In the future

[gar]

131024-1228 EDT

In the mid 1950s Chrysler research ran some experiments on radar braking. This was an in-car and traffic experiment with a normal driver, and in the passenger side a person that manually performed the function of radar braking. The experiment determined that psychologically the normal driver became dependent upon radar braking for normal braking rather than just for emergency braking. No further work.

A few years later in the early to mid 1960s a boarding house member and fellow EE got a job at GM and was heading up work on a pet project of Ed Cole's, then president of GM and an engineer, on radar braking. This time a car with a real radar braking system was envolved. So my friend brought his big Cadillac with the experimental system over to my house to provide a demonstration of its operation. We went on some main and neighborhood streets. He would rapidly drive up behind a car and not apply the manual brake, and the big Caddy would approipriately slow down.

In my neighborhood we have various curved streets. In one spot it is close to a T intersection. At the top of the T was a parked car in front of a house. Speed limit is of course 25 MPH. So Jim, the driver, sped up to about 35 MPH straight for the car, and we appropriately slowed down to a stop. Possibly 10 ft from the car. Looking up we saw people in the front yard wondering why these nuts have driven at high speed straight at their car. When Ed Cole left GM it seems that radar braking work was stopped.

Today, 2013, there are ads on TV about production cars with radar braking. With the unattentative, cellphone talking, drivers of today and adding radar braking I suspect greater problems will develop. Radar braking alone is insufficient to provide an autonomous vehicle. Much more is needed.

The new directions that are being studied will ultimately result in an automatically driven car. Google's car is one part of this. What instigated this post is the following web site:
http://blog.annarborusa.org/u-m-announces-plans-for-facility-to-test-automated-vehicles/
There has to be a lot of inter-vehicle, vehicle to road, and road to vehicle communication, and supporting system structure to accomplish this goal. In the future lots of work for electricians.

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[mgookin]

Very interesting. Thanks for the post.

I agree; it will make people develop more dangerous driving habits.

 

[K8MHZ]

Very interesting. Thanks for the post.

I agree; it will make people develop more dangerous driving habits.

Also agree.

But I think it's a step in the direction of an inevitable evolution. It won't be long when, statistically, it will be safer to let the car drive itself than to have a human in control. Shortly after, it will be illegal to drive a car on a public road and only cars that drive themselves will be allowed on public roads.

 

[K8MHZ]

Gar,

Great story. I am kind of a car geek (I used to work for a Chrysler dealership) and to me you are very lucky to have ridden in the Cadillac with the prototype system on it.

Way too cool!

 

[ggunn]

Also agree.

But I think it's a step in the direction of an inevitable evolution. It won't be long when, statistically, it will be safer to let the car drive itself than to have a human in control.

For some drivers I know we are already there.

 

[gar]

131024-1734 EDT

An illustration of where radar breaking likely would have been ineffective. I will use our actual street names that won't mean anything to most readers, but then it is easy for me to describe the actual situation. Basically the streets cross almost in a perpendicular way.

I was westbound on Stadium Blvd approaching Packard Rd. Both are posted 35 MPH. There is a signal light at the corner. I am first in line in the right lane westbound coming to Packard and my light is red, I am slowing down, and probably less than 5 MPH when my light turns green, and I am probably 1/2 car length from the intersection.

Looking both ways I see a car coming from the North on Packard and not slowing down. I lay on the horn and the woman driving, talking on a cellphone, looks up and slams on her brakes, just stopping on my side of her crosswalk (effectively just into my lane). She continued to talk on the phone. Had I proceeded on my green light she would have hit my side.

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[GoldDigger]

131024-1734 EDT

An illustration of where radar breaking likely would have been ineffective.
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Radar braking on your car might have worked if it extrapolated the path of her vehicle instead of just looking straight ahead.
Radar braking on her car might have worked if it took into account the observed motion of your car.
But the situation where one car is both changing speed and moving into the path of another is definitely a tough one.

 

[Jraef]

My Uncle worked for Polaroid. He was part of the original project that developed the 'sonar' range finder used in auto-focusing the SX-70 Polaroid cameras, if any of you are old enough to remember them. After that was released, they were approached by Ford, probably in the mid 1970s?, to help them on a sonar based brake assist system. He said they made it onto a Lincoln and tested it for a year or so, he even got to drive it for a while. As much as he liked his project from a technology standpoint, he HATED the concept of it in a car. He said that everyone who tried it very quickly became "lazy" (as he put it) about paying attention to hazards in the road. His observation (although not trained in this) was that when we drive, we are unconsciously calculating future potential hazards and running scenarios in our heads in case anything comes true, pre-planning our actions. But when we discover that something else is going to take care of a task for us, our brains move on to other tasks and we become more distracted. Made sense to me. I thought of that conversation the first time I saw the commercials demonstrating the auto-parallel park features, then again when I saw these recent commercials for the braking systems.

 

[iwire]

I think the way to deal with the lazy issue is to make it so that if the computer has to apply the brake it also gives the driver a painful shock.

 

[gar]

131024-2007 EDT

In my post numbered 6 at that Stadium-Packard corner there are many times when joggers, walking people, bicycles, and other objects are cluttering the corner. Also a bank parking lot, northbound cars and bicycles going straight north or turning into the parking lot. Very tough for a radar and computer to figure out what is going on. Without interaction with the road the computer won't know when the light turns red or is nearly ready to turn red.

