A Stanford professor provides evidence that automated computer car voices shouldn't nag or criticize.
That computer masquerading as a person, seemingly residing somewhere in your car, might be interested in more than mere facts. As it gets to know your voice, your facial expressions (from an onboard camera) and your style, it could adapt its conversation to your mood, just as a human passenger would. If the computer behind the synthetic voice sensed that you were tense, as the car's sensors were silently warning the computer that your driving was becoming erratic, the voice might attempt to calm you down. It would project just the right tone and employ the perfect turn of phrase.
In tests of volunteers driving automobile simulators in the lab, researchers put their subjects into stressful situations and tested out potential responses from the voice. For example, some drivers received a reproachful warning: "You're not driving very well and you need to pay more attention."
"Well, you won't be shocked to learn that people got angry and actually drove worse," laughed Nass as he told the story. As the voice ratcheted up its rhetoric ("You really need to be more careful!"), the driving deteriorated further. Finally, when the voice began insisting that the drivers pull over to the side of the road, they responded by getting into accidents.
In a 2007 study, Nass, doctoral student Helen Harris, and undergraduates Kyle Davis, David Diaz and Brooke Sullivan searched for ways to help people control their emotions in the car in a study called "Car-tharsis." In a frustrating situation, a soothing voice from the car might sympathize with your predicament: "Don't worry. There will be a chance to pass the truck." The unspoken message? You don't need to get upset. Or if you got cut off in traffic, the car might simply do the yelling for you: "Learn to drive!" or "You idiot!"
Maybe the car should answer questions by playing excerpts of songs that encapsulate what the computer wants to say. In that case I expect people who think they are going to be late for an appointment due to a traffic jam should hear "Don't worry, be happy".
Depressed people want depressed cars. I can believe this from personal experience. When I was depressed as an adolescent I used to like to listen to Neil Young's album On The Beach. It was more depressing than me and it made me feel better by comparison.
Depressed drivers drive better when their car speaks as if it, too, were feeling down. "If you're in a really bad mood, do you want a bouncy person around?"
Drivers can trust a local AI built into their car. But they don't trust a centralized Borg AI talking to them through their car.
Drivers feel more engaged with the computer voice if they believe the computer is installed in their car, as opposed to a wireless connection to a distant computer. As a result, they disclose more information to the in-car computer and drive faster.
As we design computer systems to make us do what their designers decided are the best behaviors from us we are effectively designing computer systems to manipulate us. I suspect that the first AIs deployed into widespread use will therefore possess enormous skills for manipulating humans. The ability to automate efforts to manipulate us will make us more manipulated and controlled by computer systems.
I've previously argued that any automated car safety technology that reduces deaths will become required by governments including eventually robotic driving once it becomes safer than human driving. Well, let me add some more reasons why governments will mandate robotic driving: Automatic control of groups of cars going down a freeway will increase fuel efficiency and reduce traffic jams.
An automated way of allowing cars to drive much closer to each other in heavy moving traffic, so-called platooning, could cut congestion, save fuel and cut greenhouse gas emissions, according to research published today in Inderscience's International Journal of the Environment and Pollution.
Don't you just hate it when in heavy traffic one guy hits his breaks and then cars behind hit theirs even harder as they see brake lights and suddenly a lump of cars has slowed way down? If a long line of cars ran under computer coordination this cause of traffic slow-downs could be greatly reduced.
As populations grow and the number of vehicles on the roads in cities and motorways across Europe, North America and the developing world, rises, traditional ways of tackling the problem, such as simply building more roads or improving public transport are becoming less and less effective. "Automated highway systems are one of the many approaches that have been suggested to tackle the problems," says Mitra.
Traffic is a growing problem across the globe with the number of vehicles on the on the roads in Britain alone having risen from 26 million to almost 33 million in the last decade and that number set to rise by 25% over the next ten years. The problem is burgeoning in areas of enormous economic growth, such as China and India where countless new vehicles are pulling out and entering the traffic flow on newly built roads. With all that new traffic, of course, comes more pollution, and the need for ever more innovative approaches to tackling it.
Technologies that are a step in this direction already have reached the market under the title of autonomous (or active or adaptive or intelligent) cruise control where a laser or radar on the front of a car detects other cars in front driving at lower speeds and the cruise control slows the car to run at the same speed as the car in front of it. This is still an expensive luxury option.
Computers that communicate between cars to coordinate acceleration could do a much better job of avoiding the need for any car to hit the brakes in the first place. Cars could run more closely together if they were far less likely to do unpredictable things.
