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Ratcheting up steeringless and brake pedal less autonomous vehicles

Discussion in 'Gen 2 Prius Technical Discussion' started by Dxta, Jan 16, 2018.

  1. Dxta

    Dxta Senior Member

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    http://www.autoguide.com/auto-news/2018/01/gm-asking-permission-put-car-no-steering-wheel-pedals-road.html

    With the plans by GM to rachet up its production of its first batch of automous cars in 2019, it would be great to see how the public accept such a technology.

    The crux for me here is that such vehicles, atleast, the Cruise AV, based on the Chevrolet Bolt EV, would come without a steering wheel, and brake pedal? That's scary.

    But according to the article, the vehicle meets SAE level 5, which is OK, to ferry people, and is limited to only some geofenced areas.

    It also boasts of onboard computers/sensors and all that, that could safely navigate the car.

    For me, I would never be in such a car.
    I need some form of control with my driving. Not some computers controlling the car, from cloud.

    Such controls are similar to what Tesla didn't to a model S, or something like, that they had to somehow boost the SOC of a customers car I order to help the customer drive to safety, during one of the hurricanes in the USA.

    If they hadn't jiuced the car's battery, that'd have posed a safety risks for the owner of the car.

    1. But how secure are such vehicles, and their technology?

    2. If you've got the opportunity, say, a company has got kits to make your hybrid Prius or whatever, autonomous, without steering wheels and brake pedals, would you be OK with it?

    3. I would only accept to be in the car, if there's a kind of sensors that senses my body movements, in such a way that if I'd want to navigate to the right, I could just sway my hands or shoulders, and it responds.

    4. What happens if you drive the car in the desert, or a place like Nigeria?
    It would costs you millions of dollars to have em fix, right? Not economically feasible I guess for use as Uber taxi.


    What are your thoughts about the technology?

    GM-Cruise-AV.jpg



    Dxta
     
  2. LeprechaunOne

    LeprechaunOne Junior Member

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    Perhaps I am a bit old school. The reason I buy and use vehicles is to do what I want with them which isn't always driving on a road and certainly not being confined to areas where driverless vehicles are practical.

    Driverless vehicles do have a place in this world. They have been successfully used in factory automation dating back to the mid 1980's. They could well replace much of the current public transportation needs and effectively eliminate mundane driving portion of the work that taxi drivers, user/lyft drivers, public transportation (bus/train/subway) drivers perform. Think about how much of the work performed on a flight is done by the autopilot. The place this approach always fall short is in the domain of the unanticipated events. Subways/trains/planes today still require a person present to handle emergency situations. Even with the trending Artificial Intelligence algorithms, it is my belief that they can never effectively be trained to handle the un-expected. How can something be trained to handle something that is not anticipated?

    I would never consider buying a vehicle without controls I could use directly unless I was going to provide its use as a service to others in an application similar to what taxis, Uber, and Lyft provide today. The legal liabilities might still prevent even these applications from my consideration. I would consider having an "autopilot" like capability as an option to a vehicle I would consider buying.

    I'll avoid the subject of "security" for now. Any such "autopilot" type system would have to be wholly contained within the vehicle with no ability to be controlled from an external source to be considered by myself.

    The subject of "drone vehicles being driven remotely" is a completely different topic. This could well be a replacement for human drivers present in a vehicle in the delivery industry.