Apple's Automobile Project Said to Include Self-Driving Cars

[apolloa]

I will admit, I feel we are legally and socially many years away, many many years away from driverless cars on normal public roads when it comes to accidents, and who is liable.

The AI on a computer controlled can has to be incredibly advanced and fed with all manner of moral judgements as to what action to take when something bad happens.

Let's say it was you in your computer driven car.

Do you want you car to regard itself and your safety as top priority, or should it sacrifice itself/your safety to avoid others it may hit, and also what type of others would be more valid?

Rather than hit the lorry that's pulled out, would you rather it swerved and ran into the group of school children waiting at the buss stop as it's calculated that, that action would be the best to avoid injury to you the passenger?

Or should it hit the lorry, feeling the children's lives or major injury to them would be morally worse than injury to you?

And who is going to explain this decision making process in a court of law, as it has to be in place.

You can't just have, BRAKE HARD in a straight line as the only piece of code.

Actually they are a lot closer than you think, they already have permission to test self driving cars in several countries and are doing so. Cars park themselves now, they will self steer themselves if you wonder over white lines, they will self brake in emergency's, they automatically control their speeds with advanced cruise control, and that is all available right now!

So it will not be long at all before the first driverless car is on the road. Google, Volvo, BMW, Mercedes, Audi are all making them and probably some more too.
You have driverless trains now too.

 

[Azbxcy]

The idea of it, although questionable, is truly amazing. It goes to show how our generation is advancing in all sorts of ways. However there is the question of how much trust we can put on these technological advances in relation to the risks it has on our lives.

 

[Piggie]

Actually they are a lot closer than you think, they already have permission to test self driving cars in several countries and are doing so. Cars park themselves now, they will self steer themselves if you wonder over white lines, they will self brake in emergency's, they automatically control their speeds with advanced cruise control, and that is all available right now!

So it will not be long at all before the first driverless car is on the road. Google, Volvo, BMW, Mercedes, Audi are all making them and probably some more too.
You have driverless trains now too.

Oh I'm aware they are testing them under carefully supervised conditions, and with drivers ready to snatch control in an instant.
And in the UK we have on special new areas made for them.

I'm not saying you can't make something that seems to be ok in many situations. The problem I think is the media as got wind of this, and have taken 2+2 and make 8 from it.

Driverless cars mixed in with normal daily traffic on normal roads, not WIDE open American roads, with other drivers and people all milling around crossing the road at any time, anywhere, etc etc, is the type of thing that needs to be either not done, or perfect.

Not too bad is not good enough.

A bit like a plane, it either does not fly, or it flies perfectly as we've worked out flying. Crashing a bit would not be tolerated.

There is no problem with the devices as such.
The problem will be the Law and Humans acceptance of driverless car accidents.

If we as humans can accept that accidents will happen, and there is no one we can blame then we can have them.
At the moment, we have the easy target to blame. The driver

If we are taking the driver away, either we will blame the company that makes the car, and demand to know why the car did what it did.

Or we are just going to have to accept accidents happen and there is no one to blame and claim against.

Just remember, someone's daughter will get driven into and killed by a computer controlled car and they are going to want to know why the computer decided driving into their daughter was the best decision.

They could argue, why did the car not drive the other way, and the company will have to explain how their software decided what it did was for the best.

Is self preservation the number 1 priority of the software?

Scenario.

You are sitting in your driverless car, 30 mph.
A dog barks loudly and the child jumps out into the road just yards in front of you, not enough time to stop.

1: Your car can apply the brakes in a straight line, but it's calculated it will not stop in time, and has recognised it's a small human, but will hit it, at say 20mph. But you and the car will be safe.

2: It could steer evasively to the left, but there is an adult on the pavement it would hit if it did that movement and a wall it may hit also. Child would be safe, you might be safe depending on the wall, Adult would get hit.

3: It could steer to the right, but there is an oncoming car you would hit then, saving the child in front of you, the adult on the pavement, but risking injury to the driver of the car coming towards you. this also would wreck your car, and possible major injury for you.

It will have done all these calculations in fractions of a second, and evaluated it's best move in a split second.

Which one should it do?

And which one of the 3 people or their families is going to argue in court that it should not have taken that choice.

Or, as I say, we are just going to say, well, computer knows best and not blame anyone?

I assume if it's your car, you would wish your computer in your car to take the action that best looks after your safety. So the child gets it! as the other two options place you, your car's passenger at the greater risk, than just carry on and apply the brakes. The blame then going onto the child for running out, not your fault.

 

[NY Guitarist]

I can't wait to try the 'Find My Car' app!

 

[springsup]

If Apple made a car, they'd do it because they love cars. To me, that means high-end luxury sedan if they want to be practical or some kind of GT or supercar if they're in to speed.

