Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking. Hey there, everyone, and welcome to Forward Thinking.
Speaker 1: The podcast said looks at the future and says, you
Speaker 1: might think I'm delirious the way I run you down.
Speaker 1: I'm Jonathan Strickland, I'm Lauren voc and I'm Joe McCormick.
Speaker 1: And we're revisiting a topic we've covered in a previous
Speaker 1: couple of episodes, affard thinking. We're revisiting autonomous cars. Self
Speaker 1: driving cars, Yeah, because we we had had two whole
Speaker 1: episodes about them. We recommend listening to them there in
Speaker 1: our audio archives. But but there are a lot of
Speaker 1: other things that we still wanted to talk about, and
Speaker 1: also some interesting new information that has arisen. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: part of that was just kind of talking about the
Speaker 1: history of self driving cars and developing them, because we
Speaker 1: didn't really talk about in those previous episodes. And you know,
Speaker 1: there was some work that was done as early as
Speaker 1: the nineteen seventies in trying to create self driving or
Speaker 1: autonomy as cars, and some of that technology has made
Speaker 1: its way into vehicles. Things like cruise control is a
Speaker 1: very simple manifestation, but we also have things like collision detection,
Speaker 1: parking assistance, all this other kind of technology that has
Speaker 1: been incorporated into various models of cars over the last
Speaker 1: few years. And we're seeing, you know, year over year,
Speaker 1: cars are getting more and more of these autonomous features
Speaker 1: built into them. We haven't quite reached the point where
Speaker 1: you can go and buy a truly autonomous car off
Speaker 1: the lot and have it drive you home. But we're
Speaker 1: getting there. Uh, the question is how fast are we
Speaker 1: going to get there? But we'll kind of address that
Speaker 1: a little bit later. To look at the true kind
Speaker 1: of history of the modern self driving car, you gotta
Speaker 1: look at UM a mysterious organization and part of the
Speaker 1: Department of Defense. Yeah, so, uh, Department of Defense. Yeah,
Speaker 1: United States Department of Defense has the Defense Advanced Research
Speaker 1: Projects Agency or DARPA. DARPA is actually responsible for a
Speaker 1: lot of technology that we use today. So they're building transformers.
Speaker 1: Is that it? Actually here's the funny thing. Here's the
Speaker 1: funny thing. They are working on humanoid robots right now.
Speaker 1: That's the latest challenge. But the the challenges we're talking
Speaker 1: about our autonomous cars that were called robots, but don't
Speaker 1: transform into humanoid robots. They are not in disguise. They're
Speaker 1: just robots in car form. So so they're like half
Speaker 1: of a transformer, Yes, the transformer, the boring half, and
Speaker 1: and a lot of this is hypothetically for say, disaster
Speaker 1: relief work, stuff like that, um military purposes. Specifically, it
Speaker 1: says they like they like talking about the disaster relief
Speaker 1: for ye. Well that's the that's the cheery way of
Speaker 1: putting it. Yeah, because they The specific mission of DARPA,
Speaker 1: according to the website is darpast mission is to maintain
Speaker 1: the technological superiority of the U. S Military and prevent
Speaker 1: technological surprise from harming our national security by sponsoring revolutionary,
Speaker 1: high payoff research, bridging the gap between fundamental discoveries and
Speaker 1: their military use. Not quite as fuzzy and warm as
Speaker 1: they We want to to improve disaster relief response. But
Speaker 1: I mean it's honest. So, but darp has been been
Speaker 1: responsible for technology that has given us the opportunity to
Speaker 1: have a job because it was DARPA that funded the
Speaker 1: ARPA net, which is the predecessor to the Internet. So
Speaker 1: do you guys know when, uh, when DARPA got started,
Speaker 1: Like what what event precipitated the founding of DARPA. Can
Speaker 1: you can you take a wild guess of what event
Speaker 1: in history would have inspired the United States to launch
Speaker 1: a research and development organization to try and maintain technological superiority.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna say either, um, either sput Nick or when
Speaker 1: they canceled Happy Days. You were right the first times Sputnik. Uh.
Speaker 1: Sput Nick was in fact the event that inspired the
Speaker 1: United States to form DARPA. So, of course, Sputnik was
Speaker 1: when the Soviet Union launched a saddle that orbited the
Speaker 1: Earth and went beep a few times. Terrifying. Yeah, No,
Speaker 1: Sputnik two is what was terrifying, because that had the
Speaker 1: dog in it, like poor La who suffocated pretty quickly
Speaker 1: in that because it failures in the Sputnik two. So darnia. Yeah,
Speaker 1: getting back to the cheerfulness, DARPA ended up funding lots
Speaker 1: of different projects, including what would become the Internet, or
Speaker 1: at least the predecessor to the Internet, I should be clear.
