WEBVTT - Autonomous Autos And High-Tech Gear 0:00:04.240 --> 0:00:12.360 Get in touch with technology with text stuff dot com. 0:00:12.360 --> 0:00:15.320 Hey there, everyone, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm Jonathan 0:00:15.360 --> 0:00:19.280 Strickland and now today I'm joined in the podcast studio 0:00:20.320 --> 0:00:24.279 by my esteemed colleague, the co host of Car Stuff, 0:00:24.400 --> 0:00:27.600 Scott Benjamin Scott welcome. Thank you very much. Thanks for 0:00:27.600 --> 0:00:30.600 having me. I appreciate it. Yeah, and Scott, you you 0:00:31.120 --> 0:00:33.040 this is your first time on tech Stuff. It is 0:00:33.120 --> 0:00:36.560 first guest by Yeah. Ben's been on several times. Uh, 0:00:36.560 --> 0:00:39.000 he spoke highly of you, thank you, So I have 0:00:39.200 --> 0:00:42.519 I have high expectations. Uh. If you guys have not 0:00:42.640 --> 0:00:44.720 listened to Car Stuff, you definitely need to go and 0:00:44.800 --> 0:00:47.560 check that out. I know I've recommended it multiple times. 0:00:47.560 --> 0:00:51.720 When we did our transmissions episode, I was silently hoping 0:00:51.800 --> 0:00:55.280 that Scott was not sitting at his desk cringing in horror, 0:00:55.360 --> 0:00:58.960 just from psychically understanding that we were completely in mistating 0:00:58.960 --> 0:01:01.800 how they worked shocks. You're just saying, editor, I probably 0:01:01.800 --> 0:01:04.319 couldn't poke too many holes in the in the narrative. Yeah, 0:01:04.360 --> 0:01:07.320 we were. We were I think pretty consistent, uh and 0:01:07.319 --> 0:01:11.160 and more correct than not. So that was good. And 0:01:11.400 --> 0:01:13.600 I you know, we kind of were talking about what 0:01:13.840 --> 0:01:15.560 was going to be the subject, you know, I said, well, 0:01:15.560 --> 0:01:18.959 we could pick any topic you want, and we talked 0:01:19.000 --> 0:01:23.160 about autonomous cars being the subject, the idea of, uh, 0:01:23.240 --> 0:01:27.920 you know, the whole history of autonomous cars, the technology 0:01:28.000 --> 0:01:30.760 that more or less is allowing autonomous cars to work, 0:01:30.880 --> 0:01:34.040 and how that technology is finding its way into cars 0:01:34.040 --> 0:01:37.039 you can drive today, and not not autonomous cars, not 0:01:37.120 --> 0:01:40.160 driverless cars, but that technology is making the cars we 0:01:40.280 --> 0:01:45.440 do use either easier or more safe. And so I 0:01:45.440 --> 0:01:49.200 thought I'd start off by saying, Scott, the first autonomous 0:01:49.240 --> 0:01:51.640 car story I could come up with was from fourteen 0:01:51.720 --> 0:01:54.360 seventy eight. Yeah, that goes way farther back than I 0:01:54.360 --> 0:01:57.840 had anticipated. Although you said it, I remembered what you're talking. Yeah, 0:01:57.840 --> 0:01:59.240 I mean as soon as I said I thought it 0:01:59.280 --> 0:02:01.400 was really good. I I said, before we came in here, 0:02:01.400 --> 0:02:03.360 and I thought I was gonna really catch you off guard. 0:02:03.400 --> 0:02:08.800 And you said, Leonardo da Vincius, dang, Yeah, he he 0:02:08.919 --> 0:02:11.840 sketched out an idea for a driverless cart. You're not 0:02:11.840 --> 0:02:14.519 gonna stump me on Leo too often, because we talked 0:02:14.560 --> 0:02:16.800 about Leo so many times in the early days of 0:02:16.800 --> 0:02:19.200 car stuff. I think we've talked about just about every 0:02:19.240 --> 0:02:23.120 invention the guy's ever had, which again maybe not because 0:02:23.280 --> 0:02:26.520 you know thousands, it seems like it happens for thousands 0:02:26.560 --> 0:02:29.560 of things that patterns, but ideas for thousands of things, right, 0:02:29.639 --> 0:02:33.680 tons of sketches, some of which were ideas that ultimately 0:02:34.120 --> 0:02:36.320 had no way of working, and a lot of which 0:02:36.320 --> 0:02:40.359 had you know, some real, some real great thought behind it. 0:02:41.160 --> 0:02:43.440 And this is one of them. That was a pre 0:02:43.560 --> 0:02:48.000 programmed clockwork cart. So it's not autonomous in the sense 0:02:48.120 --> 0:02:50.520 