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Robot cars on public roads? California says yes

267 points| vectorbunny | 13 years ago |arstechnica.com | reply

152 comments

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[+] Jun8|13 years ago|reply
This is fantastic! The adoption could be very fast, e.g. if insurance companies give benefits if you drive a self-driving car.

One current roadblock is the price of the system: the LIDAR (the thing on the top of the car in the picture) retails for ~$75K currently. There should be significant volume to drive the price down. But a lot of people would buy them for prestige, too (e.g. many early Prius adopters), so if the cost of the system can be reduced to perhaps $4K-$5K levels people will seriously think about this.

[+] sv123|13 years ago|reply
If everybody had a self-driving car, would insurance be obsolete?
[+] bradgessler|13 years ago|reply
I could also see increased adoption if HOV lanes were set aside only for automated cars.
[+] Daniel_Newby|13 years ago|reply
I think the LIDAR approach will have to go. Laser systems are inherently susceptible to jamming with a cheap laser diode. We cannot afford to have mass adoption of cars where somebody can create weeks of citywide gridlock with a few thousand dollars of lasers.
[+] tocomment|13 years ago|reply
Does anyone know how a self driving car would potentially handle scenarios like:

1. A traffic light being out and cop is directing traffic? (Would it have to learn hand gestures?)

2. Stopping at a guard booth.

3. Crossing a solid yellow line to pass a stopped car or a garbage truck?

[+] RedwoodCity|13 years ago|reply
Perhaps in the future a group of people will have the job of moving cars that have gone into failsafe mode, and no one else will have to drive.

Take the case of elevators, originally they had manual operators who needed to make sure that they leveled out on a given floor so people could safely get on and off. Today elevators function on their own with users simply requesting their desired location. Every now and then they do get stuck, which requires calling in a certified technician to move the elevator, help trapped passengers, diagnose and repair problems before returning the elevator to service.

A well designed control system will have a good fail safe, but having to wait two hours for the closest technician to arrive because a branch has fallen accross the road would be annoying.

[+] Anm|13 years ago|reply
The last time I read the legislation (sorry, didn't have the time now), it still requires a licensed driver to be at the wheel and at the ready to take over. I presume this sort of intermediate step will help the developers gradually transition to these type of exceptional real-world scenarios.
[+] lobster_johnson|13 years ago|reply
I wonder how it handles merging in tight traffic, such as when the current lane is closed ahead and you need to merge into the other lane. If the car doesn't have rerouting information in its database, does it go all the way up to the "closed ahead" sign blocking the road before it considers switching lanes?

Or when coming onto something like a highway where traffic has slowed down to a crawl. Normally you have to be a bit pushy and squeeze into the traffic, otherwise drivers in the other lane will never yield. Will the self-driving car know to do this, or will it wait forever for an opening in the traffic?

[+] jpiasetz|13 years ago|reply
Long term I think self driving cars fix the traffic light problem without a cop. All the cars can just work it out over a network and go like it's a stop sign or just continue as if the light is there (if the city is on-board).
[+] bfrs|13 years ago|reply
Looks like you are forgetting manual override.
[+] tkahn6|13 years ago|reply
Maybe the cop could have a device that lets the cars know when it's ok to turn or continue.
[+] eslachance|13 years ago|reply
I'm very glad to see that this is spreading. It would have been really annoying for Google to perfect their car and then have nowhere to drive it because of silly legislations. It wouldn't be the first time senators were afraid of change...
[+] ChuckMcM|13 years ago|reply
Yes, imagine that you were going to revolutionize the way people get around. And then cities around the country made it illegal to use your revolutionary device on the sidewalk. [1]

I'm still waiting to see what the opposition is going to do when they get organized. If you thought Uber was a threat to cabs, they don't hold a candle to a fleet of self driving cars with an NFC payment option.

[1] Which was of course a challenge for the Segway

[+] OstiaAntica|13 years ago|reply
It isn't "fear" of change, it is that political systems get captured by status quo interest groups that fight against change.
[+] hnriot|13 years ago|reply
Senators want to get re-elected. That's pretty much their only fear. So if robot cars. Ring wealth to their districts they will be all for them, until the first accident that kills someone. Of course human drivers kill people all the time too, but that won't matter.

We should have put the tech into the mars rover.

[+] yonran|13 years ago|reply
Previous discussions of earlier versions of the bill: in March: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3688267, and in May: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4010297

Current bill text: http://leginfo.ca.gov/pub/11-12/bill/sen/sb_1251-1300/sb_129...

What seems to have changed since May:

- The California DMV will set safety rules before 2015 instead of waiting for NHTSA to allow production use,

- The manufacturer must apply to the DMV before production use.

- Cars must record sensor data for 30s before every collision.

What I don’t like about the bill is that it requires an operator to be able to take manual control of the vehicle at any time. I’d imagine that as autonomous vehicles develop in the coming years, this restriction will have to be removed.

[+] columbo|13 years ago|reply
> What I don’t like about the bill is that it requires an operator to be able to take manual control of the vehicle at any time.

I'd feel very strange being in a car without a manual override of some sort. Maybe in 10 years and only if the vast majority of cars are self driven it will be a different story. I can't imagine trying to drive through Chicago hoping that my little robot driver is aware of the two tow-trucks weaving through traffic behind me at 90mph.

[+] GFischer|13 years ago|reply
When horseless carriages first became legal, the legal requirement called for "a man with a red flag to walk in front of any self-propelled vehicle on a public road at no more than 4mph".

http://www.datchethistory.org.uk/Link%20Articles/Ellis/evely...

