Part 43 - Thus Spoke Zarathustra

The new year looks like it could be the time of the big step forward in the world of autonomous vehicles.

General Motors lat week petition the US government to allow them to build and use automated vehicles on the road without a steering wheel or pedals with the aim of mass producing these in 2019.

Lets just sit back and think about that for a minute as the concept is staggering.

2019 could see totally autonomous mass produced vehicles on the road.

Read that line again.

2019 could see totally autonomous mass produced vehicles on the road.

This gets rid of one of the worst aspects of the current technology where level 3 automation requires a driver to take over at a moments notice when it can't handle something.

That's all well and good if the driver is wide awake and alert and watching the road but what happens when the driver relies on this because it works so well for long periods of time - then suddenly it doesn't.

Tesla is well aware of that with its famous collision with a truck at high speed with the driver reportedly using the vehicle as fully autonomous.

GM has long stated that it wants to go directly to level 4 automation where the car can take action on its own when in uncertain circumstances such as slowing down or pulling over therefore avoiding this potential lethal situation with level 3 control.

So lets see where this going because it means that driverless cars (in every aspect of the name ) could be on the road far sooner than currently expected.

Another aspect of that is the thinking that automation needs a lot more testing before releasing into the real world but drivers are so bad (and I count myself in that if I am being honest) that even non perfect automation will produce less deaths that human drivers so the sooner the better.

 Seeing automated vehicles on the road is a rarity in most place but in Phoenix Arizona it is a common sight. Primarily because of the physical characteristics of the place where it is hot and dry most of the time with no snow, little rain and wide pot hole free roads which makes it ideal for testing in near perfect conditions but not so well if you want to sort out problems as they arise but you can't have everything.

Meanwhile, back in my world I am rapidly moving on with 3D printing as in my previous blog.
I build the Digital sundial which ended up a 40 hour print and I hoped that the power held up as there was a storm coming in and I was terrified of a power failure as the printer can't recover from a power loss. Fortunately it didn't happen and I had a successful run and the digital sundial works very well.

Buoyed by this success I embarked on the next big print and started on the hand for my new robot arm. This was a 15 hour print and ran very smoothly - for 14 and a 1/2 hours.

They were right, it doesn't recover from a power fail, even a 2 second flicker.

AAAAAARRRGH

My 3D printer now has a UPS connected to it.....

Who said you don't learn from experience!

This coming weekend I will reprint it and start to construct the hand and arm.
I have now received the parts I was waiting for and should get the dancing robot (Otto) working as well.

Something to look forward too and I will will post developments as they occur.

Cheers

Part 42 - It's life Jim but not as we know it.

2018 has  arrived.

Happy new year and all that.

To me these date numbers are well into science fiction territory as I never actually expected to get to this stage but that's another story.

Now that I'm here I am so grateful as we are (as I have said so many times before) on this massive cusp of change and I love change.

Now that the new year is here it brings on the first of the new season motor shows and the Singapore show is currently open and announcements are trickling out as it goes on.

Audi has announced the first full production car with the Audi 8 L (dubbed the AI) that has level 3 automation.
Level 3 automation is basically full automation (but not fully functional for all situations) and requires a driver to take control when it finds a situation it can't handle.

This is a  great leap forward but brings back the problem of complacency.

A driver who uses this can become so used to it in automated mode that they forget that the car can't yet do it all yet and they aren't prepared to take control fast enough in an emergency situation.

As happened with Tesla it is likely that deaths will occur, just because people are people.

Level 4 hopefully is not far away where the car can pull over and stop when no human intervention occurs when requested.

Having said all that this is pretty remarkable that that level of sophistication is now available in a production vehicles.

Meanwhile Nividia has announced a new "supercomputer on a chip" which they hope will become the standard for automated vehicles.

"Nvidia says its invention of “the world’s first autonomous machine processor” is in the final stages of development and will be production ready by the end of the year."

The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) is becoming more automated car these days and there is an interesting article here about cars of the future.

Meanwhile, on a more personal level I am progressing in my robotics development in leaps and bounds since the acquisition of a 3D printer. To say it has changed my life would be an understatement and my wife may (is) regretting buying this for me.

To give you an example I was pretty happy with my development of a robotic arm which I designed and built parts for using my home made CNC machine.

But it has been rapidly superceded with this:

Which rapidly became this:

Now the bug has bitten and I have embarked on this incredible thing.

What really blows me away is the fact that I can build this at home at an affordable price thanks to ordering parts from China and building the plastics on my own 3D printer.

Since Christmas (given that its January the 12th now) I am building things that I had hoped to have the capability of doing maybe five years down the track.

Isn't technology great?

Having said that and being enthused about all things tech I will guarantee that some people will look at the above video and think fearful thoughts about this level of robotics.

Bear in mind that a car, TV or washing machine is just that, a machine.
Just because it looks vaguely like a human does mean that it has human characteristics, it's still a machine.

AI now is a totally different ball game as you can let it make its own decisions based on what it has learned and that's a game changer in anyone's book and a subject for another discussion.

Today is Friday. (TGIF)

Tonight I am going to print a 3D sundial just because I can.

This is an extreme example of either the pinnacle of technology or an example of someone with far too much time on their hands, you choose but it really is super cool.

'Till next time.