let it could you could set it down on a 0:02:50.600 --> 0:02:52.399 road and it would just be able to follow the road. 0:02:52.880 --> 0:02:56.320 It would follow a predetermined pathway and it did so. 0:02:56.360 --> 0:02:58.919 It had a had a cam that you could put 0:02:58.960 --> 0:03:02.280 cam stops on, which would tell it tell essentially the 0:03:02.280 --> 0:03:07.280 steering mechanism win to turn left or right along its pathway, 0:03:07.360 --> 0:03:10.480 and a spring that you would wind inside the cart 0:03:10.960 --> 0:03:16.200 gave it the the energy needed to propel itself forward. Yeah, 0:03:16.919 --> 0:03:20.120 and uh so if you knew that I needed to 0:03:20.160 --> 0:03:25.080 travel forward approximately this far because approximately because you're gonna 0:03:25.120 --> 0:03:28.239 get and then turn left, you could put the camp 0:03:28.280 --> 0:03:30.520 stop in the right spot and then it would do that. 0:03:30.960 --> 0:03:33.920 But that's it. It would have to be the predetermined path. 0:03:34.000 --> 0:03:36.160 And now it's just the one you can refresh my memory. Yeah, 0:03:36.160 --> 0:03:38.480 I don't think that this was ever built in his time. 0:03:38.680 --> 0:03:41.200 I believe that some engineers created it later for a 0:03:41.280 --> 0:03:44.800 museum pieces that right, that's right, the the original one 0:03:45.200 --> 0:03:49.320 was probably never built in Leonardo's time, which is not 0:03:49.360 --> 0:03:54.360 a big surprise. A lot of his inventions were again 0:03:54.440 --> 0:03:56.720 just the realm of the sketch book. They were never 0:03:56.800 --> 0:04:01.200 actually built. But it was Mark Rossheim who made a 0:04:01.240 --> 0:04:03.600 working model of it. He also made I did an 0:04:03.600 --> 0:04:07.680 episode with Josh Clark about humanoid robots. He also made 0:04:07.760 --> 0:04:13.040 a clockwork mechanical night based on Leonardo da Vinci's design, 0:04:13.080 --> 0:04:16.760 which supposedly was built during da Vinci's time. But we 0:04:16.880 --> 0:04:20.280 just have a written account of it existing as opposed 0:04:20.320 --> 0:04:23.080 to an actual example of it. So it may that 0:04:23.080 --> 0:04:26.640 that story maybe apocryphal, but the actual design worked interesting, 0:04:26.680 --> 0:04:28.960 So it's fascinating that it would work. You know, these 0:04:29.160 --> 0:04:31.880 these drawings of his that finally came to life, you know, 0:04:32.279 --> 0:04:37.279 hundreds of years later, and and they truly do work. Yeah. Yeah, 0:04:37.320 --> 0:04:40.839 we have the story from I believe you said about 0:04:40.839 --> 0:04:44.279 a radio controlled full size car, not not a not 0:04:44.320 --> 0:04:47.159 a radio control car like a toy car. We're talking 0:04:47.160 --> 0:04:50.440 about a full sized car being controlled by radio. That 0:04:50.600 --> 0:04:54.120 is amazing to me. How granted that's TELA operated right. Again, 0:04:54.160 --> 0:04:58.560 it's not autonomously controlled, so a little different from a 0:04:58.560 --> 0:05:01.280 car that drives itself. A little bit different. Yeah, I 0:05:01.320 --> 0:05:03.200 guess so. Um, you know you said that it would 0:05:03.200 --> 0:05:05.320 be controlled by someone outside the vehicle. I guess it's 0:05:05.560 --> 0:05:08.440 you could consider it the earliest remote controlled or radio 0:05:08.520 --> 0:05:12.800 controlled full size car ever. And it was tested in 0:05:12.839 --> 0:05:15.479 a very difficult situation too. It was New York City 0:05:16.160 --> 0:05:18.680 during a traffic jam. So we're talking about driving up 0:05:18.720 --> 0:05:22.600 Broadway and down Fifth Avenue in heavy traffic in you 0:05:22.600 --> 0:05:24.800 can I measure what that was like. And that's a 0:05:24.800 --> 0:05:28.520 pretty rigorous first test. Yeah, I'm amazing to think that. 0:05:28.560 --> 0:05:30.880 You know they were doing this in n I mean, 0:05:31.560 --> 0:05:34.800 but again, look what we're look where we're at now. Yeah. 0:05:35.279 --> 0:05:39.360 So we get science fiction author David H. Keller, who 0:05:39.360 --> 0:05:43.080 wrote a story called the Living