Volvo’s first self-driving cars now being tested live on public roads in Sweden

http://www.kurzweilai.net/volvos-first-self-driving-cars-now-being-tested-live-on-public-roads-in-swedish-city

by taivo • 12 years ago

252 172 12 years ago

kurzweilai.net

GnarfGnarf• 12 years ago

Volvo have stopped selling manual transmission ("stick") cars in North America. They have lost me as a customer.

ape4• 12 years ago

If you dislike automatic transition I guess you'll not like self driving cars.

StavrosK3• 12 years ago

I was quite a fan of the manual transmission, but I got an automatic car for the first time now (Mercedes A-class), and it's just so good at shifting that I never even consider it any more. I think of the transmission as another part of the driving experience to automate away now, like turning lights and parking brakes on and off.

nmcfarl2• 12 years ago

It’s quite possible that’s true of many people.

But I like manual transmissions as they force me to pay attention to the act of driving quite frequently. Without that constant reminder, I have a tendency to zone out and go on autopilot myself, which is of course dangerous.

Manual transmissions are my hack to attack this issue - but I’d love to have a self driving car where I was reasonably confident that my zoning out would not be a safety hazard. (As a manual transmission isn’t a great hack, and I live in an urban area, I mainly take the bus, which solves the "zoned out problem" completely.)

McGuffin• 12 years ago

Maybe if you'd bought a lot more Volvos, they still would've had a market for that option.

chiph3• 12 years ago

With draconian CAFE requirements coming (49 mpg average [1][2] for vehicles the size of a Honda Fit), manufacturers are really ramping up their efforts to be compliant. Automatic transmissions now can deliver 1-2 better mpg than a manual, plus sometimes faster shift times. You're also seeing a lot more CVT transmissions vs. conventional planetary gear ones these days because they typically deliver 2+ mpg better economy.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAFE#Agreed_standards_by_model_...

[2] I'm not saying the days of the V8 are over (like in Mad Max 2 -- "The last of the V8 Interceptors. A piece of history.") .. but if you want one, you might want to start thinking about buying one to keep.

jotm5• 12 years ago

How is it possibly better than automatic? I've driven a manual Scania, it's a serious pain in the ass - automatic transmissions are a godsend for trucks...

anigbrowl• 12 years ago

Some people like driving rather than seeing it as a means to an end. I got to really enjoy gearing on a motorcycle.

i80and• 12 years ago

It really depends on the person and the vehicle. I learned to drive stick some years after I started driving, and I just adore the experience to the point where I will not buy an automatic car. Maybe in the future. But not now.

That said, trucks and passenger vehicles with rubbery shifter bushings might be a different story. There's a lot of shifter and clutch variation out there.

chiph3• 12 years ago

No rotating laser dome on the roof?

nabla94• 12 years ago

LIDAR does not work in rain, on wet roads or in the snow.

Google car drives only in good weather in California for a reason. In Sweden they could drive maybe a week in a year.

    ... Sommaren är kort   
    de mesta regnar bort ..

Qworg5• 12 years ago

Google currently has a req out for a electromechanical engineer to work on a new sensor system. I'm betting they're building a new sensor for their vehicle - rotating, but perhaps not LIDAR.

Cracking the heavy rain/snow problem would require more than just a new design though - you'd need a totally different sensor modality, a mix of sensors that can extract enough data, or a system that's far more robust to noise.

threeseed2• 12 years ago

Apparently LIDAR does work in rain albeit with degradation in it's effectiveness.

Regardless I wasn't aware of this before. Why would Google chose this technology ? It's bizarre.

spyder• 12 years ago

There is "Rain Room" art installation that uses depth sensing IR cameras (not LIDAR) to stop the raining around peoples in the room:

http://youtu.be/EkvazIZx-F0?t=1m56s

Maybe it works only because they use multiple cameras and they don't need too high resolution.

andrelaszlo2• 12 years ago

I spotted one of them close to where I work:

https://plus.google.com/105073266122249925354/posts/a7XDM2xg...

There's SOME kind of thingy on the roof. Not sure what it is though. Any ideas?

Didn't want to go too close though: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_83efj9Xdg :)

Qworg5• 12 years ago

Those look like dual GPS antennas.

MrClean• 12 years ago

“The test cars are now able to handle lane following, speed adaption, and merging traffic all by themselves,”

This is an important step, although I must say they appear to be far behind Google. My money is on Google getting to an acceptable deployment phase far earlier.

protomyth5• 12 years ago

Given the driving conditions in Sweden and the years of experience Volvo has as a car company, I would bet they will be able to deploy and all weather version before Google.

haberman4• 12 years ago

This effort does not appear to be as ambitious as the Google approach. The cars drive a specific test route around "50 kilometers of selected roads in and around Gothenburg." That's quite a different thing than a system where you key in an arbitrary destination and the car drives you there.

acchow• 12 years ago

Can you explain what expertise as a car company has to do with AI?

sscalia• 12 years ago

Negative. We'll never see a Google self driving car commercially.