Speaker 1: And then also in two thousand four decided to get
Speaker 1: into the automated car business. In a way, they actually
Speaker 1: submitted a challenge to the world, or really I should
Speaker 1: say to the United States. Um, And they said that
Speaker 1: the purpose of the DARPA Grand Challenge two thousand four,
Speaker 1: which was the first year they held. It is to
Speaker 1: leverage American ingenuity to accelerate the development of autonomous vehicle
Speaker 1: technologies that can be applied to military requirements. UH, So
Speaker 1: we always get a military bit at the end. So UH.
Speaker 1: In that challenge, they had I think twenty five groups. Uh.
Speaker 1: And the challenge specifically involved a route from Los Angeles
Speaker 1: to Las Vegas, which is three hundred miles. Is a
Speaker 1: three hundred mile course that these cars were expected to
Speaker 1: UH to go on, and it included both on road
Speaker 1: and off road sections. They had cleared the on road
Speaker 1: sections of traffic so these robotic cars wouldn't be careening
Speaker 1: into pedestrians and and and regular traffic. It wasn't onlike
Speaker 1: Hollywood Boulevard or anything like that. The best probably yeah, no,
Speaker 1: I've been on Hollywood Boulevard. That is for the best.
Speaker 1: A series of way points to find the routes, and
Speaker 1: the vehicles were to follow those way points, and there
Speaker 1: were also some checkpoints where the teams were allowed to
Speaker 1: stand by in order to do quick repairs or refuel
Speaker 1: their vehicles before the vehicle would continue on. However, every
Speaker 1: single vehicle had to be unmanned and autonomous, which meant
Speaker 1: you could not control it by remote control. It had
Speaker 1: to be moving on its own and the winning team
Speaker 1: would be the first one or the one to navigate
Speaker 1: that route in the shortest amount of time and they
Speaker 1: would win one million dollars. So among those twenty five
Speaker 1: teams were some racing teams UH. There was also cal
Speaker 1: Tech and Virginia Tech were in there. There was even
Speaker 1: a high school team, the Palos Verdes High School Racing Team,
Speaker 1: and other teams involved robot enthusiasts and other companies and
Speaker 1: research facilities. So who won nobody none. None of the
Speaker 1: vehicles were able to to go across that three hundred
Speaker 1: mile routes successfully within the timeframe. So then they held
Speaker 1: another Grand Challenge in two thousand five. It was a
Speaker 1: little more um conservative, I would say. Instead of three
Speaker 1: hundred miles, it was a hundred thirty one point two
Speaker 1: miles long and UH it was so that made it
Speaker 1: less than half as long as the two thousand four challenge. UM.
Speaker 1: They had five teams completed UH and Stanford went away
Speaker 1: with the first prize, winning two million dollars. Some of
Speaker 1: the other teams included a couple of teams from Carnegie
Speaker 1: Melon and a team from Princeton UH, but the Stanford
Speaker 1: team completed the challenge in six hours fifty three minutes. UH.
Speaker 1: Their car relied on lasers, optical cameras, and radar for
Speaker 1: environmental perception, and the data gathered by sensors was mapped
Speaker 1: against a drive ability map that was used to set
Speaker 1: the direction and speed of the vehicle. And all the
Speaker 1: technical papers for all the teams, all of that is
Speaker 1: available on an archive site at DARPA will try and
Speaker 1: link that in social so that you guys can see
Speaker 1: Because you can actually go and read their technical papers
Speaker 1: and see their approach to building an autonomous vehicle. It's
Speaker 1: really fascinating stuff, um, particularly if you're an engineer and
Speaker 1: you can understand all the terms. Even for me, where
Speaker 1: I could understand maybe twenty of them, I was really
Speaker 1: I was really excited to read them. And then you
Speaker 1: finally had the Urban Challenge, which was in two thousand seven.
