A car that needs no driver

[slowhand]

DETROIT - Cars that drive themselves — even parking at their destination — could be ready for sale within a decade, General Motors Corp. executives say.


GM, parts suppliers, university engineers and other automakers all are working on vehicles that could revolutionize short- and long-distance travel. And Tuesday at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas GM Chief Executive Rick Wagoner will devote part of his speech to the driverless vehicles.

"This is not science fiction," Larry Burns, GM's vice president for research and development, said in a recent interview.



http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080107/ap_on_hi_te/gadget_show_driverless_cars

 

[dick van cock]

Brilliant! Who needs research on alternative fuels when we can spend R&D funds on building a funny gadget?

 

[cartman24]

It's a cool idea, but doesn't make much sense if there will still be tons od people driving manually controlled vehicles.

 

[tartanterrier]

I wonder how many mpg that does

 

[Legzman]

stupid! How fuckin lazy have americans come as to need a car to do the driving for them?

I love driving and as such would loath a car like this!

 

[Vanilla Bear]

But it were not the Americans who invented a "robot-car" first.
Or at least they werent alone doing that.

 

[blue ballz 22]

i for one prefer driving a car rather than being the passenger in a car that will take me to where i want to go. id prefer to go over the speed limit a little( or a lot depending on where i am)

 

[Mr. Daystar]

Doesn't need a driver huh? Let's see that fucker find a full service gas station, because if it won't give me control. I'm not sticking a gas nozzle in the tank!

 

[senob44]

Unfortunately, this type of thing may eventually lead to massive layoffs in the transportation industry. Soon the middle class will have two choices: work at Wal-Mart or starve to death!

 

[D-rock]

They say a decade, but I wouldn’t be surprised if 30 years from now we still aren’t close to having that. :1orglaugh

 

[Fonzarelli]

I hate this idea
I think they are digging their own grave with this one....if you can`t drive your car, then what`s the point? I can take a bus just as well then.

This is what happens when less and less automotive engineers are true car guys these days, and computer nerd type of geeks are becoming the majority...
Go make some computer games or something and leave car guys alone.

 

[BlueBalls]

Takes the fun out of driving.

 

[Member2019]

DARPA Grand Challenge ...

I was personally/educationally involved with one previous generation DARPA competition at my Alma Mater a dozen years ago (we placed in the top half-dozen). Early on the focus was on autonomous aerial vehicles, which have more freedom of motion and control (far less constraints). But more recently this has evolved into the DARPA Grand Challenge, which is a far greater (actually, now the "Grand") challenge.

For those of you that don't know, the US Department of Defense (DoD) budget isn't just for war fighting. A sizable amount is put into the [Defense] Advanced Research Projects Agency ([D]APRA), which also funded the original packet switched networking and related software (i.e., the foundation of the Internet). In fact, [D]ARPA does a lot well outside of defense (like development and funding of the new Tsunami net to warn before the next disaster hits SE Asia). Even defense applications have real, commercial ones too, hence why the US puts a significant portion of its defense budget into it.

Read up people, this is the future, and it's happening now. In the next decade, the technology to drive it will be commodity, shrunk to a simple "black box" control system (replacing countless, separate components) plus integrated (in the car body) sensory LIDAR and be very, very mature in hardware-software. But what do I know? People regularly question if I'm even an engineer. So assume I don't know anything, or I'm just "well read," yet they question anything I post that is technology, defense, research and related to anything else and want "proof" (of which I can never provide enough).

Makes me wonder why I am continually bothering to bring up the "little know reality" (not even after a Google search) of technology that I've been either tracking or, in virtually most cases, personally/professionally involved with at some point myself. Whatever I post just gets smacked anyway, or my posts lambasted as everything but "arrogant" to "irrelevant" to "proven wrong" and whatever. Sigh, think what you want, but DARPA has the leading research on this matter right now, with heavy commercial involvement.

 

[trunk_monkey]

What?!?!?! All these years I thought mine was driving itself. I just assumed that when it hit people that they owed it money. Well thank you sir for this bit of knowledge, I shall learn this "driving" thing that these Brits keep talking about.