Journal #6 How Self-Driving vehicles can helps and opinions

Journal #6 How Self-Driving vehicles can helps and opinions

(This article is created by XIANGRUI SU with English Author name Leo. Article contain some ideas from Henry Wechsler opinions. Any unauthorized copy, quote and referencing are not allowed)

The information from trusted source which is made by Urmson indicated several benefits gives by automobile self-driving. It is Urmson who is head of engineering for google’s self-driving car project that make this information source reliable. Urmson In article “Progress in self-driving vehicles” declared three good points that can be achieved by self-driving automobile. The first one is increase the safety and mobility. Then, by using data analysis, Urmson shows how self-driving mobile can effect on avoid traffic accident. Also this article explain how important the self driving car is. Self-driving car good LIDAR system can helps disable to drive, which is a system include light detection and ranging remote sensing functions. Engineer Urmson in this article also analyzed some challenges that self-driving car ever faced or facing now. Those challenges are funding direction, data base and LIDAR density issues. There still is a challenge expect those three issues, which is consumer psychology. There are no doubt that engineer by following engineering ethic rules can built very reliable and good quality self driving vehicle. However, how to let consumer trust the car which has self-driving function should be set as a challenge. People not in this area seems very hard to trust computer approaches, they may be not willing to sit into the car, which can not driving by themselves. Self-driving car company needs some time to persuade consumer with sensor enhanced, self-driving car can be trusted. From my basic knowledge and opinions, this car works for me. However, before I using this vehicle, I need check how the processor processing data and examine if it reliable by myself. Self-driving vehicles can hugely increase the mobile experiences, and with well designed chips to ensure passenger’s safety. There is no reason to give up self driving car if it can be trusted. As an engineer, I know how this car can achieved those benefits mentioned above, detector work together with sensor and central processing core can performance very well to ensure the car on the line and avoid accidence. Self-driving car is not only the hope, it can be comes true by research.    

reference:

Urmson,C.(2015).Progress in self-driving vehicles. Spring Bridge:From the Frontiess of Engineering and Beyond, 45(1). retrieved from www.nae.edu

Journal 6 Peng Zhou

Chris Urmson, who is the head of engineering for Google’s Self-Driving Car Project, argues in his article Progress in Self-Driving Vehicles that “ Automated driving has experienced a research renaissance in the past decade as investigations have been motivated by organized competitions to increase safety and mobility.” And the main reason why self-driving vehicles are important raised by Urmson in his article is that “they should dramatically reduce accidents, enable people who cannot drive to get around, and, when deployed as part of efficient shared vehicle fleet, reduce congestion.

Personally speaking, I agree with the view that self-driving vehicles are very useful and safety. But I think there is still a lot of problems should be solved before the self-driving vehicles can be produced.

One of the most important problems is about the ethics. For example, if the car in front of you stops suddenly for some reason, and your vehicle don’t have enough time and distance to stop. You only have two choices, crushing to the car in front of you or take a sudden turn. But what if there is a pedestrian or other vehicle just on the way that you prepare to turn. So, it is hard for the computer to make the choice. It is hard to say which one is correct, and I think the choice should base on the specific situation. The choices that related to the ethic have to be made by human beings.

Another important disadvantage of the computer is that we can’t trust it all the time. Because computers make choice based on the program, but it is hard to say that the program is perfect. Even the Microsoft Company still update some leaks for Windows. So we can’t make sure that the program takes everything into consideration, especially for some special situation. And it also leads in another safety problem. Criminal can easily change the software of their target’s car to make an accident.

There are a lot of problems of the self-driving vehicles need to be solved. But I still believe that it should be a good choice if the technology can solve all of the problems.

Journal 6 Gengwei Zhang (Daniel)

Urmson, who is a leader engineering in Google's Self-Driving Car Project, states in the article “Progress in Self-Driving Vehicles” that "In the coming years advanced assistance systems and self-driving vehicles will become common place, delivering on the promise of making roads safer and more convenient for all." It not only reflects that the theory of self-driving cars has been accepted by many people because of the property, it also likes a announcement that people will bring a revolution in the future.

The mean reason why he believes self-driving vehicles are important for the future is decreasing traffic accidents. As Urmon says in the article: "More than 30,000 people are killed each year on the road, and over 90 percent of these accidents are due to human error." But it also have some negative views from some people who cannot totally trust high technology. The main negative point that they consider is that how can it deal with the international problem, such as linking failed or some bugs. Maybe it will avoid some small traffic accidents, but it has huge potential disasters.

However, some people, like me, believe self-driving is the best choice for the people who are not very good at driving. I saw a lot of serious traffic accidents on TV or on news, and one of my friend suffered a traffic. I deeply realized that sometimes small mistakes will lead to disasters. Self-traffic cars are based on the map data from Google map, which we have been used a lot of years. It is a reliable map with great real time traffic information and navigation. This technology will be achieved on self-deriving cars, and it will totally instead of human operations. On the other hand, I believe developers has thought those problem like cannot link internet, and those problem will be solved before selling it. I will let my family and friends try self-driving cars, and it is more safe than driving by themselves.

Journal #6

   Nowadays there is a heating debate about whether or not we should develop self-driving vehicles, some people agree with that it is beneficial for us, while others think it can bring some problems. In Chris Urmson’s article, he listed some ideas about why the self-driving vehicles are important for the future.

   The first is, as a society we need to do a much better job at protecting road users. So if you look at worldwide statistics, there’s 1.2 million road users who are killed per year. Around 40 percent of that number is pedestrians and cyclists. So yes, there’s an awful lot of room for improvement there, just generically.

