Can Autonomous Vehicles Navigate?

Isn’t navigating without a person complex and expensive? Seems like an obvious question.

It may be complex, but it it’s no longer expensive :-)

When I was a boy, my uncle worked for Lockheed and loved airplanes. He took me to a remote control airplane show and we watched a model B-36  take off and fly. Today this B-36 remote control plane shows 50 years of technology advances, but the concept is the same.

These hobbyists have been working on these models, and today you can buy model planes and even helicopter “drones” that essentially fly themselves. You can buy them as kits or pre-assembled.

What about the technology that makes this possible, and inexpensive?

Think about what an iPhone processor does, with GPS, accelerometers, and a high-resolution camera. Think about the user interface, you see graphics, you touch it for input, and even talk to it. Think about the battery keeping all this going for days.

Now apply all this technology to the challenge of navigation. Chris Anderson in the June 2012 issue Wired Magazine has given some insight into this world of progress: How I Accidentally Kickstarted the Domestic Drone Boom. Here’s his description of how available the navigation technology is:

“Today, all the sensors required to make a functioning autopilot have become radically smaller and radically cheaper. Gyroscopes, which measure rates of rotation; magnetometers, which function as digital compasses; pressure sensors, which measure atmospheric pressure to calculate altitude; accelerometers, to measure the force of gravity—all the capabilities of these technologies are now embedded in tiny chips that you can buy at RadioShack. Indeed, some of the newest sensors combine three-axis accelerometers, gyros, and magnetometers (nine sensors in all), plus a temperature gauge and a processor, into one little package that costs about $17.”

Hopefully this convinces you that it is inexpensive to solve these complex navigation challenges. Next we’ll talk about completely Autonomous Vehicles. 

Are Autonomous Vehicle Feasible?

Are Autonomous Vehicles really feasible? Are they realistic in any reasonable time frame? Excellent questions, and hopefully this will help convince you that both answers are YES!

It’s always challenging predicting the future of technology, we tend to be too optimistic in the short term and too pessimistic in the long term. So much depends on what else gets invented, how it relates to other technologies, the buzz generated, etc.

One key indicator is whether there is strong demand for a technology. That’s why I’ve been talking so much, and will continue, about specific uses and the people who really need the types of technology I’m discussing. Note, I don’t care if my specific ideas get picked up, what I really want is that the problems I’m discussing get a solution, or multiple solutions. I’m hoping to stir people up to build a new transport system.

So on to feasibility!

I’ve already talked about Kiva Systems that are already deployed and working wonderfully in the warehouses of major companies. And I believe these units could just as easily pick up a chair with you sitting in it – we’ll discuss the costs, challenges and details of this in future posts. J

I’ve also talked about Google and the others in the Autonomous Vehicle race to coexist, or even replace, the automobile. You could argue that these are still experimental, and I would agree. But they are also solving a much more complex and harder problem than we need for the Autonomous Vehicles I’ve been discussing. They have to deal with the well known foibles of human drivers, and all the other challenges of highways and byways: dogs, children, flying debris, rain, wind, … 

Science News is a bi-weekly magazine that covers developments in science, and is not oriented toward technology. So I was fascinated with the article in the March 9, 2013 issue The 3-D Printing Revolution. You might say, what’s so new about that, I’ve been reading about it for a long time, for example this Nov. 30, 2012 Wired article Next Years 3-D Printers Promise Big Things – Really Big Things that says the 3D printing industry is decades old.  Speaking of vehicle feasibility,  the article shows a printed bike, and the printer that made it.

The Science News Article features an autonomous boat, almost entirely printed.  The science angle is that the inventors hope to build a fleet of these to be used for collecting scientific data. There is even a Kickstarter project for the Robotboat Mark VI. BTW, Science News talked about the potential for 3-D printing for living cells in January 26. 2008 article (sorry you need a subscription to get access ;-(. 

One of the innovations that led to the Robot Boat was a novel rudder, which the inventor printed out in tact, even including a spring (which I find truly amazing).

So if items of this complexity can be printed today in your home, or in your neighborhood 3-D printshop , the types of vehicles I’m talking about are definitely feasible.

In the next posts I’ll talk about specifics, such as navigation, avoidance, …