IBM calls the research initiative collaborative driving, and the company says it's designed to prevent accidents and reduce traffic congestion. The work will be spearheaded by the IBM lab in Haifa, Israel. "More than a million people die on the roads every year around the world, and people waste a lot of time and money sitting in traffic jams," says IBM researcher Oleg Goldshmidt. "You would like to help with both problems in any way possible."
Humans are too error-prone behind the wheel. Slowly but surely driving is getting automated.
Every time a piece of safety equipment becomes fairly cheap the United States government and governments of other highly industrialized nations have moved to require the use of that equipment. When automated operation of cars by embedded computers becomes safer than human driving will governments move to require installation of such artificially intelligent (AI) computer systems in all new cars? Will governments eventually go even further and some day even ban the operation of cars and trucks by humans?
The US government is going to mandate computer-controlled features to help maintain vehicle control. Electronic anti-lock brakes (ABS) and other computer-controlled means to keep tire traction on the road will become mandatory in the United States for all new cars.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is set to announce a preliminary regulation requiring electronic stability control technology on all new vehicles.
I predict the US government will require all new cars be constructed to support fully automated operation within 20 to 30 years.
Auto companies think automated systems for avoiding loss of driving control are more important than air bags for reducing accidents, injuries, and deaths.
The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety estimated in a report in June that as many as 10,000 deaths a year could be prevented if all vehicles were equipped with the feature. Auto companies have said the systems are more critical in preventing deaths than air bags, which are credited with saving 1,200 lives per year.
Many computer-assisted driving technologies are hitting the market. All these technologies will become more advanced and lower in cost in coming decades. Toyota is moving from radar to optical (i.e. light-based) sensors to detect and automatically try to avoid crashes into road obstacles such as pedestrians.
Toyota Motor Corp. and Denso Corp. collaborated with NEC to implement the chip in autos. It was adopted as an image-processing unit for a pre-crash safety system for Toyota's Lexus LS460 to be introduced in the fall. Toyota already offered a pre-crash safety system that employs milliwave radar.
The Lexus road obstacle avoidance will work by automatically activating the brake.
The new Lexus LS460 with the image processors will automatically slam on the brakes a split second before hitting a pedestrian or vehicle and prevent a collision or reduce impact.
Systems that monitor driver wakefulness and attention are also starting to hit the market. Cameras aimed at drivers try to alert drivers when they are not paying attention and an obstacle looms.
And if all the coddling means your attention wanders, there is a camera checking the driver's eyes are on the road.
Lexus' Pedro Pacheco says: "In the event that there is an obstacle in front of the car and the driver is at the same time looking at the side of the road, the system will sound a warning to alert the driver.
I've also read proposals to have cars automatically detect whether a person has been drinking alcohol and is too drunk to operate a car.
Driver monitoring systems can detect a driver falling asleep behind the wheel.
Dr. Grace, a former Carnegie Mellon University professor, is CEO of Attention Technologies Inc., which just started marketing a Driver Fatigue Monitor -- a dashboard-mounted camera that measures how often a sleepy driver's eyes close at night and then sets off a warning alarm.
Attention Technologies is one of two local companies that have developed anti-drowsiness monitors.
The other is AssistWare Technology Inc., another Carnegie Mellon spinoff that is selling a forward-mounted camera that sets off an alarm when a vehicle veers out of its lane or wanders erratically within the lane.
Volvo is one of many car companies developing driver monitoring systems.
GÖTEBORG, Sweden (November 30, 2005) – Volvo Car Corporation is taking a decisive new step toward helping drivers avoid vehicle collisions with its new Volvo Driver Alert system, technology designed to monitor a vehicle's progress on the road and alert the driver if it detects signs of fatigue or distraction. The system helps drivers make the right decision, rather than taking control of the vehicle.
The company intends to patent the Driver Alert technology and plans to make the system available in Volvo vehicles within two years.
Driver fatigue is a major traffic safety problem around the world. According to the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), approximately 100,000 collisions are caused every year on American highways by drivers who fall asleep. Fifteen hundred of the collisions result in fatalities and a further 71,000 lead to physical injuries. In Europe, the situation is very similar: the German Insurance Association – GDV (Gesamtverband der Deutschen Versicherungswirtschaft e.V.) – estimates that 25 per cent of all fatal collisions on German roads are caused by fatigue.
BMW is also working on warning systems to alert drivers when they are drifting out of their lanes.
