Real time for what?

Posted Nov 13, 2012 13:56 UTC (Tue) by KSteffensen (guest, #68295)
In reply to: Real time for what? by man_ls
Parent article: LCE: Realtime, present and future

Stock markets would be my guess. Considering how much automated trading is taking place and how much money is involved I'm guessing this is a big market.

I think there's too much safety hysteria in the automotive business to actually let the cars be driven by a computer.

Real time for what?

Posted Nov 13, 2012 14:07 UTC (Tue) by hummassa (subscriber, #307) [Link] (10 responses)

Seeing as Google self-driving car is now street-legal in Nevada, I wouldn't bet on it.

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/technology/2012/05/google-sel...

Real time for what?

Posted Nov 13, 2012 14:37 UTC (Tue) by KSteffensen (guest, #68295) [Link] (9 responses)

Cool! I did not know that.

Next big hurdle will be the debate the first time one of these is involved in an accident.

Real time for what?

Posted Nov 13, 2012 14:45 UTC (Tue) by hummassa (subscriber, #307) [Link] (8 responses)

Where have you been the last year? ;-)

They already ran about 300,000 miles, with only two accidents: one, the autonomous driving system was offline (i.e., the car was being driven by the human driver) and two, the car was rear-ended. Apparently, they are safer than me (I usually go some 40,000 miles between minor crashes and scrapes, and I have some 400,000 miles total in twenty years of driving, with ten incidents).

Real time for what?

Posted Nov 13, 2012 15:02 UTC (Tue) by KSteffensen (guest, #68295) [Link] (7 responses)

Let me qualify that. The first accident involving grave human injury and/or death.

I'm quite willing to believe that on the average these things are far more safe than human drivers since they so rarely have to text their girlfriends or fiddle with the radio or whatever. I do think they will have to prove their safety far more rigorously than the average human driver, though.

Real time for what?

Posted Nov 13, 2012 15:20 UTC (Tue) by rvfh (guest, #31018) [Link] (2 responses)

Real test for machine is in difficult situations, where humans may 'feel' that something is not quite right...
Also, I am unsure these cars would work in Europe with crazy drivers and difficult-to-compute timings at some crossings.

(disclaimer: I was born and have lived most of my life in Europe.)

Real time for what?

Posted Nov 13, 2012 15:23 UTC (Tue) by niner (subscriber, #26151) [Link]

Well they could hardly do worse than human drivers... speaking as a cyclist who has to endure and survive them every day.

Real time for what?

Posted Nov 13, 2012 15:26 UTC (Tue) by mpr22 (subscriber, #60784) [Link]

Heck, it'd probably have trouble in Boston, MA (which admittedly has one of the most European street layouts of any major city in the USA).

Real time for what?

Posted Nov 14, 2012 11:58 UTC (Wed) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link] (3 responses)

I do think they will have to prove their safety far more rigorously than the average human driver, though.

I think a Turing-like test should suffice: If during a driving test, a driving license examiner cannot tell whether a computer or a person is driving the car, and it looks as if the entity in question ought to pass, then – if it was actually the computer driving – the setup is OK.

Real time for what?

Posted Nov 21, 2012 19:02 UTC (Wed) by ceswiedler (guest, #24638) [Link] (2 responses)

Or the driving test is wildly insufficient to distinguish bad drivers.

Real time for what?

Posted Nov 22, 2012 11:17 UTC (Thu) by Otus (subscriber, #67685) [Link]

> Or the driving test is wildly insufficient to distinguish bad drivers.

That's not the purpose of most driving tests. Usually the purpose is to see if someone is good enough that they'll learn the rest on their own without being too much of a danger to others.

Realistically most people who pass a driving test are going to be bad drivers for a long while. (Unless they are testing for a license in another state/country and have already driven a lot.)

Real time for what?

Posted Nov 22, 2012 11:24 UTC (Thu) by mpr22 (subscriber, #60784) [Link]

Naturally. There's a driving examiner in the front passenger seat; getting an accurate picture of someone's everyday driving in such conditions is more or less impossible.