Robocars As the Best Way Geeks Can Save the Planet

Brad Templeton writes "I (whom you may know as EFF Chairman, founder of early dot-com Clari.Net and rec.humor.funny) have just released a new series of futurist essays on the amazing future of robot cars, coming to us thanks to the DARPA Grand Challenges. The computer driver is just the beginning — the essays detail how robocars can enable the cheap electric car, save millions of lives and trillions of dollars, and are the most compelling thing computer geeks can work on to save the planet. Because robocars can refuel, park and deliver themselves, and not simply be chauffeurs, they end up changing not just cars but cities, industries, energy, and — by removing dependence on foreign oil — even wars. I, for one, welcome our new robot overlords." (More below.)

Templeton continues: "The key realization is that while the safety and timesavings that come from having computers as chauffeurs is very important and can save a million lives every year, a number of interesting consequences come from the ability of robocars to drive themselves while vacant. This allows them to deliver themselves to us on demand, to park themselves and to refuel/recharge themselves. On-demand delivery makes car sharing pleasant and allows the use of "the right vehicle for the trip" on most trips. Self-refueling means the people using cars no longer need care about range or how common fueling stations are, enabling all sorts of novel energy systems with minimal "chicken and egg" problems. Because passengers don't care about the range of their taxis, battery weight and cost are no longer issues in electric cars and scooters."

First Johnny Cab!

I'm so excited!

Re:First Johnny Cab!

Cool, Can we have Robert picardo record the voice for our new robotic overlords.

Re:First Johnny Cab!

Earth has a date of destruction set with the Sun eating it in about 5 billion years. Why must we be all consumed with "saving the planet" on a daily basis? It's such a useless and pointless endeavor to "save the planet".

You're right, our time is much better spent on pedantic jackassery.

Wow, good job!

I scoffed a bit when I RTFS, but the essays are really good and make an excellent case. I read them looking for gaping holes to point out, but really didn't find any major unaddressed concerns. I have to say RTFA is highly recommended. Read it, you won't be sorry.

Re:Wow, good job!

Well, there is the small matter of making the robocars, but I guess it's not the job of a "futurist" to do that. Also, he seems to have jumbled a bunch of different enormous breakthroughs (limitless, cheap, clean energy; enormously powerful and reliable AI; efficient solution of enormous traveling salesman problems) into a single obsession. It's not like robocars per se somehow eliminate dependence on oil.

Re:Wow, good job!

I hope I don't gloss over this (read the roadblocks section.) There are many technical and political problems to solve.

As for energy, the goal is to use far less energy than we use today (whether it's cheap or clean is nice but orthogonal) and it's far from limitless.

The AI is not so powerful. Most animals can navigate in traffic of their own kind, even insects. But no, it's no tiny project -- but it's a tractable large project.

You don't need to solve traveling salesman! In fact, I believe centralized control is a bad idea. You can solve traveling salesman over small problem sets, it's only trying to solve it for large numbers that's explosively NP.
You just have to do better than we do today.

Re:Wow, good job!

People have hypothesized female Slashdot readers before, but I think it's easier to find a Higgs boson.

Re:Wow, good job!

Actually, I know of at least four others.

Re:Wow, good job!

Higgs boston thingies or girl-types?

Re:Wow, good job!

You will find many of your issues addressed in the article. In fact, I have a large section on the question of how people like to store stuff in their cars, as I am one of those people. At the same time, in cities like NYC, where nobody owns cars, people seem to have managed to get past this "insurmountable" problem.

Suggest you read the article for more on your concerns. If you wish to shop personally, by the way, you would load the deliverbot, not the store. Deliverbots should cost around 5 cents/mile, I predict, for small one suitable for typical cargo.

People who want to own cars will still own cars, but they can own different cars, and hire specialized cars for specialized trips.

The sleeper car does not need to refuel, if it's going slow. My example is a trip to Lake Tahoe that's 4 hours at 75mph but 7 hours at 40mph. Cars actually get *better* MPG at slower speeds, so it would have to refuel *less* often.

As for renting durable goods. It costs more because there is a large overhead in renting today. Picture a world where delivery is quick and cheap, and thus the durable goods are also rented a far larger percentage of their time. This is a side-issue, but I think the potential here is very large for much cheaper rental, always beating the cost of owning something you use 2 hours/month.

I am adding a section to the deliverbot concept about a room for the deliverbot. That's where the bed arrives, and stays if you like. I'm also wondering if we don't see better in-house robotic tech for moving furniture but I don't want to depend on it. Guest beds are worth paying extra for (to cover disinfect, inspection and work of moving in a house) because the real cost of a permanent guest bed is not the cost of the bed -- it's the space in the house an infrequent guest room takes.