It's a science experiment.

ams6110• 12 years ago

lane following, speed adaption, and merging traffic all by themselves

Well, that's better than most human Volvo drivers can do, by my experience. Whenever I see a car make a bone-headed move in traffic, chances are it's a Volvo.

dalek2point3• 12 years ago

anyone has any idea where their location data (i.e map) is coming from?

andrelaszlo2• 12 years ago

I'm guessing Lantmäteriet (National Land Survey - https://www.lantmateriet.se/).

jotm5• 12 years ago

I can't wait for self driving tech to be put into use - transportation will get cheaper and faster (no more 8-10 hours driving limit bs), not to mention that one or two persons could drive a dozen trucks filled with cargo (though a lot of truckers will hate that)...

objclxt• 12 years ago

transportation will get cheaper and faster (no more 8-10 hours driving limit bs)

Why do you say that? Somebody is still going to need to be awake at the controls, at least for the first few decades of self driving tech. There's a reason pilots on planes don't go to sleep when the auto-pilot kicks on.

hershel• 12 years ago

It's not a good comparison: flying vs driving have totally different response times(minutes vs seconds). One could even say people can't respond in a good way in seconds , unless they keep full attention at all times, which beats the purpose of self driving cars.

jotm5• 12 years ago

The driver won't have to be vigilant or even awake for the whole time, only in emergencies. I'm assuming the car would stop or slow down automatically in case of any problem and notify the driver.

Good point on the pilots, though I always felt that it's unnecessary for them to stay awake (especially on cargo planes). And it looks like many do fall asleep inflight: http://uk.reuters.com/article/2013/10/08/oukoe-uk-britain-pi...

Truckers, on the other hand, need to be alert all the time, falling asleep for even a few minutes can be catastrophic.

I'm mostly hoping for fewer human drivers - two drivers/technicians should be enough to drive a whole convoy of trucks between cities/countries.

Zigurd• 12 years ago

I don't think that will be a hard requirement. A self-driving system will have to be capable of bringing a truck, or a convoy of trucks, to a safe stop in case of an incapacitated "driver" ("operator?"). Bringing an airplane promptly to a safe stop is usually not possible.

ableal• 12 years ago

not to mention that one or two persons could drive a dozen trucks filled with cargo

Maybe autonomous vehicles will make smaller trucks cost-effective, and big trucks will then be charged their true cost in road damage and traffic risks.

That would be a much more visible change in the traffic landscape.

augustl4• 12 years ago

I own a 2013 XC60 and as a programmer, I'm amazed at how well their current automation works in practice. The car reads road signs to show me the current speed limit in the dash (actual OCR, not a GPS database). It works amazingly well, except when it's very dark in the winter. Adaptive cruise control flawlessly follows cars based on radar, even in somewhat dramatic full stops, e.g. when there's suddenly heavy traffic ahead. I always have my foot on the break pedal just in case, but I'm yet to have to intervene.

thematt• 12 years ago

Why would it bother OCR'ing road signs? That seems much more error prone and needlessly complex. That data is readily available from a data sources based on your GPS location, I know TomToms and other navigation devices have it.

nawitus• 12 years ago

At least in Finland, probably in Sweden too speed limits change often (every 6 months) due to winter. In my experience the GPS databases are extremely often not in sync, and you can't predict which speed limits change and when. In addition, there are electronic speed limits that change depending on the weather in real-time. OCR seems like a better option for these conditions.

interurban• 12 years ago

I think OCR may have reliability issues, but most road signage has consistent properties (size, height, font, etc.) that could be easily optimized for.

It also covers the (admittedly limited) situations where no GPS is available (tunnels, skyscrapers). If there are temporary changes in speed limits due to construction or other events, OCR could immediately identify those with no need to download new information.

steven7774002• 12 years ago

I know in Seattle there are variable speed limit zones, where the signs are digital displays that can be changed at anytime to reflect appropriate speed limits for the current conditions.

tzakrajs• 12 years ago

Those databases are quite often out of date and incomplete.

perbu• 12 years ago

Speed limits might change without prier notice due to a car accident or road works ahead. Such works might be initiated by authorities responding to an accident or similar without planning or access to update a central database.

joosters• 12 years ago

Well it's what us humans do and it works OK for us. No internet connection or satellites required either.

mkempe5• 12 years ago

Maybe because their goal is to steadily build a car system that can read the environment and adapt speed and direction based on the actual situation? a map is not the territory.

