Automation dependency stripped of political correctness.
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and so it begins.....
Legal breakthrough for Google's self-driving car - BBC News
Google's self-driving car system could soon be given the same legal definition as a human driver, paving the way for vehicles without steering wheels or pedals.
The US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) - which sets rules and regulations on America's roads - shared its thoughts in a letter to Google made public this week.
Until now, any car without a human driver would not be considered roadworthy.
However, in light of technological advancements, the NHTSA has changed its perspective.
"If no human occupant of the vehicle can actually drive the vehicle, it is more reasonable to identify the driver as whatever (as opposed to whoever) is doing the driving," it said.
"In this instance, an item of motor vehicle equipment, the Self-Driving System, is actually driving the vehicle."
Google boost
It means Google's self-driving pod, which has no typical in-car controls, is one crucial step closer to being allowed on public roads.
With the NHTSA's blessing, the car now fits the key criteria required to pass the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards test.
Legal breakthrough for Google's self-driving car - BBC News
Google's self-driving car system could soon be given the same legal definition as a human driver, paving the way for vehicles without steering wheels or pedals.
The US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) - which sets rules and regulations on America's roads - shared its thoughts in a letter to Google made public this week.
Until now, any car without a human driver would not be considered roadworthy.
However, in light of technological advancements, the NHTSA has changed its perspective.
"If no human occupant of the vehicle can actually drive the vehicle, it is more reasonable to identify the driver as whatever (as opposed to whoever) is doing the driving," it said.
"In this instance, an item of motor vehicle equipment, the Self-Driving System, is actually driving the vehicle."
Google boost
It means Google's self-driving pod, which has no typical in-car controls, is one crucial step closer to being allowed on public roads.
With the NHTSA's blessing, the car now fits the key criteria required to pass the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards test.
Until now, any car without a human driver would not be considered roadworthy.
Drove down my street yesterday (one lane either side of CL). Parked cars on the left curb and a little further down on the right curb. Saw car coming in the distance (200m), opposite direction. He was just "ahead" of me "in the sequence" so I slowed down to a crawl to let him weave between the parked cars first.
Then I thought of the nerds who design driverless cars. How would they program their cars to handle that situation?
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"Nerds" managed to design a spacecraft that flew to a comet which we didn't know what would look like or what would be made of and then landed on it without human input after 10 years in space.
I think they might manage that tricky dilemma.
I think they might manage that tricky dilemma.
So "nerds" designed a machine to do nothing for 10 years, then land on a rock with absolutely nothing else around to hit, but that rock.
That machine then crashed into that rock, and humans had to intervene to move said machine so it would work. Even that intervention only lasted for a matter of hours before said machine ran out of power and died.
While not wanting to take away from the complexity and success of that mission, its hardly a ringing endorsement of computer automation.
Tourist, while undoubtedly fully autonomous airliners are possible at some point in the future, it's not going to be anytime soon. No matter how much you jump up and down about it. It seems most of the experts agree we are a long, long way from achieving that level of automation.
As for the Google car, they are squaring the circle of who are you going to sue when it all goes wrong and someone gets killed. In this case, it's now Google. Hardly a huge technological sptep forward.
That machine then crashed into that rock, and humans had to intervene to move said machine so it would work. Even that intervention only lasted for a matter of hours before said machine ran out of power and died.
While not wanting to take away from the complexity and success of that mission, its hardly a ringing endorsement of computer automation.
Tourist, while undoubtedly fully autonomous airliners are possible at some point in the future, it's not going to be anytime soon. No matter how much you jump up and down about it. It seems most of the experts agree we are a long, long way from achieving that level of automation.
As for the Google car, they are squaring the circle of who are you going to sue when it all goes wrong and someone gets killed. In this case, it's now Google. Hardly a huge technological sptep forward.
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"We better not mention the Mars landing err arrival. "Did you say inches, Sir?!" Go the nerds..."
Every one of the spacecraft systems that successfully landed men on the lunar surface and returned them safely to Earth was designed using inches and pounds. The Viking probes that were first to safely land on the surface of Mars, as well as the rockets that launched them, were also designed using inches and pounds.
I just laugh every time I hear claims of how superior the metric system supposedly is. History proves otherwise.
Every one of the spacecraft systems that successfully landed men on the lunar surface and returned them safely to Earth was designed using inches and pounds. The Viking probes that were first to safely land on the surface of Mars, as well as the rockets that launched them, were also designed using inches and pounds.
I just laugh every time I hear claims of how superior the metric system supposedly is. History proves otherwise.
I think the point is, that even superhuman "nerds" who can supposedly design a computer to do anything, can also screwup over something as simple as which unit of measurement to use.
Not that one unit is better than another.
You should come to the UK where we use a mixture of everything, it's a right ball ache!
Not that one unit is better than another.
You should come to the UK where we use a mixture of everything, it's a right ball ache!
The road opposite mine is a main bus route. It is also a main residential road. Kerb to kerb it is less than 4 cars wide.
There is marked parking all along one kerb, and about 30% of the other kerb is double yellow, so 70% of it is full of cars.
As a result you can just about squeeze two cars past each other, but not a car and a bus.
The other day two buses came head to head with no room to let the other past, and within 20 seconds a big queue of cars formed behind both buses... I could see this happening about 300m away as I was walking to the shops.
By the time I walked past the buses a few minutes later there was a solid line of probably 80 cars behind them, and nobody was able to reverse backwards because there were cars constantly adding to this stream of queuing traffic.
By the time I was walking back past it half an hour later several police cars had shut the road at both ends to stop more cars joining, and had started turning traffic around in both directions behind the buses. Said to one of the cops as I was walking past how I was amazed it doesn't happen more often, and he said it was the third time this month that he had to come and sort it out (numerous other times where he wasn't the one to turn up and resolve it)
How would automated cars deal with a situation like that, how would they follow police instruction, or know to reverse backwards to allow more room for others to move back?
I just laugh every time I hear claims of how superior the metric system supposedly is.
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Capn,
No, I didn't miss the point. I have worked on a couple NASA programs that involved working with engineering groups in Russia, Italy and Japan. There were different units of measure used, there were different engineering standards used, there were different material standards used, and there were different languages. Did not have the type of issue described on any of these projects.
While working with the Russians on one NASA program, every document we supplied to them was translated and converted to ISO. But the engineering documents we received from them were just copies of their originals that we had to translate and convert ourselves. NASA management did not completely trust the data supplied by the Russians, and I recall spending a couple weeks creating a digital analysis model from their documentation to verify its accuracy.
No, I didn't miss the point. I have worked on a couple NASA programs that involved working with engineering groups in Russia, Italy and Japan. There were different units of measure used, there were different engineering standards used, there were different material standards used, and there were different languages. Did not have the type of issue described on any of these projects.
While working with the Russians on one NASA program, every document we supplied to them was translated and converted to ISO. But the engineering documents we received from them were just copies of their originals that we had to translate and convert ourselves. NASA management did not completely trust the data supplied by the Russians, and I recall spending a couple weeks creating a digital analysis model from their documentation to verify its accuracy.