   Second, we know this is a new technology we’re bringing into the world and we want to do it as safely as possible. So we took it upon ourselves to think about how can we have an independent layer of safety for people out there in the community. We’re going to do everything we can to design the software and hardware to never fail, but should it fail or should someone step out in the road at a distance where they couldn’t take an evasive action, we want to reduce the impact.

  As for the drawback of this technology, I think the main dangerous thing is that it can be made use of by terrorists for some terrible things, for example, terrorists can put bombs in one self-driving car without any drivers, so by this they have no people loss, and then let their cars go to somewhere they want to destroy. This is an important issue that we must consider.

  In my opinion, I think only if the technology is being mature , I will drive these automated vehicles. Since I think if this technology is not fully developed, there are still some potential danger in it.

Journal #6 Zhaoyang

In Chris Urmson’s article “Progress in Self-Driving Vehicles” (2015), he talks about the history of self-driving vehicles and their future developing. Why do we need automated driving? Chris first indicates that it has been motivated “to increase safety and mobility”. A large number of accidents are due to human error, resulting in many people killed. Then he says that self-driving vehicles enable “people who cannot drive to get around” and deployed to reduce congestion. In the end, Chris points out indirectly that driver remaining in the steering loop may have problems of attentiveness and skill atrophy. In my perspective, there are two challenges that unmanned control automobiles are facing: 1. To what extent will the general public accepts this technology? 2. What is the backup solution when the system crashes?

This topic is really heated among customers who have the willingness to buy a car. If, one day, self-driving vehicles are in the market, will they consider them? I believe this is just a time-relative problem. Unmanned control is a trend appearing not only in vehicles but also in airplanes and even furniture, such as a vacuum cleaner. When Apple introduced the first iPhone, consumers did not believe it would replace keyboard phones. However, now, iPhone and Samsung are the top two smart-phone selling companies, and Nokia was purchased by Microsoft. Technology always moves forward, so self-driving vehicles will be the general one in the future.

When we are using a computer, we fear the system crashing. If this happens, we may lose files. Unfortunately, if this happens on a self-driving car, we may lose lives. Undoubtedly, the most important mission is to avoid the system crashing. Designers can program a backup solution that can pull over the car when the system breakdown, then the driver can take over. One main system executes self-driving, and one backup system performs pulling over. Since the latter is fairly simpler, it is not as easy to crash as the former system.


I love trying new things so I would like to drive these vehicles. Technology moves forward so that human should also move forward. 

Journal #6 by Hao Zhang

Chris Urmson is head of engineering for Google’s Self-Driving Car Project, and he wrote an article which entitled “Progress in Self-Driving Vehicles”. In his article, he argues that self-driving vehicles are important for these reasons. Traffic accidents has become the main cause of death, and self-driving vehicles can avoid human error to reduce accidents. They can also improve the problem of traffic congestion and air pollution which is more and more serious in cities, when deployed as shared vehicle. Furthermore, they should give the ability of getting around to people who cannot drive.

Recent data from Institution of Mechanical Engineers shows that 56% of public make it clear that they won’t buy a self-driving vehicle. Most people worry about the security of self-driving vehicle, and it is still a question whether self-driving vehicle is smart enough to ensure people’s safety. Time is needed to verify the reliability of self-driving vehicle and to make it acceptable by most people. On the other hand, self-driving vehicle which works like a robot faces the ethical and legal issues. For example, who should be responsible for traffic accident caused by self-driving vehicle, driver or manufacturers? It has already arouses controversy among American legal scholars. Furthermore, self-driving vehicle should obey the three laws of robotics which set that robots may not injure a human being. But in some complex condition, such as that driver has to sacrifice himself to prevent car from thrusting into a group of children, would self-driving vehicle make the same choice as human? Compared with technical problems, ethical and legal issues are more difficult to be solved.

As for me, I won’t be the first person to try automated vehicle because of the reasons above. But I believe that with development of self-driving vehicle and spread among people, all the problems could be figured out one day soon.

Journal #6 Huizhong Pan

In Urmson’s article “Progress in Self-Driving Vehicles”, he states why self-driving vehicles are important in the future and introduces some ways used to development unmanned technology including the application of machine learning, large-scale mapping, improved LIDAR(light detection and ranging remote sensing technology) and radar sensing capability.

Firstly, in the part of DARPA’s Grand Challenges, a way fusing the information from other publicly available sources with onboard sensing data was used in a game. What’s more, Stanford team combined machine learning with LIDAR, which was proved to make vehicles drive faster. Secondly, in the part of The Urban Challenge, key technical advances were high-density LIDAR and using high-density maps. In the last part of Post-Challenge Progress, the technology being developed by Google use high-resolution maps and combine LIDAR, camera and radar sensors to provide a better model of the environment. Thus, on the base of these technologies, driver assistance systems even fully self-driving vehicles will reach an advanced stage in the near future.

In terms of the negatives and challenges of unmanned technology, there are indeed some. First of all, the author states that 90 percent of traffic accidents are due to human error, and how can we guarantee technologies which are created by human will not make mistakes? Just image that an unmanned car drives at rush hour, and once it is out of control, how horrible the consequences will be! When come with the challenges, it should be that the unmanned vehicles must obey traffic rules strictly that we have made. The author also mentions, “not only to complete the challenge with moving vehicles but also to obey a subset of driving rules”.

Even though there are advanced technologies we have talked about, I still dare not to drive automated vehicles. I can’t stand that when I get close to other cars, and I can’t do anything but listen to my car. Maybe my body keeps safe, but I will be insane. There is one situation that I will use unmanned vehicle when it is used as a truck, and I needn’t to be in the vehicle, so I will not suffer the mental hurt.