Machine in the anthology 0:05:43.120 --> 0:05:46.960 Wonder Stories. Keller's story involved lots of different things, but 0:05:47.160 --> 0:05:50.359 had a description of driverless cars that took all the 0:05:50.480 --> 0:05:54.120 stress out of the commute. You just jumped in. You 0:05:54.120 --> 0:05:56.640 can put the kiddies into the into the car. It 0:05:56.640 --> 0:05:58.560 would take them to school, and you wouldn't have to 0:05:58.560 --> 0:06:01.400 worry about, you know, a chauffeur making a wrong turn. 0:06:01.400 --> 0:06:03.240 I did mention a show fair, which I thought was 0:06:04.320 --> 0:06:05.960 meant that the story must have been for a very 0:06:06.000 --> 0:06:09.760 specific audience. But uh, in nineteen thirty nine, we have 0:06:09.839 --> 0:06:13.200 the infamous World's Fair. This, this is a World's Fair. 0:06:13.240 --> 0:06:16.039 I wish I could travel back in time and visit myself. 0:06:16.080 --> 0:06:20.280 You're talking about GM's Futurama exhibit, right, this is amazing. Yes, 0:06:20.320 --> 0:06:22.719 that's exactly what I'm talking about. But this particular World's 0:06:22.720 --> 0:06:26.120 Fair had tons of science fiction a ee kind of ideas, 0:06:26.360 --> 0:06:29.000 as most of the World's Fairs did, but the ones 0:06:29.120 --> 0:06:32.760 that this one had really excite me because there was 0:06:32.800 --> 0:06:35.839 everything from robots to the these this idea of the 0:06:36.000 --> 0:06:39.640 smart highway system in the Futurama presentation. And I actually 0:06:39.680 --> 0:06:44.000 watched the film that was shown back at the nineteen 0:06:44.360 --> 0:06:50.520 nine World's Fair, and it's pretty interesting their approach. You know, 0:06:50.560 --> 0:06:54.120 they they foresaw a smart highway system in place by 0:06:54.200 --> 0:06:58.320 nineteen sixty that's what they were predicting in nineteen thirty nine. 0:06:58.440 --> 0:07:00.960 And GM has been on this in this bandwagon for 0:07:00.960 --> 0:07:03.520 a long long time. I mean probably prior to nine, 0:07:04.320 --> 0:07:06.200 to be honest with you, I mean the development of 0:07:06.240 --> 0:07:08.159 that system alone. And this is the one that showed 0:07:08.200 --> 0:07:11.680 showcased electric cars that were powered by circuits that were 0:07:11.680 --> 0:07:15.200 embedded in the roadway. So this is a an infrastructure system, 0:07:15.800 --> 0:07:18.240 as we'll talk about in this episode, but this was 0:07:18.320 --> 0:07:22.120 also a radio controlled system. Yeah. And they had there 0:07:22.320 --> 0:07:25.440 their highways were like trenches, so you would have a 0:07:25.560 --> 0:07:27.880 lane that was essentially a trench. You could not change 0:07:27.960 --> 0:07:31.760 lanes because you had these barriers on either side, individual 0:07:31.880 --> 0:07:34.480 lanes or trenches. Yeah, and the idea was that you 0:07:34.520 --> 0:07:37.120 would you would get there would be open spots where 0:07:37.120 --> 0:07:39.360 you would get into the correct lane depending upon what 0:07:39.480 --> 0:07:43.000 your destination is, but otherwise you stay on target in 0:07:43.040 --> 0:07:46.360 the death Star lane. And uh. It also had radio 0:07:47.600 --> 0:07:50.720 communication between vehicles to make sure that the vehicles were 0:07:50.760 --> 0:07:55.040 maintaining the proper distance from each other. The ideas were incredible. Now, 0:07:55.080 --> 0:07:58.160 most of this was infrastructure that was built into the 0:07:58.240 --> 0:08:03.200 road system itself. So we're talking smart roads, smart highways, 0:08:03.720 --> 0:08:08.880 and uh, we're not talking so much about smart cars, right. 