The latest models also detect pedestrians, bikes, and even animals -- and the car sets off an alarm and brakes so that we don't run over them. High beams are politely turned off when meeting another car, as well as when passing near pedestrians. The software also performs lane detection, shows you where you're heading when moving in reverse, signals to the driver when another vehicle is close by to the left or right, even if you can't seen them in the rearview mirrors.

Volvo has a goal of preventing or mitigating accidents to such an extent that by 2020 nobody will die in a Volvo when there is a car accident. Their commitment to the safety of car passengers was such that they let everyone freely use their patented seat-belt system when they improved it. They've been running a team in Sweden for decades that travels to every single car accident involving a Volvo, so that they can understand the causes and consequences of the accident, sometimes even repeat the event in lab conditions -- and they can improve the cars accordingly.

Yes, we own a (new) Volvo -- we picked it up at the factory in Sweden, drove around Europe for a few weeks, and returned it for them to ship it over to our US address.

sjtrny• 12 years ago

It would use both it's own location based database and OCR for any local changes such as road works and variable speed limits.

chipsy• 12 years ago

The car has to account for human beings holding up signs, e.g. accident sites, temporary construction, or school crossing guards.

This functionality is demonstrated in one of the more recent ridealongs of Google's car.

fizz_and_buzz• 12 years ago

Where I live, signs that change to adept to the traffic flow a pretty common[1]. Also, sign for construction sites are not in gps databases.

[1] http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:VBA_showing_100_kilom...

malandrew2• 12 years ago

My gut feeling tells me that there should be a mandate that requires all safety software to be open-source and liberally licensed. Safety should be very much part of the commons and we all lose out when this type of software isn't shared freely.

Building high quality safety software and sharing it with all car manufacturers wins way more brownie points in my book than using it as a selling point.

augustl4• 12 years ago

Someone in this thread mentioned that Volvo let anyone use their patented seat belt design. So there's at least a tiny speck of light in the end of the tunnel :)

dopamean• 12 years ago

I agree 100% however I think this is probably unlikely to happen. Being safer than another brand makes for great marketing copy and Volvo has been able to rely on that for a very long time. Openly sharing their edge with their competitors doesn't sound like "smart" business. Having said that, they did share their seatbelt design once so maybe....

tuxguy• 12 years ago

1. just curious, this is is sweeden, right ? 2. city driving/ highway ?

augustl4• 12 years ago

Norway :) The road sign reading works well anywhere. Adaptive cruise control works best on highways - it's cruise control, after all. When doing a 90 degree turn, for example, it doesn't "know" what's happening. It works well for slow traffic though, and can do full stops and automatically start driving again when traffic is really slow.

jareds3• 12 years ago

I wonder what the first country that will allow completely automated cars with no human driver is? As a blind person I wonder if that would be enough to have me consider migrating from the U.S. depending on the country.

danielweber2• 12 years ago

You should seriously consider approaching car companies. There will be some (understandable) public resistance to automatic cars, but you could make an excellent poster boy for their benefits.

shalmanese• 12 years ago

Google already thought of that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdgQpa1pUUE

simonebrunozzi• 12 years ago

I've been talking about this for years with friends. I bet on Singapore. (I lived there 2.5 years and know the place a bit).

jareds3• 12 years ago

Do you need a car in Singapore? I thought they had decent public transit?

31reasons• 12 years ago

That will be interesting since Singapore hates car use. That shows in their incredibly high tax on cars. A typical car costs more than $100k. Since automated cars can reduce city cruising for parking space and increase car utilization they may actually welcome the automated cars and perhaps ban manual cars altogether.

ollebro2• 12 years ago

It wouldn't surprise me if it was Sweden. Most cars you see on the road are Volvos and most new sold cars are Volvos.

vidarh• 12 years ago

Volvo is the manufacturer with the highest market share, but it still "only" has 20% of the market, so it's by no means "most cars".

(source: Volvo Cars press release: https://www.media.volvocars.com/global/en-gb/media/pressrele... )

majidarif• 12 years ago

This won't work in our country. Drivers don't follow traffic regulation, the roads can't even be called roads. Everything is just wrong. Even a very advance AI can't handle our roads in Philippines.

jotm5• 12 years ago

Heh, that's true for most countries. But I'm pretty sure the tech can already handle motorways - the cars could self-drive there, then let the driver take over in cities...

bluthru• 12 years ago

Has anything been said about an open protocol for inter-car communication? What about sharing point cloud data?