I don't really see self-driving as being all too important. It's useful when your driving is purely functional (to get from A to B and hopefully back to A), but I wouldn't think it essential if you're coming at this from a perspective of people who love cars.

What I absolutely do not see is Apple entering the middle or low end segments of the market. This is not going to be a cheap electric car for the masses. You're thinking of some other company who isn't Apple.

 

[lowercaseperson]

I will admit, I feel we are legally and socially many years away, many many years away from driverless cars on normal public roads when it comes to accidents, and who is liable.

I posted this earlier, but I feel like it's very fitting. "Many many years" may quickly become "tomorrow."

http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevenkotler/2015/02/06/the-acceleration-of-acceleration-how-the-future-is-arriving-far-faster-than-expected/

 

[NY Guitarist]

I'm not sure about the idea of self driving cars. I'll continue keeping myself in control.

What about when you need a cab?

 

[Piggie]

I posted this earlier, but I feel like it's very fitting. "Many many years" may quickly become "tomorrow."

http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevenk...-future-is-arriving-far-faster-than-expected/

Well, when I was leaving school they were showing computers that could listen, understand what you were saying, and talk back.

And we have almost nothing even close to that decades later

Even speech synthesis is only just barely becoming borderline any good, and it has no idea or understanding about what you are saying, just uses some tricks, looks things up and/or compares the word/saying it thinks you said to some table to hope it gets it right.

Its sad how all the promises and things I saw as a small child are still hardly any further along.
Realistically we have just got better at using tricks to make it seem like computers can understand.

I wish it was not so, and we could have deep and meaning full conversations with a computer.

Again, going back to the cars morals, it would be interesting to learn about a computers morals, would it be against all religion for example as that's all human made up rubbish, best left in the less intelligent past where it belongs?

Or should be have different computers to promote different points of view?

Hence my thing about cars. Who is the one going to be that decides what priorities a car's computer software should have in the event of things going wrong. And at what times, laws should be broken on the road also as a situation calls for that to happen. Or are you going to sit at the broken stop light on red all day?

 

[rcread]

Almost half of my cars (four) still have carburetors. I don't anticipate being an early adapter on the self-driving car front.

 

[bflowers]

So some quick research shows the average margin on cars is 6-9% for normal cars, and as high as 10-15% for luxury. How much would the car end up costing when Apple puts their 40% profit margin on it? I suspect it will be outside of iFixit's budget to tear one down!

 

[Tech198]

Looks like one of those english/British cars used in "Mr Bean"

I'd really like to open the Apple box, but this darn think just won't open

 

[Arcady]

Good luck making this stuff work in the snow, with ice all over the sensors.

 

[JAQ]

Yes. People make better more informed decisions than cars that drive themselves who only make decisions based on what they are programed to do.

Assuming the kind of technology that will be available in the next several years:

• The best human drivers will be much safer than a computer driver.
• The worst human drivers will be much less safe than a computer driver.

The question of safety is really one of statistics: averages, medians, and distribution curves.

 

[Gasu E.]

Tim..Tim? TIM…JUST BUY TESLA! The platform is already there for you to apple-ize. The world does not need another car company and you know that.

Apple building their own car may be a bad idea. But Apple buying Tesla is worth than a "bad idea"-- it's a non-idea. There would be absolutely no point in Apple buying Tesla, and would be the beginning of the end for Apple. Apple should be building innovative new products, not buying someone else's existing product.

 

[DakotaGuy]

One things for sure, cars are going to get really boring in the future. Forget having fun flooring it on the on-ramp. These cars will surely only allow a very leisurely pace and never allow any speed limit to be broke even by 1 MPH. Forget fancy high performance sports cars or off road trucks because what is the point? The computer will dictate exactly how the auto must be used at all times.

As a person who enjoys vehicles and driving I guess I'll miss it when it's gone, but I'm hoping just like the CD and MP3 couldn't quite kill off the vinyl LP (It's still alive and kicking with increasing market share) there will still be a few cars available for those of us who like to drive our vehicles.

 

[iSee]

I will admit, I feel we are legally and socially many years away, many many years away from driverless cars on normal public roads when it comes to accidents, and who is liable.

The AI on a computer controlled can has to be incredibly advanced and fed with all manner of moral judgements as to what action to take when something bad happens.

Let's say it was you in your computer driven car.

Do you want you car to regard itself and your safety as top priority, or should it sacrifice itself/your safety to avoid others it may hit, and also what type of others would be more valid?

Rather than hit the lorry that's pulled out, would you rather it swerved and ran into the group of school children waiting at the buss stop as it's calculated that, that action would be the best to avoid injury to you the passenger?

Or should it hit the lorry, feeling the children's lives or major injury to them would be morally worse than injury to you?