0:08:09.760 --> 0:08:13.000 The cars themselves didn't have as much of that technology 0:08:13.040 --> 0:08:15.480 built into them because the the thinking at the time 0:08:16.320 --> 0:08:18.640 was that this is a system that's going to require 0:08:18.640 --> 0:08:20.880 an infrastructure to support it. It's going to be an 0:08:20.880 --> 0:08:24.240 external system that operates the vehicles that that operate within 0:08:24.320 --> 0:08:26.720 that system. I got I got it. And the cars 0:08:26.800 --> 0:08:29.120 have to be able to read the system communicate with 0:08:29.160 --> 0:08:31.400 the system that's outside the vehicle. I got it. I've 0:08:31.400 --> 0:08:33.040 got a lot to say about that in a little while, 0:08:33.840 --> 0:08:37.480 because there's some interesting things that happened mid nineteen nine 0:08:37.960 --> 0:08:42.000 or so. Yeah. Yeah, that's where some some big thinking 0:08:42.040 --> 0:08:45.200 started to kind of shift from this, because this was 0:08:45.240 --> 0:08:49.960 the predominant approach for the idea of a driver less system, 0:08:50.040 --> 0:08:53.880 or at least automated car system was that you would 0:08:53.960 --> 0:08:58.280 have the the the largest part of the system built 0:08:58.320 --> 0:09:01.080 into the landscape, not of the vehicle. The vehicle would 0:09:01.080 --> 0:09:03.480 be a receiver and the landscape would be the transmitter. 0:09:03.520 --> 0:09:05.120 And it makes sense, I guess when you think about 0:09:05.160 --> 0:09:07.600 the size of the I guess, for lack of better 0:09:07.600 --> 0:09:08.960 way to say this, you can correct me on this, 0:09:09.040 --> 0:09:12.520 but the electronics that are required the cars simply couldn't 0:09:12.559 --> 0:09:16.920 handle that big. Yeah. Yeah. The for a very long time, 0:09:17.080 --> 0:09:20.160 the the technology that would allow a vehicle to be 0:09:20.800 --> 0:09:24.960 autonomous was so huge that you couldn't put in a 0:09:24.960 --> 0:09:27.840 commercial vehicle, in a moving vehicle. Yeah, you needed to 0:09:27.920 --> 0:09:30.600 have it as something that was all along the side. Yeah, 0:09:30.640 --> 0:09:33.640 with the transistor wasn't even developed till the nine So 0:09:33.679 --> 0:09:38.040 we're talking about time where you're looking at electro mechanical circuitry, 0:09:38.559 --> 0:09:43.400 vacuum tubes, actual moving parts to complete circuits. Uh, that 0:09:43.600 --> 0:09:45.520 is enormous and you would not be able to fit 0:09:45.600 --> 0:09:47.679 that and it would make a vehicle so heavy as 0:09:47.720 --> 0:09:50.200 to make it impractical. And it's so so different now 0:09:50.240 --> 0:09:52.840 because they're actually you know, those components are actually saving 0:09:52.880 --> 0:09:55.679 weight in vehicles over the versions of the technology that 0:09:55.720 --> 0:09:59.280 we used prior to that, the mechanical versions. So it's 0:09:59.280 --> 0:10:02.280 just amazing that way this thing is advanced. Yeah, And 0:10:02.320 --> 0:10:03.800 like I said, you know, all the way through the 0:10:03.880 --> 0:10:06.480 nineteen fifties, there was still the look at the smart 0:10:06.520 --> 0:10:09.720 highway system. In fact, there were companies that worked on 0:10:09.920 --> 0:10:14.200 technology that would have brought this into reality even as 0:10:14.280 --> 0:10:17.960 early as the late nineteen fifties if we had chosen 0:10:18.000 --> 0:10:22.280 to pursue it. But that kind of system requires massive 0:10:22.360 --> 0:10:26.440 buy in across multiple companies, and no company really wants 0:10:26.480 --> 0:10:28.880 to hand over the keys to their Kingdom to some 0:10:28.960 --> 0:10:33.080 other standard. So you don't want If I'm developing cars 0:10:33.800 --> 0:10:36.679 and I know that my competitor is also developing cars 0:10:36.720 --> 0:10:39.880 and is proposing this highway system that my cars are 0:10:39.920 --> 0:10:42.280 going to have to conform to, I'm not going to 0:10:42.360 --> 0:10:45.920 be really crazy about that system. We see this in 0:10:45.960 --> 0:10:50.120 technology everywhere, not just in cars, but every kind of technology. 0:10:50.400 --> 0:10:53.800 If I want to have an interconnected kitchen where my 0:10:54.000 --> 0:10:57.640 refrigerator talks to my stove, I have to get them 0:10:57.640 --> 0:11:00.400 from the same manufacturer, because no one wants to build 0:11:00.440 --> 0:11:03.080 their stuff that to work with other people's stuff. It 0:11:03.080 --> 0:11:06.720 means you can't sell more of your things. So we 0:11:06.800 --> 0:11:09.880 never saw this smart road smart highway system take off 0:11:09.920 --> 0:11:14.120 the way the visionaries back in the late thirties were imagining. 