Remote car steering legalization

[Moreno]

What are the current laws in different countries (particularly Canada, US) about remote car steering? Are there any plans to legalize it? It could be helpful to those people who cannot and do not want to drive themselves.

[dimreepr]

6 minutes ago, Moreno said:

What are the current laws in different countries (particularly Canada, US) about remote car steering? Are there any plans to legalize it? It could be helpful to those people who cannot and do not want to drive themselves.

Taxi's are legal, mostly.

[iNow]

Why not continue focusing on self-driving / autonomous vehicles instead of opening another avenue for hackers for remote control by human hands?

[Moreno]

8 hours ago, dimreepr said:

Taxi's are legal, mostly.

What if a person wants to have a private vehicle, but cannot or doesn't want to drive? I think a vehicle can be equipped with cameras and some person in India or elsewhere can drive it remotely. I expect it is not going to cost too much.

[zapatos]

2 hours ago, Moreno said:

What if a person wants to have a private vehicle, but cannot or doesn't want to drive? I think a vehicle can be equipped with cameras and some person in India or elsewhere can drive it remotely. I expect it is not going to cost too much.

I expect the insurance to cover something like this will make the idea cost prohibitive.

[Raider5678]

9 minutes ago, zapatos said:

I expect the insurance to cover something like this will make the idea cost prohibitive.

I agree. 

Well.

Actually. Now that I'm thinking about it.

Insurance companies perfect driver is someone who never gets tired, doesn't drink and drive, doesn't speed, has almost instantaneous reaction time, can see 360 degrees in all directions, and never get's distracted by cell phones. 

They're not equal to human drivers yet, but I don't imagine it's far.

 

[zapatos]

2 minutes ago, Raider5678 said:

I agree. 

Well.

Actually. Now that I'm thinking about it.

Insurance companies perfect driver is someone who never gets tired, doesn't drink and drive, doesn't speed, has almost instantaneous reaction time, can see 360 degrees in all directions, and never get's distracted by cell phones. 

They're not equal to human drivers yet, but I don't imagine it's far.

 

Indians are generally considered to be human.

[iNow]

Lol! I think raider accidentally switched reference frames there and may have been commenting on self driving vehicles?

[Raider5678]

1 minute ago, zapatos said:

Indians are generally considered to be human.

Sorry, I misread this. I thought it was talking about fully autonomous driving.

Just now, iNow said:

Lol! I think raider accidentally switched reference frames there and may have been commenting on self driving vehicles?

Exactly. It's late, I just finished college classes after working all day, and I'm tired. I probably should be sleeping, as evident by that.

[iNow]

No worries. Thanks for clarifying

[zapatos]

Yeah, I got a chuckle out of it too! 😁

[Raider5678]

2 hours ago, Moreno said:

What if a person wants to have a private vehicle, but cannot or doesn't want to drive? I think a vehicle can be equipped with cameras and some person in India or elsewhere can drive it remotely. I expect it is not going to cost too much.

Imagine having a lag spike while you're turning at a red light.

 

[iNow]

3 minutes ago, Raider5678 said:

Imagine having a lag spike while you're turning at a red light.

Buffering...

[Raider5678]

3 minutes ago, iNow said:

Buffering...

*Car driving down the road with the driver asleep.*

Indian driver: "Crud. I just lost connection."

*Car runs over someone.*

*Connection comes back*

Indian driver: "Ah. There we go."

Breaking News: Man arrested after hit and run. Blames Indians.

Edited September 17, 2019 by Raider5678

[zapatos]

Indian driver: It was the other car's fault! I was driving on the left side of the road like usual!!

[John Cuthber]

On 9/17/2019 at 4:13 AM, zapatos said:

Indian driver: It was the other car's fault! I was driving on the left side of the road like usual!!

Sounds reasonable.

[Airbrush]

A self-driving car is totally different.  It has a camera on top that is spinning around watching everything, ALL the time.  A person remotely controlling the car cannot possibly be watching all around the car, and integrating:  inertial navigation, GPS, radar, video, and lasers.  Is there really a car that can be remotely operated?  If so, it would be using one camera, or several?  I don't think it will be as safe as a self-driving car.  Is there a way to have a human participate in navigation?

