There has been some talk of the traditional Detroit car companies competing with Google (aka Alphabet, aka Waymo?) head to head in the development and commercialization of self-driving cars. But according to Bloomberg, that isn’t going to happen. Losers.
Tag Archives: self-driving cars
March 2018 in Review
Most frightening stories:
- One reason the U.S. blunders into war repeatedly is that it does not do a good job of analyzing the motives of its adversaries.
- International investors may be losing confidence in the U.S. dollar. And a serious financial crisis in China is a possibility, although China is also trying to become a “cyber superpower“.
- One reason propaganda works is that even knowledgeable people are more likely to believe a statement the more often it is repeated.
Most hopeful stories:
- One large sprawling city could be roughly the economic equivalent of several small high-density cities. This could potentially be good news for the planet if you choose in favor of the latter, and preserve the spaces in between as some combination of natural land and farm land.
- The problems with free parking, and solutions to the problems, are well known. This could potentially be good news if anything were to be actually done about it. Self-parking cars could be really fantastic for cities.
- The coal industry continues to collapse, and even the other fossil fuels are saying they are a bunch of whining losers. And yes, I consider this positive. I hope there aren’t too many old ladies whose pensions depend on coal at this point.
Most interesting stories, that were not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps were a mixture of both:
- Some people really do win the lottery more than they should.
- You can buy a computerized chicken coop or cider maker.
- You can do network analysis or call Matlab in R.
self-parking cars
Wired explains why cars that can park themselves are going to be so awesome, whether or not they are allowed to cruise the public streets and highways just yet.
Parking is a problem that engineers reckon self-driving cars can solve. Send the robot to find a space, after it drops you off at your destination. Summon it back later when you’re ready to leave.
The fatal accident in Arizona this week, in which an Uber autonomous test vehicle killed a pedestrian pushing a bike across the street, highlights some of the dangers of robo-driving at regular speeds. But low-speed movement, with scanners running on full, in a fixed area, is a much safer way to apply the tech. Building owners could have high resolution maps made of their parking lots, geo-fence them, and designate them as no-human zones, so cars can do their thing. It’ll be just like dropping your car at a valet stand, except you don’t have to dig around for singles. More cars will fit into each lot: Because doors don’t need to be opened, the vehicles can squeeze tightly together.
Being a tech magazine and not an urban planning magazine, they don’t realize the significance of the short phrase “More cars will fit into each lot”. Because most cars are parked most of the time, and they take up such enormous amounts of space, this could fundamentally change the land use in cities over time by opening up enormous amounts of space to other uses. And that is assuming people own the same number of cars they do now. As the incentive to own a private vehicle decreases, more of the fleet will be in motion at any given time and less will be parked, accelerating the virtuous cycle of reduced car demand even more. What kind of uses could be better than parking? Well, any – such as housing, commercial space, parks (the kind with soil and plants), natural areas, solar panels. Now might be a good time for cities and suburbs to start thinking about what they want to do with all this public real estate other than just letting it sit there generating heat, stormwater and pollution. As a start, installing separated bike lanes might not seem such a daunting problem, and just opening up some existing parking as temporary loading zones for deliveries, contractors, the elderly and disabled would be an enormous help in many cities.
humans as a check on self-driving cars?
This article describes the safety protocols Uber had in place to try to avoid a pedestrian death like the one that just happened in Arizona.
Trainees spend time in a classroom reviewing the technology and the testing protocols, and on the track learning to spot and avoid trouble. They even get a day at a racetrack, practicing emergency maneuvers at highway speeds. They’re taught to keep their hands an inch or two from the steering wheel, and the right foot over the brake. If they simply have to look at their phones, they’re supposed to take control of the car and put it in park first.
Working alone in eight-hour shifts (in Phoenix they earn about $24 an hour), the babysitters are then set loose into the wild. Each day, they get a briefing from an engineer: Here’s where you’ll be driving, here’s what to look for. Maybe this version of the software is acting a bit funky around cyclists, or taking one particular turn a little fast.
And constantly, they are told: Watch the road. Don’t look at your phone. If you’re tired, stop driving. Uber also audits vehicle logs for traffic violations, and it has a full-time employee who does nothing but investigate potential infractions of the rules. Uber has fired drivers caught (by other operators or by people on the street) looking at their phones.
fatal automated vehicle crash in Arizona
A Google automated vehicle has killed a pedestrian in Arizona, which has some of the loosest regulations on testing them. I learned about this from the Bicycle Coalition of Philadelphia.