0:11:14.320 --> 0:11:16.839 It just never happened. And they always seem to promise that, 0:11:16.880 --> 0:11:18.880 you know, in twenty five years, we're gonna see this 0:11:18.920 --> 0:11:20.680 as the standard, this is the way it's gonna be, 0:11:20.800 --> 0:11:23.720 or in twenty years sometimes and even now, you know, 0:11:24.000 --> 0:11:26.880 even now, when we see the autonomous cars that um 0:11:26.880 --> 0:11:30.280 auties rolling out in other companies, they're's still saying it's 0:11:30.280 --> 0:11:33.360 a decade away, it's fifteen years away, and it's always 0:11:33.400 --> 0:11:35.760 been the case. It's been the case ever since, you know, 0:11:35.840 --> 0:11:38.520 the nineteen thirties. Yeah, yeah, it's all well, I mean, 0:11:38.559 --> 0:11:41.120 that's that's kind of like a running joke in twenty 0:11:41.120 --> 0:11:44.240 to fifty years or in ten to fifteen years. Uh. 0:11:44.280 --> 0:11:47.160 And then you look at the people who are suggesting, 0:11:47.200 --> 0:11:48.959 whatever the technology is, it will be here in ten 0:11:49.000 --> 0:11:51.720 to fifteen years, and you go back five years and 0:11:51.760 --> 0:11:53.680 those people are saying it will be ten to fifteen years, 0:11:53.679 --> 0:11:55.559 and you go back another Eventually you get to a 0:11:55.600 --> 0:11:58.079 point where you realize it's always ten to fifteen years away, 0:11:58.120 --> 0:12:00.160 and you wonder if that tend to if that's just 0:12:00.360 --> 0:12:02.720 if that tomorrow is always going to be tomorrow and 0:12:02.800 --> 0:12:06.760 never today. Um, but we're along the way. We're seeing 0:12:06.800 --> 0:12:10.920 some really cool developments. In the sixties, we had labs 0:12:10.960 --> 0:12:14.040 at Stanford and other facilities begin to work on robot 0:12:14.040 --> 0:12:18.240 controlled vehicles, which weren't cars. They were vehicles meant to 0:12:18.280 --> 0:12:21.920 go into space, like space probes, but these robot controlled 0:12:22.000 --> 0:12:24.920 vehicles that were meant to allow a a probe to 0:12:24.960 --> 0:12:28.880 continue on a pathway and make corrections on its own, 0:12:29.240 --> 0:12:31.120 because you know, the further way you get from Earth, 0:12:31.160 --> 0:12:34.160 the longer it takes for information to pass between the 0:12:34.160 --> 0:12:36.960 probe and Earth. Information can only go so fast as 0:12:36.960 --> 0:12:38.959 the speed of light, and eventually those probes go far 0:12:39.080 --> 0:12:42.760 enough where that becomes a factor. Then you had to 0:12:42.800 --> 0:12:44.800 have a system that can make minor corrections on its 0:12:44.880 --> 0:12:48.320 own rather than have to relay the problem back. Then 0:12:48.360 --> 0:12:49.839 you have to do all the math. Al Right, well, 0:12:49.880 --> 0:12:51.880 we have to fix the problem not for right now, 0:12:52.320 --> 0:12:55.520 but for forty five minutes from now, because that's when 0:12:55.559 --> 0:12:58.720 the probe will get our response. And it's just it's 0:12:58.760 --> 0:13:01.920 too complicated too. Yeah, No, no one wants to do 0:13:02.000 --> 0:13:04.520 that much, especially when all you have to rely on 0:13:04.559 --> 0:13:08.400 our slide rules. Uh. So then we see that kind 0:13:08.440 --> 0:13:12.679 of technology start to filter into other areas, and uh 0:13:12.720 --> 0:13:14.719 that's when we started to really think about what are 0:13:14.720 --> 0:13:19.120 the elements that are necessary to let a car navigate autonomously. 0:13:19.240 --> 0:13:22.280 This involves sensing the environment, so it has to be 0:13:22.320 --> 0:13:24.880 able to detect where it is in relation to the road, 0:13:25.120 --> 0:13:29.960 to other vehicles, to other possible obstacles, whether that's people 0:13:30.160 --> 0:13:33.120 or animals or whatever it might be. It has to 0:13:33.160 --> 0:13:36.160 be able to process the information that it receives so 0:13:36.200 --> 0:13:38.760 that it has a way of making sense of all 0:13:38.800 --> 0:13:41.920 that data. Just just picking up the data isn't enough, right, 0:13:42.000 --> 0:13:43.480 You have to be able to say what does this 0:13:43.600 --> 0:13:45.840 data mean? And then it has to react to it. 0:13:45.920 --> 0:13:48.960 It has to have a way of responding to that information. 