But I agree the deliverbot/renting speculation is a sideline to the real message of the article, so tell me what else you don't think is credible there.

Re:Wow, good job!

It seems several of your concerns revolve around what you perceive as lack of privately owned cars, but that is not actually a premise of the essays. He specifies that some people will still maintain personal vehicles, though for many doing so will no longer make economic sense. Similarly, your complaint of refueling on longer trips assumes there will be no more fuel-powered vehicles, but that assumption is not made in the essays either. If you read the whole thing (including the "stories" section), I think you'll find he's made a compelling case.
Oh, and also your concern about store hopping -- just reserve the car until the trip is concluded, nothing I read would stop you doing that. Same for gigs, beach outings, etc.
The only really big legitimate objections I can see many people having are that
(1) the scenario he envisions would probably result in privately owned vehicles dedicated only to their owners' convenience becoming quite a bit more expensive than they are now (though I would actually call that a good thing, as IMO it should be more expensive to be wasteful), and
(2) individual privacy could be affected. But then really, personal privacy is quickly becoming a thing of the past anyway, and may well be unavoidable. But that's a whole other can of worms...

I predict...

...that this will usher in a glorious new era of alcoholism.

After all, I think it's the driving problem that really prevents people from drinking to their full potential. I can't count the number of times I've thought "I know, I'll go to a bar and get hammered!" and then, a few seconds later, "ahhh, but I don't know how I'd get home."

Yes, I think 2053 will have a few things in common with 1953 - a glorious time when men were men and martinis were brunch.

Yes, but this also means...

This really will be a glorious future. Think about it: no more "...was killed by a drunk driver" commercials! Now, we just need to worry about drunk programmers.

...potentially more "I learned it from watching you!" commercials.

Sounds like...

...Personal Rapid Transit, but on roads rather than rails.

In any case I think that people would be better employed saving the planet by working to prevent so many car journeys being made in the first place by trying to put an end to Single Use Zoning and fixing the silly way we build our so-called cities. It's not as geek-friendly or glamorous as rolling out a shiny new car that looks like something from an episode of Buck Rogers, but North American culture has too much faith in high-tech solutions to complex problems.

Prevention is always better than cure. Better to go back to building cities so that they can meet their original purpose of putting daily needs within walking distance. Better to fix the leak rather than put a bigger or more sophisticated bucket under it.

Re:Sounds like...

Prevention is always better than cure. Better to go back to building cities so that they can meet their original purpose of putting daily needs within walking distance. Better to fix the leak rather than put a bigger or more sophisticated bucket under it.

While there are certainly advantages to living in geographically self-contained units, there are also massive benefits to centralizing industries.

Yes, the "slow foods" movement will tell us, accurately, that shipping our produce from hundreds of miles away causes an incredible amount of waste in fuel.

But consider the alternative - a small farm for every nine city blocks. Suddenly, instead of having a system where one farmer can produce food for a thousand, you have a system where one farmer produces food for, say, fifty. Which means you have to have 20 times more farmers. Which means there are fewer people to provide other services. The same goes for commerce: five corner stores might be more convenient than one larger, more centralized 7-11 - but now you have five times as many people working in low-end retail.

It's centralization of the more menial services that allow so many of us to have jobs in less immediately-necessary services - like programming or science. And almost-completely-unnecessary services, like video game design and filmmaking? Forget about it.

Re:Sounds like...

Better to fix the leak rather than put a bigger or more sophisticated bucket under it.

Cars that drive themselves are a way of fixing the leak... what you're proposing is fixing the leak by tearing out all of the pipes and starting from scratch. Cities have already been built. It will be VERY time consuming and EXTREMELY costly to rebuild them to be more efficient with everything within walking distance. Cars are constantly changing, new models come out every year and nowadays have a 10 year shelf life. We could update pretty much our whole society into self-driving cars within 20 years and at the expense of the driver. Can the same be said about rebuilding cities?

Infrastructure

One major issue with RoboCars is that any effective implementation of them will require substantial changes to our current infrastructure. GPS based navigation is helpful - but - RFID markers on roads is much more effective. Cars can locate other cars, as shown in the Grand Challenge, using LIDAR, but this is very, very expensive and sometimes unreliable. (The DARPA 08' cars used 70,000 dollar LIDAR systems, and i'm not too sure how long one would last) To effectively know the location of other cars, all cars would need a transponder, echoing its location and other data (speed, intentions, plans to change lane, etc) I'm not quite sure how long it will be before we can implement these systems. To get autonomous cars cheap, and in a reasonable amount of time, we'd have to start mandating transponders right about now.