This is certainly a tragedy. The Bicycle Coalition seems to condemn Google for testing the car, then goes on to make the point that human drivers kill people every day, every one is a tragedy, and there isn’t much public outcry about it. I agree with this, and yet I find it interesting that logic and our gut feeling about the morality of the situation seem to be so different. Imagine that changing all cars to self-driving ones would cut the number of people killed by 50% (and I have seen estimates of much larger reductions than that). It would seem immoral not to make that change. But at the same time, it would seem immoral to unleash a fleet of robot cars, knowing that a certain fraction of them are going to kill people, and by killing a few people learn how to not kill as many people in the future. I don’t know the answer to this, except that the technology will gradually get better, and insurance companies may eventually decide the human drivers are not worth the risk.
Dubai tests “autonomous mobility pods”
These things look more like horizontal elevators than cars.
January 2018 in Review
Most frightening stories:
- Larry Summers says we have a better than even chance of recession in the next three years. Sounds bad, but I wonder what that stat would look like for any randomly chosen three year period in modern history.
- The United States is involved in at least seven wars: Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Libya, Somalia, and Pakistan. Nuclear deterrence may not actually the work.
- Cape Town, South Africa is in imminent danger of running out of water. Longer term, there are serious concerns about snowpack-dependent water supplies serving large urban populations in Asia and western North America.
Most hopeful stories:
- There are some new ideas and practical examples of urban green infrastructure planning that take full advantage of ecological and social science to maximize benefits. Also, there are some advances in the idea of using gamification in urban planning. Biophilic Cities is a new (to me) group trying to create “cities of abundant nature in close proximity to large numbers of urbanites.
- There is new evidence that reading is really good for the developing brain.
- Practical wireless charging may finally be getting close. End the tyranny of the cord!
Most interesting stories, that were not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps were a mixture of both:
- Sales of electric vehicles may take off in 2018. Sales of autonomous vehicles will eventually take off, but 2018 may not be the year.
- Just when people on the street might have heard of CRISPR, there are already newer and more powerful gene editing techniques coming online, including the idea of gene circuits. There is some doubt about whether CRISPR will ultimately work in humans. And in other biotech news, brain scans have reached the point where they can reveal an image you are picturing in your mind.
- If you are a white supremacist, it’s okay to have an Asian girlfriend according to the New York Times. The unfortunate corollary would seem to be that if someone is accusing you of being a white supremacist, you can’t just get an Asian girlfriend and expect that to be a sufficient defense.
2017 in Review
Most frightening stories of 2017:
- January: The U.S. government may be “planning to roll back or dilute many of the provisions of Dodd-Frank, particularly those that protect consumers from toxic financial products and those that impose restrictions on banks”.
- February: The Doomsday Clock was moved to 2.5 minutes to midnight. The worst it has ever been was 2 minutes to midnight in the early 1980s. In related news, the idea of a U.S.-China war is looking a bit more plausible. The U.S. military may be considering sending ground troops to Syria.
- March: La Paz, Bolivia, is in a serious crisis caused by loss of its glacier-fed water supply. At the same time we are losing glaciers and snowpack in important food-growing regions, the global groundwater situation is also looking bleak. And for those of us trying to do our little part for water conservation, investing in a residential graywater system can take around 15 years to break even at current costs and water rates.
- April: The U.S. health care market is screwed up seemingly beyond repair. Why can’t we have nice things? Oh right, because our politicians represent big business, not voters. Also, we have forgotten the difference between a dialog and an argument.
- May: We hit 410 ppm at Mauna Loa.
- June: The Onion shared this uncharacteristically unfunny observation: “MYTH: There is nothing mankind can do to prevent climate change. FACT: There is nothing mankind will do to prevent climate change”. It’s not funny because it’s probably true.
- July: Long term food security in Asia could be a problem.
- August: The U.S. construction industry has had negligible productivity gains in the past 40 years.
- September: During the Vietnam War the United States dropped approximately twice as many tons of bombs in Southeast Asia as the Allied forces combined used against both Germany and Japan in World War II. After the Cold War finally ended, Mikhail Gorbachev made some good suggestions for how to achieve a lasting peace. They were ignored. We may be witnessing the decline of the American Empire as a result.
- October: It is possible that a catastrophic loss of insects is occurring and that it may lead to ecological collapse. Also, there is new evidence that pollution is harming human health and even the global economy more than previously thought.
- November: I thought about war and peace in November. Well, mostly war. War is frightening. The United States of America appears to be flailing about militarily all over the world guided by no foreign policy. Big wars of the past have sometimes been started by overconfident leaders thinking they could get a quick military victory, only to find themselves bogged down in something much larger and more intractable than they imagined. But enemies are good to have – the Nazis understood that a scared population will believe what you tell them.
- December: A lot of people would probably agree that the United States government is becoming increasingly dysfunctional, but I don’t think many would question the long-term stability of our form of government itself. Maybe we should start to do that. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has been doing a decent job of protecting consumers and reducing the risk of another financial crisis. The person in charge of it now was put there specifically to ruin it. Something similar may be about to happen at the Census Bureau. A U.S. Constitutional Convention is actually a possibility, and might threaten the stability of the nation.
