Driver not Wanted

16 responses to “Driver not Wanted”

1. 

   benjiman

   Mar 31, 2011 at 6:11 pm

   AMEN. Please. Now. I want to get to that last sentence ASAP.

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2. 

   tifotter

   Mar 31, 2011 at 6:27 pm

   People spend an average of 52 A DAY in traffic? Wow. I only get caught in a jam once or twice a week. Loved your high-speed video. 🙂

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3. 

   Astrocatou

   Mar 31, 2011 at 6:33 pm

   Despite my humor on this subject previously…I agree its a valid concept.
   Now lets get the batteries sorted…(!)

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4. 

   PhOtOnQuAnTiQuE

   Mar 31, 2011 at 7:18 pm

   Sweet short talk. If some of you are curious about it and want to learn more about it, he gave us a longer talk at TEDx Brussels last December.

   

   "The problem with cars now is that they spend the vast majority of their time parked in the wrong location so they cannot be used by other drivers."

   "Enables car sharing, automatic taxi. We do not need personal cars, most of the time."

   "It’s all in the algorithms."

   TEDx Brussels talk : Sebastian Thrun : Rethinking the Automobile

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5. 

   solerena

   Mar 31, 2011 at 9:42 pm

   oh, wish could have one today:) if it could ride, fly and sail – would be even better:)

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6. 

   ukweli

   Apr 1, 2011 at 2:46 pm

   "It’s all in the algorithms."

   This is never true in the real world.

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7. 

   Graeme’s Pixs

   Apr 14, 2011 at 8:07 am

   too true

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8. 

   jgury

   Apr 16, 2011 at 8:35 am

   So why don’t we have the Indy 500 now with frigging robots? They would go much faster, not have fatal accidents, be more exciting (at least for the geek crowd-I’m not so sure about the infield crowd if you have ever been there, if you know what I mean) and even be more fuel efficient! I am looking forward to a time when generations after look back at us and say how ridiculous it was that humans were racing cars.
   If the Google car is so great they should enter it in some races vs. humans just like IBM does with chess and deep blue. Hell the crowd at Talladega would go wild to see Daryl, Buck and Roy gang up on Google Car and smash it into the wall. That is, if they are able to catch it. Yee Haaa!

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9. 

   jurvetson

   Feb 17, 2012 at 4:56 pm

   There was talk of that, but the humans would not have a chance.

   A ton of people have pinged me from all over the country about today’s NPR Morning Edition: When the Car is the Driver. I guess people still listen to radio. =)

   Actually, it’s a great sample selection bias – the people who heard it were probably caught in long commute time traffic ! Here are some parts of the transcript

   Google’s fleet of robotic cars has driven more than 200,000 miles over highways and city streets in California and Nevada. Google did this testing in kind of a legal limbo. These cars aren’t forbidden, but, "There was no permission granted for any of that to happen by anybody," says Steve Jurvetson, a venture capitalist and robotic car enthusiast.

   "It’s essential that there be a place to do tests," he says. "There’s two ways to do it — the seek-forgiveness strategy and the seek-permission strategy. Frankly, the 200,000 hours I think that have been driven here in California — that’s a seek-forgiveness strategy. Right?"

   Google says it will probably be years before cars like this go on sale. But Jurvetson, the venture capitalist, says he’s convinced this technology could save thousands of lives "today, already, right now."

   Robots are never distracted. They don’t text or drink or get tired. They see things no human can.

   "That front radar catches bounces off the ground," Jurvetson says. "We were driving behind an 18-wheeler, and we saw the vehicles in front of the 18-wheeler — vehicles we could not see with our eye — because the signal bounced off the pavement … at a glancing angle underneath the 18-wheeler. And so no human will ever have the amount of information that these cars have when they are driving."

   While Nevada may be the first state to create a licensing system for self-driving cars, it won’t be the last; Hawaii, Florida and Oklahoma are already following suit. And Jurvetson says one day we may be asking ourselves if humans should still be allowed to drive.

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10. 

    jgury

    Feb 19, 2012 at 2:00 pm

    Google airline is pretty obvious. That is an easier tech problem than Google car too; more degrees of freedom, larger margins for error and multiple electronic control systems already operationally tested, in use and accepted. Unfortunately people are more phobic about dying in plane crashes compared to driving despite the statistical reality. Regardless, the economics are much more compelling for a cockpit crew member like Otto in Airplane! only with a Google suit. Google Otto could also entertain passengers with full Google G+ HOT content and have programming pre selected for each passenger taste and search profile-which will solve the problem of terrorism too.

