera angle of the car

470
00:25:05,800 --> 00:25:09,240
Speaker 1: moving through and then the view of this range finder

471
00:25:09,320 --> 00:25:12,520
Speaker 1: including people like pedestrians walking across the street, so that

472
00:25:12,520 --> 00:25:15,080
Speaker 1: the car new to stop and like it was making

473
00:25:15,080 --> 00:25:17,320
Speaker 1: a left turn and it would stop and allow pedestrians

474
00:25:17,320 --> 00:25:21,200
Speaker 1: to continue across. The pedestrians continue to walk across, which

475
00:25:22,240 --> 00:25:25,600
Speaker 1: belied a casual approach to this to the level that

476
00:25:25,640 --> 00:25:29,320
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure they were plants because as in not

477
00:25:29,320 --> 00:25:32,360
Speaker 1: not like plants is in the life form, but rather

478
00:25:32,400 --> 00:25:35,600
Speaker 1: they had been planted there by Google, because whenever I've

479
00:25:35,680 --> 00:25:38,000
Speaker 1: crossed the street and the car is turning left and

480
00:25:38,119 --> 00:25:40,679
Speaker 1: is about to collide with me, I have a reaction.

481
00:25:40,840 --> 00:25:45,199
Speaker 1: And these people did not almost like Hills. Yeah, in

482
00:25:45,240 --> 00:25:47,200
Speaker 1: a way, I guess. Right now, I want to say,

483
00:25:47,240 --> 00:25:48,760
Speaker 1: you those ties into this, and this is kind of

484
00:25:48,840 --> 00:25:51,400
Speaker 1: last thing I got about the Google car really because

485
00:25:51,400 --> 00:25:53,439
Speaker 1: I'd like to get to the technology of it. But

486
00:25:54,119 --> 00:25:57,639
Speaker 1: there have been two incidents, I suppose, with Google cars.

487
00:25:58,119 --> 00:26:01,280
Speaker 1: And the interesting thing about both of these incidents, it's

488
00:26:01,320 --> 00:26:04,400
Speaker 1: not the fault of the system. These are human errors. Yeah,

489
00:26:04,440 --> 00:26:06,119
Speaker 1: I wasn't. I think one of them might have been

490
00:26:06,119 --> 00:26:08,639
Speaker 1: a human error of the person who was operating the

491
00:26:08,720 --> 00:26:12,080
Speaker 1: Google car. They they had taken manual control correct, and

492
00:26:12,119 --> 00:26:14,640
Speaker 1: then the other one was Google car got rear ended.

493
00:26:14,800 --> 00:26:17,760
Speaker 1: Yeah exactly, other driver exactly. So you know, there should

494
00:26:17,760 --> 00:26:20,280
Speaker 1: be zero bad press about the Google cars being in

495
00:26:20,320 --> 00:26:22,879
Speaker 1: an accident. Yeah, you're talking about more than a hundred

496
00:26:22,920 --> 00:26:26,680
Speaker 1: forty thousand miles logged and only two incidents, and neither

497
00:26:26,760 --> 00:26:29,399
Speaker 1: of them were due to the autonomous part. So so

498
00:26:29,480 --> 00:26:33,040
Speaker 1: none of them, none of the thousand miles had an

499
00:26:33,040 --> 00:26:37,080
Speaker 1: accident associated with them, just the miles of the human operations. Yeah,

500
00:26:37,080 --> 00:26:38,880
Speaker 1: that's right. And you know this thing is uh, it's

501
00:26:38,920 --> 00:26:42,440
Speaker 1: only authorized I guess to operate in what is it,

502
00:26:42,520 --> 00:26:47,520
Speaker 1: four states, right? I know that California, Nevada, California, Nevada, UM, Michigan,

503
00:26:47,560 --> 00:26:50,200
Speaker 1: and Florida, and then I believe the District of Columbia

504
00:26:50,280 --> 00:26:53,840
Speaker 1: has recently signed on as well, and Georgia might be soon,

505
00:26:53,960 --> 00:26:57,760
Speaker 1: according to according to the Laddinal Constitution, which sent out

506
00:26:57,760 --> 00:27:00,679
Speaker 1: a tweet the other day saying Georgia might pave the

507
00:27:00,760 --> 00:27:06,439
Speaker 1: way for driverless cars. And I thought, but we'll get

508
00:27:06,480 --> 00:27:08,720
Speaker 1: into personal feelings at the end of this episode. The

509
00:27:09,119 --> 00:27:11,280
Speaker 1: pave the Way will be the fifth state to jump

510
00:27:11,320 --> 00:27:13,520
Speaker 1: on the bandway pave the way for the for people

511
00:27:13,640 --> 00:27:17,080
Speaker 1: in Georgia for driverless cars, I guess understood. But yeah.

512
00:27:17,160 --> 00:27:19,080
Speaker 1: The one thing that is cool is Google is working

513
00:27:19,080 --> 00:27:22,800
Speaker 1: on prototype cars for autonomous driving, their own cars. These

514
00:27:22,840 --> 00:27:26,000
Speaker 1: look like tiny little smart cars. Have seen these. They're

515
00:27:26,119 --> 00:27:29,840
Speaker 1: they're nifty looking devices, but they are really I mean

516
00:27:29,880 --> 00:27:32,439
Speaker 1: when we say prototype, we really mean it. This is

517
00:27:32,480 --> 00:27:35,240
Speaker 1: like a proof of concept kind of thing. And they

518
00:27:35,440 --> 00:27:38,479
Speaker 1: only have a top speed of twenty five Google captain

519
00:27:38,520 --> 00:27:41,680
Speaker 1: at that. Yeah, they need some development there. Yeah, it's

520
00:27:41,720 --> 00:27:44,280
Speaker 1: mostly I think, to again test the system out, and

521
00:27:44,320 --> 00:27:47,440
Speaker 1: they don't have a steering wheel, they don't have an accelerator,

522
00:27:47,480 --> 00:27:50,159
Speaker 1: they don't have a break, there are no manual controls. It.

523
00:27:51,040 --> 00:27:53,840
Speaker 1: I mean that that is not a car from the

524
00:27:54,240 --> 00:27:56,880
Speaker 1: classic viewpoint of what a car should be. Right. Yeah,

525
00:27:56,920 --> 00:28:00,119
Speaker 1: there's no way for you to intervene. You have to

526
00:28:00,160 --> 00:28:03,439
Speaker 1: take full like faith that the system is gonna take

527
00:28:03,440 --> 00:28:05,280
Speaker 1: care of you. This is something just off the top

528
00:28:05,280 --> 00:28:06,679
Speaker 1: of my head here I was. I was thinking that.

529
00:28:06,720 --> 00:28:09,160
Speaker 1: You know, recently I heard somebody say something like, um,

530
00:28:09,200 --> 00:28:12,440
Speaker 1: you know the cars have only advanced. Well, really, I

531
00:28:12,480 --> 00:28:15,160
Speaker 1: guess maybe it's more to say cars have not advanced

532
00:28:15,240 --> 00:28:17,400
Speaker 1: enough that if Henry Ford were to come back now

533
00:28:17,480 --> 00:28:19,680
Speaker 1: from the grave, he would look at a car and say,

534
00:28:19,720 --> 00:28:22,800
Speaker 1: that's a car, and that's that's my invention that's been adapted. Right.

535
00:28:22,920 --> 00:28:25,200
Speaker 1: There hasn't been a major dramatic shift in the way

536
00:28:25,240 --> 00:28:27,879
Speaker 1: that cars have been built since cars have been built,

537
00:28:28,640 --> 00:28:30,480
Speaker 1: and and this is one. When you look at something

538
00:28:30,480 --> 00:28:34,320
Speaker 1: that has no steering wheel, no no, no, i'm accelerator,

539
00:28:34,359 --> 00:28:36,760
Speaker 1: no breaks, no anything like that. He might look at

540
00:28:36,800 --> 00:28:38,440
Speaker 1: that and say, like, I don't know what this is.

541
00:28:38,480 --> 00:28:41,720
Speaker 1: How how do you hook it up to another horse?

542
00:28:41,760 --> 00:28:44,480
Speaker 1: Have we gone back to horse drawn carriages? What's up with?

543
00:28:44,600 --> 00:28:47,320
Speaker 1: Is this a woodshed on wheelship that's going on? You

544
00:28:47,400 --> 00:28:49,720
Speaker 1: must you must haul stuff in that right, This must

545
00:28:49,760 --> 00:28:52,719
Speaker 1: only go downhill, which would be very useful in some

546
00:28:52,760 --> 00:28:56,240
Speaker 1: parts of San Francisco. And you still can't say yeah, yeah, exactly.

547
00:28:56,280 --> 00:28:58,360
Speaker 1: You just you just have to hope that when whichever

548
00:28:58,480 --> 00:29:03,200
Speaker 1: way you're hurtling down the hill, you're clear of any obstacles. Um.

549
00:29:03,240 --> 00:29:05,920
Speaker 1: When I went to C E. S and two thousand fourteen,

550
00:29:06,080 --> 00:29:09,360
Speaker 1: which the year that we're recording this, I also saw

551
00:29:10,120 --> 00:29:14,400
Speaker 1: Audi and BMW showing off driverless car technology. Again, this

552
00:29:14,480 --> 00:29:17,800
Speaker 1: is this is stuff where the companies weren't committing to

553
00:29:17,880 --> 00:29:20,280
Speaker 1: saying that they were going to produce a driverless car,

554
00:29:20,720 --> 00:29:23,000
Speaker 1: but rather that they were developing the technology to make

555
00:29:23,600 --> 00:29:27,160
Speaker 1: driving safer for everybody. So it's kind of like saying,

556
00:29:27,600 --> 00:29:30,040
Speaker 1: look at all the technology we've developed that makes these

557
00:29:30,080 --> 00:29:33,920
Speaker 1: cars safe, We've incorporated all of them into this one vehicle,

558
00:29:34,360 --> 00:29:38,160
Speaker 1: and it's so sophisticated that the vehicle can drive itself.

559
00:29:38,400 --> 00:29:40,000
Speaker 1: That was kind of the way they were presenting it,

560
00:29:40,080 --> 00:29:42,600
Speaker 1: not that the cars that you buy from us in

561
00:29:42,760 --> 00:29:46,040
Speaker 1: five years or ten years are going to be automated

562
00:29:46,040 --> 00:29:47,440
Speaker 1: and you just hit a little switch and you go

563
00:29:47,480 --> 00:29:49,560
Speaker 1: to where you want to go. But rather, this is

564
00:29:49,560 --> 00:29:52,720
Speaker 1: how safe we are, which is an interesting way of

565
00:29:52,720 --> 00:29:54,160
Speaker 1: of taking an effect. That's the way a lot of

566
00:29:54,160 --> 00:29:57,560
Speaker 1: auto manufacturers are approaching this. Not to say we're building

567
00:29:57,640 --> 00:30:01,160
Speaker 1: driverless cars, but rather we're building incredibly eight cars now

568
00:30:01,200 --> 00:30:04,800
Speaker 1: in two thousand sixteen, which I know is in the

569
00:30:04,800 --> 00:30:07,360
Speaker 1: future for those of you who are listening, you know,

570
00:30:07,360 --> 00:30:11,360
Speaker 1: and when we're recording this isn't But that's when Cadillac

571
00:30:11,480 --> 00:30:14,800
Speaker 1: is supposedly going to come out with a car that

572
00:30:14,920 --> 00:30:18,640
Speaker 1: could be completely automated if you wanted to, at least

573
00:30:18,680 --> 00:30:22,520
Speaker 1: in certain situations, in their two thousand seventeen line of vehicles,

574
00:30:22,680 --> 00:30:26,800
Speaker 1: which would have the super Cruise feature. I like that name,

575
00:30:27,560 --> 00:30:31,040
Speaker 1: super Cruise System. Yeah, and that uh from why I

576
00:30:31,120 --> 00:30:36,000
Speaker 1: understand you would initiate the super Cruise system in specific

577
00:30:36,080 --> 00:30:39,720
Speaker 1: scenarios like if you were in stop and go highway

578
00:30:39,720 --> 00:30:43,480
Speaker 1: traffic and you know it's mindless, you're you come to

579
00:30:43,520 --> 00:30:46,960
Speaker 1: a stop, you wait what seems to be an eternity.

