ELC: Google learns to drive [LWN.net]

ELC: Google learns to drive

Posted Feb 21, 2013 19:35 UTC (Thu) by yodermk (guest, #3803)
Parent article: ELC: Google learns to drive

Shame this isn't being done in the open! This is an area where peer reviewed open development could really shine. It would attract all kinds of the best and brightest software engineers.

In any case I can't drive due to low vision and really hope I'll be able to use one of these in a few years.

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ELC: Google learns to drive

Posted Feb 22, 2013 3:49 UTC (Fri) by felixfix (subscriber, #242) [Link] (5 responses)

Open source would be rather pointless here. The hardware is expensive, probably undergoing constant modifications of one sort or another. Software changes come from actual field trials and not from the kind of testing that can be done by just any interested person. A solid core of a few full-time programmers is probably more usefully employed in actual programming, not in screening contributions of mixed value from outsiders of whom they know little.

Might be different once other people have their own qualified cars, but not before then.

ELC: Google learns to drive

Posted Feb 22, 2013 10:15 UTC (Fri) by ortalo (guest, #4654) [Link] (1 responses)

I'd like more open source personnally, but for a different reason: spot the vulnerabilities in that code before the cars are released.
(And no, a solid core of paid full-time programmers swearing with right hand raised that their code is secure will not convince me more than a bunch of hardcore open-source hackers grep-ing through it. Maybe I've been burnt too many times now.)

open sourcing of Google self-driving car code

Posted Feb 23, 2013 0:38 UTC (Sat) by giraffedata (guest, #1954) [Link]

I rather doubt legions of people would spend time reviewing code, without compensation, that they can't run themselves. It sounds really boring and unrewarding. Where open source benefits from the many eyes, it's because legions of people already know and use the code for other reasons - they work on it themselves. At the very least, they use it.

We all want to learn to drive

Posted Feb 22, 2013 13:08 UTC (Fri) by man_ls (guest, #15091) [Link]

Laboratory tests could be developed (or enhanced) for many of the same situations that arise while driving. For example: give it a picture or a live feed of a semaphore and see if it is recognized, a radar map to find out a spot, and so on. Also, the low level libraries could be scrutinized and improved.

Field tests are now almost impossible to run for anyone except the original developers, but that is likely to change in a few years.

ELC: Google learns to drive

Posted Feb 24, 2013 22:58 UTC (Sun) by Russ.Dill@gmail.com (guest, #52805) [Link]

One of the reasons they drove 400k miles is that so they would have a huge dataset to test against. If they can use this dataset for testing, so could opensource developers and other researchers.

ELC: Google learns to drive

Posted Feb 28, 2013 13:37 UTC (Thu) by heijo (guest, #88363) [Link]

I suppose you could just run it in a driving simulation using Google Earth data, and could have lots of fun throwing stuff on the road, cutting into his path with your own simulated car, and seeing how the car reacts.

ELC: Google learns to drive

Posted Feb 23, 2013 0:53 UTC (Sat) by giraffedata (guest, #1954) [Link] (3 responses)

In any case I can't drive due to low vision and really hope I'll be able to use one of these in a few years.

Probably more than a few years for that. In a few years, fully sighted people may be able to use these cars, but for everyone else, probably decades more. Today, only 3 states have allowed cars on the road that don't have a human actively driving, and even those require a licensed driver to be sitting in the driver's seat ready to take over. (Google apparently broke the law to make the video with the blind man in the driver's seat).

A better hope for those who can't drive would be the self-driving roads. Those are a lot better than self-driving cars in a lot of ways, and we wouldn't even want occupants of cars on a self-driving road to participate in the driving, but I understand why Google is more interested in the self-driving car path.

ELC: Google learns to drive

Posted Feb 23, 2013 14:36 UTC (Sat) by intgr (subscriber, #39733) [Link] (1 responses)

Now what's a self-driving road? A Google search didn't produce any meaningful results.

ELC: Google learns to drive

Posted Feb 23, 2013 17:24 UTC (Sat) by dthurston (guest, #4603) [Link]

See the beginning of the article: it's the "smart road" option.

ELC: Google learns to drive

Posted Feb 24, 2013 23:01 UTC (Sun) by Russ.Dill@gmail.com (guest, #52805) [Link]

If they broke the law to make the video, their police escort was rather lax in enforcing it.