Speaker 1: So the Urban challenge was stepping up the difficulty from
Speaker 1: the two thousand five challenge. It wasn't as long, but
Speaker 1: it was in an urban environment, meaning they were going
Speaker 1: to create traffic patterns. They had people driving actual cars
Speaker 1: driving around to to make that more like an actual
Speaker 1: town setting. Uh. They used an old uh no longer
Speaker 1: in use Air Force base to create their little fake
Speaker 1: town and and have the three various courses. They had
Speaker 1: a national qualifying event. Uh. There were I think eighty
Speaker 1: nine teams that had applied to be part of this.
Speaker 1: Thirty five were selected to participate in the National Qualifying Event,
Speaker 1: which took place over eight days, had three test areas.
Speaker 1: One course was one where vehicles had to merge into
Speaker 1: and out of two way traffic in a circulating course.
Speaker 1: And out of all the test days, only one vehicle
Speaker 1: was ever struck by a robotic car. And in my
Speaker 1: notes I said for getting fresh, So apparently a robot
Speaker 1: car just Actually, there's some funny stories from this, I'll
Speaker 1: tell you in a second. The second course tested cars
Speaker 1: ability to stay within a lane on a meandering road.
Speaker 1: So if the road has lots of turns and curves
Speaker 1: in it, can the car actually maintain the right lane? Uh,
Speaker 1: in order for it to not very into oncoming traffic?
Speaker 1: Well ideally yes. Yeah, we'll have a lot more to
Speaker 1: say about that in a minute too. They also had
Speaker 1: to go through a a narrow street where they had
Speaker 1: parallel parked cars on either side of the street, and
Speaker 1: that section was called the Gauntlet, And the last part
Speaker 1: of that test was the robot had to locate and
Speaker 1: park in an assigned parking space and then pull back
Speaker 1: out and move on to the third course, which was
Speaker 1: a series of four way intersections that the robot had
Speaker 1: to negotiate, so the rolways had to detect traffic and
Speaker 1: obey the rules of the road. So you know, when
Speaker 1: you come up to a four way stop, who gets
Speaker 1: to go through first? It all depends upon when you
Speaker 1: arrived at the four way stop and your position in
Speaker 1: relation to the other drivers. And also they put in
Speaker 1: roadblocks on the course and the robots had to identify
Speaker 1: the roadblock, make a U turn, and then plan some
Speaker 1: different Yeah. Yeah, it had to still get to its
Speaker 1: to its end location. Um. And what was interesting was
Speaker 1: that eleven teams went on to the final challenge. That
Speaker 1: challenge required the robots to visit specific checkpoints and the
Speaker 1: teams were not notified of the checkpoint locations until five
Speaker 1: minutes before the launch, so they had a map of
Speaker 1: the entire space, like they knew what the digital file
Speaker 1: that had all the map of the fake town, but
Speaker 1: they didn't know where the checkpoints we're going to be
Speaker 1: on that map until five minutes before they were pulling
Speaker 1: out the star the route and exactly they had to
Speaker 1: do it right there in real time. The course also
Speaker 1: had thirty vehicles with drivers moving through the course during
Speaker 1: the test, so you had real live drivers on the
Speaker 1: course at the same time, and about half the vehicles
Speaker 1: were removed from the course for various errors. And here's
Speaker 1: the fun part. One of the errors was the Terra
Speaker 1: Max vehicle that nearly drove into the old Commissary building
Speaker 1: on the Air Force space, so they were able to
Speaker 1: stop it just before it drove into a building. Um.
Speaker 1: And also the team you you see f car spontaneously
Speaker 1: decided to park at a car port and just take
Speaker 1: a break, just pulled into a car poard and stopped,
Speaker 1: just like y'all, I give up, I am done with
Speaker 1: this test. They eventually disqualified it. Cornell and uh Cornell
Speaker 1: and M I. T S vehicles gently bumped into each other.
Speaker 1: I like to say they were trading paint. They were
Speaker 1: trying to share a lane together, but they were allowed
Speaker 1: to continue the course once they were separated and totally
Speaker 1: given a little time out. UH. And then first place
Speaker 1: on that went to a team called Tartan Racing out
Speaker 1: of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and the second place went to Stanford again. UH.