580
00:30:47,000 --> 00:30:49,400
Speaker 1: This is a familiar story for anyone who drives in

581
00:30:49,440 --> 00:30:53,240
Speaker 1: Atlanta on any of the highways during rush hour certainly,

582
00:30:53,520 --> 00:30:56,440
Speaker 1: and then you wait and then there's a four ft

583
00:30:56,520 --> 00:30:58,840
Speaker 1: gap that opens between you and the car in front,

584
00:30:58,880 --> 00:31:01,120
Speaker 1: so you creep forward and then you stop again. More

585
00:31:01,160 --> 00:31:04,320
Speaker 1: than likely another car jams itself into that four ft gap. Right,

586
00:31:04,360 --> 00:31:07,560
Speaker 1: if you have not acted, then that certainly has happened.

587
00:31:07,880 --> 00:31:09,920
Speaker 1: So this would be a system you would activate in

588
00:31:09,960 --> 00:31:12,520
Speaker 1: those kind of situations to sort of take over the

589
00:31:12,560 --> 00:31:15,680
Speaker 1: monotony of that of that situation. Can I tell you

590
00:31:15,760 --> 00:31:18,320
Speaker 1: how I've I've heard it described, And the Supercrew System

591
00:31:18,400 --> 00:31:20,400
Speaker 1: is relatively new. They've been talking about it for about

592
00:31:20,400 --> 00:31:23,040
Speaker 1: a year now, but they've recently had a you know,

593
00:31:23,120 --> 00:31:25,080
Speaker 1: the press release that came out and said we're likely

594
00:31:25,120 --> 00:31:28,880
Speaker 1: to put this on a vehicle in and they'll release

595
00:31:28,920 --> 00:31:33,280
Speaker 1: in ten model and it's likely to be on a Cadillac.

596
00:31:33,560 --> 00:31:35,200
Speaker 1: That's that's probably what it's gonna be. So you'll see

597
00:31:35,200 --> 00:31:38,280
Speaker 1: it written as a Cadillac Supercrew System, but it's really

598
00:31:38,320 --> 00:31:42,160
Speaker 1: just GM Supercruise alright. So the way they describe it

599
00:31:42,240 --> 00:31:46,040
Speaker 1: is that it's a full speed range adaptive cruise control

600
00:31:46,160 --> 00:31:49,320
Speaker 1: and lane centering system. These as cameras and other sensors

601
00:31:49,360 --> 00:31:53,320
Speaker 1: to automatically steer and break in highway driving situations. That's

602
00:31:53,320 --> 00:31:55,800
Speaker 1: how they kind of lay it out in uh in

603
00:31:56,320 --> 00:31:59,640
Speaker 1: not so much legal turns but layman's terms. Yes, right now,

604
00:32:00,040 --> 00:32:03,000
Speaker 1: I want to make note here also that Mercedes Benz

605
00:32:03,000 --> 00:32:05,560
Speaker 1: has had a similar system for a long time. You know,

606
00:32:05,600 --> 00:32:11,600
Speaker 1: they've had something that they call um dystronic plus's dystronic. Well,

607
00:32:12,280 --> 00:32:16,080
Speaker 1: come on, Scott, you can be honest here. A lot

608
00:32:16,200 --> 00:32:18,920
Speaker 1: of the words we come up within the automotive industry

609
00:32:19,040 --> 00:32:21,320
Speaker 1: don't really mean anything. I know, I know, it's just

610
00:32:21,360 --> 00:32:23,880
Speaker 1: their own brand name, I guess for the same type

611
00:32:23,880 --> 00:32:25,480
Speaker 1: of system. But they've had it for a few years

612
00:32:25,840 --> 00:32:28,000
Speaker 1: and it's been on the S and E class models.

613
00:32:28,480 --> 00:32:31,880
Speaker 1: And the one difference here, and this is where the

614
00:32:31,960 --> 00:32:36,480
Speaker 1: legal stuff comes in, right, Mercedes has required drivers to

615
00:32:36,520 --> 00:32:38,520
Speaker 1: have their hands on the wheel even when the system

616
00:32:38,600 --> 00:32:41,239
Speaker 1: is operational. Now, that's how they get around saying that

617
00:32:41,280 --> 00:32:45,040
Speaker 1: this is an autonomous car. Now, GM calls it semi

618
00:32:45,120 --> 00:32:48,680
Speaker 1: automated driving. And they're not gonna say autonomous. They're not

619
00:32:48,720 --> 00:32:50,880
Speaker 1: gonna say that it's a self driving system. They're never

620
00:32:50,880 --> 00:32:53,720
Speaker 1: going to say that for now. They're gonna leave it

621
00:32:53,760 --> 00:32:57,120
Speaker 1: at this, this semi automated and they're gonna say that, Yeah, sure,

622
00:32:57,160 --> 00:32:59,080
Speaker 1: the drivers have to be in the driver's seat. They

623
00:32:59,080 --> 00:33:01,400
Speaker 1: have to be paying attention to be awake, which is

624
00:33:01,400 --> 00:33:02,960
Speaker 1: weird to say, but they have to be awake. They

625
00:33:03,000 --> 00:33:05,800
Speaker 1: can't have your feet propped up on the dashboard. You

626
00:33:05,800 --> 00:33:07,960
Speaker 1: have to be at the ready. Yeah and uh, and

627
00:33:08,360 --> 00:33:09,960
Speaker 1: likely they're gonna say that you're gonna have to have

628
00:33:10,000 --> 00:33:12,320
Speaker 1: your hands on the wheel, just as Mercedes does, because

629
00:33:12,360 --> 00:33:15,520
Speaker 1: again it comes down to legal issues. Sure, yeah, I

630
00:33:15,560 --> 00:33:18,040
Speaker 1: mean we just you know, you were mentioning just now

631
00:33:18,080 --> 00:33:20,240
Speaker 1: that there are only a few states that even allow

632
00:33:20,280 --> 00:33:24,040
Speaker 1: autonomous cars on the road. So if you if you

633
00:33:24,240 --> 00:33:26,720
Speaker 1: call your car that, then you have just limited where

634
00:33:26,760 --> 00:33:29,320
Speaker 1: your car can be driven legally. But if you call

635
00:33:29,360 --> 00:33:32,120
Speaker 1: it semi autonomous, and you you stress the fact that

636
00:33:32,240 --> 00:33:34,440
Speaker 1: there's no point where you can take your hands off

637
00:33:34,480 --> 00:33:38,160
Speaker 1: the wheel legally with this vehicle, that you have to

638
00:33:38,160 --> 00:33:41,600
Speaker 1: be in control or at least be able to be

639
00:33:41,680 --> 00:33:45,320
Speaker 1: in control at any given time, then I think you

640
00:33:45,400 --> 00:33:47,520
Speaker 1: kind of dance around that little legal issue in your

641
00:33:47,520 --> 00:33:49,719
Speaker 1: car can suddenly be sold in all the different states.

642
00:33:49,960 --> 00:33:51,560
Speaker 1: But you know what the truth is, and I've seen

643
00:33:51,560 --> 00:33:54,560
Speaker 1: this written a few different places that most of us

644
00:33:54,600 --> 00:33:56,880
Speaker 1: if we're driving relatively new vehicles. I mean's in the

645
00:33:56,920 --> 00:34:00,000
Speaker 1: last few years even Uh, most of us are probably

646
00:34:00,080 --> 00:34:03,200
Speaker 1: driving what you can be considered an almost autonomous car

647
00:34:03,320 --> 00:34:05,960
Speaker 1: right now. I know it's strange to think about it,

648
00:34:05,960 --> 00:34:08,280
Speaker 1: but think if you think about the technologies they're involved.

649
00:34:08,320 --> 00:34:11,360
Speaker 1: I mean, you get blind spot detection, lane change departure,

650
00:34:11,480 --> 00:34:15,600
Speaker 1: backup cameras, sensors to go along with that, cross traffic alerts,

651
00:34:15,640 --> 00:34:19,400
Speaker 1: active cruise control. Uh. You know all these systems, the

652
00:34:19,400 --> 00:34:21,919
Speaker 1: the A B s, systems that are electronic that UM,

653
00:34:23,000 --> 00:34:27,040
Speaker 1: electronic speed controls, You've got um stability control systems. All

654
00:34:27,080 --> 00:34:31,280
Speaker 1: that plays into what creates UM this this bigger package

655
00:34:31,320 --> 00:34:33,720
Speaker 1: that would be an autonomous vehicle. Those are the puzzle

656
00:34:33,760 --> 00:34:36,200
Speaker 1: pieces that are required to be in place before they

657
00:34:36,200 --> 00:34:38,640
Speaker 1: can call it autonomous or allow it to all work

658
00:34:38,680 --> 00:34:41,920
Speaker 1: together to be autonomous. So most of us have systems

659
00:34:41,960 --> 00:34:44,239
Speaker 1: like that. We've got the pieces there. It's like you're

660
00:34:44,239 --> 00:34:47,239
Speaker 1: halfway there. They're just not connected in the exact right

661
00:34:47,280 --> 00:34:49,520
Speaker 1: way that they need to be. They're connected, sure, and

662
00:34:49,520 --> 00:34:53,840
Speaker 1: they work together flawlessly really, but there's just that missing piece,

663
00:34:53,880 --> 00:34:56,360
Speaker 1: the puzzle. And that's when you give over control to

664
00:34:56,400 --> 00:34:59,280
Speaker 1: the system. You give the control over to the computers

665
00:34:59,280 --> 00:35:01,800
Speaker 1: and step and let it happen. And we're seeing tiny,

666
00:35:01,880 --> 00:35:06,239
Speaker 1: little increminal steps toward that, although uh, they tend to

667
00:35:06,280 --> 00:35:09,280
Speaker 1: be implemented in a way where control is still ultimately

668
00:35:09,400 --> 00:35:12,279
Speaker 1: left up to the driver, where the driver can override

669
00:35:12,320 --> 00:35:16,880
Speaker 1: anything that's been creating decided quote unquote decided by the vehicle.