In the future, if manual override becomes undesirable or unneeded, it will probably be repealed. Actually, I'm surprised by this many steps forward so soon (I was a bit cynical of them ever being approved)

[+] cm127|13 years ago|reply
I think I understand your complaint. If people can take control, i.e. take responsibility, then it's imperative to show evidence they were in control if something were to go wrong.

This will always be tricky because even Toyota a couple of years ago had trouble defending against alleged bugs that turned out to be completely untrue.

[+] tommi|13 years ago|reply
The manual control at any time is actually a feature I want to have. It doesn't have to be the current style steering wheel, stick and pedals but maybe something else like a joystick.
[+] lunchbox|13 years ago|reply
How is this different from what happened in May?

http://articles.latimes.com/2012/may/21/business/la-fi-autos...

"California Senate passes bill for self-driving cars"

[+] mikeyouse|13 years ago|reply
Legislature is an iterative process--

The votes:

Senate Floor (08/29/2012), Assembly Floor (08/28/2012), Assembly Floor (08/24/2012), Assembly Committee (08/16/2012), Assembly Committee (07/02/2012), Senate Floor (05/21/2012), Senate Committee (04/10/2012)

The senate approved a version in May, and sent it to the Assembly. The Assembly added some markup. Only in the last week did the Senate and Assembly vote on the same bill, which is the process needed to send a bill to the governor.

(Full history here: http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/postquery?bill_number=sb_1...)

[+] hypersoar|13 years ago|reply
It has now gone through both houses of the legislature, presumably after the bill from May went through reconciliation. It is on its way to the governor, who, given its apparent lack of controversy, is likely to sign it.
[+] 001sky|13 years ago|reply
California legislators have sent a bill to the governor’s desk

- Not yet signed. So not yet law. Still.

[+] russell|13 years ago|reply
I've been rear-ended 7 times in the past 5 years. I'll be glad when everyone else has self-driving cars.

(My GF says I drive too fast and stop too quickly. She's probably right, although 3 of those times I was moving at less than walking speed.)

[+] aphyr|13 years ago|reply
7 times sounds atypical; perhaps by changing your driving behavior you could reduce your risk. You might try decelerating slowly, keeping 2-4 seconds of following distance, checking your rear-view while braking, and leaving extra space in front of your vehicle at a stop--moving forward as cars come in behind.
[+] baq|13 years ago|reply
you should try racing (real-race-track variety racing) with something expendable, you'll learn to remember there might be people behind you very quickly.
[+] raldi|13 years ago|reply
7 different roads?
[+] Sharma|13 years ago|reply
Alright! New field of hacking,security and development will emerge now. People will try to hack, other people will try to make it secure and some of us will work on developing fancy apps for these vehicles.
[+] farinasa|13 years ago|reply
I personally can't wait to read a book on the way to work.
[+] jarek|13 years ago|reply
> I personally can't wait to read a book on the way to work.

Yes, what wondrous technology it must be that enables this!

[+] tolos|13 years ago|reply
Have there been any studies on whether people actually want autonomous cars (a quick google search only shows one: http://www.alpineautotrans.com/?p=326)? I think it's a good idea, and I bet most people on HN would agree, but what's the downside? How many people in the general public would trust a robot driver? Can you still speed -- if you're late for work -- if you need emergency medical care? Can you take manual control of the vehicle -- would that raise insurance rates if you did so? How many people in the general public would be ok with that?
[+] randomdata|13 years ago|reply
Good questions, but overcoming consumer resistance is not a new science. The autonomous car will be just another in a long line of products that were initially dismissed by consumers.

Many cars you can buy today are practically autonomous anyway. You may still feel like you are in control, but the computer systems will take over in many cases. Going fully autonomous is the natural leap. The trick is only one of marketing to get the people comfortable with the idea. These frequent announcements is one way to build that comfort level before the first production units are ready to be sold.

[+] tomsaffell|13 years ago|reply
A robot-driven version of my personal car (and how I use it today), is moderately appealing. But as a stepping stone to a future where an autonomous robot-driven (flying?) cab pulls up curbside, picks me up, and smoothly, safely speeds me through a city where the absence of any manually driven vehicles allows for safer more efficient use of road-space, well, that's very exciting to me.
[+] Reltair|13 years ago|reply
Yes! Driving in traffic is mind-numbing.

It also doesn't help that traffic seems to be getting worse in the bay area.

[+] rayiner|13 years ago|reply
But think about how convenient your self-driving car will be when you're sitting in traffic!
[+] rynes|13 years ago|reply
From the view of some consumers (I might be one,) a car may be considered to be a black box that is used to transport someone/something(s) from point A to point B. I do not automatically assume that it is always better to instrument a machine to control such a box rather than having a qualified person control it.
[+] chintan|13 years ago|reply
I'm pretty sure you'll have to sign a 'terms & waiver' document similar to the one before Sky Diving.
[+] juiceandjuice|13 years ago|reply
I've seen google's robotic cars already driven on the 280, specifically the Lexus SUV.
[+] olalonde|13 years ago|reply
On a related note, does anyone have an idea on how Google plans to commercialize their technology?
[+] bsbechtel|13 years ago|reply
What the hell happens when hackers manage to hijack control of these thing going down the highway?
[+] sigzero|13 years ago|reply
I love to drive in any kind of traffic. No thanks on the robot car. I want to remain in control.
[+] AndrewKemendo|13 years ago|reply
I can see it now: a Lidar and autonomous system integrated on my Tesla S.
[+] andreer|13 years ago|reply
I'm all for this, but I'm a bit miffed about the terminology: autonomous/robot/self-driving cars. "Autopilot" is shorter, simpler and well-established - and IMHO more accurate, as long asa human driver ready to take over at any time is still required.