0:13:49.559 --> 0:13:51.920 That's critical because what's going to react to it. Is 0:13:51.920 --> 0:13:53.000 it going to be the driver? Is it going to 0:13:53.040 --> 0:13:55.040 be the system itself and it is going to just 0:13:55.080 --> 0:13:58.280 alert you with a a noise or light or is 0:13:58.280 --> 0:14:00.280 it something that is going to take control and do 0:14:00.320 --> 0:14:03.640 it itself exactly? And uh, and there we've seen lots 0:14:03.679 --> 0:14:06.360 of different approaches with that. Sometimes, Uh, you know, you 0:14:06.400 --> 0:14:10.559 could argue that the progress has mostly been going from 0:14:10.640 --> 0:14:14.360 the most simple implementation to the more complicated implementations that 0:14:14.360 --> 0:14:17.480 have become possible as technology has improved. But sometimes it's 0:14:17.520 --> 0:14:22.080 just you don't not everyone wants a car that starts 0:14:22.080 --> 0:14:24.160 to respond on its own because they start to feel 0:14:24.200 --> 0:14:26.680 like they're no longer in control of their own vehicle, 0:14:26.960 --> 0:14:30.320 which for some people is a real issue. Uh. In 0:14:30.360 --> 0:14:33.640 the nineteen eighties, there was a guy named Ernst Dickmans 0:14:33.680 --> 0:14:36.840 who created an autonomous driving system using a Mercedes van 0:14:37.960 --> 0:14:41.240 called the VaMoRs Mercedes Van. Have you heard of this? 0:14:41.840 --> 0:14:45.840 It's the vision guidedstem yeah, yeah, yeah, this this was 0:14:45.880 --> 0:14:49.560 a really incredible thing to look at. So it's it 0:14:49.640 --> 0:14:52.600 was a van that had an enormous amount of electronic 0:14:52.640 --> 0:14:55.560 equipment inside it. And again this is we're talking about 0:14:55.600 --> 0:14:59.800 the nineteen eighties. This is a vehicle that could autonomously 0:15:00.440 --> 0:15:04.840 navigate down highway systems. Yeah. They called this a robotic van. Yeah, 0:15:04.920 --> 0:15:09.080 and in fact, three different generations of robotics went through 0:15:09.120 --> 0:15:13.040 this one van. They do a system, they gut the system, 0:15:13.160 --> 0:15:15.840 they would rebuild it and do a second generation. They 0:15:15.840 --> 0:15:18.880 did it again for a third generation, and it could 0:15:18.920 --> 0:15:22.400 do things like maintain its distance from the vehicle that's 0:15:22.440 --> 0:15:25.360 ahead of it, It could maintain its position in the lane, 0:15:25.360 --> 0:15:28.600 it could maintain its speed and uh. It was really 0:15:29.720 --> 0:15:33.080 a groundbreaking approach that a lot of the technology and 0:15:33.400 --> 0:15:37.000 um and processes that were used and that have filtered 0:15:37.040 --> 0:15:39.640 into the autonomous cars we were talking about today. Sure, 0:15:39.680 --> 0:15:44.360 this is the beginning of what we call adaptive cruise control. Yes, yeah, 0:15:44.360 --> 0:15:46.360 we'll talk about that a little bit more later too. 0:15:46.640 --> 0:15:50.920 So super cool. And there are videos online of this 0:15:51.640 --> 0:15:55.520 the Vamours Mercedes v A M O R s uh, 0:15:55.560 --> 0:15:58.480 and you can actually see this thing like cruising down 0:15:58.480 --> 0:15:59.880 the road with the guy sitting in the back of 0:15:59.880 --> 0:16:02.760 the van looking at the electronics that again are just 0:16:02.800 --> 0:16:05.840 taking up shelves of space in the van. So unless 0:16:05.840 --> 0:16:07.360 you happen to have a van with lots of shelves 0:16:07.360 --> 0:16:10.000 of space, that's not the best implementation. But it did 0:16:10.040 --> 0:16:12.120 show the promise of the techno. I wonder why they 0:16:12.160 --> 0:16:15.480 didn't do with their two seat sports car. Yeah, yeah, 0:16:15.600 --> 0:16:19.760 just carrying behind a trailer with cables connecting to the car. Uh. 0:16:19.840 --> 0:16:24.480 In ninety