670
00:35:17,239 --> 00:35:21,440
Speaker 1: So here's some examples, like adaptive cruise control we've mentioned,

671
00:35:21,440 --> 00:35:24,080
Speaker 1: so to really explain what that is. First, cruise control

672
00:35:24,640 --> 00:35:28,680
Speaker 1: as a concept is an old idea. I mean, even

673
00:35:28,719 --> 00:35:30,839
Speaker 1: if you go back to the earliest cars, a lot

674
00:35:30,880 --> 00:35:34,440
Speaker 1: of them had governors that allowed them to maintain a

675
00:35:34,719 --> 00:35:37,040
Speaker 1: steady rate of speed even if they were going uphill

676
00:35:37,160 --> 00:35:41,759
Speaker 1: or downhill. Yeah, we're talking even prey as early as

677
00:35:41,800 --> 00:35:44,680
Speaker 1: that this was something that was important because otherwise, you know,

678
00:35:44,719 --> 00:35:46,960
Speaker 1: you would hit a hill and suddenly your engine has

679
00:35:47,000 --> 00:35:49,239
Speaker 1: to do more work, right, and so now you're gonna

680
00:35:49,239 --> 00:35:51,600
Speaker 1: have to start really pressing down on the on the

681
00:35:51,640 --> 00:35:54,120
Speaker 1: accelerator in order to get this car to continue up

682
00:35:54,160 --> 00:35:55,880
Speaker 1: the hill, especially if you want to maintain the speed

683
00:35:55,880 --> 00:35:57,520
Speaker 1: that you were at when you were on a level plank.

684
00:35:58,440 --> 00:36:00,040
Speaker 1: Then you get to the peak of the hill and

685
00:36:00,200 --> 00:36:02,320
Speaker 1: it's time to go down the hill and now suddenly

686
00:36:02,320 --> 00:36:04,120
Speaker 1: your car is careening out of control. I mean, you

687
00:36:04,200 --> 00:36:07,000
Speaker 1: have to have the systems in place to help maintain

688
00:36:07,040 --> 00:36:10,000
Speaker 1: that level of speed. Cruise control itself. There was an

689
00:36:10,000 --> 00:36:13,359
Speaker 1: early system called speedos stat, which was invented in nine.

690
00:36:15,239 --> 00:36:18,359
Speaker 1: Uh but then and that one didn't really show up

691
00:36:18,400 --> 00:36:22,239
Speaker 1: until about nine Chrysler Imperial, so you know, it was

692
00:36:22,280 --> 00:36:25,080
Speaker 1: a decade away. So remember we were talking about this,

693
00:36:25,160 --> 00:36:27,319
Speaker 1: you'll see this in ten years. It's one case where

694
00:36:27,320 --> 00:36:29,799
Speaker 1: it did come true. Yeah, and I would say that

695
00:36:29,880 --> 00:36:33,360
Speaker 1: I think the thing that really pushed cruise control into

696
00:36:33,840 --> 00:36:37,279
Speaker 1: fleets of vehicles was, I mean, that really made it

697
00:36:37,320 --> 00:36:40,680
Speaker 1: a standard. Was the gas crisis in the seventies. Was

698
00:36:40,719 --> 00:36:44,200
Speaker 1: this idea that suddenly fuel economy was really important. It

699
00:36:44,239 --> 00:36:47,239
Speaker 1: hadn't been as important before. I mean, no one wants

700
00:36:47,280 --> 00:36:51,279
Speaker 1: to waste money, but now when for the A lot

701
00:36:51,320 --> 00:36:53,960
Speaker 1: of our listeners are younger, But in the seventies there

702
00:36:54,000 --> 00:36:56,360
Speaker 1: was a gas crisis that meant that there were there

703
00:36:56,400 --> 00:36:59,400
Speaker 1: would be enormous lines at gas stations in order to

704
00:36:59,400 --> 00:37:01,759
Speaker 1: get just a little bit of gas, and that, you know,

705
00:37:01,840 --> 00:37:04,799
Speaker 1: it was it was a really serious tough time. Well,

706
00:37:04,840 --> 00:37:06,160
Speaker 1: when you get right down to it. That's why the

707
00:37:06,160 --> 00:37:08,360
Speaker 1: e p A was formed, right, and that's why we

708
00:37:08,440 --> 00:37:11,520
Speaker 1: have a lot of the regulated or mandated materials or

709
00:37:11,680 --> 00:37:15,279
Speaker 1: materials with the electronics. I yes, uh, they're requiring cars

710
00:37:15,400 --> 00:37:17,920
Speaker 1: that are driving the prices up. We can we talk

711
00:37:17,960 --> 00:37:20,839
Speaker 1: about that later. Yeah, we absolutely k But that's that's

712
00:37:20,840 --> 00:37:22,480
Speaker 1: really the start of the e p A and the

713
00:37:22,760 --> 00:37:27,640
Speaker 1: National um, you know, traffic, highway, Traffic safey Administration, all

714
00:37:27,680 --> 00:37:30,480
Speaker 1: the all the government bureaus that say you have to

715
00:37:30,520 --> 00:37:34,040
Speaker 1: have this safety device, this uh, this electronic control device

716
00:37:34,040 --> 00:37:36,719
Speaker 1: in your vehicle, a lot to have onboard diagnostics in

717
00:37:36,840 --> 00:37:40,640
Speaker 1: order to uh, to maintain emissions. You know, you have

718
00:37:40,680 --> 00:37:43,000
Speaker 1: to be able to to to measure that and make

719
00:37:43,040 --> 00:37:46,480
Speaker 1: sure that you're within the right the allowed range. Sure

720
00:37:46,480 --> 00:37:48,279
Speaker 1: emissions in the environment are a big part of this

721
00:37:48,320 --> 00:37:51,120
Speaker 1: whole thing. So let's let's talk about that later. But

722
00:37:51,520 --> 00:37:54,080
Speaker 1: but let's move on to adaptive cruise control because that's

723
00:37:54,120 --> 00:37:58,880
Speaker 1: a a natural extension of this nine modern cruise control

724
00:37:58,920 --> 00:38:02,080
Speaker 1: that we saw in the the idea of setting your speed.

725
00:38:02,200 --> 00:38:04,760
Speaker 1: So let's say that, Uh, let's say I'm driving down

726
00:38:05,760 --> 00:38:09,040
Speaker 1: a highway in Atlanta, So I'm going the average speed,

727
00:38:09,040 --> 00:38:11,359
Speaker 1: which is somewhere around now eighty seven miles per hour.

728
00:38:11,600 --> 00:38:14,759
Speaker 1: That's what it feels like. Okay, that's fair. Uh yeah, no,

729
00:38:14,880 --> 00:38:18,840
Speaker 1: Atlanta is pretty crazy. So you've got your your speeds

730
00:38:18,840 --> 00:38:21,960
Speaker 1: that you set your cruise control. Now, with regular cruise control,

731
00:38:22,040 --> 00:38:24,280
Speaker 1: that just means that's going to maintain that speed until

732
00:38:24,360 --> 00:38:27,319
Speaker 1: you depress either the accelerator or the break and then

733
00:38:27,360 --> 00:38:29,879
Speaker 1: it puts it back into manual control and then your

734
00:38:30,040 --> 00:38:33,520
Speaker 1: you can choose whatever speed you want. Adaptive cruise control

735
00:38:33,560 --> 00:38:37,080
Speaker 1: the way it works is it has that that speed

736
00:38:37,120 --> 00:38:39,719
Speaker 1: you've set as the ideal, Right, that's the speed you

737
00:38:39,719 --> 00:38:43,200
Speaker 1: would like to go, assuming that the world allows you

738
00:38:43,239 --> 00:38:45,760
Speaker 1: to do so. But let's say you start to overtake

739
00:38:45,800 --> 00:38:48,480
Speaker 1: the car in front of you. Now, adapt cruise control,

740
00:38:48,520 --> 00:38:50,520
Speaker 1: as I understand it, please correct me if I'm wrong,

741
00:38:51,280 --> 00:38:54,400
Speaker 1: means you have a system where it's able to identify

742
00:38:54,440 --> 00:38:56,839
Speaker 1: if there is a vehicle traveling in front of you

743
00:38:56,960 --> 00:39:00,000
Speaker 1: and you're about to overtake it, and it will automatically

744
00:39:00,200 --> 00:39:03,440
Speaker 1: decrease your speed so that you are traveling at the

745
00:39:03,480 --> 00:39:05,120
Speaker 1: same speed as the car in front of you. And

746
00:39:05,120 --> 00:39:07,960
Speaker 1: if that car speeds up and you're still below your

747
00:39:08,000 --> 00:39:10,399
Speaker 1: your set speed for your cruise control. It will then

748
00:39:10,440 --> 00:39:13,080
Speaker 1: start to accelerate until you hit that speed again. Correct

749
00:39:13,200 --> 00:39:15,680
Speaker 1: you You dial in a distance that you're comfortable with,

750
00:39:16,160 --> 00:39:18,880
Speaker 1: and that's how it works. I mean, it keeps a distance.

751
00:39:18,920 --> 00:39:21,840
Speaker 1: There's never ah, there's never something that encroaches on that

752
00:39:21,920 --> 00:39:24,680
Speaker 1: distance more than than what you've already said. If it does,

753
00:39:25,080 --> 00:39:27,480
Speaker 1: that's when it begins to break, and it breaks accordingly.

754
00:39:28,040 --> 00:39:30,759
Speaker 1: You know, with the vehicle in front of you, you

755
00:39:30,760 --> 00:39:33,120
Speaker 1: can't do anything about the person behind you. So that's

756
00:39:33,120 --> 00:39:35,200
Speaker 1: something that we'll find. You know, there's really not a

757
00:39:35,200 --> 00:39:36,839
Speaker 1: whole lot you can do about that. That's the kind

758
00:39:36,840 --> 00:39:39,960
Speaker 1: of wild card here. However, you know you can't. You

759
00:39:40,000 --> 00:39:42,640
Speaker 1: can or your vehicle can adjust for that vehicle in

760
00:39:42,680 --> 00:39:44,359
Speaker 1: front of you, just based on this. I mean, it's

761
00:39:44,360 --> 00:39:48,560
Speaker 1: a radar system uses the lasers in some cases. Sometimes

762
00:39:48,600 --> 00:39:51,440
Speaker 1: it's a camera system. I think Subaru uses a camera system,

763
00:39:51,520 --> 00:39:54,560
Speaker 1: so it's actually relying on optical data. That's interesting. Yeah,

764
00:39:54,560 --> 00:39:56,719
Speaker 1: that's that's what's going on there. And I think there's

765
00:39:56,719 --> 00:39:59,120
Speaker 1: probably other manufacturers that use camera systems as well. The

766
00:39:59,160 --> 00:40:01,759
Speaker 1: super is just a good example. But it's a it's

767
00:40:01,760 --> 00:40:05,319
Speaker 1: a fascinating thing and um, maybe i'll stump you with

768
00:40:05,320 --> 00:40:07,440
Speaker 1: this one. I don't know, thank you. When do you

769
00:40:07,480 --> 00:40:11,000
Speaker 1: think the first adaptive cruise control system was was in

770
00:40:11,080 --> 00:40:15,600
Speaker 1: place or or demonstrated? Wow? Uh, these always end up

771
00:40:15,600 --> 00:40:19,799
Speaker 1: being earlier than I had anticipated. I know that UM

772
00:40:21,239 --> 00:40:24,600
Speaker 1: was the first modern cruise control, but adaptive being able

773
00:40:24,640 --> 00:40:28,919
Speaker 1: to yikes, I'm gonna embarrass myself no matter what I said,

774
00:40:28,920 --> 00:40:34,000
Speaker 1: I'm gonna say nine. Gosh, darn it, you're perfect, right, Yeah,

775
00:40:34,040 --> 00:40:37,399
Speaker 1: not bad so. Twenty years ago, nineteen years ago, uh,

776
00:40:37,520 --> 00:40:40,760
Speaker 1: Mitsubishi was the first one to develop this adaptive cruise

