Seasons Greetings To Our Robot Driver Overlords

My last post provided links to some news items regarding the arrival of self-driving cars, in timeframes that, upon inspection, seem more than a little optimistic. In famously robot-friendly Japan, Nissan has vowed they’ll be selling autonomous vehicles by the year 2020. Upping the ante, Sweden boasts Volvo will be putting 100 self-driving automobiles on the streets of Gothenburg in 2017. 

Pardon me, but Google has already jumped that shark, though quietly, testing self-driving cars on public roads in California since 2010. Their controlling software is called Google Chauffeur. The project is led by Sebastian Thrun, director of the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and co-leader of the team that won the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge (for autonomous vehicles).

While it’s most unlikely that Google wants to be in the business of building robot cars, they surely do want to be in the business of controlling them. Along with, it may be presumed, prime chunks of the environments in which they operate. 

There is power/money in assisting autonomous vehicles to play nicely with each other and with other elements of the environment, particularly on crowded city streets. There is power/money in collecting, parsing and distributing the data that nourishes these systems. There is power/money in being the hub that ties it all together.

Google is positioning itself to do that. That makes me glad. And a little worried. Yes, I’ve read the company’s announcements. Google says robot drivers will save lives by cutting traffic fatalities in half. They will save automotive fuel with increases in efficiency impossible for human operators to achieve. They will adhere to the company motto, Don’t be evil. The other goals are nice, but it’s Google's motto that really gets me. I badly want them to adhere to that motto. 

Without question, demonstrations of Google’s self-driving tech are impressive. At a 2011 TED Conference some journalists from Popular Science got a ride in a Chauffeured Prius. The car was equipped with $150K in aftermarket modifications, including a roof-mounted LIDAR (laser radar) range finder. The setting was the rooftop of a large municipal parking structure. The video is linked below.

I wonder how many viewers were surprised by what they saw in the video. The PS journalist clearly was.

We're Not Ready

Don’t get me wrong, I love what Google is doing for the Internet Age. The amazing Google Maps/Satellite/Earth services have become invaluable to my personal and professional lives. I am unapologetically dependent upon Google’s most excellent search engine. I think I’m hooked on Blogger, the drop-dead simple system that allows me to produce and publish Blaugury. (I’m even considering -- hard as it is for a Mac-head to admit -- an Android-based smart phone!)

Still, I’m not sure their so-far excellent record for enhancing our virtual world is quite enough to sell me on their ability to deliver a real-world self-driving car. Develop and test, yes, but viable on a wide commercial scale? Given the strong likelihood of deep and wide societal impacts, shouldn’t we be thinking of solutions in generational terms? Are our state and federal governments

On March 1, 2012, Nevada passed the first law permitting the operation of autonomous cars. A month later Florida was the second state to do so; in September, California was the third. Michigan joined the club in 2013, and more will follow. Somewhat obviously Google led the lobbying for the Nevada law. (Though I hope not for that “what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas” thing.) A little more surprising, however, was Google’s recent acquisition of Boston Dynamics, a developer of fast, agile, animal-like robots for military applications. 

Want a cold chill? Watch these demonstrations.

CHEETAH

SAND FLEA

BIG DOG

After seeing those BD robots in action, you should have no trouble remembering that Google’s still working with DARPA. Google-powered robots dominated the Defense Agency’s most recent Robotics Challenge. 

Now, I’m as aware as anyone that military applications have been the (cough) driver for all manner of excellent inventions, things that have benefitted society and the world at large -- including, it must be said, the Internet that brings these fine pixels to your screen. Google’s broad-spectrum efforts to automate transportation -- at every conceivable level and to every conceivable purpose -- will no doubt lead to many more amazing and wonderful technology products and services, things that will enrich our future selves immensely. 

Or they could, as some Netizens have suggested, turn into Skynet.

(That last part really doesn't bother me. Plenty of other things could go wrong before that ever happens.)

Bumps in the Road is my next post.

A sincere Happy Holidays to all . . . !!!

On The Road (And Way Off)

As an American male in good standing, I might be able to get into this whole blogging thing more easily if I could just climb into my car and drive there. I’d tap the address into my trusty GPS unit and follow the turn-by-turn instructions -- and because I zeroed out her voice within the first few hours of operation, I wouldn't have to listen to the humorless woman who lives there. After a quiet interlude I’d arrive at my destination: Blog Heaven. Or at least Blog Limbo or Blog Purgatory. Not Heaven, but not Hell, either.

Hmm, let’s just see where this whole driving thing takes us.

It’s clear driving is considered a birthright in this country, and I remain mystified why our Founding Fathers didn’t spare a few words for the “freedom of the road” somewhere in the Bill of Rights. (Actually, I think the Declaration of Independence manages to cover it with “pursuit of happiness” -- something which the automobile has managed to turn into a high-speed chase.) Getting a license to drive is a right of passage, for male and female, alike. Having an automobile of one’s own is a grant of seemingly absolute power over physical inertia and boredom. Driving should be glorious, liberating . . . but it’s not.

