Driverless cars banished to fake Michigan 'town' until they learn to read Opened on Monday, the University of Michigan's Mcity is the world's first controlled environment to test driverless cars, designed and developed by the university's "Mobility Transformation Center" (MTC) along with the Michigan Department of Transportation. The driverless utopia is a 32-acre simulated urban/suburban …
Self driving cars are already being tested on real roads; their safety record is pretty good:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_driverless_car#Traffic_accidents
Self driving cars are now pretty much inevitable, they will be safer than human drivers because once they are developed to an acceptable level of risk then all of them will be capable of driving to the same standard. Humans have varying levels of driving competence, ranging from those who kill themselves, or someone else, within a few days of getting a license to those who drive for fifty years without having an accident.
The USA has around 30,000 fatalities a year, so the humans are already way behind on safety; I can easily imagine a time in the future when insurance companies will prefer self-drive cars over human control, and that's what will force the issue. Already a young driver in the UK will expect to pay £2000 for their first year of insurance after receiving full license; if they can get mobile in a self drive car without the cost of learning to drive or a huge insurance bill, then why would they go to the trouble?
The same argument may also apply to hire cars; why would they take on the risk of people with variable driving skills, possibly in an unfamiliar vehicle with the controls on the wrong side, when they can simple rent out a self drive vehicle for less money? I know they make a lot of money on the insurance, but those who are renting self drive cars will undercut them in the market.
Humans driving cars could soon become a leisure activity for those who are prepared to pay for the additional risk involved, and it may even become illegal to drive oneself in urban areas where the risk of an accident involving a third party is much higher.
I can only imagine how much fun it must be to be on the dev team of these kinds of projects....
Ok developer number 1, your project car for todays exercise is a Shelby Cobra, your only constraint is that it must remain on the track at all times.
Ok developer number 2, your project car for todays exercise is a Double Decker bus, your only constraint is that it must remain on the track at all times.
Ok developer number 3, your project car for todays exercise is a Reliant Robin, your only constraint is that it must remain on the track at all times.
On your marks, set, go ................................Maria Karts comes to life.....( without the drivers of course)
"Why do people say "Robin Reliant", but not "Astra Vauxhall" or "Escort Ford" ?"
If you had ever driven/been in one you would know why.. My grandfather used to own one......which he then gave to my father...... which meant that myself and my brother would rather walk to school than get driven there.....
It's a kind of embarrassing car...it's only got 3 wheels ( 2 at rear , 1 in front) poor quality, absolutely crap handling, very negative street cred, you really don't want to be in a crash with one of these things...
A BondBug on the other hand is extremely cool...
I think JulieM's point isn't wondering why people pick on the Robin, but why people often get the name the wrong way round.
It isn't a 'Robin Reliant', but a 'Reliant Robin'. Reliant is the car maker (who also made, amongst others, the Scimitar, Sabre and of course the Kitten - a 4 wheel version of the Robin). For some reason people do seem to frequently call it a 'Robin Reliant' though but I have no idea why - can anyone shed light on it? As JulieM notes, they wouldn't call a Ford Escort an Escort Ford.
Reliant Robin: Comedic deathtraps to be sure but they were the car of necessity for old rockers 'cause you could drive them on a bike licence - instant family transport, no car licence required. Unfortunately guys I knew who had one tended to drive with excessive enthusiasm, being used to bikes. They'd consider it a mark of skill to be able to get it on two wheels in a corner without tipping it. Let's see a robot do that (just to bring it back on topic)
BTW Robin Reliant/Reliant Robin, Series (n) Land Rover as another instance of model before manufacturer in common usage?
Didn't really answer the point of the question... the point was that the car is made by reliant and the model is a robin... so it should be Reliant Robin. For some reason the mistake persists and because we are English and English is a wonderful language we don't care enough to avoid the problem
On to your other point... the Bond Biug was a pretty looking car but exactly like the Robin it falls over because the design is fundamentally wrong - the laws of physics say any car with this configuration will fall over at the first decent attempt to go round a corner.