777
00:40:40,760 --> 00:40:43,920
Speaker 1: control for a production vehicle. There was no breaking as

778
00:40:43,960 --> 00:40:46,319
Speaker 1: part of the system. It just used you know, the

779
00:40:46,320 --> 00:40:49,160
Speaker 1: throttle control and down shifting to kind of adjust the

780
00:40:49,200 --> 00:40:51,960
Speaker 1: speed accordingly as you mentioned. But again it was a

781
00:40:52,040 --> 00:40:54,200
Speaker 1: very primitive version, not like what we see today. And

782
00:40:54,280 --> 00:40:57,200
Speaker 1: you know the the super cruise system and you know

783
00:40:57,239 --> 00:41:00,400
Speaker 1: Audi and all the other manufacturers that are creating really

784
00:41:00,440 --> 00:41:04,160
Speaker 1: really advanced systems. Related to this are things like collision

785
00:41:04,160 --> 00:41:07,279
Speaker 1: detection and collision prevention systems where you have to have

786
00:41:07,280 --> 00:41:09,880
Speaker 1: the same sort of technology to sense that there is

787
00:41:10,120 --> 00:41:14,520
Speaker 1: a potential oncoming collision. Now, the implementation for that or

788
00:41:14,560 --> 00:41:17,319
Speaker 1: the the reaction of that maybe something as simple as

789
00:41:17,320 --> 00:41:19,640
Speaker 1: an alert in the car so that you as the

790
00:41:19,680 --> 00:41:22,760
Speaker 1: driver have to react and thus make sure you prevent

791
00:41:23,040 --> 00:41:27,080
Speaker 1: a collision, or and maybe something as as sophisticated as

792
00:41:27,120 --> 00:41:31,040
Speaker 1: a breaking system that initiates automatically to help you avoid

793
00:41:31,320 --> 00:41:33,200
Speaker 1: a collision. Because as we enter, as we all know,

794
00:41:34,239 --> 00:41:39,400
Speaker 1: human reaction time is uh is not immediate, right, and

795
00:41:40,160 --> 00:41:44,160
Speaker 1: electronics can react and a fraction of a second exactly right.

796
00:41:44,160 --> 00:41:46,319
Speaker 1: And we see this in a lot of different manufacturing

797
00:41:46,320 --> 00:41:48,120
Speaker 1: systems right now. In fact, a lot of commercials on

798
00:41:48,160 --> 00:41:51,399
Speaker 1: television right now show you exactly that happening. And of course,

799
00:41:51,400 --> 00:41:53,239
Speaker 1: the Mercedes system that we talked about, you know, the

800
00:41:53,520 --> 00:41:55,000
Speaker 1: whether you have to have the hands on the wheel,

801
00:41:55,440 --> 00:41:58,040
Speaker 1: that system uses something like this. You can slow the vehicle.

802
00:41:58,239 --> 00:42:02,040
Speaker 1: I believe the super cruise system will completely stop the

803
00:42:02,120 --> 00:42:04,920
Speaker 1: vehicle if necessary, which is that's pretty unusual. I mean,

804
00:42:04,960 --> 00:42:07,560
Speaker 1: that's not that's not the case in every situation. So

805
00:42:08,000 --> 00:42:10,040
Speaker 1: all of this relies on just where you kind of

806
00:42:10,239 --> 00:42:13,080
Speaker 1: get this out there. All of this relies on electronic

807
00:42:13,120 --> 00:42:15,920
Speaker 1: systems working together in the car, which wasn't possible before

808
00:42:15,920 --> 00:42:18,359
Speaker 1: when it was just a mechanical system. So you know,

809
00:42:18,400 --> 00:42:20,680
Speaker 1: you have to have electronic throttle control. You have to

810
00:42:20,719 --> 00:42:24,040
Speaker 1: have electronic brakes. You have to have UM, you know

811
00:42:24,080 --> 00:42:27,000
Speaker 1: for the lane departure warning systems and stuff. I'm sorry

812
00:42:27,000 --> 00:42:31,040
Speaker 1: not for that one, but UM for UM electronic stability control.

813
00:42:31,080 --> 00:42:33,920
Speaker 1: You have to have an electronic systems that can control

814
00:42:34,480 --> 00:42:36,799
Speaker 1: each other, can talk to each other and decide what's

815
00:42:36,880 --> 00:42:41,360
Speaker 1: necessary at that exact moment, and do it without driver input. Right. Yeah,

816
00:42:41,440 --> 00:42:45,080
Speaker 1: it's none of us want to have big robotic arms

817
00:42:45,160 --> 00:42:47,640
Speaker 1: coming out of the dashboard and holding the steering wheel

818
00:42:48,000 --> 00:42:52,359
Speaker 1: or or robotic feet that pressed the pedals down. That

819
00:42:52,360 --> 00:42:56,440
Speaker 1: that is not really an ideal implementation of the robot car. Okay,

820
00:42:56,480 --> 00:42:58,680
Speaker 1: you're you're making fun of that. I understand. I know

821
00:42:58,719 --> 00:43:00,600
Speaker 1: what you're saying that you know that sound. It's funny

822
00:43:00,640 --> 00:43:03,399
Speaker 1: that that it would happen that way. But I've got

823
00:43:03,440 --> 00:43:05,080
Speaker 1: this article here, and I okay, this is the one

824
00:43:05,080 --> 00:43:06,640
Speaker 1: that I kind of wanted to to share, and I

825
00:43:06,680 --> 00:43:09,080
Speaker 1: think it's a good time. This is less than twenty

826
00:43:09,160 --> 00:43:10,919
Speaker 1: years ago for this article. And when we were first

827
00:43:10,920 --> 00:43:14,760
Speaker 1: talking about this this idea for this show, I mentioned

828
00:43:14,760 --> 00:43:17,680
Speaker 1: that I had been to UM the Automated Durability Test

829
00:43:17,719 --> 00:43:22,280
Speaker 1: track in Chelsea, Michigan, for Chrysler, and this was a system.

830
00:43:22,280 --> 00:43:25,400
Speaker 1: It's a very primitive looking back system, but it was

831
00:43:25,480 --> 00:43:27,880
Speaker 1: so advanced at the time. I just can't tell you

832
00:43:27,920 --> 00:43:31,200
Speaker 1: how cool this thing was. But they actually used robots

833
00:43:31,200 --> 00:43:33,960
Speaker 1: that they would load into the driver's seat to drive

834
00:43:34,000 --> 00:43:37,799
Speaker 1: these vehicles on this automated durability system test track. So

835
00:43:37,840 --> 00:43:40,160
Speaker 1: what they would do is they would test vehicles on

836
00:43:40,200 --> 00:43:42,879
Speaker 1: this track in kind of an advanced way, and that

837
00:43:42,920 --> 00:43:46,399
Speaker 1: they would um an accelerated way. It's made a better

838
00:43:46,440 --> 00:43:48,759
Speaker 1: way to say it, because x number of miles on

839
00:43:48,760 --> 00:43:51,560
Speaker 1: this track equaled x number of miles in the real world,

840
00:43:51,640 --> 00:43:54,839
Speaker 1: So the conditions on the track were so extreme as

841
00:43:54,880 --> 00:43:58,839
Speaker 1: to be equal to a number of regular miles in

842
00:43:59,120 --> 00:44:01,000
Speaker 1: the real world. Yeah, so they would test like the

843
00:44:01,000 --> 00:44:04,400
Speaker 1: new Jeep Grand Cherokee there, and they would really really

844
00:44:04,400 --> 00:44:07,160
Speaker 1: punish it more so than than they could on a

845
00:44:07,600 --> 00:44:10,480
Speaker 1: track with a real driver, because the real driver just

846
00:44:10,520 --> 00:44:13,680
Speaker 1: simply couldn't take sitting in the seat for one hundred

847
00:44:13,719 --> 00:44:16,319
Speaker 1: thousand miles. But they could put a thousand miles on

848
00:44:16,360 --> 00:44:18,239
Speaker 1: this track. And I'm just gonna give these numbers for

849
00:44:18,280 --> 00:44:20,440
Speaker 1: an example. They could do it a thousand miles on

850
00:44:20,480 --> 00:44:22,600
Speaker 1: this track and then equaled a hundred thousand miles in

851
00:44:22,640 --> 00:44:24,600
Speaker 1: the real world or what a driver could take a

852
00:44:24,680 --> 00:44:27,319
Speaker 1: human driver. So they would load these robots in and

853
00:44:27,360 --> 00:44:29,360
Speaker 1: it had you know, I think the whole track was

854
00:44:29,400 --> 00:44:31,960
Speaker 1: only like one point three miles around, and it was

855
00:44:32,000 --> 00:44:35,800
Speaker 1: like a ten million dollar four year thing to build.

856
00:44:35,800 --> 00:44:38,120
Speaker 1: And it had wiring in the in the ground, you know,

857
00:44:38,160 --> 00:44:40,320
Speaker 1: like there were pucks that were buried in the pavement,

858
00:44:40,440 --> 00:44:42,640
Speaker 1: and uh there was a controller that was in kind

859
00:44:42,640 --> 00:44:45,920
Speaker 1: of like a almost like an aircraft controller tower, and

860
00:44:45,960 --> 00:44:47,719
Speaker 1: he would watch everything that's going on in a very

861
00:44:47,840 --> 00:44:50,880
Speaker 1: um you know, an old style looking system, you know,

862
00:44:50,920 --> 00:44:53,279
Speaker 1: to to monitor everything that's happening. And they could bring

863
00:44:53,360 --> 00:44:55,279
Speaker 1: vehicles in for service or just let them run all

864
00:44:55,360 --> 00:44:57,640
Speaker 1: day whenever they had to you know, had to have happened.

865
00:44:57,920 --> 00:45:00,960
Speaker 1: But it cost so much money to do this and

866
00:45:01,040 --> 00:45:03,719
Speaker 1: the infrastructure that was required just for that at one

867
00:45:03,760 --> 00:45:08,080
Speaker 1: point three miles in nine that's amazing because it's still

868
00:45:08,120 --> 00:45:10,680
Speaker 1: that was only nineteen years ago. It wasn't that long

869
00:45:10,680 --> 00:45:13,640
Speaker 1: ago when you look back. It's just incredible. But the

870
00:45:13,920 --> 00:45:15,680
Speaker 1: other one thing that I need to point out here

871
00:45:15,719 --> 00:45:18,200
Speaker 1: is in reading this article, in addition to just that

872
00:45:18,200 --> 00:45:22,360
Speaker 1: that strange you know, situation. I guess I read about

873
00:45:22,400 --> 00:45:26,600
Speaker 1: a test that happened in seven with with Buick. Now,

874
00:45:26,680 --> 00:45:30,520
Speaker 1: GM has been um on the autonomous vehicle thing for

875
00:45:30,520 --> 00:45:33,880
Speaker 1: a long long time since, as we heard, right alright,

876
00:45:33,920 --> 00:45:39,319
Speaker 1: so to automated buses, an automated police car, and ten

877
00:45:40,680 --> 00:45:44,400
Speaker 1: seven buhicles sabers were cruising driverless up and down a

878
00:45:44,480 --> 00:45:47,240
Speaker 1: seven point six mile two lane stretch of I fifteen

879
00:45:47,560 --> 00:45:50,440
Speaker 1: in San Diego. And I had no idea until I

880
00:45:50,480 --> 00:45:53,600
Speaker 1: read this article. Right, the test, I mean, they had

881
00:45:53,640 --> 00:45:57,439
Speaker 1: to bury high strength magnets in the pavement every three

882
00:45:57,520 --> 00:46:00,400
Speaker 1: to ten feet in order to make this work. In

883
00:46:00,440 --> 00:46:03,320
Speaker 1: addition to a you know again you said, a truckload

884
00:46:03,400 --> 00:46:06,319
Speaker 1: of equipment in the vehicles, right, These were you know,

885
00:46:06,400 --> 00:46:08,719
Speaker 1: no small no small feet, I guess for them to

886
00:46:08,800 --> 00:46:11,760
Speaker 1: to load this stuff into the vehicle. Each car carried

887
00:46:11,800 --> 00:46:15,960
Speaker 1: about one hundred thousand dollars worth of equipment in in

888
00:46:16,120 --> 00:46:17,920
Speaker 1: order to make this work. And it was just a short,

889
00:46:17,960 --> 00:46:20,279
Speaker 1: one time thing. But it's another one of those things

890
00:46:20,320 --> 00:46:22,600
Speaker 1: like we're thinking about ten years. You know, this may

891
00:46:22,600 --> 00:46:24,640
Speaker 1: be the way we do things when you look at

892
00:46:24,800 --> 00:46:27,960
Speaker 1: at what is required to lay out that infrastructure. I mean,

893
00:46:28,120 --> 00:46:30,480
Speaker 1: let alone like let's say that we've already developed the

894
00:46:30,520 --> 00:46:33,320
Speaker 1: technology that would allow us to have the smart highway approach.

