How Silicon Valley engineers are transforming cars into very smart, very fast and increasingly opinionated information systems
Posted 09.12.2011 at 10:11 am
19 Comments
The Climber: “Shelley,” an autonomous Audi TTS Roadster, used differential GPS and gyroscopic data to navigate the 12.4-mile, 156-turn Pikes Peak road course. Courtesy Audi
Most obviously, ERL engineers have used those connections to build a series of prize-winning robot cars not unlike the BMW Track Trainer. In 2005, a Touareg ERL modified in conjunction with the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory won the Darpa Grand Challenge, a Pentagon-sponsored desert race for driverless vehicles. In 2007 ERL’s robot Passat took second in DARPA’s Urban Challenge, an obstacle-course competition. And last fall, a lab-modified Audi TTS self-navigated the entire 12.4-mile Pikes Peak course in Colorado in just 27 minutes, reaching speeds of up to 45 mph.
I asked Lee how the kind of smarts on display in all these cars would first reach regular drivers. He played a short video for me that explained the lab’s work on what its engineers call the Affective Intelligent Driving Assistant. The product of a joint venture with two Massachusetts Institute of Technology labs, AIDA feeds inputs from multiple sensors to a central artificial intelligence that “observes” your habits and behaviors and tailors your car’s performance to them. AIDA can learn your favorite routes and stops, remember and remind you of important events, and over time anticipate other desires; it might know, for instance, which day you like to go to the grocery store because that’s when the wild Alaskan salmon arrives.
In other words, improvements in artificial intelligence will turn the car into a personal assistant. In time, we could even leave the driving to the assistant, because the sensors and software being developed for such applications will add up, the technology will evolve, and a difference in degree will become a difference in kind. “The idea is to change the relationship between human and machine,” Lee says. By 2030, cars could be smart enough that we’ll summon them to pick us up at the airport.
Phone Home: Even as they become sleeker (like this Nissan iV concept), cars are getting smarter. Nissan
Engineers have already overcome most of the physical challenges. Computer processors regularly take control of the braking, steering and acceleration in many current high-end production models—such as when a stability-control system prevents drivers from spinning out on a wet road—and these same high-end cars are also increasingly encrusted with sensors (cameras, radar, LIDAR, infrared, ultrasonic) that gather data to feed those processors. The car will eventually know where it is and where it is going, and perhaps even how it will get there. Within a few years, differential GPS, which uses fixed ground stations to correct inaccuracies in satellite signals, will allow a car to reliably determine its location to within a few inches. Put these together, and pretty soon you have a Track Trainer that requires no engineer riding shotgun. It will be parked in your garage.
Cars are not especially good at learning right now, but engineers are working on that too. Rob Passaro has worked at BMW’s Group Technology Office in Silicon Valley since it opened in 1998, when the auto industry’s idea of an IT revolution was a car that could play MP3s. When I met him in the “office’s” spotless garage, though, he quickly explained that his primary mission was to “open the car as a platform for applications.” Cars are the most thoroughly computerized machines most of us will ever buy, he said, but unlike phones or laptops, they are nearly impossible to upgrade—you pay your money and then drive the thing unchanged until it’s scrapped. But connect a car to the Internet, and the possibilities become more interesting.
"The idea is to change the relationship between human and machine."Passaro plopped a white iPhone into a cradle in the center console of a 5 Series sedan to demonstrate BMW Apps, a system available on all BMWs produced after March 2011 that connects the car to a website from which the driver can download BMW-specific iPhone apps. For now, BMW offers only customized versions of already-popular apps from companies like Pandora and Facebook. The interesting thing about these apps is not that they exist, however, but where they exist. They show up on the dashboard display, not on the iPhone, and their installation involves customizing software that car companies have traditionally treated as an unalterable, untouchable secret. Car companies are skittish about the possibility, but eventually it’s probably inevitable that someone will invent apps that work their way much further into the car’s vital functions—all the way, perhaps, into the fuel-injection or lane-detection systems.
Cars won’t just talk to the Internet. They will also gather information from their immediate surroundings. After Passaro finished his demo, he handed me off to another engineer, Darren Liccardo, who walked me out of the garage and into a wide, mostly empty parking lot surrounded by giant hedges.