Safe motoring in style means maintaining maximum attention also on long distances. And this is precisely why BMW Group engineers have developed an assistance system helping the driver to avoid situations where they begin to lose their attention and awareness. Lane Departure Warning therefore informs the driver in good time of any unattended deviation from the car’s proper course, telling the driver through clear signals to countersteer and move back in the desired direction. This serves to avoid driving errors resulting from lack of concentration on traffic conditions.
Adaptive Cruise Control is a new technology that automatically adjusts vehicle speed to maintain a driver-selected distance from the vehicle ahead in the same lane. This next generation of cruise control uses forward-looking radar, installed behind the grill of a vehicle, to detect the speed and distance of the vehicle ahead of it, and then automatically adjusts your speed accordingly.
How does it work? The radar headway sensor sends information to a digital signal processor, which in turn translates the speed and distance information for a longitudinal controller. The result? If the lead vehicle slows down, or if another object is detected, the system sends a signal to the engine or braking system to decelerate. Then, when the road is clear, the system will re-accelerate the vehicle back to the set speed.
The fancy driving automation systems are coming out first on the more expensive models.
BMW AG, DaimlerChrysler AG and Toyota Motor Corp. are among the makers of premium models that are starting to market cars that automate many parts of the driving experience: self-parking cars (with the driver inside or out); parking guidance systems (for the less-lazy driver); enhanced cruise-control systems that work in stop-and-go-traffic and maintain a safe distance between cars; and warning systems that tell you when you've strayed from your lane.
Brakes and gas pedals are not the only parts of cars which are coming under partial computer car. Automotive engineers are also targetting control of the steering wheel. Mercedes has just introduced a radar-based parking assistance technology as an option in their CL-class cars.
First, the parking guidance system automatically uses side mounted radar sensors to monitor whether the space on either the driver or passenger side is adequate to park the vehicle. If it is, the dashboard displays a "P" icon, alerting the driver to the fact a suitable space is available.
Once the driver stops the vehicle and changes to reverse gear, the instrument cluster then displays a bird's eye view of the parking situation along with guide lines showing how best to park. Red lines indicate the current steering angle, while yellow lines show the steering angle needed. As the driver turns the steering wheel and the two lines coincide, they then combine to form green lines, alerting the driver that he is now in the appropriate angle to reverse.
Finally, as the driver is reversing, an audible signal gives notice when it's time to countersteer, perfectly situating them and their new coupe in that ordinarily too-tight-to-fit-in parking space.
You can see where all this is going. As optical and radar sensors and computers drop in price and become more powerful and as software algorithms become more sophisticated computers are going to gradually take over more driving tasks from truck and car drivers. Computers will become better than drivers and computer-operated cars will become safer than human-operated cars.
Biogerontologist Aubrey de Grey foresees a human future where biotechnologies allow us to live in eternal youth and never grow old. Once we reach that future accidents, murder, and suicide will become the major causes of death. Aubrey expects political movements will successfuly bring about a ban on cars in order to reduce death from accidents. I do not think most governments and polities will go down that path. More likely computers will make car operation so incredibly safe and accidents so rare that cars will not have much impact on average longevity.
Update: Skepticism about the feasibility of computer-operated vehicles became harder to maintain when the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency's Grand Challenge periodic contest for autonomous driverless vehicles finally produced winners in October 2005.
A robotic Volkswagen called “Stanley”, developed by a team from Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, won a $2 million prize on Sunday for winning a tough desert race of driverless vehicles.
And in a stunning improvement on 2004’s Grand Challenge, when no car completed more than 5% of the course, four other vehicles also finished. The 212-kilometre race across the Nevada desert is set by the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).
It says something about the rate of advance of the underlying technologies that so many contestants could all suddenly achieve the needed capability in the same year.
On May 1, 2006 DARPA announced a more difficult next phase Grand Challenge for autonomous vehicles to navigate an urban terrain. (PDF format)
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) today announced plans to hold its third Grand Challenge competition on November 3, 2007.
The DARPA Urban Challenge will feature autonomous ground vehicles executing simulated military supply missions safely and effectively in a mock urban area. Safe operation in traffic is essential to U.S. military plans to use autonomous ground vehicles to conduct important missions.
DARPA will award prizes for the top three autonomous ground vehicles that compete in a final event where they must safely complete a 60-mile urban area course in fewer than six hours. First prize is $2 million, second prize is $500,000 and third prize is $250,000. To succeed, vehicles must autonomously obey traffic laws while merging into moving traffic, navigating traffic circles, negotiating busy intersections and avoiding obstacles.
Does anyone doubt this challenge will be conquered within 5 years?