895
00:46:33,800 --> 00:46:38,000
Speaker 1: When you look at just installing that it's such an

896
00:46:38,120 --> 00:46:40,080
Speaker 1: enormous this is this goes back to something that we

897
00:46:40,160 --> 00:46:42,200
Speaker 1: covered on tech stuff before, and Scott, you and I

898
00:46:42,239 --> 00:46:44,560
Speaker 1: have talked about it just in the in the office,

899
00:46:44,920 --> 00:46:49,960
Speaker 1: that solar highway idea. That the idea sounds kind of interesting,

900
00:46:49,960 --> 00:46:52,560
Speaker 1: but then when you start to really think about the implementation,

901
00:46:52,640 --> 00:46:56,399
Speaker 1: you realize it's such a monumental, gargantuan task that would

902
00:46:56,400 --> 00:47:01,480
Speaker 1: cost billions of dollars that it's not nest It doesn't

903
00:47:01,680 --> 00:47:04,640
Speaker 1: seem realistic. The same sort of thing with these smart highways.

904
00:47:04,640 --> 00:47:07,680
Speaker 1: The idea is amazing, but when you look at the

905
00:47:08,120 --> 00:47:10,360
Speaker 1: choosing the alternative of putting all the systems in the

906
00:47:10,440 --> 00:47:13,120
Speaker 1: car as opposed to in the road, it just seems

907
00:47:13,160 --> 00:47:15,560
Speaker 1: to make more sense. Yeah, it sure does. Yeah. So

908
00:47:15,600 --> 00:47:19,120
Speaker 1: these these systems have advanced so much now that that's

909
00:47:19,120 --> 00:47:22,640
Speaker 1: why we're seeing this rapid increases the sharp curve to

910
00:47:23,120 --> 00:47:26,439
Speaker 1: to think people thinking that maybe this is possible. Yeah,

911
00:47:26,520 --> 00:47:29,040
Speaker 1: I mean before, I mean, look at how cumbersome this

912
00:47:29,080 --> 00:47:31,799
Speaker 1: whole thing was just fifteen years ago, twenty years ago.

913
00:47:31,920 --> 00:47:34,040
Speaker 1: It was. It was almost the same as it was

914
00:47:34,120 --> 00:47:37,600
Speaker 1: in Yeah, and we're seeing since you know the Google

915
00:47:37,600 --> 00:47:40,600
Speaker 1: car and in two thousand nine that you know, this

916
00:47:40,680 --> 00:47:43,200
Speaker 1: is maybe something that's really possible. I mean that that

917
00:47:43,560 --> 00:47:45,680
Speaker 1: this is a self sufficient system. This is the one

918
00:47:45,719 --> 00:47:47,799
Speaker 1: that you know is self contained. Maybe that's a better

919
00:47:47,840 --> 00:47:50,000
Speaker 1: way to say it. Yeah, it doesn't necessarily mean that

920
00:47:50,040 --> 00:47:53,239
Speaker 1: we won't see cars in the future communicate with each other.

921
00:47:53,320 --> 00:47:55,120
Speaker 1: But in the past, we used to think that that

922
00:47:55,200 --> 00:47:58,200
Speaker 1: was the only way that this system would work. Right, Like,

923
00:47:58,280 --> 00:48:02,759
Speaker 1: let's say, uh, you're looking at the the Highway of tomorrow,

924
00:48:03,440 --> 00:48:06,560
Speaker 1: and all the cars are are constantly in communication with

925
00:48:06,600 --> 00:48:09,560
Speaker 1: each other to maintain the correct distance from one another

926
00:48:09,880 --> 00:48:13,319
Speaker 1: to funnel traffic appropriately so that you don't have these

927
00:48:13,360 --> 00:48:15,959
Speaker 1: traffic snarls, or at least they don't last as long.

928
00:48:16,280 --> 00:48:18,520
Speaker 1: That you could even have cars more cars on the

929
00:48:18,600 --> 00:48:21,680
Speaker 1: highway because you could pack them in closer together. Because

930
00:48:21,719 --> 00:48:23,719
Speaker 1: now that they're all talking to each other and they're

931
00:48:23,760 --> 00:48:27,399
Speaker 1: all uh, electronically controlled, they can react in a real

932
00:48:27,480 --> 00:48:30,080
Speaker 1: time where they don't need the you don't need to

933
00:48:30,120 --> 00:48:32,839
Speaker 1: build in the human reaction time to have a safe

934
00:48:32,920 --> 00:48:35,600
Speaker 1: driving experience. You just have to have the robotic reaction

935
00:48:35,640 --> 00:48:39,080
Speaker 1: time which is much shorter. That's like the the crazy

936
00:48:39,160 --> 00:48:42,000
Speaker 1: idea of the future. As it turns out, we might

937
00:48:42,040 --> 00:48:44,080
Speaker 1: be able to do that without having the cars talk

938
00:48:44,160 --> 00:48:46,640
Speaker 1: to each other or the roads at all. If the

939
00:48:46,800 --> 00:48:50,600
Speaker 1: if each car's system is sophisticated enough, it can all

940
00:48:50,640 --> 00:48:54,600
Speaker 1: be autonomous and self contained. Um. I don't know, but

941
00:48:54,640 --> 00:48:57,160
Speaker 1: I expect we'll have a combination of the two because

942
00:48:57,640 --> 00:49:01,760
Speaker 1: I think we'll eventually get to really complex systems where

943
00:49:01,800 --> 00:49:06,239
Speaker 1: things like traffic lights will respond in dynamic changing conditions.

944
00:49:06,280 --> 00:49:09,080
Speaker 1: So let's say that the traffic system itself is able

945
00:49:09,120 --> 00:49:13,360
Speaker 1: to sense where congestion is and react in real time,

946
00:49:13,400 --> 00:49:16,719
Speaker 1: not not on a intersection by intersection basis, but on

947
00:49:16,760 --> 00:49:20,480
Speaker 1: a system wide basis. Uh. You know, the dream of

948
00:49:20,520 --> 00:49:22,480
Speaker 1: the future is that you get in your car, it

949
00:49:22,560 --> 00:49:24,680
Speaker 1: drives you to work and you don't hit a single

950
00:49:24,760 --> 00:49:28,799
Speaker 1: red light the entire time. That's a big dream. You

951
00:49:28,840 --> 00:49:31,600
Speaker 1: know what Autie is making network right now and really

952
00:49:31,680 --> 00:49:34,320
Speaker 1: part of what's going on with this Audi Connect system

953
00:49:34,360 --> 00:49:36,400
Speaker 1: that they've got and it's probably one of the vehicles

954
00:49:36,400 --> 00:49:38,759
Speaker 1: that you saw at CES. Yeah, there's two things that

955
00:49:38,800 --> 00:49:40,400
Speaker 1: I want to mention here. Now. You talked about the

956
00:49:40,760 --> 00:49:43,120
Speaker 1: traffic lights. We'll talk about that first. I guess one

957
00:49:43,160 --> 00:49:45,239
Speaker 1: of the things that we talked about in a Car

958
00:49:45,280 --> 00:49:47,640
Speaker 1: Stuff episode about um. I think it was just kind

959
00:49:47,640 --> 00:49:49,799
Speaker 1: of my car detect the lights gonna when the light's

960
00:49:49,800 --> 00:49:52,080
Speaker 1: gonna turn green, something like that, right, I can't remember

961
00:49:52,120 --> 00:49:55,560
Speaker 1: the episode name now, but the Audi vehicle will will

962
00:49:55,600 --> 00:49:59,120
Speaker 1: sense it kind of it ties itself into the central

963
00:49:59,160 --> 00:50:03,200
Speaker 1: computer that breaks the the the lights for the entire city.

964
00:50:03,680 --> 00:50:05,360
Speaker 1: I don't know if you knew that or not. There

965
00:50:05,480 --> 00:50:08,319
Speaker 1: is one system that operates the lights in in most

966
00:50:08,360 --> 00:50:10,719
Speaker 1: big cities, and sometimes you know, in the case of

967
00:50:10,840 --> 00:50:13,600
Speaker 1: New York, where there's thousands and thousands of lights, it's

968
00:50:13,600 --> 00:50:16,799
Speaker 1: broken up into different groups or different divisions by one.

969
00:50:16,880 --> 00:50:20,040
Speaker 1: Sometimes it's it's controlled individually at that intersection and then

970
00:50:20,040 --> 00:50:24,520
Speaker 1: actually causes problems. Now, if they're controlled by one central system,

971
00:50:24,560 --> 00:50:27,080
Speaker 1: it allows traffic to flow much easier and much better.

972
00:50:27,320 --> 00:50:29,120
Speaker 1: But Audi has found a way to tap into that

973
00:50:29,160 --> 00:50:31,360
Speaker 1: system legally, they've allowed them to do that, you know,

974
00:50:31,440 --> 00:50:35,200
Speaker 1: as part of the testing. But your car will either

975
00:50:35,360 --> 00:50:37,879
Speaker 1: speed up or slow down to allow you to make

976
00:50:37,960 --> 00:50:39,719
Speaker 1: that next light. Now, it won't go to extremes, it

977
00:50:39,719 --> 00:50:41,640
Speaker 1: won't slow you down to five miles per hour in

978
00:50:41,960 --> 00:50:44,520
Speaker 1: his own where it's thirty five and it won't accelerate

979
00:50:44,560 --> 00:50:47,279
Speaker 1: to some crazy speed and and then thus break all

980
00:50:47,440 --> 00:50:50,080
Speaker 1: laws precisely. But it will tell you if you're going

981
00:50:50,120 --> 00:50:51,719
Speaker 1: to make that next light or not, and what you

982
00:50:51,719 --> 00:50:54,080
Speaker 1: should do, you know, slightly let off the gas and

983
00:50:54,080 --> 00:50:55,799
Speaker 1: you're gonna make it to that next light, through through

984
00:50:55,840 --> 00:50:58,560
Speaker 1: the next light, um or you may not have a chance.

