A Solution to Driverless Car Problems

UPDATE Dec 13, 2016: The Google Self-Driving Car Project is now Waymo.  Tesla has recently recalled 362,000 self-driving vehicles because regulators found the FSD (Full Self-Driving) system increased the risk of crashes. For the present, we have to restrict AI to closed systems such as freeways. Urban driving is an open system and far too complex (see Rebooting AI by Gary Marcus).

At least since 2010, Google has been developing a self-driving car called Google Chauffeur. In 2013, news organizations were reporting (here) that Google wanted to create a fleet of driverless "robo-taxis" similar to the Johnny Cabs (pictured above) in the 1990 movie Total Recall. Needless to say, there are problems with the robo-car idea, but I have a solution (maybe).

The current generation of robo-cars have expensive laser range finders that map out the environment around the car and compare it to precisions maps, something like Google maps street views. These technical capabilities are really just extensions of technology available on current production automobiles such as collision avoidance systems and GPS navigation devices. At the current state of robo-car technology, some problems remain: (1) Not all incidents with human-operated cars can be avoided (here), and (2) The technology has limitations: heavy rain and snow cannot currently be handled; unmarked 4-way intersections must be navigated very conservatively; trash, potholes and debris in the road cannot be identified and humans signaling the car (such as a police officer) cannot be identified.

Recently, I was driving the expressways surrounding Phoenix, AZ (particularly the 101, the 202 and Hwy 60). It doesn't take more than a few hours a driving to observe all sorts of unsafe and reckless driving: speeding, swerving, unexpected lane changes, tailgating, road rage, etc. etc. The achilles heel of the US expressway system is a rush-hour accident caused by unsafe driving at high speeds. Typically, traffic grinds to a halt until the accident scene can be cleared. If you can get into the right-hand lane and get off the expressway, you will often get to your destination more quickly driving through town. As population density increases and  freeway traffic increases, the number of accidents and gridlock situations will continue to increase. Adding more lanes to the freeways or adding more freeways is not the answer: at some point land expansion is no longer possible and the expanded freeways only become congested again as traffic expands to meet the lanes available.

Here's my suggested solution to the joint problems of freeway congestion and driverless cars: restrict freeways to robo-cars only! Access to expressways would be controlled with i-Pass technology and could be combined with tolls. Robo-car (or more generally robo-vehicle, to include trucks) technology would have to control speed based on existing conditions and distance from other vehicles based on traffic congestion and speed. The robo-car control could only be over-ridden to slow the car down. There would be no mix of driverless and human-controlled cars. Destinations would be pre-programmed into the navigation system prior to entering the expressway and could not be changed (the ticket-to-ride). Traffic conditions and trip plans would be communicated over the Internet to a map server and would be freely available to humans and to robots. Expressway police patrols would not be needed. Accidents or road blocks resulting from mechanical failures would result in ticket-to-ride reprogramming either into open lanes or off the expressway where human control would take over.

Obviously, this is not a perfectly egalitarian solution. Lower income drivers might be unable to afford robo-car technology and be forced onto the city streets or on to public transportation. Honestly, this is not much different than the current system where the poorest low income commuters are forced onto public transportation and many of the high-mileage older vehicles need to be taken off the road to reduce CO2 emissions. Restricted freeways would force consideration of public transportation options and potential subsidies for robo-cars (similar to or in addition to subsidies for hybrid, high-mileage vehicles).

In any event, large cities in the US Southwest would be great testing grounds for robo-freeway restrictions. Snow and heavy rain (except in the monsoon season when freeways become flooded and should be closed) are not limitations for the technology.  As for the idea of robo-taxis, I would be a lot more skeptical since they would have to mix with human-controlled city-street traffic. In case you missed the Johnny Cab (robo-cab) scene from Total Recall, the video clip (below) will help provide an image for the future of robo-cabs.