Jraef your uncle's reaction is exactly what Doc Lewis, head of Chrysler Research, and his boys had determined. This experiment had to predate the fall of 1955 because that is when our U of M contract with Chrysler Research on an improved ignition system was started. We never completed the ignition system contract because by December 1957 Chrysler knew that the 1958 recession had already begun and they started cutting anywhere possible.

An interesting aside is the connection of different people that one meets over time. One of my present neighbors started his work life at Chrysler under Doc Lewis. Not coincident in time with my work with Chrysler, but a few years later. My neighbor worked for Chrysler for few years, then was hired by Ford Motor by an individual, Bruce, I had contact with years earlier. Bruce had very close connections with Henry because his father worked directly with or for Mr. Ford. Bruce is quite possibly the only person that was given a violin lesson by Henry Ford.

Back to the intersection problem. A connected highway, where information flows back and forth between cars (meaning each other), and cars with the road, should provide information to a driver that can prevent a lot of intersection accidents. At this point in time only information would be provided, not control. So the driver still has to pay attention. At an intersection a driver could be alerted that by the time their car reaches the intersection that the light will turn yellow. Iwire, now that the driver is warned to stop, but they make no effort to do so, then your big shock is generated.

The present tests in Ann Arbor with 3000 cars, and multiple intersections is in the North Campus area and close to Dominos Farms. This is a fairly congested area. However, the present study is mostly infomation collection, and only a few cars provide information to the driver. This new study will be on its own test track area with only test vehicles.

If I was in school at this time I would want to get a job on this connected highway program.

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[zbang]

As much as he liked his project from a technology standpoint, he HATED the concept of it in a car. He said that everyone who tried it very quickly became "lazy" (as he put it) about paying attention to hazards in the road.

Asiana Airlines flight 214. Smart money says the pilot was to dependent on the flight automation to realize that there were problems until too late to correct them. (BTW, there's a really interesting analysis of the plane's approach path at http://flyingprofessors.net/what-happened-to-asiana-airlines-flight-214-2/)

 

[GoldDigger]

Asiana Airlines flight 214. Smart money says the pilot was to dependent on the flight automation to realize that there were problems until too late to correct them. (BTW, there's a really interesting analysis of the plane's approach path at http://flyingprofessors.net/what-happened-to-asiana-airlines-flight-214-2/)

For those who don't want to work through the whole analysis, it appears that a root cause was that the pilot was new to that plane, and insufficiently aware of the fact that it two two separate actions to engage the automatic system rather than the single action needed on the Airbus he was intimately familiar with.
So he was relying on automation that was not actually turned on, and ignored the separate clear warnings that he was in trouble.

 

[Fulthrotl]

I think the way to deal with the lazy issue is to make it so that if the computer has to apply the brake it also gives the driver a painful shock.

how about it just applies a shock if it detects a cellphone being used in the car, and leaves the brakes alone entirely?

 

[GoldDigger]

131024-1228 EDT
The new directions that are being studied will ultimately result in an automatically driven car. Google's car is one part of this. What instigated this post is the following web site:
http://blog.annarborusa.org/u-m-announces-plans-for-facility-to-test-automated-vehicles/
There has to be a lot of inter-vehicle, vehicle to road, and road to vehicle communication, and supporting system structure to accomplish this goal. In the future lots of work for electricians.

In the late 1960's visitors to the D.C. Powers [sic] Lab at Stanford University (named after Donald C. Powers, an otherwise forgotten GTE executive) were surprised and often delighted to see a "DANGER, ROBOT VEHICLE AHEAD" sign as you turned off the main road into the facility driveway.
The vehicle was a small platform with four bicycle wheels, several cameras and proximity sensors, a large battery, and a data cable that connected it all to a large computer inside the building.
Initially it had trouble even finding a clear path to its goal past stationary objects, but it got a lot better as the years went by.
The facility.

 

[mgookin]

...The facility.

Awesome pic. Do you know what year that was?

 

[ggunn]

Without putting a whole lot of thought into this beyond reading this thread, it seems to me that either computers should completely control all the cars on the road, or people should. Anything in between is potentially disastrous.

 

[JDBrown]

Without putting a whole lot of thought into this beyond reading this thread, it seems to me that either computers should completely control all the cars on the road, or people should. Anything in between is potentially disastrous.

The trouble is, there seems to be more and more evidence for people controlling all the cars on the road being disastrous as well.

It seems to me that a computer-controlled system would lead to far fewer accidents ... BUT when an accident does happen it will be a 1,000-car pileup with 100% fatalities.

(... And then the machines will take over.)

 

[GoldDigger]

Awesome pic. Do you know what year that was?

Here is the source. There are more cool pics there. It would have to be between 1965 and 1980, and my guess would be toward the beginning of that period.

 

[steve66]

I recently saw a commercial for a car with a "lane warrning" that warns you when you cross into the wrong lane. I think that will make more people likely to use electronics while driving.

A coworker & I were discussing this, and he had the same conclusion I saw posted here - A car should be 100% automated, or none at all. Partially automated is more dangerous than nothing at all.

 

[StarCat]

Neo Fascist Control idea

Neo Fascist Control idea

This kind of idea rises out of truly insane minds and is a perfect example of an external " Orwellian " construct.
The last thing we need is more technology used in an attempt to control " People."
Any and all ideas along these lines are patently dangerous.
The solution is total personal responsibility and holding people accountable for such.