And who is going to explain this decision making process in a court of law, as it has to be in place.

You can't just have, BRAKE HARD in a straight line as the only piece of code.

You're over-thinking this.

Stop as fast as possible *is* the last line of defense. Remember, this only come into effect after *everything else has already gone wrong* -- none of which were due to the automatic car. Don't forget that the car is going to be able to react much faster than a human driver. Whatever bad that happens is going to be less than if only a human had been controlling the car.

Also, the car won't be moving that fast since it would have detected the risk that a truck in position to pull out represents as well as the risk of a bunch of kids near the road. Just like a good human driver, it will slow down when the likelihood of something suddenly jumping in front of it increases. A computer is infinitely patient, so will not be pushing it, regardless, as people do at times.

Think about traffic laws for a minute. They are designed so that each vehicle is responsible for its own forward momentum considering what's in front of it and that's about it. No one needs to ponder moral conundrums to drive safely and a computer isn't going to either. We have "STOP" signs, not "ponder the moral implications of the intersection you are about to enter and make the choice of how to proceed wisely" signs.

Computers are already assisting people in driving -- detecting obstructions and applying the breaks before a person could, automatic parking, proximity alerts, etc. These all just make driving safer.

Anyhow: flash forward a bit in time.. the truck is computer controlled as well. So it doesn't pull out unexpectedly. In fact, the truck and the car have already negotiated a merging protocol before the truck would have even come into view of a human driver.

 

[lowercaseperson]

One things for sure, cars are going to get really boring in the future. Forget having fun flooring it on the on-ramp. These cars will surely only allow a very leisurely pace and never allow any speed limit to be broke even by 1 MPH. Forget fancy high performance sports cars or off road trucks because what is the point? The computer will dictate exactly how the auto must be used at all times.

As a person who enjoys vehicles and driving I guess I'll miss it when it's gone, but I'm hoping just like the CD and MP3 couldn't quite kill off the vinyl LP (It's still alive and kicking with increasing market share) there will still be a few cars available for those of us who like to drive our vehicles.

I have to agree wholeheartedly. If you watch Top Gear, ever year the cars go round the track faster and faster....yet every year they hate the driving experience more and more. "Sterized, computerized, automatic...but undoubtedly faster." The last car I remember them loving us the 2013 Corvette, because it was "unruly" and "out of control." The latest Lambo was a top 5 track time, but nobody actually liked it.

American Muscle, those unruley cars, like LPs, WILL live on.

 

[Col4bin]

Mass marketed self-driving automobiles, eh? Still not for a very long time.

 

[cuencap]

It has to be a self driving electric car. Nothing else would make sense. The best hint we have is the mini-van with all the cameras and sensors on it. That would be for self driving features. And if the sensors weren't mission critical, then Apple would never have allowed such an obvious leak to get exposed like that.

And it has to be electric because electric cars are the future. They have innate efficiencies (like avoiding running your car on mini-explosions) that will make internal combustion cars unable to compete in the long run.

Ummm...false?
1) who says the mini van has sensors on it? Based on the shoddy images we have seen, these could be a bunch of cameras for all we know.
2) How are you going to solve the issue of a lack of charging stations? How about the effort involved in creating the energy to charge and maintain all of there electric cars? It's not as simple as saying "they are more efficient than an internal combustion car"

 

[Dargoth]

Lol wut. About 99.9% of accidents are caused by people making "informed decisions:"

1) Drunk driving
2) Risking a red light
3) Speeding
4) Texting
5) Talking on the phone
6) Distractions

You think any company is going to release a half-assed self-driving car? No way. It's going to be at least 5x better than a human driver if they release it.

Plus, odds are they're still going to require a driver until the tech has been proven for a few years, just as a safeguard incase things do go awry. As you said, it's hard for them to make a self-driving car that's worse than human drivers. I'm not worried. I for one welcome our automotive overlords.

 

[Keirasplace]

Assuming the kind of technology that will be available in the next several years:

• The best human drivers will be much safer than a computer driver.
• The worst human drivers will be much less safe than a computer driver.

The question of safety is really one of statistics: averages, medians, and distribution curves.

