Google’s driverless cars are already street-legal in three states, California, Florida, and Nevada. According to Ford, the self-driving car will be available within five years.
According to a recent report by KPMG and the Centre for Automotive Research, autonomous cars will be in showrooms as early as 2019.
Essentially, smart cars will communicate with other vehicles on the road so they do not crash into each other. They will also have the ability to sense and respond to the surrounding infrastructure: stop signs, street lights, guardrails, and other basic transportation signals. Eventually they will be able to drive better and safer than people – no drinking, no distractions, better reflexes, and better awareness of other vehicles (via networking).
In Google’s ongoing Driverless Car project, the Google fleet has driven accident-free for over 300 000 miles making it clear that the concept is completely viable. Each Google Driverless car is equipped with GPS, radar, video cameras, laser radar and a lot of real-time computing power. Basic navigation relies on maps and GPS, with live sensor input to react to real-time changes. The entire setup costs about $150 000, which is obviously well beyond the reach of 99% of drivers; but clearly this cost will scale down quickly.
Another technology that figures prominently in the future of autonomous vehicles is communication systems which will make it possible to route traffic dynamically to maximise flow and minimise travel times, with increased road capacity. No more traffic lights, traffic jams and road rage!
Consider this list of benefits:
* Fewer traffic collisions: computers are better at focused, repetitive tasks such as driving.
* Dynamic traffic routing: increased roadway capacity and reduced traffic congestion.
* Relief from driving chores: people can sleep, watch movies, read books, or whatever, instead of the stress of driving.
* No restrictions: everyone can enjoy travelling regardless of physical abilities, age, or other limitations.
* No more drunk drivers and innocent victims.
* No need to find parking: driverless cars will drop off passengers, then go to park until signalled for pick up.
* Improved energy efficiency: minimisation of start/stop driving, and elimination of the weight of the unnecessary drivers.
* Car-sharing: Services (like Zipcars available today) will be much more practical and inexpensive than car-ownership.
* Reduced need for traffic police, red light cameras, and other safety enforcement measures.
* Cargo transport and delivery vehicles will have no need for drivers.
Here is an interesting thought: Because of the much higher risk of accidents, within a couple of decades people may not LEGALLY be allowed to drive their own cars. Hmmmm – my grandson will not learn to drive.
Antifragile: Things that gain from disorder
A new wave of statisticians is changing the way the world is viewed. Have you seen the movie, Moneyball? It demonstrates that the way big teams evaluate players rarely reflects ability. Statistics counts.
Nate Silver’s statistics accurately predicted the results of the recent US elections, making traditional pundits and polls look foolish. His recent book, ‘The Signal and the Noise’ is already Amazon’s Book of the Year.
In the UK, Ben Goldacre’s books ‘Bad Science’ (2008) and the more recent ‘Bad Pharma’ exposed poor experiments and the greed of the pharmaceutical industry.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb is among the best of these new statisticians. His books ‘Fooled by Randomness’ and ‘The Black Swan’ were among the first to show how poorly data is used to predict events. His new book is, ‘Antifragile: Things that gain from disorder’.
What Taleb calls ‘antifragile’ is the category of things that not only gain from chaos and stress, but need it to survive and flourish. Just as human bones get stronger when subjected to stress and tension, and rumours or riots intensify when someone tries to repress them, many things in life benefit from stress, disorder, volatility and turmoil.
Antifragile is beyond resilient; the resilient merely resists shocks and stays the same, the antifragile actually become stronger.
Antifragile gains from randomness and uncertainty, and more important, adapts through errors. It is better to be stupid and antifragile than smart and fragile. Anything that gains from random events is antifragile.
The tragedy of modernity is that those that are protected the most are often hurt the most. Just like not exercising causes muscles to weaken, complex systems are weakened when deprived of stressors. Just like kids who are spoiled by over-protective parents, societies are spoiled by governments trying to relieve stress. It actually weakens the system.
Taleb’s message is iconoclastic and revolutionary. He asks these provocative and insightful questions:
* Why is debt bad?
* Why is what we call ‘efficient’ not efficient?
* Why do government social policies only protect the strong?
* How did the sinking of the Titanic actually save lives?
* Why write a resignation letter before even starting a new job?
Consider this: The protected are fragile. The antifragile will survive.
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