Speaker 1: First prize was two million dollars again. So ultimately six
Speaker 1: teams finished the challenge that year, which showed that even
Speaker 1: though they wrapped up the difficulty, they still had six
Speaker 1: teams from across the United States complete that course, which
Speaker 1: really showed the development of technology in the span of
Speaker 1: two years, because we remember in two thousand four no
Speaker 1: one finished, well three years really, because it was two
Speaker 1: thousand seven when they did Urban Challenge, right, And of
Speaker 1: course at this point in two thousand seven, many cars,
Speaker 1: if not most cars, had on board computers. We're controlling
Speaker 1: a lot of different systems. It was mostly monitoring, but yeah,
Speaker 1: there was some control as well. But of course after
Speaker 1: these challenges, some tech companies a little curious. Are you
Speaker 1: talking about a company that rhymes with schmoogle? Um? I
Speaker 1: might be Okay, I remember when this news broke because
Speaker 1: I have a friend who works at Google who told
Speaker 1: me that he didn't tell me about the car. He
Speaker 1: just told me. It's like there's something that's so cool
Speaker 1: going on at Google, and I can't wait for it
Speaker 1: to become public because you're gonna flip out. And it
Speaker 1: took about half a year before the news became public
Speaker 1: from when he told me, and sure enough I flipped out.
Speaker 1: They actually recruited from the challenges they did. In fact,
Speaker 1: the guy who is the project leader UM is in
Speaker 1: fact a one of the members of the Stanford team
Speaker 1: that won Sebastian. He won that two thousand and five challenge,
Speaker 1: so he was part of the the winning team back then.
Speaker 1: And uh, and there are a few others who also
Speaker 1: are working with Google that participated in the Grand Challenge,
Speaker 1: and other people who participated in the Grand Challenge are
Speaker 1: working for specific car companies, so not just Google. Google
Speaker 1: was not the only one to pull talent from this group.
Speaker 1: There are other car companies that that did as well, right,
Speaker 1: But so Google got to work um decking out some
Speaker 1: other proprietary vehicles. They weren't creating their own car from scratch.
Speaker 1: That's one thing to make clear. Yeah, the first one
Speaker 1: that I remember being released to the public, or the
Speaker 1: information that's released to the public, was a Toyota Prius actually,
Speaker 1: but they also they've used Lexus, Yes they have, which
Speaker 1: is also a Toyota company. Yeah, but so they in
Speaker 1: two thousand and ten, I believe it was, they went
Speaker 1: public with r Yeah, they have been working on it
Speaker 1: for like a year, but that was when we found
Speaker 1: out about it. Yeah, there was a big Google blog
Speaker 1: post where they announced that, look, you know where there
Speaker 1: are all these traffic accidents, um cars, they're not driving efficiently,
Speaker 1: and people are spending way too much time behind the wheel.
Speaker 1: We can solve all three of these problems at once
Speaker 1: if we create self driving cars, right, just take people
Speaker 1: out of the equation and everything goes better because removing
Speaker 1: quote the loose nut between the gas pedal and the
Speaker 1: steering wheel. That's my favorite. That's my favorite joke. Mechanics. Yeah,
Speaker 1: as as we talked about in the previous episodes, the
Speaker 1: National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration estimates that more than
Speaker 1: road crashes are due to human error. Yeah, I've seen
Speaker 1: I've seen figures everywhere between that that's huge. Like if
Speaker 1: you could remove that then you would significantly decrease the
Speaker 1: number of injuries and deaths, perhaps terribly upset the car
Speaker 1: insurance industry, but which you know, that's okay. Uh. You
Speaker 1: also have efficiency to consider. Machine drivers are going to
Speaker 1: be way more efficient than human drivers because they have
Speaker 1: like established rules that govern when they gas and break,
Speaker 1: especially once you set up a network of these things
Speaker 1: and these at times cars start working together to clear
Speaker 1: out traffic exactly. Yeah. In two thousand twelve UM and
Speaker 1: I Trip Police study, they they estimated that they think
Speaker 1: a highway filled entirely with autonomous cars instead of with
Speaker 1: human driven cars, can increase the capacity of that highway
Speaker 1: five times. Um. Yeah. Now, now we just have to
Speaker 1: get to the point where we don't need jobs anymore,
Speaker 1: and then we'll just stay at home in our cars
Speaker 1: will drive everywhere for us for no reason. Perfect. Uh. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know what's interesting to me? Do you know what
Speaker 1: they You know what the Google car uses as a
Speaker 1: primary sensor, right? Is it light ar? Yeah? Have you
Speaker 1: heard about this? Okay, So imagine the lasers l sixty
Speaker 1: four lasers. That's not radar for detecting lies, Um, L
Speaker 1: I D A R. Yes, it's it's sixty four lasers
Speaker 1: all right. So imagine that you've got a pack of
Speaker 1: sixty four lasers and a turret top of a car,
Speaker 1: and that tour. It rotates at six centered revolutions per minute.