To remind folk the 3 wheeler was (and actually still would be) a good idea because of the strange UK taxation rules that make it cheaper to tax.
Strangely I also don't understand the design for more practical reasons - the differential that is required is far from efficient or cheap to manufacture/source so why use it? The single steering wheel is also a completely custom creation. The approach taken by Morgan with their 3 wheeler (even the updated version of the original) and the German 3 wheelers...
Basically :
take the front suspension of any small rear wheel drive family saloon for the front two wheels
take a motorbike engine and transmission (maybe use a propshaft thats a bit longer than normal)
And then you have all you need... pretty near straight from a parts bin and perfectly stable.
As I think I have mentioned before on these forae, the Bond Bug was actually an amazing vehicle. The top model was capable of 115mph (for internal consumption only - never let insurance companies know!), and the factory test drive demonstrated to me that it could do handbrake turns, doughnuts, and 3-wheel slides on corners - all because the COG was barely above the wheel hubs.
Because it should be 'Reliant Robin' ....
while I'm here I fail to notice anything other than level roads, no hills in driverless car world? How will they handle blind summits with parked cars either side or angled junctions at the bottom of a hill? How about getting confused on an overpass and trying to turn onto the road below? ouch!
Maybe however these won't be able to use the 'Sorry I mate I didn't see you' (SMIDSY) method of 'apologising' for maiming cyclists and motorcyclists....
I don't see a version of a one-lane country road with the occasional laybys and small herds of sheep wandering slowly across. Nor the historic town centre with a bloody great half-timbered building that turns two lanes into half a lane with a pelican crossing at each end. And where is the unbelievably tight parking areas where a Chelsea Tractor and a Smart Car have managed to eliminate two other possible parking areas? When the driverless car can handle all of those (and Parisian taxi drivers), then I will gladly hop into one.
Dear Mr or Ms Grinder, no actually, I am not one of those who validates by personhood by my vehicle. I would actually love a car that drives itself, as then I could read on the journey. But tested a driverless vehicle on American-style roads is not setting a big enough challenge. I have known excellent American drivers go white when driving through a quaint Cotswold town or, indeed, Scotland. When I see a Google car zipping safely around Rome, I will happily climb aboard.
It depends on where in America you drive. It's a big place. Cruising through the plains states will be a cakewalk, yes, but the Google cars are currently road-testing in California, which has plenty of potential for crazy driving. Consider Los Angeles or San Francisco during rush hour.
"...no actually, I am not one of those who validates by personhood by my vehicle..."
Well then you're accusing people smart enough to build a self driving car of being naive enough to think the world is entirely covered by trivial road layouts (while presuming it's designed entirely by Americans who are so insular they've never visited another country). Even if they really are that dumb, every time we have an autonomous automobile post, everybody points out these problems. I'm sure they have a full list of test cases by now.
Not just Scotland. Anywhere outside of what appears to be the tunnel vision of these researchers.
"Our cities will be much better to live in, our suburbs will be much better to live in."
And it's not just graffiti covering road signs, trees and bushes do as well, I don't suppose that has occurred to them. Then there's the concealed entrances to farms and the like, usually full of a whopping great tractor and trailer just pulling out into the main road.
So, all right for townies, maybe not for the rest of us.
"I suspect the researchers are well aware of the complexity of real world driving outside the US, but one must start somewhere."
Maybe. Maybe not. IIRC only about 20% of USAian have a passport and only about 13% ever actually leave the USA to see any of the "rest pf the world"
There is no reason an automated car can't cope with all these situations far better than a human.
A tractor pulling out is much more likely to be noticed by an permanently on, un-fatigued always scanning device, that can respond in minute fraction of the time. WHile you pause for a quarter of a second after seeing the tractor the car has already started braking, calculated the trajectory and speed of the tractor, started sounding the horn, turned on the flashers to warn drivers behind and possibly started a diversionary course.