I have a bad feeling that Google is going to keep everything sealed in Google Maps. The industry would benefit from sharing all of their data with OpenStreetMap.

icebraining• 12 years ago

Has anything been said about an open protocol for inter-car communication?

Yes: http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/02/03/us-autos-technolog...

But I don't think it's for mapping, just safety.

toomuchtodo3• 12 years ago

The industry would benefit from sharing all of their data with OpenStreetMap.

What is the barrier to entry for an open platform for people to submit this same data to OpenStreetMap. Precise Positioning + GoPros + data processing on the backend.

Qworg5• 12 years ago

All of those things? Plus the new StreetView cars are running LIDAR as well.

Major projects like this have a ton of hardware limitations.

songgao• 12 years ago

A lot of companies are working on WAVE/DSRC. Here's a demo from Volvo: http://youtu.be/tasa3D1vVTc

And yes the safety applications like emergency brake, intersection collision warning, or curve speed warning etc., have high priority but other Applications like mapping are also possible. I think current mapping applications use road side infrastructures (also through DSRC) but I guess you could share traffic information (Waze?) using inter-vehicle communication.

Here's an technical paper if anybody is interested: http://secs.oakland.edu/~gpcorser/vanet-kenny-DSRC.pdf

bra-ket• 12 years ago

did they warn the pedestrians?

mkempe5• 12 years ago

I know you meant this as a joke.. however, Volvo cars do watch for pedestrians and automatically stop for them if needs be. In the worst case, there is an external airbag that will deploy in front of the windshield to avoid the worst types of injuries based on decades of analysis of car accidents with pedestrians (in Sweden).

jpatokal2• 12 years ago

Except when they don't, as demonstrated in the rather famous fail below during a PR demo:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lcJ9xgBZJdI

The explanation was "The failure of the test was due to the dummy not being set up properly", which I find rather less than reassuring.

http://www.drive.com.au/motor-news/volvo-crash-test-goes-wro...

ommunist• 12 years ago

This will probably not work in Britain. Especially at one particular roundabout on the Isle of Dogs. http://goo.gl/8AqnLE <~ See for yourself.

squidsoup2• 12 years ago

Can't help but think some of the traffic engineers in the UK are a little bonkers, see Swindon's Magic Roundabout (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_Roundabout_(Swindon)).

lmm• 12 years ago

Americans are always awed/terrified by the Magic Roundabout, but it's actually very practical (turning right is much easier than on a single big roundabout, and the whole thing moves better), and straightforward to use even for newcomers (well, assuming you've used roundabouts at all - I understand America doesn't have many of them?)

zizee• 12 years ago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_Light_tree (sculpture).

amckenna• 12 years ago

Watching the video it struck me that the lights embedded in the barriers between lanes are a really good idea. It provides illumination of the road and the barrier without large poles lining the road which block the view and are expensive.

mkempe5• 12 years ago

In Sweden the national traffic authority is responsible for steadily improving the road conditions and environment in order to make road traffic safer (for everyone). What you noticed is one example of their many improvements.

mkempe5• 12 years ago

Here are a couple of interesting pieces on road safety in Sweden:

- Why Sweden has so few road deaths [1]

- Vision Zero (fatalities and serious injuries on highways by 2020) [2]

[1] http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2014/02/ec...

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vision_Zero

cscx• 12 years ago

How does Subaru EyeSight compare to Volvo's autonomous safety features?

Note: I know EyeSight can't drive the car itself.

hellbreakslose• 12 years ago

"tested live on public roads in Sweden" All I saw was a guy driving that car. Didn't actually get to see the car driving on its own.~ Can't believe it till I see it.

nigekelly• 12 years ago

Very interested in this space and how it will end up. We have a big emotional attachment to cars evidenced by the fact that the annual cost of taking taxis everywhere is probably cheaper than the annual costs of owning a car if you live in a city. NYC habitants have probably made this transition already.

SO if we end up with self driving taxis then this form of transport will become ridiculously cheap as the driver's salary is now eliminated. The rationale to own a car will become harder to justify.

Also I read recently that our actual usage of cars is very low over a year. This means huge inefficiency. There is plenty of spare capacity per car to do alot more journeys. If we all start taking self driving taxis that run 24x7 in a few years time where does that leave the car companies. One assumes with far fewer car sales. Are they shooting themselves in the foot?

peteretep• 12 years ago

    > We have a big emotional attachment to cars evidenced by
    > the fact that the annual cost of taking taxis everywhere 
    > is probably cheaper than the annual costs of owning a
    > car if you live in a city

I don't think that's true of most cities. Definitely not true of London.

Volvo’s first self-driving cars now being tested live on public roads in Sweden

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