Speaker 1: And what's doing is it's just constantly scanning its environment
Speaker 1: so that it can detect minute changes as as it's
Speaker 1: traveling through a space, so it knows not only what
Speaker 1: stationary objects are nearby, it can track when things are
Speaker 1: moving and then be able to plot against that. UM. Now, granted,
Speaker 1: I think I think in every case that I've read,
Speaker 1: Google only allows people who are using these cars to
Speaker 1: operate them on highways. Once they pull off onto surface streets,
Speaker 1: it has to go under manual control by Google's policy. UM.
Speaker 1: And of course these are not cars that are allowed
Speaker 1: outside of the realms of Google. But that is changing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, what's what's interesting is that, you know, it
Speaker 1: was two thousand ten when Google unveiled this, and there
Speaker 1: weren't really any laws on the books that would allow
Speaker 1: for autonomous cars. In fact, most of the laws in
Speaker 1: the world specify that you have to have a driver
Speaker 1: behind the wheel in control of the vehicle at all times.
Speaker 1: But actually that is now changing, and in a few
Speaker 1: places in the United States it's already changed. Right in California, Nevada,
Speaker 1: and Florida, there have been laws passed that specifically allow
Speaker 1: for the testing of autonomous cars. Nevada was the first
Speaker 1: in in two thousand eleven, they passed Assembly Buill number
Speaker 1: five eleven, And what that basically did was it allowed
Speaker 1: the state Department of Transportation to revise their laws to
Speaker 1: accommodate for autonomous cars. Now, in this case, there's still
Speaker 1: has to be a driver behind the wheel, but the
Speaker 1: driver does not have to be in control of the
Speaker 1: vehicle at all times. Yeah. Um. And so Nevada actually
Speaker 1: followed through with that and in two thousand twelve they
Speaker 1: officially approved a license for autonomous cars. Yes, I saw
Speaker 1: that May of two thousand twelve. I know that Florida,
Speaker 1: Florida being one of the other states that allowed for
Speaker 1: autonomous car testing. This is I honestly don't know the
Speaker 1: reasoning behind this. I'm just gonna throw it out there
Speaker 1: and see if you guys think it's realistic. Do you
Speaker 1: think that it's possibly because of the aged population in
Speaker 1: Florida that this was something that Florida was interested in. Well,
Speaker 1: I don't know, but I mean I've read that a
Speaker 1: lot of the reasoning behind autonomous cars is giving more
Speaker 1: mobility to people, say who like don't see as well
Speaker 1: as they used to, um, but would still like to
Speaker 1: be able to have some independent movement around the city.
Speaker 1: I would guess that that Disney might have something to
Speaker 1: say about that as well. Automos cars are legal in
Speaker 1: California and Florida. Those are the two places where Disney
Speaker 1: parks are in the United States. So um, Google is
Speaker 1: also in California. So collusion is a little is a little,
Speaker 1: a little on the flimsy side. Uh. So that's where
Speaker 1: it is so far. I believe d C also, I
Speaker 1: think has been working on this, but now um, there
Speaker 1: are a bunch of states that are starting to considering it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and the federal government is kind of saying you know,
Speaker 1: of course, in the United States, for those who are
Speaker 1: not in the United States, we have state governments and
Speaker 1: we have the federal government. The federal government has been
Speaker 1: on record as saying, guys, you might want to slow
Speaker 1: down a little bit before you start passing all this
Speaker 1: legislation on the state by state basis, simply because we
Speaker 1: don't have enough data here to be able to legislate responsibly.