Instead of joy, too often I’ve experienced Hell-on-Wheels: More than three decades of commuting in Los Angeles; three years of navigating quirky and narrow European byways; three days stuck in Rome’s glacial traffic. I’ve driven on the wrong side of the road (the UK), legally and well. I've been a passenger in NYC taxis. Worse, I’ve even endured cold sweats on bus tours in Egypt, where people think nothing of crossing busy six-lane highways, on foot, pausing on the white lines, as if they’re magically safe there. (In reality, of course, those lines are invisible to Alexandria’s furious drivers, who care little for the rules of the road, and not a fig for pedestrians.)

Alexandria, Egypt

Obviously I survived to write this post, but even though I’m retired and living in Georgia, I can find Hell by getting into my car. While far removed from my cultural roots, the South is a truly beautiful part of the country; but its roads are home to a maddeningly inconsistent breed of driver. Emphasis on maddeningly inconsistent: People here politely observe proper queueing etiquette at traffic bottlenecks, yet also pull out into oncoming traffic -- slow as blackstrap molasses, heedless of the cannon-balling semitrailer rig they’ve just cut off. 

Such risky/stupid behavior makes me crazy, and I react by swearing a lot. When my wife is in the car with me, she gets angry, too -- not because of my language (I tend to favor creative, occasionally humorous invective), but because of the volume: she has to hear me, and the people I’m swearing at generally don’t. (Confession: I blow my horn, too, but not as often as I used to because people here carry guns.) Truth is I want to do a better job of keeping cool at the wheel, but the insanity of the average driver makes it hard.

And then I saw Russian dashboard camera videos! 

First, a little background: Russian courts prefer video footage to eyewitness testimony. Because mayhem is so common on that country’s roads -- chain reaction pileups, road rage incidents, staged accidents and insurance fraud, police corruption, etc. -- dashboard cameras are ubiquitous. And even in cases where videos aren’t needed in court, the Internet provides an insatiable appetite for bizarre and shocking footage. 

Because so much of the craziness exceeds the written word's capacity to describe, I'm providing the following links to compilations of Russian dashcam footage. They are testimony to a driving environment that would challenge the sanity of even the hardiest motoring soul. If the reader still can’t believe his or her eyes, try a few search strings on YouTube. Eventually you’ll be convinced. Or rendered catatonic.

Exhibit A:

Exhibit B:

There are plenty more where those came from: an entire subculture is devoted to them, including subscription video channels and busy Facebook pages. If you’re like me you find the images to be, in no particular order, stunning, amusing, horrifying, inexplicable. All your years of driving -- especially if they’ve been spent exclusively in the USA, Australia or Europe -- will have prepared you not at all for what’s in some of the clips: High-speed passing of slow or stopped traffic, where there’s no hope of doing so safely. Trucks and cars careening through icy intersections, ignoring signal lights, road signs, police and other vehicles. Crumbling infrastructures transforming thoroughfares into minefields and obstacle courses. 

The spectacular crashes and harrowing near-misses are enough to make me treasure the average American driver. (But I still watch them like a hawk, because I never know when they’ll suddenly turn “mad Russian.”) Fortunately for actual Russians, the whole truth isn’t quite as disturbing as the videos imply. In terms of traffic-related death rates, with 18.6 deaths per 100,000 people, Russia is middle-of-the-road. (More illuminating would be fatalities/mile driven, but that info is not available.) The USA, by comparison, comes in at a relatively benign 10.4. (Pity the poor Eritreans who suffer 48.4 traffic-related fatalities per 100,000 people. Someone should send them some dash cams)

I’m pleased to report at least one happy ending: a YouTube video I saw several months ago showed a young man getting out of his car to help an old woman, who was trying, and failing, to cross a busy road. While the 35 angelic seconds didn’t exactly erase the 15 or so minutes of devilish carnage that preceded it on the compilation, it left me with a sense that the very best humanity has to offer is behind at least some of those steering wheels.

* * *

So, what’s the Blaugury trend-analysis point of this post? Given the horror show of hurtling metal monsters and traffic scofflaws, what would help to slow the headlong rush toward greater and greater highway carnage? Certainly social pressures matter little because, inside our little castles on wheels, anti-social behavior is only a rude gesture away. Politics -- formal state and municipal vehicle codes -- and the informal rules of the road, exist only to be broken. Does technology offer us any hope?

There are some things on the horizon that may yet play a part:

• Nissan plans to offer a fully autonomous car for sale by 2020. (Not really that far off, is it?)
• Volvo will bring self-driving autos to Sweden by 2017. (Wow, that’s only four years out!)
• Google wants to put driverless cars on US roads, as early as 2014. (Are you done laughing yet?)

For me, it’s the last bullet point that really puts things in perspective. Seriously, is there any possibility that driverless automobiles will catch on in this country? (Go ahead, laugh some more; doctors say it’s good for you.)

In a nation where so many citizens consider registering firearms a dangerous infringement of individual freedoms, and believe background checks and waiting periods unthinkable invasions of anyone’s (even a mentally unstable terrorist’s or former felon’s) right to “bear arms” and “resist tyranny,” is there any reason to hope Americans will be willing to turn their wheels over to specialized versions of their home computers?

I think not -- at least not anytime soon -- and I’ll try to explain why next time.

photo credit: M. E. Mendrygal