four you had the Eureka Project Prometheus. Now 0:16:24.480 --> 0:16:28.360 the Eureka Project was out of Europe Um and they 0:16:28.400 --> 0:16:31.040 had three Mercedes Benz cars with systems that allowed their 0:16:31.040 --> 0:16:34.200 cars to make autonomous lane changes, which was a first 0:16:34.280 --> 0:16:37.080 in vehicles. They could detect where the lanes were. They 0:16:37.120 --> 0:16:39.960 could detect up to six other vehicles, three in front 0:16:40.000 --> 0:16:42.880 and three behind. Essentially the car that's directly in front 0:16:42.880 --> 0:16:45.240 of them, the car that's to the lane and the left, 0:16:45.240 --> 0:16:47.000 the car that's to the lane in the right, and 0:16:47.040 --> 0:16:49.240 then the ones that are behind them as well. And 0:16:49.280 --> 0:16:51.800 if all the parameters were right, if none of those 0:16:51.800 --> 0:16:56.280 cars were too close or were moving uh laterally across lanes, 0:16:56.720 --> 0:17:00.200 then it could make an autonomous lane change on its own, 0:17:00.520 --> 0:17:02.440 which was a big deal. That's still a big deal 0:17:02.480 --> 0:17:04.320 now even right. I mean when you think about it, 0:17:04.359 --> 0:17:07.320 some of the modern vehicles, that's still a big selling 0:17:07.359 --> 0:17:11.400 feature is uh, you know, lane warning detection devices things 0:17:11.440 --> 0:17:14.720 like that and uh and um blind spot detection and 0:17:14.800 --> 0:17:16.680 you know that that was what they were using then, 0:17:16.800 --> 0:17:19.439 just a more primitive version, yes, and so now we're 0:17:19.480 --> 0:17:22.760 starting to see that specific type of technology find its 0:17:22.760 --> 0:17:26.879 way into consumer vehicles today. Uh. Two thousand four was 0:17:26.920 --> 0:17:31.080 when DARPA introduced the Grand Challenge. I love the DARPA 0:17:31.119 --> 0:17:34.080 Grand Challenge. It is the coolest thing to me. They 0:17:34.119 --> 0:17:38.040 invited a lot of different research institutions, colleges, even private 0:17:38.040 --> 0:17:40.840 companies to participate in this challenge. The idea was to 0:17:40.880 --> 0:17:46.520 build a vehicle that could autonomously navigate a course in 0:17:46.560 --> 0:17:50.800 the desert, the Mojave Desert, uh, and to see if 0:17:50.800 --> 0:17:53.680 it could get from point A to point b uh. 0:17:53.720 --> 0:17:59.400 And they have several teams participate, but no one successfully 0:17:59.480 --> 0:18:02.040 navigated of course that first year, and no prize was 0:18:02.080 --> 0:18:04.840 awarded that first year. Yeah. I think I think one 0:18:04.880 --> 0:18:07.439 team got eleven point seven kilometers in and that's the 0:18:07.520 --> 0:18:09.199 furthest anyone made it I'll give you a little bit 0:18:09.200 --> 0:18:12.639 of a spoiler. Yeah, the two thousand five five Darper Challenge, 0:18:12.680 --> 0:18:15.639 and challenge that plays heavily into the development of the 0:18:15.640 --> 0:18:19.200 Google car. Yes, because the two thousand five challenge had 0:18:19.240 --> 0:18:22.320 five teams that actually did finish, including one from Stanford, 0:18:22.840 --> 0:18:25.800 and the people on that Stanford team many of them 0:18:25.800 --> 0:18:28.679 went on to work for Google. Yeah. In fact, you 0:18:28.720 --> 0:18:30.680 know the guy that headed the team, I guess, um, 0:18:30.760 --> 0:18:34.800 Sebastian Thrum. That's the guy that he won the two 0:18:34.800 --> 0:18:37.480 thousand five Darker Grand Challenge and the two million dollar 0:18:37.560 --> 0:18:40.119 prize in the US Department of Defense. But he was 0:18:40.160 --> 0:18:41.679 also the co and this is also the guy that 0:18:41.760 --> 0:18:44.560 was the co inventor of Google street View. Yes, so 0:18:44.640 --> 0:18:47.840 he's he's got you know, some some engineering chaps. I 0:18:47.880 --> 0:18:50.320 guess he's got he's got the credential. Yeah, that's right. 0:18:50.359 --> 0:18:52.320 So you know, we'll talk about the Google self driving 0:18:52.320 --> 0:18:55.119 car later. Yeah, yeah, he um. He also gave a 0:18:55.160 --> 0:18:59.320 TED talk specifically about driverless cars and his personal uh 0:18:59.440 --> 0:19:03.560 motivation for developing driverless cars, which was a very personal story. 