Speaker 1: Whereas the technology companies are saying, look, all the data
Speaker 1: that's coming back is showing that this is way safer
Speaker 1: than the alternative. So right, a report published by the
Speaker 1: Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, which which is a nonprofit
Speaker 1: although it is funded by the American auto industry um
Speaker 1: and said that collision warning and breaking systems are already
Speaker 1: helping drivers avoid accidents. Um that that statistically, if you
Speaker 1: were drive, if you are in a car that has
Speaker 1: these systems, you are less likely to be in an accident. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And also it's good to keep in mind that typically
Speaker 1: these laws, uh, they sort of unveil these new motor
Speaker 1: rights in different stages, so they're opened on private roads
Speaker 1: before they are on public roads, right, Um. And I
Speaker 1: guess that's to allow for testing. And and it's it's
Speaker 1: not just Google Old that's getting into this game. Actually,
Speaker 1: there are quite a few companies that are all investing
Speaker 1: in their own automated car technology. Toyota is another one,
Speaker 1: BMW four GM, Volvo, Audi, Mercedes, Benz, Nissan, Right, right, Toyota. Yeah,
Speaker 1: all of these have at least in the testing stages
Speaker 1: various forms of these things, and a lot of them
Speaker 1: are saying that within the next ten years they're going
Speaker 1: to be rolling out, if not fully automated cars at
Speaker 1: least um auto assist cars with more, because again, this
Speaker 1: may be one of those things where because of the
Speaker 1: legislative barriers, there may be some time that we'll have
Speaker 1: to wait to see automated cars being available for the
Speaker 1: average consumer. I'm sure they'll be prohibitively expensive for most
Speaker 1: people when they first when they first hit the roads
Speaker 1: as well, But I think it's gonna be. I think
Speaker 1: it's gonna be a few years just because of the
Speaker 1: legislative side. But we will still benefit from that technology
Speaker 1: in other ways, with more more advanced cry prevention systems,
Speaker 1: parking assistance, that kind of stuff. Yeah, speaking to the price,
Speaker 1: I believe right now an autonomous car is running about
Speaker 1: a hundred and fifty thou dollars. Yea. I saw one
Speaker 1: guy say that that there's always the possibility that before
Speaker 1: we see fully autonomous cars rolling off the manufacturing plants
Speaker 1: out of all these these companies, that we may see
Speaker 1: aftermarket kits where you can convert a car over to
Speaker 1: an autonomous vehicle. But even that would be in the
Speaker 1: hundred dozen dollar range, so still not cheap. Sure, Yeah,
Speaker 1: And you know the kinds of companies that are putting
Speaker 1: out things that you can buy right now that are
Speaker 1: partially autonomous are like Mercedes Benz, which has a radar
Speaker 1: and stereoscopic cameras that will help you determine, you know,
Speaker 1: help your car determine the speed of traffic around you
Speaker 1: and also your position within a lane and keep you
Speaker 1: there up to speeds of about eighteen miles per hour. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I think, uh GM, they've said that they're they're
Speaker 1: going to have partially autonomous cadillacs by well, we'll see.
Speaker 1: That's really close. Yeah, yeah, yeah, and partially autonomous. I
Speaker 1: mean that's vague enough where you could argue that there
Speaker 1: are cars on the market right now that have that
Speaker 1: one of the upcoming systems and that I'm excited about.
Speaker 1: And and another another sponsor plug, This one is from Toyota.
Speaker 1: UM is a cooperative adaptive cruise control, part of which
Speaker 1: uses transceivers to broadcast speed, acceleration, and breaking in between
Speaker 1: different cars on the road, so that way you can
Speaker 1: maintain the proper vehicle distance between you and the car
Speaker 1: in front of you. That kind of thing, right with
Speaker 1: something a little bit more interactive than just the the lasers.
Speaker 1: The receptors that are that are figuring out what's going
Speaker 1: on more than just an alarm or something on those lines. Yeah.
Speaker 1: In fact, um M I T had a great little
Speaker 1: post about some recent research that came out of the
Speaker 1: Google experiments. A. Google has been running these these cars
Speaker 1: for something like over three hundred thousand miles accumulatively. If
Speaker 1: you had them all up together, it's like three miles
Speaker 1: of travel time. They've had one accident, and according to
Speaker 1: according to Google, that was done while the car was
Speaker 1: under manual control, not under computer control. So I think
Speaker 1: they also got rear ended ones. Yeah, but the when
Speaker 1: they took the black box readings, because a lot of
Speaker 1: what is going into these autonomous cars is also a
Speaker 1: very intricate um recording system for everything that's going on
Speaker 1: in the car. I mean, you know, they are in
Speaker 1: the testing stages, so of course that data is very valuable. Um.