985
00:50:58,640 --> 00:51:00,120
Speaker 1: Just don't worry about it. You're gonna sit here for

986
00:51:00,160 --> 00:51:03,319
Speaker 1: a minute. Not a big deal. But they said that

987
00:51:03,920 --> 00:51:06,640
Speaker 1: what's interesting is that you think something like that you're

988
00:51:06,640 --> 00:51:10,279
Speaker 1: gonna have to have, you know, everybody's gonna have to

989
00:51:10,320 --> 00:51:12,320
Speaker 1: be on board with us to make it work right. Otherwise,

990
00:51:12,480 --> 00:51:14,400
Speaker 1: if you if you only have one or two drivers

991
00:51:14,400 --> 00:51:17,080
Speaker 1: on this, it doesn't make any difference. Everybody else is

992
00:51:17,120 --> 00:51:20,359
Speaker 1: still going to make the system so congested that even

993
00:51:20,400 --> 00:51:23,960
Speaker 1: for those two drivers, it's not really gonna work exactly right. Well,

994
00:51:23,960 --> 00:51:26,400
Speaker 1: the surprising thing was that they said that the numbers

995
00:51:26,480 --> 00:51:28,680
Speaker 1: of of cars that have to have this system in

996
00:51:28,719 --> 00:51:30,719
Speaker 1: place in order to make it work is very, very low.

997
00:51:30,760 --> 00:51:33,279
Speaker 1: And I thought it was somewhere around I want to say,

998
00:51:34,920 --> 00:51:37,040
Speaker 1: it's something like that. It's it's in that neighborhood of

999
00:51:37,040 --> 00:51:40,360
Speaker 1: ten percent, so you know, that's not such a difficult

1000
00:51:40,360 --> 00:51:42,600
Speaker 1: target to meet, really, I mean around here, I mean

1001
00:51:42,640 --> 00:51:44,200
Speaker 1: there's a lot of Audie drivers, a lot of people

1002
00:51:44,239 --> 00:51:47,160
Speaker 1: driving new Audies. Yeah, I could see this working in Atlanta,

1003
00:51:47,400 --> 00:51:49,239
Speaker 1: I know, other parts of the world where you know,

1004
00:51:49,280 --> 00:51:51,440
Speaker 1: that's maybe not the popular brand or whatever. But if

1005
00:51:51,480 --> 00:51:54,640
Speaker 1: the system works its way into other vehicles, other manufacturers,

1006
00:51:54,760 --> 00:51:56,879
Speaker 1: and they were able to tie into the system as well,

1007
00:51:57,360 --> 00:52:00,640
Speaker 1: that might be something that really really helps traffic. And Yeah,

1008
00:52:00,760 --> 00:52:02,640
Speaker 1: and the other thing that I wanted to talk about,

1009
00:52:02,640 --> 00:52:05,400
Speaker 1: because Audi's big into this, really big into this. They

1010
00:52:05,440 --> 00:52:08,200
Speaker 1: had at CS they had a demonstration of a self

1011
00:52:08,280 --> 00:52:11,919
Speaker 1: parking car. Yes, self parking is one of those things

1012
00:52:11,920 --> 00:52:13,960
Speaker 1: I definitely wanted to talk about because this is something

1013
00:52:14,000 --> 00:52:17,080
Speaker 1: that we're starting to see in various vehicles, things that

1014
00:52:17,280 --> 00:52:19,719
Speaker 1: like parallel parking assist, but now we're getting to the

1015
00:52:19,760 --> 00:52:22,120
Speaker 1: point where the car itself can totally take over. Yeah,

1016
00:52:22,160 --> 00:52:24,040
Speaker 1: this is interesting because imagine this. You go to the

1017
00:52:24,080 --> 00:52:27,040
Speaker 1: mall and it's Christmas time, and you know how it's

1018
00:52:27,080 --> 00:52:28,960
Speaker 1: you know, it's already stressing out. You had a search

1019
00:52:29,000 --> 00:52:31,000
Speaker 1: for a parking right up and down the roads. You're

1020
00:52:31,040 --> 00:52:34,160
Speaker 1: following people to their parkings by little creepy right alright

1021
00:52:34,239 --> 00:52:36,239
Speaker 1: before shaking their heads because all they want to do

1022
00:52:36,320 --> 00:52:38,000
Speaker 1: is put some bags in the truck and they're gonna

1023
00:52:38,000 --> 00:52:39,560
Speaker 1: go right back. And said, is it worth it to

1024
00:52:39,600 --> 00:52:42,000
Speaker 1: pay the seventy five dollars to valet park my car

1025
00:52:42,239 --> 00:52:44,920
Speaker 1: mall or whatever it is, because it seems like seventy alright,

1026
00:52:44,960 --> 00:52:47,480
Speaker 1: So you drive up to the curb and you and

1027
00:52:47,520 --> 00:52:49,719
Speaker 1: you get out and you just let the car go

1028
00:52:49,840 --> 00:52:52,040
Speaker 1: and park itself in the parking lot. That's incredible. And

1029
00:52:52,080 --> 00:52:54,760
Speaker 1: it goes in and parks, it's shuts itself off, waits

1030
00:52:54,800 --> 00:52:56,640
Speaker 1: for you to come back and call it, and you know,

1031
00:52:56,760 --> 00:52:59,759
Speaker 1: you call it because otherwise the journey of trying to

1032
00:52:59,800 --> 00:53:02,360
Speaker 1: fig out where your car parked would be very adventurous,

1033
00:53:02,640 --> 00:53:05,239
Speaker 1: being pretty difficult. So the car comes back to you

1034
00:53:05,239 --> 00:53:06,719
Speaker 1: and picks you up on the curb side, and you

1035
00:53:06,800 --> 00:53:09,320
Speaker 1: leave and it's that simple. Now. I was wondering, okay,

1036
00:53:09,400 --> 00:53:11,720
Speaker 1: I was thinking about this. What if there's no parking spots,

1037
00:53:11,719 --> 00:53:13,839
Speaker 1: does it just circle the entire time that you're gone.

1038
00:53:13,880 --> 00:53:16,799
Speaker 1: That would be a drag. But the other thing is

1039
00:53:16,840 --> 00:53:19,439
Speaker 1: that there does have to be some infrastructure in place

1040
00:53:19,480 --> 00:53:22,120
Speaker 1: for this to work. This this system right now, the

1041
00:53:22,120 --> 00:53:24,600
Speaker 1: way it works, Uh, the parking lot has to be

1042
00:53:24,640 --> 00:53:26,960
Speaker 1: wired for something like this to work right now. I

1043
00:53:27,000 --> 00:53:30,320
Speaker 1: think in the future they're saying, as you know, as always,

1044
00:53:30,360 --> 00:53:32,400
Speaker 1: in ten years, we may see this, yeah, where we

1045
00:53:32,840 --> 00:53:34,840
Speaker 1: might even see it where the car is able to

1046
00:53:34,840 --> 00:53:38,879
Speaker 1: do it all without the infrastructure being necessary. But it's

1047
00:53:38,880 --> 00:53:41,000
Speaker 1: not a surprise to me to see this kind of

1048
00:53:41,080 --> 00:53:44,759
Speaker 1: this kind of progression where you have the the you know,

1049
00:53:44,800 --> 00:53:47,560
Speaker 1: you've you've kind of rigged the game, right, You've rigged

1050
00:53:47,560 --> 00:53:50,920
Speaker 1: the game by defining what the playing board is, and

1051
00:53:50,960 --> 00:53:53,520
Speaker 1: then your piece can move along the playing board in

1052
00:53:53,560 --> 00:53:56,000
Speaker 1: a very predictable way because you've defined the playing board.

1053
00:53:56,239 --> 00:53:59,760
Speaker 1: Eventually the pieces get sophisticated enough that you could play

1054
00:54:00,040 --> 00:54:03,000
Speaker 1: on any surface and you're fine. Same sort of thing

1055
00:54:03,120 --> 00:54:06,080
Speaker 1: is that the idea of the early autonomous cars really

1056
00:54:06,080 --> 00:54:09,919
Speaker 1: heavily dependent upon a system that they could uh communicate

1057
00:54:10,000 --> 00:54:13,279
Speaker 1: with in order for them to operate. But now we're

1058
00:54:13,280 --> 00:54:15,439
Speaker 1: getting to a point where they can do so all

1059
00:54:15,480 --> 00:54:17,040
Speaker 1: on their own. I think the same thing is going

1060
00:54:17,120 --> 00:54:19,120
Speaker 1: to be true for the self parking systems in the future.

1061
00:54:19,120 --> 00:54:22,280
Speaker 1: We'll think about this alright, so Audi offers this system

1062
00:54:22,400 --> 00:54:24,480
Speaker 1: as an option. Right, let's just say that they do

1063
00:54:24,520 --> 00:54:27,960
Speaker 1: in ten years from now, and it's it's thousand dollars

1064
00:54:26,960 --> 00:54:30,120
Speaker 1: or to add this system to your vehicle. Are you

1065
00:54:30,160 --> 00:54:32,239
Speaker 1: going to add that option? You're gonna check that little

1066
00:54:32,239 --> 00:54:35,520
Speaker 1: box because there's that one parking lot in Cleveland where

1067
00:54:35,520 --> 00:54:38,040
Speaker 1: it's gonna work. Yeah, you might want to wait until

1068
00:54:38,120 --> 00:54:41,600
Speaker 1: that technology is completely self contained. All right, that's a

1069
00:54:41,719 --> 00:54:44,280
Speaker 1: that's a little bit you know, extreme, I guess. But

1070
00:54:44,280 --> 00:54:47,080
Speaker 1: but Audi is so on board with this. I mean,

1071
00:54:47,120 --> 00:54:51,279
Speaker 1: there really are running gangbusters towards this autonomous vehicle. I mean,

1072
00:54:51,960 --> 00:54:54,520
Speaker 1: in two thousand ten they ran a car up Pike's Peak.

1073
00:54:54,560 --> 00:54:56,040
Speaker 1: I don't know if a lot of techno tech stuff

1074
00:54:56,080 --> 00:54:57,760
Speaker 1: listeners are going to know that or not car stuff

1075
00:54:57,760 --> 00:55:01,239
Speaker 1: listeners do. We've talked about it. But in two thousand ten,

1076
00:55:02,000 --> 00:55:05,200
Speaker 1: Audi ran an autonomous t t s up Pike's Peak

1077
00:55:05,280 --> 00:55:08,759
Speaker 1: the International Hill Climb competition course. I think it's something

1078
00:55:08,800 --> 00:55:11,719
Speaker 1: like a hundred and forty four turns twelve and a

1079
00:55:11,760 --> 00:55:14,560
Speaker 1: half miles. It's you know, fourteen thousand feet in the air.

1080
00:55:15,080 --> 00:55:17,200
Speaker 1: It did it in like twenty seven minutes, which is

1081
00:55:17,200 --> 00:55:19,560
Speaker 1: not a great time to granted, you know, the fastest

1082
00:55:19,640 --> 00:55:22,520
Speaker 1: drivers do it in ten minutes, but it's pretty amazing.