0:19:03.680 --> 0:19:06.720 As a teenager, he lost a friend in a car accident, 0:19:07.240 --> 0:19:09.480 and so he said he wanted to develop systems that 0:19:09.520 --> 0:19:13.760 could save lives, and that's really his driving motivation, not 0:19:13.840 --> 0:19:18.840 to use a pun to create autonomous cars. So uh yeah, 0:19:18.880 --> 0:19:20.959 the two thousand four and two thousand five DARPA challenges 0:19:21.040 --> 0:19:24.359 kind of set the bar for autonomous cars in a 0:19:24.520 --> 0:19:28.840 large but desert course. Two thousand seven DARPA would up 0:19:28.880 --> 0:19:32.280 the antie with the Urban Challenge, which is where they 0:19:32.480 --> 0:19:34.320 were on an I think it was an Air Force 0:19:34.400 --> 0:19:40.320 base and the cars had to navigate a simulated town environment, 0:19:40.359 --> 0:19:44.320 including merging into and out of traffic. I remember hearing 0:19:44.320 --> 0:19:46.159 about some of the cars that would do. Feel like, 0:19:46.200 --> 0:19:48.600 there's one car that just pulled itself into a parking 0:19:48.640 --> 0:19:50.879 lot and stopped. I guess it just got overwhelmed. Some 0:19:50.920 --> 0:19:52.639 of some of these are funny clips to watch. You 0:19:52.680 --> 0:19:56.840 see them, it's interesting to see how they handle the situation. Yeah, 0:19:56.880 --> 0:19:59.159 I think two of them got into an accident with 0:19:59.200 --> 0:20:03.719 each other. But there were six teams that finished the 0:20:03.720 --> 0:20:07.040 course successfully. And you know, when you think about navigating 0:20:07.119 --> 0:20:10.520 a dynamic system like that with and they weren't told 0:20:10.560 --> 0:20:12.040 what the route was going to be ahead of time. 0:20:12.080 --> 0:20:14.840 They were told just as the challenge started. So the 0:20:14.880 --> 0:20:16.840 idea was that the car had to be able to 0:20:16.880 --> 0:20:21.280 autonomously do this. They couldn't program everything in pre challenge. 0:20:21.440 --> 0:20:23.679 It had to be able to handle these situations on 0:20:23.720 --> 0:20:26.680 its own and obey all traffic laws. So not just 0:20:26.920 --> 0:20:28.919 merge into and out of traffic, but come to a 0:20:28.960 --> 0:20:31.880 stop at intersections and be able to read signs. You'd 0:20:31.920 --> 0:20:34.639 be able to read signs, be able to react to 0:20:34.720 --> 0:20:40.680 traffic lights, pedestrians. These are all big challenges, right. Any 0:20:40.800 --> 0:20:44.040 one of these is a huge challenge from an engineering standpoint. 0:20:44.119 --> 0:20:46.439 I can't remember if they use simulated pedestrians or if 0:20:46.480 --> 0:20:49.040 it was actual pedestrians, because that would be a dangerous 0:20:49.040 --> 0:20:52.000 game to play in the middle of the dark urban challenge. 0:20:52.000 --> 0:20:54.680 I would need to have a guaranteed million dollar prize 0:20:54.720 --> 0:20:58.160 to be a pedestrian for an autonomous car. Jella guaranteed 0:20:58.200 --> 0:21:00.800 milk that would do it. Yeah, well, you know, yeah. 0:21:01.080 --> 0:21:04.080 Maybe it depends also on what if they had capped 0:21:04.119 --> 0:21:06.919 the UH the speed limit that the cars were all 0:21:07.000 --> 0:21:09.000 up to travel. If anybody's listening, I'll do it for 0:21:09.040 --> 0:21:12.880 half that we're pricing each other out all my life 0:21:12.880 --> 0:21:16.200 and limb is worth two heard of your post? Uh 0:21:16.240 --> 0:21:19.639 And in two thousand ten, that's when Google revealed that 0:21:19.800 --> 0:21:23.280 they were working on a driverless car. It had happened already. 0:21:23.520 --> 0:21:26.960 I had a friend at Google who was joking around 0:21:27.000 --> 0:21:29.959 that he had this huge, huge, huge thing that Google 0:21:30.080 --> 0:21:32.760 was working on that I would just die to learn, 0:21:33.440 --> 0:21:35.320 but he wouldn't tell me what it was. And the 0:21:35.359 --> 0:21:37.159 week when this came out, I wrote to him and 0:21:37.200 --> 0:21:40.760