Most hopeful stories of 2017:
- January: The theory of island biodiversity gives us some clues on how to maximize the biodiversity that a given amount of natural land can support.
- February: You can take a class on how to not be fooled by the news.
- March: A new political survey says there is a chance that a majority of Americans are not bat-shit crazy. Which suggests they might not be too serious about Steve Bannon, who believes in some bat-shit crazy stuff. There are a number of apps and guides out there to help sane people pester our elected representatives when they fail to represent our interests.
- April: The value added tax is a boring but good idea. Why can’t the U.S. have nice things? Oh, right…
- May: Buzz Aldrin and NASA have plans for Mars colonization around the 2030s. Stephen Hawking thinks this is a good idea to hedge our bets against bad things that might happen here on Earth.
- June: On the education front: Finland achieves some of the world’s best educational outcomes with a lot of playtime and not a lot of homework. Musical training early in life is good for your brain later in life, even if you don’t continue it. There are lots of free philosophy and ethics courses online.
- July: A new cancer treatment genetically modifies a patient’s own immune system to attack cancer cells.
- August: The Aichi Biodiversity Targets are some very specific numerical targets that have incorporated in the 2015 Sustainable Goals.
- September: Utility-scale solar energy cost dropped 30% in one year.
- October: Supersonic (civilian) travel is almost back.
- November: Donald Trump does not appear to be trying to destroy the Federal Reserve.
- December: Macroeconomic modeling is improving. So, just to pick a random example, it might be possible to predict the effects on a change in tax policy on the economy. Now all we need is politicians who are responsive to logic and evidence, and we could accomplish something. At least a few economists think the imperfect tax plan the U.S. Congress just passed might actually stimulate business capital investment enough to move the dial on productivity. The deliberate defunding of health care included in the bill is going to hurt people, but maybe not all that dramatically.
Most interesting stories that weren’t particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps were a mixture of both:
- January: Apple, Google, and Facebook may destroy the telecom industry.
- February: The idea of growing human organs inside a pig, or even a viable human-pig hybrid, is getting very close. Tiny brains can also be grown on a microchip. Bringing back extinct animals is also getting very close.
- March: Bill Gates has proposed a “robot tax”. The basic idea is that if and when automation starts to increase productivity, you could tax the increase in profits and use the money to help any workers displaced by the automation. In related somewhat boring economic news, there are a variety of theories as to why a raise in the minimum wage does not appear to cause unemployment as classical economic theory would predict.
- April: I finished reading Rainbow’s End, a fantastic Vernor Vinge novel about augmented reality in the near future, among other things.
- May: The sex robots are here.
- June: “Fleur de lawn” is a mix of perennial rye, hard fescue, micro clover, yarrow, Achillea millefolium, sweet alyssum, Lobularia maritima, baby blue eyes, Nemophila menziesi, English daisy, Bellis perennis, and O’Connor’s strawberry clover, Trifolium fragiferum.
- July: Ecologists have some new ideas for measuring resilience of ecosystems. Technologists have some wild ideas to have robots directly counteract the effects of humans on ecosystems. I like ideas – how do I get a (well-compensated) job where I can just sit around and think up ideas?
- August: Elon Musk has thrown his energy into deep tunneling technology.
- September: I learned that the OECD Science, Technology and Innovation Outlook named “ten key emerging technology trends”: The Internet of Things, Big data analytics, Artificial intelligence, Neurotechnologies, Nano/microsatellites, Nanomaterials, Additive manufacturing / 3D printing, Advanced energy storage technologies, Synthetic biology, Blockchain
- October: Even if autonomous trucks are not ready for tricky urban situations, they could be autonomous on the highway with a small number of remote-control drivers guiding a large number of tricks through tricky urban maneuvers, not unlike the way ports or trainyards are run now. There is also new thinking on how to transition highways gradually through a mix of human and computer-controlled vehicles, and eventually to full computer control. New research shows that even a small number of autonomous vehicles mixed in with human drivers will be safer for everyone. While some reports predict autonomous taxis will be available in the 2020s, Google says that number is more like 2017.
- November: It’s possible that the kind of ideal planned economy envisioned by early Soviet economists (which never came to pass) could be realized with the computing power and algorithms just beginning to be available now.
- December: Microsoft is trying to one-up Google Scholar, which is good for researchers. More computing firepower is being focused on making sense of all the scientific papers out there.
I’ll keep this on the short side. Here are a few trends I see:
Risk of War. I think I said about a year ago that if we could through the next four years without a world war or nuclear detonation, we will be doing well. Well, one year down and three to go. That’s the bright side. The dark side is that it is time to acknowledge there is a regional war going on in the Middle East. It could escalate, it could go nuclear, and it could result in military confrontation between the United States and Russia. Likewise, the situation in North Korea could turn into a regional conflict, could go nuclear, and could lead to military confrontation between the United States and China.