1083
00:55:22,560 --> 00:55:24,759
Speaker 1: They didn't have anybody behind the wheel. I mean, there's

1084
00:55:24,760 --> 00:55:26,520
Speaker 1: a thousand foot cliff on one side and the other

1085
00:55:26,600 --> 00:55:30,719
Speaker 1: side is you know, Rocky Death the other way as well. Um,

1086
00:55:30,840 --> 00:55:35,080
Speaker 1: that's a little extreme. Anyway, they chose the TTS because

1087
00:55:35,120 --> 00:55:38,399
Speaker 1: it has the pieces in place and and it makes

1088
00:55:38,400 --> 00:55:40,799
Speaker 1: perfect sense. It has the you know, the the drive

1089
00:55:40,840 --> 00:55:43,399
Speaker 1: by wire throttle, it has adaptive cruise control, It has

1090
00:55:43,480 --> 00:55:46,560
Speaker 1: SMI semi automatic gearbox, which is another one we really

1091
00:55:46,600 --> 00:55:50,160
Speaker 1: talked about, and lots of other electronic gadgetry like GPS.

1092
00:55:50,200 --> 00:55:54,960
Speaker 1: To contract this vehicle within two centimeters, that's incredible two centimeters.

1093
00:55:55,000 --> 00:55:59,560
Speaker 1: I remember when GPS was such that the military required

1094
00:55:59,600 --> 00:56:05,600
Speaker 1: all consumer level GPS receivers to only be accurate to

1095
00:56:06,200 --> 00:56:10,160
Speaker 1: maybe fifty feet. Uh. And then eventually during the Clinton

1096
00:56:10,160 --> 00:56:13,520
Speaker 1: administration that got lifted so that we could have more

1097
00:56:13,600 --> 00:56:16,239
Speaker 1: accurate GPS receivers. But it was the domain of the

1098
00:56:16,280 --> 00:56:18,040
Speaker 1: military until and then I think it went down to

1099
00:56:18,120 --> 00:56:20,400
Speaker 1: like ten ft and then went down to three feet. Right.

1100
00:56:20,400 --> 00:56:21,680
Speaker 1: I don't know what it is now, but I mean

1101
00:56:21,719 --> 00:56:23,600
Speaker 1: to track a vehicle and now you get like a

1102
00:56:23,680 --> 00:56:25,720
Speaker 1: note on your on your watch saying, take a step

1103
00:56:25,719 --> 00:56:27,840
Speaker 1: to your left because you know you're about to step

1104
00:56:27,840 --> 00:56:32,760
Speaker 1: in a crack or something. Yeah, this is amazing stuff.

1105
00:56:32,800 --> 00:56:34,759
Speaker 1: I mean, there's so much more we could talk about.

1106
00:56:34,800 --> 00:56:38,040
Speaker 1: I mean we haven't really even talked about like lane correction,

1107
00:56:38,280 --> 00:56:40,520
Speaker 1: where it takes over the steering for you and helps

1108
00:56:40,560 --> 00:56:43,360
Speaker 1: adjust you back into the the middle of the lane.

1109
00:56:43,480 --> 00:56:46,160
Speaker 1: You could even have You can even have cars that

1110
00:56:46,280 --> 00:56:48,200
Speaker 1: keep you in the center of the lane and so

1111
00:56:48,280 --> 00:56:50,520
Speaker 1: you feel a little tugging at your steering wheel when

1112
00:56:50,520 --> 00:56:53,120
Speaker 1: you start to drift. Out of that sentence, Mercedes, does it? Now,

1113
00:56:53,360 --> 00:56:56,719
Speaker 1: get this Mercedes, Mercedes vehicle. I just read this. If

1114
00:56:56,840 --> 00:57:00,680
Speaker 1: another vehicle enters your lanes, they're they're drifting, your car

1115
00:57:00,719 --> 00:57:03,040
Speaker 1: reacts to it, So your car starts to move all

1116
00:57:03,080 --> 00:57:06,080
Speaker 1: the way. Your car will react appropriately to get out

1117
00:57:06,080 --> 00:57:07,360
Speaker 1: of the way of the other vehicle that gets in

1118
00:57:07,400 --> 00:57:09,399
Speaker 1: your land. So it's not just monitoring what it's doing.

1119
00:57:09,440 --> 00:57:12,280
Speaker 1: It's monitoring what other cars are doing and taking invasive action.

1120
00:57:12,360 --> 00:57:15,040
Speaker 1: When when we say react appropriately, does it also call

1121
00:57:15,160 --> 00:57:19,120
Speaker 1: the driver bad names? That's that's not appropriate. Okay, okay,

1122
00:57:19,120 --> 00:57:22,560
Speaker 1: all right, well you know I just I only repeat

1123
00:57:22,560 --> 00:57:26,360
Speaker 1: what I see in traffic. I'm a non driver flips

1124
00:57:26,360 --> 00:57:30,160
Speaker 1: the electronic bird. That's right, So you know, just again,

1125
00:57:30,160 --> 00:57:32,320
Speaker 1: There's so much more we could talk about, but in

1126
00:57:32,400 --> 00:57:35,920
Speaker 1: order to wrap this episode up, I have to ask you,

1127
00:57:36,160 --> 00:57:39,520
Speaker 1: Scott an important question. My important question is why is

1128
00:57:39,560 --> 00:57:44,439
Speaker 1: your personal feeling about autonomous cars? You're the car guy,

1129
00:57:44,480 --> 00:57:47,000
Speaker 1: all right, So this has changed. My opinion has changed

1130
00:57:47,040 --> 00:57:49,080
Speaker 1: over the last couple of years because when I first

1131
00:57:49,160 --> 00:57:52,160
Speaker 1: started here, we were still in you know, talking about

1132
00:57:52,200 --> 00:57:55,480
Speaker 1: the you know, the infrastructure systems that everybody had to

1133
00:57:55,480 --> 00:57:57,960
Speaker 1: be on board or else it wasn't gonna happen. And

1134
00:57:58,080 --> 00:58:00,080
Speaker 1: you know, that was completely different from the way it

1135
00:58:00,160 --> 00:58:02,280
Speaker 1: is now. The stuff that I'm seeing coming out now,

1136
00:58:02,640 --> 00:58:05,080
Speaker 1: I'm starting to buy into it a little bit. Don't

1137
00:58:05,120 --> 00:58:07,439
Speaker 1: tell Bent, No, I won't now maybe I should. I'll

1138
00:58:07,440 --> 00:58:09,760
Speaker 1: probably talk with him about this soon, but but this

1139
00:58:09,800 --> 00:58:11,680
Speaker 1: is really the first I've dug into it in a while.

1140
00:58:12,400 --> 00:58:14,800
Speaker 1: And honestly, some of the systems that I'm that I'm

1141
00:58:14,880 --> 00:58:17,600
Speaker 1: learning about and the way that they operate, I think

1142
00:58:17,640 --> 00:58:20,320
Speaker 1: that's okay. I like this, the semi control type stuff.

1143
00:58:20,360 --> 00:58:22,880
Speaker 1: I don't think I'll ever want to completely hand over

1144
00:58:22,880 --> 00:58:25,120
Speaker 1: control like you know, the the Google car that you're

1145
00:58:25,120 --> 00:58:28,320
Speaker 1: mentioning with no steering wheel and no break etcetera. I

1146
00:58:28,320 --> 00:58:31,240
Speaker 1: don't like that idea one bit. What I do feel

1147
00:58:31,240 --> 00:58:33,760
Speaker 1: that I'm okay with is that, in certain situations and

1148
00:58:33,840 --> 00:58:38,760
Speaker 1: certain conditions, if you give over I guess um partial

1149
00:58:38,800 --> 00:58:41,640
Speaker 1: control to systems, I'm fine with that. I mean, I

1150
00:58:41,720 --> 00:58:43,600
Speaker 1: understand that, you know, for safety reasons, that's fine. It

1151
00:58:43,680 --> 00:58:45,680
Speaker 1: can think faster than I can think, or react faster

1152
00:58:45,720 --> 00:58:48,160
Speaker 1: than I can. But I'm still I'm still one in

1153
00:58:48,200 --> 00:58:51,280
Speaker 1: the in the realm of I'd like to maintain control

1154
00:58:51,320 --> 00:58:54,080
Speaker 1: the car myself. Well. And you enjoy driving too, right,

1155
00:58:54,160 --> 00:58:58,080
Speaker 1: I mean to you, driving is a pleasure activity. I mean,

1156
00:58:58,200 --> 00:59:00,640
Speaker 1: obviously not like stop and go try pick in Atlanta

1157
00:59:00,760 --> 00:59:03,160
Speaker 1: and highways, but driving is a pleasure activity and I

1158
00:59:03,200 --> 00:59:04,640
Speaker 1: think for a lot of people that's true. And it

1159
00:59:04,640 --> 00:59:08,080
Speaker 1: also represents a sense of independence and freedom, the fact

1160
00:59:08,160 --> 00:59:10,400
Speaker 1: that you can get up and go to a destination

1161
00:59:10,440 --> 00:59:14,520
Speaker 1: on on your own, and it very much feeds into

1162
00:59:15,240 --> 00:59:18,160
Speaker 1: sort of the American identity, you know. And there are

1163
00:59:18,200 --> 00:59:20,040
Speaker 1: some places in the world where this is not as

1164
00:59:20,080 --> 00:59:22,120
Speaker 1: big a deal, but for us it's huge as it

1165
00:59:22,360 --> 00:59:25,560
Speaker 1: really ties into our national identity. Huge expression of freedom.

1166
00:59:25,840 --> 00:59:27,440
Speaker 1: And and the thing is, you know, I need to

1167
00:59:27,440 --> 00:59:30,400
Speaker 1: clarify this. I'm talking about like my daily driver. Now,

1168
00:59:30,400 --> 00:59:31,760
Speaker 1: if I were to have a car that was like

1169
00:59:31,760 --> 00:59:35,160
Speaker 1: a weekend car project car, Um, you want that full manual,

1170
00:59:35,400 --> 00:59:38,520
Speaker 1: I would want. I would want that just no electronics

1171
00:59:38,520 --> 00:59:40,080
Speaker 1: in that thing at all, if possible. I mean, just

1172
00:59:40,120 --> 00:59:42,840
Speaker 1: to be a raw experience. And I like that a lot,

1173
00:59:42,880 --> 00:59:44,520
Speaker 1: I really do. And so I think that you know

1174
00:59:44,520 --> 00:59:46,320
Speaker 1: that I've got two different ways to look at it.