Speaker 1: But it proved that the autonomous car breaked appropriately and
Speaker 1: that the guy behind him that rear ended him was
Speaker 1: not paying attention and just just just hit him because
Speaker 1: because the car did exactly what was supposed to do. Yeah,
Speaker 1: a lot of this research that's going on right now
Speaker 1: is about how to manage the interface between humans and computers,
Speaker 1: and you know where a human should take over, where
Speaker 1: a computer should take over, what specialties both of these
Speaker 1: operators can have. And some of the questions being posed
Speaker 1: are about, you know, whether or not reckless driving behavior
Speaker 1: is actually really important in some situations. You know, whether
Speaker 1: or not a computer could handle a situation wherein you
Speaker 1: kind of need to go over a line, or you
Speaker 1: need to speed up or slow down at a at
Speaker 1: a rate of speed that isn't otherwise advisable, or break
Speaker 1: a traffic law. Now, it does seem that for the
Speaker 1: most part, the uh, the autonomous cars are able to
Speaker 1: respond much much faster than any human could, in a
Speaker 1: more smooth transition than humans. However, that's that's based upon
Speaker 1: a certain set of rules. Well, yeah, and and assuming
Speaker 1: that everyone is in an autonomous car, that's fine. But
Speaker 1: when you are the one person in an autonomous car
Speaker 1: and you're driving in a town full of crazy people
Speaker 1: like go on no Atlanta, then maybe that your car
Speaker 1: is doing everything that's right, but you know, it may
Speaker 1: still not save you from a crash. Of course, we
Speaker 1: can't plan for everybody's behavior, obviously, you can only do
Speaker 1: the best you can. One of the other interesting things
Speaker 1: from that m I T post was that the data
Speaker 1: shows that automated car spin time and what they called
Speaker 1: near collision states, meaning that that that's how you usually drive.
Speaker 1: I don't drive at all, so so that makes it easy.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, but ner if I were to drive, I'd
Speaker 1: be in a constant near collision state. And some might
Speaker 1: argue that Georgia is a near collision state, but the
Speaker 1: you know, the the actual definition there is when you
Speaker 1: are engaging in behaviors that are more likely to cause
Speaker 1: the collision, things like accelerating too quickly, breaking too quickly,
Speaker 1: following too close, following much too closely. In the automated cars,
Speaker 1: because you set up these very specific rules for them
Speaker 1: to follow, they have to follow those rules, so they
Speaker 1: tend to operate within much safer parameters than your typical
Speaker 1: driver would. Though also I've read if if you were
Speaker 1: to imagine entirely automated highway, those cars can follow much
Speaker 1: more closely, much more safely, if you were able if
Speaker 1: everyone were automated, Like if if either of these we
Speaker 1: have that infrastructure and all the cars are talking to
Speaker 1: one another, then the theoretically you could do that and
Speaker 1: also ours behind you know, larger vehicles would even benefit
Speaker 1: from drafting at the point you're talking about saving a fuel,
Speaker 1: But you know that's building out an infrastructure is is
Speaker 1: really really hard, and uh, I think I think we'll
Speaker 1: see automated cars before we see automated infrastructures on a
Speaker 1: wide scale basis. Though, an interesting thing about the most
Speaker 1: recent developments and automated cars is they might not depend
Speaker 1: on that much infrastructure like we used to imagine that. Well,
Speaker 1: in order to really have automated highways, you need like
Speaker 1: you know, computers in the roads that control everything, right,
Speaker 1: But we're creating fleets of automated cars today that do
Speaker 1: you just find simply by reacting to each other, right,
Speaker 1: and or through differential GPS systems so that they're paying
Speaker 1: attention to to not only your position via satellite, but
Speaker 1: via markers in the road. Right. Like I said, I think,
Speaker 1: I think there are a couple of different barriers that
Speaker 1: we have to get over for automated cars to become
Speaker 1: a reality for the average consumer. The big one being legislative,
Speaker 1: because I think it is going to take a lot
Speaker 1: of work to get to a point where automated cars
Speaker 1: have a legal designation that is recognized, not just within
Speaker 1: a state, but between states and within between countries even
Speaker 1: for them to be a viable form of transportation, I think.
Speaker 1: I think the thing that's going to help with that
Speaker 1: is is the parallel to all of this, where in
Speaker 1: insurance companies are providing black boxes as an opt in
Speaker 1: option for opt in option, that was a really great
Speaker 1: turn of phrase for for for their drivers to potentially
Speaker 1: get a lower rate on their car insurance. And not
Speaker 1: many people, but maybe like about a third of people
Speaker 1: I supposedly are signing up for these things, and so
Speaker 1: they're starting to gather data on driving habits a lot more.