Decline…and Fall? A question on my mind is whether the United States is a nation in decline, and I think the surprisingly obvious answer is yes. The more important question is whether it is a temporary dip, or the beginning of a decline and fall.
Risk of Financial Crisis. The risk of another serious financial crisis is even scarier that war in some ways, at least a limited, non-nuclear war. Surprisingly, the economic effects can be more severe, more widespread and longer lasting. We are seeing the continued weakening of regulations attempting to limit systemic risk-taking for short-term gain. Without a pickup in long-term productivity growth and with the demographic and ecological headwinds that we face, another crisis equal to or worse than the 2007 one could be the one that we don’t recover from.
Ecological Collapse? The story about vanishing insects was eye-opening to me. Could global ecosystems go into a freefall? Could populous regions of the world face a catastrophic food shortage? It is hard to imagine these things coming to a head in the near term, but the world needs to take these risks seriously since the consequences would be so great.
Technology. With everything else going on, technology just marches forward, of course. One technology I find particularly interesting is new approaches to research that mine and attempt to synthesize large bodies of scientific research.
Can the human species implement good ideas? Solutions exist. I would love to end on a positive note, but at the moment I find myself questioning whether our particular species of hairless ape can implement them.
But – how’s this for ending on a positive note – like I said at the beginning, the one thing about 2017 that definitely didn’t suck was that we didn’t get blown up!
2018 transportation trends
U.S. News has predictions for transportation technology in 2018. In a nutshell, sales of electric vehicles will take off, but people will also keep buying inefficient gas vehicles because is relatively cheap right now.
According to this article, the commercial rollout of autonomous vehicles has suffered some setbacks, and 2018 might not be the big widespread adoption year.
Automated vehicle developers will push back their timelines for deployment, for good reason. Automated vehicles are coming, but the real question is when. Just over a year ago, tech magnate Elon Musk said he “felt pretty good” about a Tesla driving completely autonomously from Los Angeles to New York without any human interaction by the end of 2017. But at a recent conference, he pushed that date back another two years. Chevy delayed the debut of Super Cruise, and driverless shuttles have yet to move beyond pilot phases.
Society will greatly benefit from automated vehicle safety improvements. However, it’s a good thing that automated technologies are delayed. Automakers are finding it more difficult to design the system than they originally expected. Instead of putting a product on the road that is unsafe, they are responsibly taking the time they need to make sure the system is ready for the public. Patience will pay off in the long run.
I wonder if it is really a setback in technology, or a matter of a few high profile accidents getting a lot of media attention. Markets and regulatory agencies are going to respond to perception, no matter how clearly the statistics show that imperfect computer-controlled vehicles are a huge advance over human controlled vehicles. Insurance companies are somewhat immune to emotion and responsive to hard numbers though, so at some point when there are safer options available they may just jack rates up on people who don’t take those options. It probably won’t pay to be a late adopter.
November 2017 in Review
Most frightening stories:
- I thought about war and peace in November. Well, mostly war. War is frightening. The United States of America appears to be flailing about militarily all over the world guided by no foreign policy. Big wars of the past have sometimes been started by overconfident leaders thinking they could get a quick military victory, only to find themselves bogged down in something much larger and more intractable than they imagined. But enemies are good to have – the Nazis understood that a scared population will believe what you tell them.
- We should probably be sounding the alarm just as urgently, if not more urgently, on biodiversity as we are on global warming. But while the case against global warming is so simple most children can grasp it, the case against biodiversity loss is more difficult to articulate.
- A theory of mass extinctions of the past is that they have been caused by massive volcanic eruptions burning off underground fossil fuels on a massive scale. Only, not quite at the rate we are doing it now. Rapid collapse of ice cliffs is another thing that might get us.
Most hopeful stories:
- Donald Trump does not appear to be trying to destroy the Federal Reserve.
- You can get a good robot vacuum cleaner now for about $200.
- In discussions of urban green infrastructure, provisioning ecosystem services have been largely ignored, but the potential is there. Permaculture is still out there.
Most interesting stories, that were not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps were a mixture of both:
- You can get an actuarial estimate of your life span online. You can also search your local library catalog automatically whenever you consider buying a book online. Libraries in small, medium, and large towns all over the U.S. appear to be included.
- “Transportation as a service” may cause the collapse of the oil industry. Along similar but more mainstream lines, NACTO has released a “Blueprint for Autonomous Urbanism“, which is my most popular post at the moment I am writing this.
- It’s possible that the kind of ideal planned economy envisioned by early Soviet economists (which never came to pass) could be realized with the computing power and algorithms just beginning to be available now.