As a human you have to negotiate new road conditions as you encounter them for the first time and make a decision based upon what you think is the best option. A new driver often panics in these situations. After driving for many years yo have experienced a lot of situations and so things like this don't faze you. Now an autonomous vehicle can analyse the decision of, potentially, millions of drivers in all different scenarios and update its decision making with the best outcome in each case. It can have thousands of years of driving experience in a few minutes at the next synch interval.
The hardest issue for vehicles is potentially having to do an illegal manoeuvre for the good of the rest of the road traffic, such as when queuing traffic backs up and uses a shoulder so that they don't block a lane and cause a tailback. Would the developers be allowed to program in non-emergency illegal manoeuvres?
> And where is the unbelievably tight parking areas where a Chelsea Tractor and a Smart Car have managed to eliminate two other possible parking areas?
Of all of your questions, I would think that this is one area where we would expect self driving cars to particularly excel. It is a purely geometrical problem which we would expect them to get right every time.
"Of all of your questions, I would think that this is one area where we would expect self driving cars to particularly excel. It is a purely geometrical problem which we would expect them to get right every time."
What has geometry or parking in a tight spot got to do with my autocar stopping, dropping me off then buggering off somewhere else to park and await my summons to come and pick me up again? Or even just driving 'round the block a couple times? Sheesh, some people! :-)
How would they cope with the Magic Roundabout?
The magic roundabout is just a series of interlinked roundabouts. My mrs face was funny the first time she saw the one at MK (she's not British and had little previous experience of roundabouts prior to import). Once I explained how it worked she was fine.
Road layouts are not going to be the problem for these cars. The problem is going to be stuff like sheep, cyclists, or other drivers that don't follow road rules. It'll struggle with fallen trees or single track roads where the housewife has overshot the passing space and refuses point blank to reverse 5 meters into it instead of forcing the JohnnyCab to reverse 50 meters around a bend, etc etc. How will it cope with situations where drivers don't follow the rules of the road? The challenges are not insurmountable, but will need a lot of real world experience in order to design effective tests.
Did they also build potholes?
Manholes with stolen covers? Occasionally with a tree branch inserted to highlight it?
Bus stop grooves? Speed bumps? Really vicious near-square ones?
How long is a googlemobile suspension expected to last anyway? Or do they intend to make it go soooo slooow so as not to make any difference?
This "city" on the University of Michigan (a state chartered university with it's own police force) campus, is within the City of Ann Arbor (with it's own police force), in Washtenaw county (with a sheriff and deputies) in the State of Michigan (with state troopers, etc.) in the US (with the FBI, et. al.)
There's deer within the city limits and on the University of Michigan campus. Not by design though. Are deer a reasonable proxy for (libertarian) sheep?
There are pedestrians and bicyclists - but the vast majority of them are to the west a few miles or so.
There's townies too. The townies and the gownies sometimes make resentful noises about each other. The rest of the region is alternately (and sometimes simultaneously) envious, bewildered, and confused by the whole mess.
There are truck eating bridges in town - a north/south railroad is elevated by bridges over a few of the citie's east/west roads and apparently a truck gets it's top peeled off ever month or so.
Sorry, no double-decker buses - although both the city and the university do run buses past the facility.
"Are deer a reasonable proxy for (libertarian) sheep?"
I don't know. Do they balance on the tops of wall & then suddenly jump down in front of you?
This was one of my first encounters after passing my driving test. Fortunately the suddenness was relative; I realised it was preparing to jump & acted accordingly, but would an autonomous car?
No, they'll jump over the wall without warning. If a sheep is balancing on the wall at least you know to slow down as they might jump off. Deer will just jump in front of you without warning. I'm fortunate I've (knock on wood) avoided such collisions so far, but some are unavoidable, even with robo-car reflexes.
Having driven past many different types of animals I would say they all pretty much are the same - they are all liable to jump off walls and rush across the road at importune times. I'm including humans in that list of animals after seeing some of the dumbest reactions ever from them.
Both self driving cars from other manufacturers and themselves along with something imitating real drivers - could be done using remote control and a fixed computer program (press accelerator now, turn left now, stop now....) Some of the cars should have defective lights and lazy 'people' who don't indicate (I don't :) )
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