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Automaker Daimler AG and parts supplier Bosch Group are teaming up to make driverless cars that they say could be on city streets at the start of the next decade.
The companies would combine expertise in car making, sensors and software so that people in a specific part of town could order a shared car through their smart phone. The driverless car would then come pick them up and take them where they want to go.
The companies said Tuesday the system would let people make better use of their time in cars and help those who do not have driver's licenses.
The auto industry and tech firms have been investing heavily in autonomous driving technology. Many basic elements of autonomous driving are already in use, such as driver assistance systems that can keep cars in freeway lanes or detect pedestrians ahead. But legal issues surrounding driver responsibility remain to be solved.
Other automakers are also working on the concept. Competitor Volkswagen showed off an autonomous vehicle with no steering wheel and facing sofa-style seats at the Geneva auto show last month. Alphabet's Waymo, the former Google autonomous car project, is testing autonomous vehicles on public roads in the United States with test drivers aboard.
In Soviet Russia, a car you don't drive is called a "taxi."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 04 2017, @09:49PM (7 children)
While tangent to this topic, on a private board (of auto engineers) someone recently posted that the computation, sensors & actuators used for autonomous cars draws about 7 KW of electricity. I'm assuming this is for a current prototype and that the power consumption will be coming down with the cost, as part of mass production. In round numbers 7KW is 10 horsepower, which is on the the same order as cruising power at highway speed for a small car (a truck might be higher). Or, in simple terms, the mileage (or mpg-equivalent) will go to hell with all this parasitic power, even if the power consumption drops in half during the next few years of development.
(Score: 3, Informative) by takyon on Tuesday April 04 2017, @10:15PM (2 children)
Nvidia's third generation [wikipedia.org] of autonomous/car computer uses 20 Watts [nvidia.com]. Add in a little storage and that might go up by a few watts.
Here's a LIDAR system [autonomoustuff.com] with a power consumption of "8 W (typical)" and no "visible rotating parts" (outside of the device).
It seems like you could do everything within 100 Watts, rather than 7,000 W.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 04 2017, @10:23PM (1 child)
Noone will need more than 640 W. **ducks**
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Wednesday April 05 2017, @08:14PM
Shouldn't that be 640 kW? :-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Immerman on Tuesday April 04 2017, @10:46PM
That seems ridiculously excessive at first glance. If it's not an outright fabrication, then I would assume it's a symptom of proof-of-concept hardware designed without any regard for power consumption.
Well designed actuators should consume minimal additional power - power assist probably already does most of the work, while a human driver is probably never called on to deliver more than a couple hundred watts of power to the pedals or wheel, and modern drive-by-wire vehicles, which lack any mechanical linkage between controls and outputs, eliminate even that small driver contribution.
1kW will power a real beast of a gaming PC, and GPU-based computations are typically far more energy efficient. I have a hard time imagining even all that computer vision fanciness requires more than a couple kW to power, and the watts-per-computation ratio has already been in freefall for decades, so that power drain is going to dwindle extremely rapidly.
Which leaves sensors - and while the sensors themselves should consume negligible power, lidar and sonar also require the synchronized emitters, which probably consume a considerable amount. 5+kW seems rather excessive though.
(Score: 3, Informative) by LoRdTAW on Tuesday April 04 2017, @11:15PM
At first I thought that was a little high. Then after having a look at Nvidia's Drive Automation [nvidia.com] page I can see that they have up to two Pascal GPU's per Drive PX 2 in Autochauffeur configuration[1]. I could see power draws surpassing 1kW if they are using multiple GPU's for the vision and LIDAR systems. The Nvidia GTX 1080, based on Pascal, draws upward of 310W under heavy load[2]. I can't see sensors or cameras drawing more than a few watts. Even a LIDAR I looked up draws only 8 watts[3]. So there are either ten or more GPU's in that car or it was a test system with way more compute power than the car needed.
And here is something else I learned on Nvidia's site that isn't sitting well with me: http://www.nvidia.com/object/hd-mapping-system.html [nvidia.com]
Essentially their Drive Automation platform is an always connected cloud platform which collects real-time 3D mapping. That means real time 3D surveillance in the vicinity of an autonomous vehicle. Who wants to bet the NSA and other three letter agencies already have hooks into such a project? Millions of 3D scanners running around 24/7 watching every move you make in 3D space. Police could instantly call up 3D scans from cars in the vicinity of a crime scene to see what was in the area. They could also track and measure physical changes such as objects being placed, moved, or removed. And there is the possibility that the vision system could be tied into this enabling real-time video as well. A tyrants wet dream. And lets not get started on the hacking and terrorism angle. Spoofing 3D data to cause cars to suddenly think there is an object in the road causing it to crash or come to a sudden stop is one thought.
Though, there is good that can come from this. Would eliminate the need for dedicated "street-view" cars for online maps. Instant video/3D from accident scenes. Better 3D mapping of the roads for helping construction crews find and prioritize road repairs, road kill removal, and even detect downed trees or other dangerous foreign obstacles. It could be used for analyzing traffic patterns to help design better traffic flows and roads. And a whole lot more.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drive_PX-series#Comparison [wikipedia.org]
2. http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/nvidia-geforce-gtx-1080-pascal,4572-10.html [tomshardware.com]
3. http://velodynelidar.com/vlp-16.html [velodynelidar.com]
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Wednesday April 05 2017, @01:06AM
I doubt sensors and computing takes anything near 7 kW. Though actuators possible can. But it may be the *peak* power specified. The technical data one needs to say design a power supply or electronic output stage. But which has little impact on energy usage.
Pumps to keep hydraulic pressure up may possible a huge energy draw. But 7 kW seems high even for this.
When designing, one has to keep apart peak, average and minimum power demands. They will impact very different aspect of a design.
(Score: 2) by hamsterdan on Wednesday April 05 2017, @10:18PM
1 HP is 746 watts, A full-fledged PC will draw not more than that, even if it draws 1500 watts, that's about only 2 HP. a full-sized Panther Grand Marquis requires about 40 HP to keep speed on highways. I can't imagine a full AI car computer drawing more than 2Kw, that's about 3HP.