Robocars can only exist after lawyers are killed

The reason cars don't drive themselves is not a problem of technology, but of liability. Now, if there is an accident the driver is blamed. Carmakers are unwilling to take on that liability and themselves be blamed for accidents.

Will the first Robocar virus...

...be called "drunk", "on cellphone" or "putting on makeup"?

An excellent web site

I give a talk on the consequences of Moore's Law to a freshman class every year, and one of my topics is autonomous vehicles. This web site does a great job of summarizing the future of personal transportation. A few other points I discuss with the class:

(1) Mass transit as we think of it will largely vanish within 20 years. Cities will find it far easier to maintain fleets of robocars, and dispatch them right to the doors of residents, rather than maintain traditional subway and bus lines. The "last half-mile" problem of getting from the door of your home to the door of your destination will be solved.

(2) The authors discuss "sleeper cars", but they don't really consider all the ramifications. A huge chunk of overnight business travel (everything within a few hundred miles) will be taken over by robocars. People will go to bed in the sleeper car, open the door the next day, and find themselves at their destination. Consequently, hotels and motels will offer short-term rooms (for one or two hours) so that people can shower and dress on the road. A significant portion of the U.S. population will literally become nomadic, sleeping in robotic RVs every night, and waking up to a new destination every morning.

(3) Once robocars are widely accepted, human drivers will be forced off the roads very quickly. How? By 100% enforcement of all traffic laws with high-tech imaging (also thanks to Moore's Law). A human will be unable to conform to the ultra-rigid driving laws that robocars will handle with ease.

As I say to my students: "You are the last generation that will need to learn to drive. To your children, it will be an option. To your grandchildren, knowing how to drive a car will be as quaint a concept as knowing how to saddle and ride a horse."

Re:An excellent web site

I ahve no doubt it will happen, but we are generations away. My son(now 10) might start to see real world use from these. If people like them, you still ahve another generation, at best, before they gin to approach critical mass. This is do to the fact that people like their freedom when driving, and/or already own cars.

So you're saying that in 50 years (two generations), autonomous vehicles won't be possible? You are seriously underestimating what will be accomplished in that time frame. I think we'll start seeing prototypes on the road within 20 years at the outside. About 10% of the U.S. auto fleet is replaced every year, so yes, add 30 more years and practically every car on the road will be autonomous. Everything else will be clunkers and antiques.

And please note, no one will be taking away your freedom to drive when you want, where you want. The only difference is that you won't need to be behind the wheel.

Also, driving is fun.

Here we get to the crux of your argument. You enjoy driving, and can't imagine anyone taking away something that represents maturity and independence to you. You're still thinking like a teenager. Clearly you're not sitting in rush hour traffic an hour every day. Driving is pure drudgery 95% of the time for most people. I think the overwhelming majority of drivers will embrace robocars. They may occasionally choose to take manual control for a spin in the open country, but most of the time they'll be perfectly content to let the computer handle the grunt work.

Re:Public transportation

Please read the article and then comment.

Re:Public transportation

Go deeper into the article about the end of transit. Buses are actually quite inefficient, because while loaded at rush hour, on average they carry few passengers. In the USA, city buses use more fuel per passenger-mile than cars do -- on average. And none of the other forms are a great deal better, though some do beat cars. Lightweight electric vehicles are 10 times more efficient than buses. It's one of the key realizations about transit in the article.

Only in the US

While he does make this conclusion about U.S. data, he is fair and continues his search to other parts of the world like Europe and Asia. From this page [templetons.com]:

Don't Europe and Asia do better?

Much better. This Australian Study cites figures saying that Western Europeans use only 76% of U.S. BTUs/pm in their private transport, and only 38% in their transit -- 2.5 times more efficient. Rich Asians do even better at transit -- they are almost 4 times as efficient in terms of energy/passenger-mile.

Re:Public transportation

our infrastructure isn't even close to what is need to support a billion electric cars.

This is a red herring that gets brought up over and over. Our infrastructure wasn't even close to what was needed to support a billion gasoline-powered cars in 1900 either. Luckily for us, not everyone immediately went out and got a car, and not everyone will immediately go out and buy an electric car either. We can expand the infrastructure over time as electric car adoption increases, just like we've done with basically every other technology that required infrastructure to work.