Autonomous Vehicles, a Matter of Simplifying the Equation

    Google has been amidst development of their autonomous car for years. Talk of the Google Car that can completely drive itself has spread the nation, even though the vehicles have never left the comfort of Google's home in Mountain View, California. However, over the past year, the company has shifted its of focus from developing a standard, full-speed, four passenger vehicle, to a simplified, souped-up golf cart. A recent article by MIT Technology Review's Mark Harris revealed the thinking behind Google's new car, simply referred to as, "Prototype."

Photo Credit: MIT Technology Review (http://www.technologyreview.com/news/537556/why-googles-self-driving-bubble-cars-might-catch-on/)

    The premise for Prototype lies behind the need for Google to simplify all of the possible outcomes and situations that one of its autonomous vehicles could encounter while driving down the road. These vehicles are examples of planning agents. As discussed in class, these are agents who must ask "what if?" and plan their possible responses accordingly. However, it requires an immense amount of computing power and work on the agent's part to determine how the entire complex world state would be in the future so that it can plan its responses. In essence, Prototype is Google's effort to limit the world state of an autonomous vehicle by only allowing it to encounter certain state spaces within the vast world that is all of the roads on earth. In a simplified way, it is similar to a person starting to find the optimal solution to a game of Pac-Man by only attempting to optimize the amount of dots eaten by Pac-Man without even considering the enemy ghosts.

    Prototype has been limited to a top speed of 25 miles per hour and must on drive down roads with a speed limit of at most 35 miles per hour within the city limits of Mountain View. This cuts out the complications of highway commutes and high speed driving altogether, while allowing the car to be considered in the same classification as a golf cart according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). Google claims that this will allow their products to get out on the road and continue testing as they work to find the solution to the complex problem of self-driving cars. Yet, after years of work on the Google Car without any significant confidence that it will be capable of handling all the problems the road could throw its way in the near future, this seems to be a step backward for Google.

    The real question seems to be whether or not anyone will be able to create a completely autonomous vehicle in the near future? All of a sudden a race has developed between many companies including Tesla and Lexus to figure out who will be the first to answer yes to that question. Even the Chinese search engine company Baidu has jumped into the mix. They have taken a slightly different approach than Google by delving straight into testing on busy streets under strict observation by operators to see where the car needs help and could use improvements.

    A common theme has been formed throughout all of these projects though that makes me doubt any of these companies' ability to produce such a car in the next few years. They all have underestimated the kinds of extraneous situations that a driver faces when behind the wheel of a car. They all seem to be stuck dealing with scenarios such as a biker hand-signaling as they bike ahead of the car, another driver on the road craning their neck to see that no one is driving this car, a police car pulled to the side of the road where the car has to slow and move over for, or even a drunk driver swerving and dangerously driving down the road. Each of these possibilities normally requires a driver to think, calculate, and weigh options on the fly in order to determine the safest course of action. Which turns the discussion to a topic also discussed in class, can machines have the ability to think such as humans? Can a self-driving car sense and predict a situation that requires a new course of action in which it may have never encountered before in order to protect its passengers?

    That is a whole argument in itself, but I believe the true limiting factor in the whole dilemma is much different. The limiting factor is us. Humans may be the reason autonomous cars are not already on roads. This is not due to the fact that we cannot create such a machine, but because we cause many of the problems that self-driven cars face. If we really consider all of those difficult situations that could cause problems for these automobiles, they are all rooted in the danger and unpredictability of humans. If all vehicles on the road were autonomous they would have the ability to communicate and inform one another about where they will be at what time and potentially avoid all accidents and problematic situations altogether. This may be optimistic thinking, but one thing is certain, in the near future it is hard to imagine a company releasing a completely autonomous, full speed, passenger vehicle for consumer purchase.