"Each [self-driving] car is equipped with an inertial navigation system, GPS, radar, video, and laser rangefinders. The vehicle leverages information gleaned from the inertial navigation system — a device that accumulates errors over time — and the GPS to determine where it is located and then uses the sensor data to further refine its position. From these data inputs, the car builds a three-dimensional image of where it is located."

https://www.dummies.com/consumer-electronics/how-does-a-self-driving-car-work/

I don't believe a human can do all those things at once.

Edited September 19, 2019 by Airbrush

[swansont]

1 hour ago, Airbrush said:

A self-driving car is totally different.  It has a camera on top that is spinning around watching everything, ALL the time.  A person remotely controlling the car cannot possibly be watching all around the car, and integrating:  inertial navigation, GPS, radar, video, and lasers.  Is there really a car that can be remotely operated?  If so, it would be using one camera, or several?  I don't think it will be as safe as a self-driving car.  Is there a way to have a human participate in navigation?

An actual driver can’t be watching all those things, either.

Why couldn’t you have multiple cameras and a VR helmet? The remote driver turns their head, and the view changes accordingly. I don’t think that’s the problem.

 

The problem is latency. Buffering has already been pointed out, but signal delay is the real killer (literally) How long does it take for the signal to reach the remote driver? The minimum latency is 2x that, and it gets subtracted from the response time. In some ways, it will be like every remote driver is driving drunk.

 

[John Cuthber]

1 hour ago, Airbrush said:

I don't believe a human can do all those things at once.

I believe that people can, and do, achieve all those things.

It's called "driving".

It's important to recall that a self driving car doesn't need to be perfect- it needs to be better than a (typical) human.
The most  interesting issue (to me) is a moral one. You need to persuade people to buy a car which will be programmed to kill them in certain circumstances.

 

Another interesting issue (already raised) if it goes wrong, who is responsible?

The driver?

The manufacturer?

The programmer?

[Moreno]

On 9/16/2019 at 11:07 PM, Raider5678 said:

*Car driving down the road with the driver asleep.*

Indian driver: "Crud. I just lost connection."

*Car runs over someone.*

*Connection comes back*

Indian driver: "Ah. There we go."

Breaking News: Man arrested after hit and run. Blames Indians.

Why do you think that probability of loosing connection is much higher than probability of breaks failure or any other technical failure? And why insurance suppose to get skyrocket?

[zapatos]

24 minutes ago, Moreno said:

Why do you think that probability of loosing connection is much higher than probability of breaks failure or any other technical failure?

How many times have you been on your phone while driving and lost the connection? How many times have the brakes on your car failed to stop the car?

27 minutes ago, Moreno said:

And why insurance suppose to get skyrocket?

Because there will be more accidents than if a person in the car is driving.

[StringJunky]

1 hour ago, zapatos said:

How many times have you been on your phone while driving and lost the connection? How many times have the brakes on your car failed to stop the car?

Because there will be more accidents than if a person in the car is driving.

Yeah, sod's law is heavily stacked against the remote driver.

 

[John Cuthber]

7 hours ago, Moreno said:

Why do you think that probability of loosing connection is much higher than probability of breaks failure or any other technical failure?

You missed the fact that the same "mechanical" failures will still happen. Having a remote driver doesn't stop the brakes failing

You just add more things that can go wrong, so the odds of something going wrong get worse.

[Sensei]

On 9/19/2019 at 9:17 PM, swansont said:

The problem is latency. Buffering has already been pointed out, but signal delay is the real killer (literally) How long does it take for the signal to reach the remote driver? The minimum latency is 2x that, and it gets subtracted from the response time. In some ways, it will be like every remote driver is driving drunk.

In the worst case scenario (opposite side of the Earth) it is 2 * 20,000 km / 300,000 km/s = 0.133 s... plus delays caused by hardware..

With satellite transmission (instead of underwater oceanic fiber wire) it would be even worse.

[swansont]

3 hours ago, Sensei said:

In the worst case scenario (opposite side of the Earth) it is 2 * 20,000 km / 300,000 km/s = 0.133 s... plus delays caused by hardware..

With satellite transmission (instead of underwater oceanic fiber wire) it would be even worse.

And it would probably be satellite, so at least triple that distance (for a geostationary comms satellite), or fiber optics for most of the path, in which case the transmission speed is more like 200,000 km/s.