A prototype 5 Series awaited. Its trunk was packed with off-the-shelf computer hardware running a popular open-source operating system called ROS, for Robotics Operating System, which is used in everything from housecleaning robots to self-piloting helicopters. In this case, it would help the car handle a basic traffic problem—negotiating a stoplight. After a drive around the Technology Office, Liccardo pulled back into the parking lot, stopped the car, drew a keyboard out from under his seat, and typed a few commands. A video-camera image of a traffic signal mounted at the back end of the parking lot appeared on the console screen. “This is what we call smart cars meet smart traffic lights,” he said.
The traffic signal had been modified to communicate with our car over a wireless Internet connection. Liccardo pointed to the console screen The light was red, but the screen displayed a countdown clock ticking off the seconds until it would turn green. He stepped on the gas, steered the car toward the red traffic light, and, confident that his vehicle-to-infrastructure communication system would let him know exactly when the light would change, accelerated. The light turned green, and we blew through it without slowing down.
single pageWant to keep track of the latest concept cars, automotive innovations, and more? Subscribe to Popular Science today, for less than $1 per issue!
19 Comments
To comment, please Login.
Popular Tags
Cars on Popular Science
|
|
|
|
|
|
June 2013: American Energy Independence
Five amazing, clean technologies that will set us free, in this month's energy-focused issue. Also: how to build a better bomb detector, the robotic toys that are raising your children, a human catapult, the world's smallest arcade, and much more.
Popular on Popsci
Most Commented
Most Emailed
Online Content Director: Suzanne LaBarre | Email
Senior Editor: Paul Adams | Email
Associate Editor: Dan Nosowitz | Email
Assistant Editor: Colin Lecher | Email
Assistant Editor: Rose Pastore | Email
Contributing Writers:
Rebecca Boyle | Email
Kelsey D. Atherton | Email
Francie Diep | Email
Shaunacy Ferro | Email
Today on PopSci.com
Copyright © 2012 Popular Science
A Bonnier Corporation Company. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited.
About the cover pix. Very cool looking car but I see a major design flaw; unsprung weight! Those massive hub assemblies will result in severe handling problems and a very rough ride.
ProfChuck: Could the car frame function as a torsion spring?
I guess the first picture in the article is an artistic drawing of a car in 2030. The drawing is more for fun at the moment.
Another design flaw is there is no axle turning the wheels!!! How does that car move? Cool concept drawing though.
Edit,
Maybe it has really small electric engines on the front wheels........... However, front wheel drive FTL.
Thinking of cars of the future and more options: Typically, if I hit the car in front of me, I am considered at fault. I wish they make a camera in front of a car with a dvr. So, when a driver cuts me off and they stop short I have a factual case on my side. Maybe the car should also have a rear camera as well attaché to the dvr?
@Jvg: Profchuck is correct. The ratio of sprung (i.e. held up by the springs)vs. unsprung mass is what's important. The sprung mass provides intertia, while the wheels (unsprung) move up and down with the bumps in the road. The heavier (more massive) the wheels, the more force is required to dampen them. If the wheels were too heavy, the vehicle would behave like a buckboard, on rough roads.
@Army Juggernaut: If you look at the drawing carefully, you'll see fairly large electric motors built into each hub assembly. You can also see the novel ways each wheel is attached to the rest of the car. The attachments for the front wheels are necessairly more complex than the rear, to allow for steering.
tundrasea, and in the center of this car is lots of buttons. The future name of this car is "The POWERFUL MACH 5". As you push buttons you will here, sprong-ying! Followed by lots of wooooo, ooo wooo-aaa's!
This is a futuristic car, so in the future they have really develop powerful springs in the wheels. You park your car in the garage at night and an electric machine rolls the wheels backwards all night long. In the morning, you just hit go! This is why in the picture we do not see a motor or anything. The springs in the wheels power you forward. No, I have no idea how you reverse.
Do you think I make a car? lol. ;)
Traffic light communicating with smart cars are great, until some pedestrian decided to rush across the zebra line at the last second. It happens.
Picture this scenario: 3 lane local street, your car on the right lane. Red light ahead, the right lane is empty, two lanes on the left have SUV or trucks stopped. Your car tell you the light will turn green just as you hit the zebra line if you speed up. Just as you near the zebra line, a pedestrian who is too slow to complete the crossing stepped into the space in front of you. No brake in the world is going to stop your car in time, and you are blocked by the cars and street sign posts.
You can't be all knowing, and the smart communications may give you false sense of safty margin. I once almost hit a child who suddenly step out between a bus and a truck, while I was turning right. If not because I always turn slowly and cautiously, he would surely be struck. All this smart devices could lure you into speeding to beat the traffic lights.
The body of the car had suspension built into the design. The curved metal was designed to flex like a ridged spring that would replace previous designs for shocks and springs.