    

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11. 

    jurvetson

    Feb 19, 2012 at 4:23 pm

    Funny you should mention that…. Here’s the TSA future I predicted:

    

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12. 

    jgury

    Feb 19, 2012 at 6:46 pm

    And this was when, 2006? RFID card capacity and capability along with biometric tech and data has not gone retrograde either.
    Of course this is closely related to the world needing to get real about biometric secure id. Everything from airport security to this absurd system of user-ids, passwords and card numbers to validate an individual for all kinds of access. The technology is so far ahead of the legal/political system and that level of intelligence. What, are we going to get to the point of $100 complete individual genomic scan data on a chip with free RFID biometric cards from your bank ATM, or hospital for everybody in the US and still have to show some ridiculous state photo id at an airport or to vote? Like I care if I get another set of data such as fingerprints, photos, etc. registered? Jeez, civil libertarians are absurd about this. They have never been bonded for a job or been in the military? Meanwhile for lack of doing the intelligent things with technology we are doing things that completely degrade individual liberty subjecting everyone to blind invasive standards of PC equality and leave supposedly sacrosanct things like voting subject to all manners of fraud and abuse. Oh, but someone like a generic US soccer mom always has the potential to become radicalized deciding to embrace terror and to use the kids as suicide bombers or drug mules if she becomes hooked on narcotics like pot.

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13. 

    jgury

    Feb 21, 2012 at 7:53 pm

    How could I have overlooked this one…. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&NR=1&v=lq...

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14. 

    jurvetson

    Apr 1, 2012 at 8:31 pm

    Turning it up a notch…
    

    P.S. and a funny story: When Thrun saw my Dad and me at TED2012, he noticed the same last name on the badges and asked "Are you married?"

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15. 

    jurvetson

    Oct 3, 2012 at 3:38 pm

    P.S.S. A new NPR radio program is airing today around the California law on robo cars. My comments tie the global gridlock concerns of Bill Ford with the solution offered by Thrun above:

    “Ending Traffic Jams

    Steve Jurvetson, a venture capitalist and self-driving car enthusiast, says safety is a huge benefit, but that’s just the beginning.

    "Because we are going to go from about a billion cars on the road today to about 2 to 4 billion in the next 50 years, we can’t accommodate that in anything approaching the infrastructure we have in place," Jurvetson says.

    Picture global gridlock. If we don’t do something dramatic to enhance infrastructure or the way cars drive, Jurvetson says, the traffic jams will be unimaginable.

    "But with autonomous cars, they can drive two to three times more densely," he says. "You could, in fact today, remove all traffic jams from America if all cars went this way."

    My dream is that if my kids can make it through college without a car, then by that time in the future, there will be no reason to learn how to drive. Imagine skipping the teen driving years altogether (year one is a death trap for all, and ADD teens are worse than drunk drivers in some studies).

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16. 

    jgury

    Oct 5, 2012 at 6:02 pm

    [http://www.flickr.com/photos/jurvetson] Forgot the source link. http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2012/10/03/162187419/...

    I’m not so sure how Google cars would solve anything about the post-apocalyptic mega gridlock where I was in São Paulo Brazil as a good example, where they have even/odd day licences and that is still not enough. Plus, there was a big power outage / infra blackout in Brasilia this week, getting ready for an election day electronic vote machine resetting surge tomorrow no doubt, which caused traffic , commuter and pedestrian chaos. That does point to some distressing difficulties in countries where the power and web grids have issues.
    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-19660765
    So what are the bigger issues here? Clearly some very different views on the rosy future of how wonderful things will be when we have new technology used to double or triple the number of cars on the planet as one example. Even with hypothetical miracle energy sources for all of them that are non polluting and green friendly. Same goes for adding another 2 or 3 billion happy people to the planet while extending their lifespans another 20 years. Oh yes, and we should not not forget all those highly lethal elderly drivers out there who will now not have to give up their precious driving freedoms by giving them G cars. Surely we don’t want their growing needs to escape our attention. ,

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