Speaker 1: On top of that, the other barrier I would say
Speaker 1: is we've seen this happen a lot in various networks,
Speaker 1: right where you get a proprietary network where other networks
Speaker 1: can't necessarily communicate with it. So, for example, we talked
Speaker 1: about an automated house, and right now, you can do
Speaker 1: a lot of automation at home. But the easiest way
Speaker 1: of doing that is to buy all your stuff from
Speaker 1: one source, because buying it from multiple sources means you
Speaker 1: have to find some way of making them communicate with
Speaker 1: each other. Sure, however, if you have for example, and
Speaker 1: UM Apple TV and also an iPhone and also right,
Speaker 1: if you're all within one ecosystem, you're great, but if
Speaker 1: you're not. If you're if your ecosystem is not homogeneous,
Speaker 1: then you're in trouble. Well, as we know, traffic is
Speaker 1: not a homogeneous situation. People have all sorts of different
Speaker 1: cars out there from different models, models and different makers.
Speaker 1: So unless we were to have an agreed upon SEV
Speaker 1: standards that all vehicles were using in order for their
Speaker 1: UH information to communicate properly, then you have potentially a
Speaker 1: fleet of cars that doesn't really communicate with each other
Speaker 1: very well. That they need to all speak the same language.
Speaker 1: And um, that's something that maybe has yet to be devised.
Speaker 1: In fact, I think we talked in our previous podcast
Speaker 1: about this about maybe the need for something like a
Speaker 1: traffic protocol. Yeah, yes, yeah, And it's one of those
Speaker 1: things where you you need either there needs to either
Speaker 1: be a leader in the space and everyone ends up
Speaker 1: following suit because they just they've defined it, or there
Speaker 1: needs to be some sort of regulation. Yeah. Like like
Speaker 1: and where did i P camp come from? Oh, well,
Speaker 1: that came out of our bonette, So that was like
Speaker 1: a public initiative that created the protocol that all of
Speaker 1: the private organizations would end up using. Right, so you
Speaker 1: could get it some form of independent entity like maybe
Speaker 1: even the I E. Being able to come up and
Speaker 1: you know, a group of engineers that come up with
Speaker 1: a A a standard language that would be used. But
Speaker 1: I mean, all of this is jumping way ahead. We
Speaker 1: still aren't entirely sure when we'll see these cars um
Speaker 1: become something that we could actually purchase. To mention i E. Again,
Speaker 1: they predicted it also last year that in their view,
Speaker 1: by of cars on the road will be autonomous. That'll
Speaker 1: be how that's a that's bold. I would love that
Speaker 1: future so much. Just I'm imagining how traffic would become
Speaker 1: such uh so much more smooth. Studies showed the young
Speaker 1: people like this idea. It's more popular more. I'm liking
Speaker 1: it even more now. Uh well, young young people are
Speaker 1: certainly the ones who are most likely to pick up
Speaker 1: these black boxes from their insurance companies. So I so
Speaker 1: I guess that would that would make perfect sense. Yeah,
Speaker 1: But I mean I think I like it the most
Speaker 1: because I don't drive, So for me having something like
Speaker 1: this where maybe I do, you know, drive occasionally, but
Speaker 1: I have a vehicle that does most of my driving
Speaker 1: for me would give me uh even more freedom, or
Speaker 1: more importantly, would mean my wife is no longer my chauffeur.
Speaker 1: Oh sure, And as we talked about in that previous episode,
Speaker 1: it would certainly open doors to people who are who
Speaker 1: are unable to drive for various physical health sure yeah
Speaker 1: or not health. But I remember I do. I did
Speaker 1: read one thing from uh M I T Professor John Leonard,
Speaker 1: who has worked on navigation systems for autonomous cars, who
Speaker 1: said he doesn't believe we'll see a totally autonomous taxi
Speaker 1: service within his lifetime. He doesn't think that's ever going
Speaker 1: to happen while he's still uh, you know, walking treading
Speaker 1: the earth so uh, and he's he's working on the problem.
Speaker 1: And it's not again, it's not just a technological thing.
Speaker 1: It's also a social thing. And that was kind of
Speaker 1: what he was pointing out, that that taxi drivers um
Speaker 1: provide an important role in society, particularly if they are
Speaker 1: efficient and nice. Uh. He was talking about this about Manhattan,
Speaker 1: but said, really, I mean more of the European style
Speaker 1: taxi drivers. I was about to say, alright, so I
Speaker 1: think I think we're good on self driving cars for
Speaker 1: the near future. Of course, I say that probably tomorrow
Speaker 1: there'll be some breaking news they'll necessitate us to do
Speaker 1: a whole new podcast. But that's okay because I love
Speaker 1: this topic. So guys, make sure you go to FW
Speaker 1: thinking dot com. That is our homepage where you can
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