@Army Juggernaut
I am pretty sure the structure holding the wheel has some sort of electromagnet, which would oscillate and attract either the top or bottom of the wheel, while the wheel would have a north magnet and a south magnet on opposite sides.
However, I do think it would not work, because there is no suspension.
Will Popular Science investigate this doomsday threat before 2012? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hCRY8ovQ3k8
I think cars will get smaller. Much, much smaller than Smart cars..kinda like Segways...but lighter...30-50kg, perhaps ?....and then we will be able to stack them into little flying craft with high power electric motors that work off very high density batteries based on carbon nanotube structures. Once we hook them together, the car and the aircraft(including lighter than air blimps)...bye bye airports !
Of course, dust effects, especially during liftoff and touchdown operations will still be a serious problem. Now, that will need some serious architectural problem solving. My proposal is that we include a tower (much like a helipad) in each home, and several large scale structures like these in commercial areas, so we don't have to redesign the city from scratch.
Engineers and whiz kids tend to be overly optimistic about the prospects of the auto-driven car. Like some have commented before, who's responsible when an accident happens. The car company, the company who supplied the hardware, the one who supplied the software, a provider or... you. In the end it is the driver who is, and should be responsible, and will be for a very long time. Can't take away too many tasks then. He (or she) may doze off.
Voyager, quite simply in an accident involving a driverless car and a driver controlled car, the driver is at fault if the hardware can be proven to be working correctly at the time. In multiple driverless car accidents, likely hardware failure would be to blame, but not necessarily the manufacturer. Things deteriorate over time. If your car had a failure due to lack of maintenance, then it's all your own fault.
Fascinating article, though pretty thick with speculation. I have to say, though, some of these ideas seem simply BAD. For instance:
"But if we were to trust the system that much, to let go of the wheel entirely, we might gain a great deal. Cars could travel in self-guided traffic swarms, moving within inches of each other, cruising through stop lights with milliseconds to spare. Traffic would decrease, and fuel efficiency would increase—theoretically, at least."
Ok, I'll grant that's "cool." But at this point you have to start asking: Why are we driving cars at all? The automobile used to be a symbol (and a means) of personal independence. How much independence exists in this futuristic vision? Time was, folks drove cars because they thought driving was fun. The cars being described in the article assume as a first principle that driving is boring, and must therefore be replaced by other (specifically computer-based) forms of entertainment:
"...distraction will be exactly what we seek as we while away the commute in our idiotproof pleasure domes. .... Soon, social-networking applications will allow drivers to communicate with one another as if chatting online."
Um, but why not just roll down the window?
Again I have to ask: why are we driving cars? Wouldn't it be simpler, cheaper, and more environmentally sound to simply increase the rail network of the country and go back to taking the train? (Cf. any major city in Europe.) If you actually have a commute so long you want to be bumming around on FaceBook, why not cut out the driving altogether? In fact, why not walk around, have a three-course meal, and talk with fellow travelers while you're at it? One bullet train and the guy or two driving it may or may not be smarter than a thousand computerized cars, but I dare say they're a lot cheaper.
I guess I'm saying, are we REALLY simplifying and improving our lives by outfitting every one of several billion cars with a Mars Rover's worth of sensors, cameras, gyros, antennae, and microchips? And furthermore, if we're working our tails off to create (or, as consumers, to afford) "idiotproof pleasure domes," don't we have to stop and ask "What exactly does that make us?"
I think some of these engineers and dreamers need to go back and watch Wall-E and consider what societal goals we're really trying to attain.
The whole robot car thing is really cool, but what hapens when the robot malfunctions? Would the driver be able to stop the car, or would he crash and die?
A so many minds stuck in the past. The sprung and unsprung weight of wheel/tire assemblies means nothing in the future! By 2030 we will have confirmed the Higgs Boson particle and will manipulate matter at will to adjust mass. This car will be able to travel at or exceed the speed of light because at a subatomic level the particles it is made up of will have no mass. What you see as wheels the true futurist sees as compact particle accelerators
This vehicle can both travel the speed of light and through time as a result. This is actually a rendering of a future Dolorean. Of course minus the nuclear generator that runs off of biological waste matter. Instead particles with no mass require no energy to accelerate, or at least very little (Im no physicist). Pollution and depleting energy concerns are out the window when we can accelerate objects by removing the fundamental component that makes up their mass.
Oh and roads will be paved in carbon nanotubes.
and it makes a mean cup of coffee....