Back to a theme of mine that I have blogged about before – Self Driving Cars. I am fascinated by the fact that people can see a time when you won’t need a steering wheel in a car and you’ll be able to get into a car and sit back and do anything you want. I can see a revolution coming in how people get around, work and interact with each other. With society relying so much on the car any change in how it works is going to have a profound affect.
In a small way Hanoi represents the future of the car. Last weekend found me and my family in a taxi trying to get from the airport to the hotel in the French Quarter of Hanoi. My son cheerfully described Hanoi as like Milton Keynes until we got into the center of the town which he then described as mayhem. In two years Hanoi has gone from a city that is all motorbikes to one that is being overrun with cars. And unlike bikes cars in Hanoi don’t swerve around you. And the point here is that cars being driven by computer, or robot depending on your view point, are much more likely to stop or steer round you than crash making towns and cities a much better place in the future.
Autonomous cars are coming and while there will be a long period of time before they come into their own there is one question we need to ask. Will they work?
According to Google they have now completed nearly 2,000,000 miles on the road with various cars all running in autonomous mode; where the software is in charge and the driver only takes over in emergencies. In that time they have only had 6 minor accidents none of which have involved the software in the car at all. In most cases it appears that despite the great technology in the car itself you can’t hope to deal with the person following behind who is simply not looking where they are going. Maybe in the future the car following behind can be braked autonomously but at this point in time it looks more and more like the technology works.
To help us understand what is happening Google publish monthly updates on their progress. What’s surprising about these updates is how technical and factual they are. Google is one of many companies working to completely redesign a basic tenet of western lives – access to our own cars – and yet their updates look like they’ve come from an insurance company. Comforting really.
What have we learned about self driving cars. Perhaps there are no great surprises here as the technology is not ready yet nor is it perfect but it is coming and it is coming fast. And its coming from almost all car manufacturers in some form or another, as well as from Google and potentially from others including Apple. Tesla has announced an update to its software to create an autonomous steering capability.
Trucks are already autonomously operating in mines in Australia and Daimler Trucks North America announced recently a semi autonomous truck. This truck is the first one to receive a licence to be tested on public roads and Nevada, again, is to be given a lot of credit for leading here.
The future of transport is autonomous. Cars and trucks can be made to drive autonomously. As long as its not too foggy, or snowy, or wet. But let’s be fair this move to being fully autonomous only really started in 2009 and I am pretty sure no one gave it any hope then. But I can see a time when my phone knows when I need to set off and where I want to go (it already does). I step into a car that’s been ordered already (possible today) and sit back to watch a film while the car sets off. I don’t need to do anything until I get out at my destination. And all I get is a bill to my phone.
Why should you talk about Driverless cars? Because they are coming and I for one can’t wait.
The Burble 