1175
00:59:46,360 --> 00:59:49,160
Speaker 1: But for the daily driver, yeah, sure, if I'm going

1176
00:59:49,200 --> 00:59:51,240
Speaker 1: to help me in traffic and stop and go every

1177
00:59:51,320 --> 00:59:52,680
Speaker 1: day because I sit in it for an hour and

1178
00:59:52,720 --> 00:59:57,080
Speaker 1: a half every day each way to get to this office. Um, well,

1179
00:59:57,640 --> 00:59:59,640
Speaker 1: good news, Scott, because you're sitting here with me so

1180
00:59:59,720 --> 01:00:01,080
Speaker 1: light to it's not gonna be any traffic when you're

1181
01:00:01,080 --> 01:00:03,720
Speaker 1: heading home tonight. So what about you, I mean, we

1182
01:00:03,760 --> 01:00:05,560
Speaker 1: haven't really talked about your thoughts in this. You're not

1183
01:00:05,960 --> 01:00:09,440
Speaker 1: I'm not a driver, So I am one percent on

1184
01:00:09,480 --> 01:00:12,520
Speaker 1: board with the autonomous car experience. All right, I understand

1185
01:00:12,800 --> 01:00:15,040
Speaker 1: that I get that. But let's just say that you know,

1186
01:00:15,360 --> 01:00:18,080
Speaker 1: you've got some confidence in the person that's driving you, right,

1187
01:00:18,120 --> 01:00:20,160
Speaker 1: So you have people that you know drive you here

1188
01:00:20,160 --> 01:00:22,320
Speaker 1: and there wherever you need to get Your wife drives right, Yes,

1189
01:00:22,400 --> 01:00:24,960
Speaker 1: she does, had no secret there. Now, would you be

1190
01:00:25,040 --> 01:00:29,120
Speaker 1: comfortable with her handing over control to the computers to

1191
01:00:29,200 --> 01:00:31,440
Speaker 1: let them drive you wherever you're going? I would be

1192
01:00:31,720 --> 01:00:34,360
Speaker 1: my wife. Let me say this first, My wife is

1193
01:00:34,360 --> 01:00:37,800
Speaker 1: an excellent driver. I make a lot of I make

1194
01:00:37,840 --> 01:00:40,360
Speaker 1: a lot of jokes at my wife's expense, which she

1195
01:00:41,240 --> 01:00:44,360
Speaker 1: humor is good naturedly. But I have to say she

1196
01:00:44,360 --> 01:00:47,560
Speaker 1: she was late getting into driving as well. She was

1197
01:00:47,600 --> 01:00:49,680
Speaker 1: not one of those people who at age sixteen got

1198
01:00:49,680 --> 01:00:53,280
Speaker 1: her driver's license. She she was a latecomer to driving.

1199
01:00:53,920 --> 01:00:57,560
Speaker 1: But she is an excellent driver, however, I think she does.

1200
01:00:57,640 --> 01:01:01,160
Speaker 1: She's also she doesn't enjoy driving. She does it, and

1201
01:01:01,240 --> 01:01:03,800
Speaker 1: she's very good at it, but it's not an experience

1202
01:01:03,800 --> 01:01:06,200
Speaker 1: that she looks forward to. So I think she would

1203
01:01:06,320 --> 01:01:08,680
Speaker 1: enjoy being able to hand over control too. I think

1204
01:01:08,720 --> 01:01:10,520
Speaker 1: a lot of people feel that way. Yeah, I mean

1205
01:01:10,560 --> 01:01:13,120
Speaker 1: I really do. There there are plenty of people who

1206
01:01:13,200 --> 01:01:15,040
Speaker 1: absolutely love it, and there are plenty of people who

1207
01:01:15,080 --> 01:01:18,280
Speaker 1: are like, this is a utilitarian task that I do it.

1208
01:01:18,280 --> 01:01:20,440
Speaker 1: It gets me to where I need to be, and

1209
01:01:20,480 --> 01:01:22,800
Speaker 1: that's all it is. It also, I think heavily depends

1210
01:01:22,840 --> 01:01:25,760
Speaker 1: upon the house you grew up in the way, the

1211
01:01:25,800 --> 01:01:28,920
Speaker 1: way the people around you looked at driving. Because my

1212
01:01:29,000 --> 01:01:32,880
Speaker 1: parents both don't really care about driving either. It is

1213
01:01:33,520 --> 01:01:35,960
Speaker 1: the way they get from point A to point B,

1214
01:01:36,440 --> 01:01:38,480
Speaker 1: and so I think I inherited a lot of that

1215
01:01:38,520 --> 01:01:43,400
Speaker 1: from them. Um. I also just I also know a

1216
01:01:43,440 --> 01:01:48,280
Speaker 1: lot about how uh the humans have the limitations? Right,

1217
01:01:48,280 --> 01:01:51,400
Speaker 1: We we do have limitations in our reaction time and

1218
01:01:51,440 --> 01:01:55,400
Speaker 1: our ability to make decisions and critical moments. And even

1219
01:01:55,400 --> 01:01:57,720
Speaker 1: when you make that decision, then there's the delay between

1220
01:01:57,760 --> 01:02:01,760
Speaker 1: making the decision and acting upon it. And it seems

1221
01:02:01,800 --> 01:02:04,400
Speaker 1: difficult to believe that machines can do this better than

1222
01:02:04,440 --> 01:02:06,120
Speaker 1: we can. But you see it all the time. I

1223
01:02:06,120 --> 01:02:10,960
Speaker 1: mean the the fact that that machines are communicating electronically.

1224
01:02:11,040 --> 01:02:13,200
Speaker 1: That means you're they're using electricity which moves at the

1225
01:02:13,200 --> 01:02:15,680
Speaker 1: speed of light. You are not getting faster than that.

1226
01:02:16,560 --> 01:02:19,920
Speaker 1: Um And once you once you figure that out and

1227
01:02:19,960 --> 01:02:22,600
Speaker 1: you get to the point where the system itself is

1228
01:02:23,040 --> 01:02:27,440
Speaker 1: it's proven to be reliable, which is obviously key. If

1229
01:02:27,480 --> 01:02:31,200
Speaker 1: you have a poorly designed system, this could be a disaster, right,

1230
01:02:31,320 --> 01:02:36,320
Speaker 1: A poorly designed autonomous car could cost lives. But assuming

1231
01:02:36,360 --> 01:02:42,160
Speaker 1: that it has been quality tested to you know, to

1232
01:02:42,240 --> 01:02:45,080
Speaker 1: the ends of the earth and back to prove that

1233
01:02:45,120 --> 01:02:47,440
Speaker 1: it in fact is able to do what it promises

1234
01:02:47,480 --> 01:02:50,240
Speaker 1: to do, then I welcome it with open arms. And

1235
01:02:50,280 --> 01:02:52,400
Speaker 1: even so, GM legal may still tell you that you

1236
01:02:52,400 --> 01:02:54,240
Speaker 1: have to have your hands on the wheel, which means

1237
01:02:54,240 --> 01:02:56,240
Speaker 1: I'm out right, I still have to go get a

1238
01:02:56,280 --> 01:02:58,400
Speaker 1: driver's license to sit in my driver less car. You

1239
01:02:58,400 --> 01:03:00,720
Speaker 1: know what may be my favorite part of that that

1240
01:03:00,840 --> 01:03:04,560
Speaker 1: whole um paragraph that you just stated, Yeah, when you

1241
01:03:04,600 --> 01:03:09,320
Speaker 1: called us the humans the humans, Yeah, it almost had me.

1242
01:03:09,600 --> 01:03:11,720
Speaker 1: I realized after I said it. I thought, now it

1243
01:03:11,760 --> 01:03:14,640
Speaker 1: sounds like I'm talking about a species to which I

1244
01:03:14,680 --> 01:03:17,800
Speaker 1: do not belong, but I do. I'm not an alien

1245
01:03:17,920 --> 01:03:21,360
Speaker 1: or a robot. Like, hey, come on, man, I don't

1246
01:03:21,360 --> 01:03:24,000
Speaker 1: need to be like calling in my backup squad so

1247
01:03:24,040 --> 01:03:26,160
Speaker 1: I can wipe out everyone's memory. Plus I can always

1248
01:03:26,200 --> 01:03:27,920
Speaker 1: at this podcast and cut that part out if I

1249
01:03:27,960 --> 01:03:31,080
Speaker 1: really wanted to a panel in the back of your head. Look,

1250
01:03:31,160 --> 01:03:34,240
Speaker 1: we don't talk about my it's It's just a tattoo,

1251
01:03:34,520 --> 01:03:37,400
Speaker 1: that's all. It is. A tattoo. Very clever, Scott, Thank

1252
01:03:37,440 --> 01:03:39,600
Speaker 1: you so much. For being on this show. This was

1253
01:03:39,640 --> 01:03:41,480
Speaker 1: a lot of fun to have this conversation. It was

1254
01:03:41,520 --> 01:03:43,000
Speaker 1: a lot of fun. And I'll tell you I've got

1255
01:03:43,440 --> 01:03:45,600
Speaker 1: I'm staring at five pages of notes that we didn't

1256
01:03:45,640 --> 01:03:49,160
Speaker 1: even get. You threw away about about six pages of

1257
01:03:49,200 --> 01:03:51,160
Speaker 1: notes after you got finished with UM. Yeah, so we've

1258
01:03:51,160 --> 01:03:53,160
Speaker 1: got enough here where we could do another episode if

1259
01:03:53,160 --> 01:03:54,920
Speaker 1: we wanted. Let me tell you, I really appreciate the

1260
01:03:54,920 --> 01:03:57,880
Speaker 1: opportunity to to be here. So thanks for asking me. Absolutely.

1261
01:03:57,880 --> 01:03:59,959
Speaker 1: And of course you can listen to Scott and Ben

1262
01:04:00,120 --> 01:04:05,400
Speaker 1: on Car Stuff, an amazing podcast. Uh and uh and Scott,

1263
01:04:05,440 --> 01:04:07,600
Speaker 1: I hope you are able to do an episode about

1264
01:04:07,640 --> 01:04:10,720
Speaker 1: autonomous cars and drop the bomb on Ben early in

1265
01:04:10,720 --> 01:04:12,720
Speaker 1: the episode, because I want to see him react when

1266
01:04:12,720 --> 01:04:15,760
Speaker 1: you say I'm on board with some of these technologies. Yes,

1267
01:04:15,880 --> 01:04:18,360
Speaker 1: some of them. Let's say, let's keep it in mind

1268
01:04:18,360 --> 01:04:21,480
Speaker 1: that it's some now. Yeah, yeah, I'm not completely swayed yet.

1269
01:04:21,520 --> 01:04:24,280
Speaker 1: It's the assist that you're looking at, not the I'm

1270
01:04:24,280 --> 01:04:27,320
Speaker 1: going to completely take over this this experience as I

1271
01:04:27,360 --> 01:04:29,480
Speaker 1: get older, I'm okay with a little bit of assistance,

1272
01:04:29,520 --> 01:04:31,760
Speaker 1: that's all. Yeah, No, I I could use all the

1273
01:04:31,760 --> 01:04:37,320
Speaker 1: assistance I can get driving and everything else. Yeah, well,

1274
01:04:37,400 --> 01:04:40,439
Speaker 1: you know I welcome them. And Hey, if you guys

1275
01:04:40,480 --> 01:04:43,040
Speaker 1: have jokes for me, or you have suggestions for future

1276
01:04:43,080 --> 01:04:45,720
Speaker 1: episodes of tech Stuff, maybe there's another house Stuff or

1277
01:04:45,760 --> 01:04:49,240
Speaker 1: its host that you would absolutely love to have back

1278
01:04:49,320 --> 01:04:51,480
Speaker 1: on the show, or someone who's never been on before.

1279
01:04:51,560 --> 01:04:54,720
Speaker 1: Let me know. You guys may be begging for Scott

1280
01:04:54,760 --> 01:04:57,040
Speaker 1: to come back. Please let me know. I'll be happy

1281
01:04:57,040 --> 01:05:00,080
Speaker 1: to pass those messages along as well. You can did

1282
01:05:00,080 --> 01:05:02,200
Speaker 1: in touch with me with the email address tech Stuff

1283
01:05:02,240 --> 01:05:04,640
Speaker 1: at how stuff works dot com or drop me a

1284
01:05:04,680 --> 01:05:07,440
Speaker 1: line on Twitter, Facebook or Tumbler with the handled tech

1285
01:05:07,520 --> 01:05:11,000
Speaker 1: Stuff hs W and I'll talk to you again really

1286
01:05:11,080 --> 01:05:15,960
Speaker 1: soon for more on this and bausands of other topics.

1287
01:05:16,160 --> 01:05:27,280
Speaker 1: Does it have stuff works dot com