Google Car’s road traffic accident
It was a minor fender-bender in which the car travelling at 2 mph struck a bus. You can see the DMV report here.
So what?
There was no one inside the vehicle to say: “A bee flew in my window,” or “I spilled hot coffee on my lap,” or “I was texting,” or “The sun was in my eyes.” Yes, the accident was partially due to decision-making software and No, this is not the end of autonomous vehicles.
As engineers, we do our best to make a robust product, but we know that nothing is perfect and in this case the software needs to be refined and refined and refined again like any other design ever made before or that will be made in the future.
Just check out the Google self-driving car reports. Their autonomous vehicle is far safer than any car with an imperfect human driver – yes, we are imperfect just as software is imperfect. We text, we put makeup on in the mirror, we answer our cell phones while driving, we get distracted by a myriad of different things that distract a human driver but will not affect a robot! I facetiously call it a robot for lack of any better term in my mind.
So move on Google, correct the problem as best you can and get us to the point where autonomous vehicles will be far safer than we are now on the roads. Robots don’t get road rage, don’t drink and drive, definitely don’t speed, nor do they ignore road signs and signals like we humans do.
See how the Google car works here.
A typical autonomous vehicle functional diagram Source: Texas Instruments in Reference 1.
It was back in the 1920s that all of this started when Francis P. Houdina, an EE in the US Army set up a 1926 Chandler with a mounted receiving antenna for remote control via another car following it close behind with a transmitter. The signals drove some small electric motors to control the movement and direction of the car.
And now we are on a journey toward safer driving eventually and, of course, there are still many refinements needed in software and improved hardware, but probably the most difficult challenge will be in security. Hackers and Black Hats will want to get into these systems just because they can. They want to show their peers how creative and talented they are. For this reason, we must be vigilant and install strong security measures in this type of vehicle.
The final hurdle will be the formal government and safety standards bodies, which could be the longest delay. But if we have secure, mature software, this will inevitably speed up this process.
What are your thoughts on this subject?
Steve Taranovich is the editor-in-chief of EE Times’ Planet Analog website where this article first appeared.
References
1 Scalable-electronics-driving-autonomous-vehicle-technologies
2 An Open Approach to Autonomous Vehicles, S. Kato, E. Takeuchi, Y. Ishiguro, K. Takeda, Nagoya University; T. Hamada, Nagasaki University, IEEE Computer Society, 2015
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