Autonomous and Driverless vehicles

Post by **MattH** » Wed Sep 20, 17 10:23 am

Following on from the electric cars thread, the other aspect of the Millbrook event was the Autonomous Vehicles.

For those that remember Johnny Cabs from Total Recall, that is here now.
There are trials going on in Greenwich around the O2 area, and in Milton Keynes with electric powered autonomous vehicles that are driving round the cycle paths. You will be able to hail them via phone and they drive you where you want to go, no driver, no pedals or steering wheel.

There was also on display a Waitrose home delivery vehicle that has been trialled to be completely autonomous.

The biggie for me was the Drive Project running around Oxford. We saw a video of a fully autonomous Ford Mondeo being driven around Oxford, in the traffic, avoiding pedestrians and doing everything a normal driver would do, but automatically. There were people on board to take over but it drove itself and steered.

The plan is that the trials will soon be taking a fleet of cars up and down the roads between Oxford and London.
They also had an Evoque which could drive autonomously off road, not relying on sat nav, just obstacle avoidance and terrain mapping.

Apparently a trial has alreday happened in USA with a delivery of Budweiser 130 miles but 40 foot artic truck being driven autonomously on the freeway with the driver taking over for the loading bay.

It is clearly a big step up from the currently available lane steering and collision avoidance on some cars, but it is coming to an A road near you soon!!

There are clearly massive issues with culpability and insurance issues and when is a driver not a driver, but this is being addressed, there is a govertment department set up to address the whole autonomous vehicle situation.

Seriousy clever stuff. I'm sure there may be people on here that know more than me about this, and maybe work in the industry, but the future gets closer every day and I for one was impressed with what is going on right now.

Post by **MattH** » Wed Sep 20, 17 10:33 am

The company doing the Oxford trials is Oxbotica

This is the Ocado article
https://www.theguardian.com/business/20 ... -uk-trials

and this is the Greenwich "pods"

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/ ... ess-future

Dave81 · Post by **Dave81** » Wed Sep 20, 17 1:48 pm

Be interested to see the Insurance issues for things like this, especially for things like cabs which will be carrying members of the public.

Would this mean an end to elephant racing too........

Can see benefits and issues.

Not long now, until Skynet goes live!!

Rebel · Post by **Rebel** » Thu Sep 21, 17 1:34 am

Dave81 wrote:Not long now, until Skynet goes live!!

^I agree.

However, I can't help thinking that the human element ( or idiot element ) will be the biggest issue. The autonomous vehicle might be programmed to follow rules and watch for pedestrians, but they can't be programmed to watch out for idiots on the road. I imagine that there'll be a minority of people who'll go out of there way to try and cause the autonomous vehicles to crash so they can try and claim thousands for whiplash

cadboy · Post by **cadboy** » Thu Sep 21, 17 7:02 am

This worries me!!!!

cars are bad enough with drivers, what are they going to be like with computers in control

Matt74 · Post by **Matt74** » Thu Sep 21, 17 10:11 am

cadboy wrote:This worries me!!!!

cars are bad enough with drivers, what are they going to be like with computers in control

I've seen so much bad driving lately I can only imagine they will be safer!

Dave81 · Post by **Dave81** » Thu Sep 21, 17 1:06 pm

Matt74 wrote:
cadboy wrote:This worries me!!!!

cars are bad enough with drivers, what are they going to be like with computers in control
I've seen so much bad driving lately I can only imagine they will be safer!

I believe Tesla has already proved that the microprocessors can act much quicker than the average human. Computers dont seem to suffer from road rage either.

Not too sure i'd trust a 15 year old car though with dodgy connectors.........Thats a problem to solve, or will these vehicles have shelf lives and youll need to get a new car every ten?

Post by **MattH** » Fri Sep 22, 17 8:35 am

The Teslas apparently have a garage mode where you can press something on your phone and it will drive to you. One of my colleagues had an owner demonstrate it to him when he was returning to his car.

db · Post by db » Mon Sep 25, 17 8:32 am

Great for when you're too piffed to find your car

mad machs · Post by **mad machs** » Mon Sep 25, 17 10:36 am

Pahhh, I invented the driverless car years ago, had a mini traveller that had a few corrosion issues, namely the door pillars had rotted out and if you opened the doors they'd fall off, so you had to get in via the the rear doors and clamber over the seats , almost like getting into a 50's jet cockpit, you could secure the rear doors by pushing on the bars of the mechanism thus latching then shut.
One day though, after refuelling, I noticed the the rear doors had come unlatched , failure on my behalf to follow the correct procedure, so I pulled over clambered into the back to sort it out, normally this wouldn't be a problem, but two things conspired to make it thus-

1. I was on hill
2. the hand brake, cable, which only worked on one side snapped

However, preoccupied with the door issue as I was , I failed to notice that my chariot was steadily gaining pace, while sat in back, finally to be made aware of the predicament when the pilot-less mini clipped the kerb at quite an impressive distance from where I had first pulled over, still gaining speed, and now meandering to the otherside of the road, luckily I was thinner, lighter and therefore more agile back then, I hurdled the seats to regain control, stopping just short of disaster.

Never really had any faith in driverless cars since then, oh and scrapped the mini and bought a 3.0S Capri shortly after.

lemans-tom · Post by **lemans-tom** » Sun Oct 01, 17 1:20 pm

Hi all

Interesting stuff, thanks for posting.

For those who are interested in what are called second order changes - i.e. what are the wider implications on society and how we live from all this autonomous and electric vehicle stuff, see the link.

Not a quick read, one to ponder with a cup of tea, but fascinating to see what the potential effects on wider society could be when you thin it through. Its American, but many things are transferable to the UK I think. The author works for a big investment bank and specialises in what goes on in silicon valley.

http://ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2017 ... nsequences

Mopar Muscle Association UK

Autonomous and Driverless vehicles

Autonomous and Driverless vehicles

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