I think it is obvious that the average driver will in no way be better than a well built computerized and redundant driving system. The A8X maybe costs $30 for now, what if it costs $10 bucks in 4 years and they put 10 into a car along with dozens of localized and specialized processors (like the M8) and dozens of sensors. I'm guessing such extreme power could handle anything you want to give it. Inputs for hundreds of sensors

Most accidents are due to:
- impaired driving (sleep deprived, drunk or drugged)
- Distracted driving (countless ways a driver can be actively distracted).
- Being bored (what I would call day dreaming, did it on a bike even, almost went into a ditch). Also called sleeping at the switch (though it is not literal sleeping ;-).
-Information overload (We are not good at reacting to very complex situations with many sensory inputs). Computers often used to filter out those signals and present a simpler view to pilots.
- Inability of humans to multitask, especially in periods of crisis (brain tends to focus real hard on a few thing creating tunnel vision and losing situational awareness, a major problem for even airline pilots)
- Lacking accurate complete info (bad visibility, inability to judge traction, cross winds, car coming into blind spot, inability to judge speed and separation, accelerating at wrong time (while person in front is braking for example), etc)
- Not understanding traffic signs
- Not being familiar with location
- Driving in unfamiliar conditions (already helped with traction control, ABS, etc)
- Plain wrong decision making considering information at hand due to timing or stress.
- Wrong driving style/speed for road or conditions
- Inexperienced or unskilled driver (rolls up every issue into one, plus they are tentative and not precise in their driving).
- Off spec cars (cars with poor driving performance due to maintenance issues)
- Clunkers (cars in poor driving conditions because they're broken in some way).
- Not signaling
- Etc.

This is what I would call mostly unconscious bad driving. Driving is just not a natural thing for people to do and it shows. A bit like sleepwalking while you drive ;-).
A driverless car will undoubtedly quell these.

Other things up the accident rate that are more willful
- Aggressive driving (legal mostly, but increases accident rate for all involved)
- Reckless driving (speeding, tailgaiting, cutting, etc)

Those things could be removed through driverless cars, but those that do this would be the least likely to like giving away their driving.

Other sources of accidents that could be helped
- mechanical failures on your own cars
- mechanical failures on other cars that puts them in your path (especially if cars communicate)


---
Obviously, despite all of this, if someone suddenly steps in front of car when it is 2 feet away, avoidance probably won't be an option. The law of physics dictate a limit to what can be done. In this case, making the car itself less dangerous to the pedestrian would be an answer (outside airbags?).

Car accidents would still happen but be very rare; extreme set of circumstances would be needed for them to occur. Say two cars running on small spots of black ice at the same time as they cross each other.

Some mechanical failures are unrecoverable and will kill you (they are very rare): brakes seizing or direction locking in a tight turn before the apex.

 

[doelcm82]

2) How are you going to solve the issue of a lack of charging stations? How about the effort involved in creating the energy to charge and maintain all of there electric cars? It's not as simple as saying "they are more efficient than an internal combustion car"

The marketplace will solve the problem of charging stations. The transition from mostly ICE cars to mostly electric cars will take place over period of years or decades. The fact that there aren't enough charging stations NOW to support the number of electric vehicles that will be on the roads in 2025 is not going to be a problem for the cars in 2025. They won't be coming back in time to overwhelm the available capacity we have now.

Here's how it will go: My friend drove his Tesla from Houston to Dallas a year ago. He made it, but only barely. Would he attempt such a journey again given the possibility that his battery might not take him that far? Of course! Now there is a supercharger station in Corsicana. He doesn't have to worry about having enough juice to make it all the way any more.

In the 1980s, I drove from Austin to College Station after midnight, and foolishly forgot to check my fuel level before I left. I started running dangerously low on fuel, so I pulled into a gas station, where I bundled up the best I could and waited, shivering until the station opened in the morning. Clearly the gasoline infrastructure of the 1980s was not prepared for me to attempt such a journey. Only through an enormous effort over many years did we get to where we are today. I could easily make a nighttime journey over the same route now. 24-hour gas stations are all over the place, and you can sometimes use a credit card to pump your own gas at a gas station that is otherwise completely closed.

The resources to support electric cars will not halt at todays levels any more than the resources to support nighttime driving halted at the levels of the early 1980s.

 

[tennisproha]

I wonder how many industries Apple and Google will have moved into in 10 years' time.

Google vs Apple vs Amazon, for world domination! Who will succeed? Find out in a decade.

Poor Walmart def lost sight of its goal

 

[AlecZ]

The street would have to be treated like railroad tracks. People would be forced to only cross at crosswalks. This way if a self driving car comes, it knows where the crosswalks are.

They could do that anyway with regular cars. Absolute zero-tolerance policy for jaywalkers; cross safely or be mowed down
There is an interesting difference between LA and Berkeley. When a ped wants to jaywalk, it's a game of chicken between the driver and the ped. Fewer peds are willing to take that risk in LA than in Berkeley. Driverless cars would always win that game, so nobody would take the risk. Unfortunately, some people end up in the middle of the street by accident...

----------

Or should it hit the lorry, feeling the children's lives or major injury to them would be morally worse than injury to you?

And who is going to explain this decision making process in a court of law, as it has to be in place.

You can't just have, BRAKE HARD in a straight line as the only piece of code.

rand()%2 ?
Being serious, you're right. This puts so much pressure on the car programmers.

 

[Morrile]

Looks like a toy police car