 

Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) Wins Bimbo Bakery Award for Most Off-Topic SOTUS Response

HORSHAM, PA: Today the  Bimbo Bakery announced that Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) was selected as the 2015 winner of the prestigious SOTUS Response Award. On January 20, 2015 Ms. Ernst gave the GOP response to President Obama's State of the Union Speech (SOTUS). In her response (transcript here and video here), Ms. Ernst was able to subtly weave in a comment about "plastic bread bags". The Bimbo Bakery Award Committee was stunned by the originality and seamlessness of her rhetoric.

At first the Award Committee thought that the mention of "bread bags" was a subtle attempt to attract the attention of the Bimbo Bakery. But, on further investigation, the committee concluded that Ms. Ernst was not capable of such subtlety. The text of her full transcript that won the award was:

You see, growing up, I had only one good pair of shoes. So on rainy school days, my mom would slip plastic bread bags over them to keep them dry.

But I was never embarrassed. Because the school bus would be filled with rows and rows of young Iowans with bread bags slipped over their feet.

What any of this had to do with President Obama's SOTUS is unclear but the mention of "bread bags" was unexpected, unusual and ultimately won Ms. Ernst the award.

What Happened to the Ancient Sonoran Desert People?

Today we visited the Casa Grande ("Big House") Ruins National Monument in Coolidge, AZ. It was the first prehistoric and cultural site to be protected by the US Government in 1892. The Big House pictured above (on the left in 1880 and on the right today protected by a steel roof), marked the peak of the Ancient Sonoran Desert People's civilization. Archeological dating methods estimate that it was constructed in the 1300's. Shortly after its construction, the Sonoran Desert civilization collapsed. What happened?

During the late 1300’s and early 1400’s, the ancient Sonoran Desert people suffered a period of widespread depopulation and abandonment. Speculations as to the cause have included drought, floods, disease, invasion, earthquakes, internal strife, and salinization of farmland. Today, several American Indian groups have ancestral links to the ancient people. Their cultural traditions, together with on-going archeology and the continued interest of visitors at Casa Grande Ruins, all combine to keep the legacy of the ancient Sonoran Desert people alive to this day (from the NPS here).

There is no definitive scientific answer but a few things struck us as we visited the site:

• The ancient Sonoran Desert people constructed (using sticks, stones and human labor only) an impressive irrigation system around the Gilla River (graphic above). Digging irrigation ditches in the Sonoran Desert was no easy task since the layer of caliche below the surface soil usually takes picks, shovels and jack hammers to break up today--tools not available to the ancient Sonoran Desert people. What would have motivated a population to undertake this brutal work?
• The Big House is at least a mile from the Gilla River path today which has no year-round running water as a result of the Coolidge Dam.
• The timbers to support the four-story Big House were carried by humans from surrounding mountainous areas many miles away where trees from which 12 foot lumber could be cut were available. Hundreds of heavy timbers had to be moved hundreds of miles by hand to build the floors of the four-story building. Only a repressive mini-Empire would have been able to extract that kind of brutal labor from a desperate population.
• Prior to construction of the Big House, people lived in small, single story dugout shelters. The Big House would not have been used for human shelter but rather for the extraction and storage of surplus.

What struck us after taking all this in was that the Big House we were gawking at was the arrogant proclamation of an ancient mini-Empire that could command such an impractical and useless monument on the basis of overpopulation supported by irrigation technology. Just at the peak of their civilization, the ancient Sonoran Desert people had created a impressive but unstable civilization that was easily toppled. Whether it was toppled by drought, flood, disease, invasion, earthquakes, internal strife or salinization of irrigated farm land doesn't matter as much as how easily and quickly the civilization collapsed.

The remaining families returned to an earlier, more sustainable civilization based on tribes and small family units that became the current Native American Tribes of the Southwest. I wonder if the politicians in the State Capital (Phoenix, AZ), the current pinnacle of Southwestern US Civilization, are aware of the lessons to be learned from studying the ancient civilizations in their backyard? My guess is that they are convinced that civilizations will never collapse again because our overpopulation is supported by advanced technology.