deanb Posted January 15, 2012 Author Report Share Posted January 15, 2012 (Engadget don't use youtube so they just get boring links)http://www.engadget....hands-on-video/http://www.engadget....hands-on-video/There's plenty more btw. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
deanb Posted January 26, 2012 Author Report Share Posted January 26, 2012 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
deanb Posted January 26, 2012 Author Report Share Posted January 26, 2012 http://www.nytimes.c...-symposium.html A bit about the legal issues of the autonomous cars. Mainly Googles. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fuchikoma Posted January 26, 2012 Report Share Posted January 26, 2012 I hadn't thought of it before, but I guess one good use for autonomous vehicles would be contraband. Think of the drug cartels that can afford automatic weaponry and even military explosives... they could buy a robocar, load it up with cocaine (or meth, or whatever's profitable lately) and send it to make a delivery. If the cops pull it over, who do they arrest? It could be clean, unregistered, scrubbed of serial numbers, or even in time, built on a stolen car. They could even add things like if it senses a police radio transmission too close to it, it goes and hangs out at an alternate location for a while so it doesn't incriminate the receiver. Hmm... road-going anonymous packages... I suppose they could also put bombs inside, though I'm thinking drones would be locked out of most areas where VIPs are going to be already. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
deanb Posted January 26, 2012 Author Report Share Posted January 26, 2012 Just make it so vehicles require a passenger. Also you'd have a vehicle with your location, or at least drop off point, included in it. Oh and you lose your stash too. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fuchikoma Posted January 26, 2012 Report Share Posted January 26, 2012 If a vehicle was smart enough to run without a driver, it could be rigged to run without one, even illegally. They could only get the location if they tailed it without it misleading them, or if they could read/decrypt the navigation files onboard. It could also go to a one-time meeting place to do a dropoff. You'd lose your stash no matter how you got busted, if you were delivering it - but it'd be beneficial not to lose an associate in the process, especially if they may give the police info on the operation. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheMightyEthan Posted January 26, 2012 Report Share Posted January 26, 2012 I would assume they'd find a way to read the navigation files. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fuchikoma Posted January 26, 2012 Report Share Posted January 26, 2012 Considering how these things are still basically computers - not lacking in power, given the feeds they have to process to drive - if someone wanted to hide it, I'd think cracking it could literally be as hard as decrypting a TrueCrypt volume. Unless they could gain access to the computer without tripping any tamper sensors, hack into it, and analyze the RAM image or hijack the running session to read the mounted disk, I don't see how they'd manage. Anyway, I'm not saying these vehicles should not be allowed, just that it does present emergent legal issues. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
deanb Posted January 26, 2012 Author Report Share Posted January 26, 2012 But only the internal PC would be encrypted, the signals the car sends out to every other passing car won't be. And if it tries to fuck about with the signals it sends or uses an encrypted none authorised system the other cars in the vicinity would tattle tale on it and then you'd definitely draw attention to your car. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fuchikoma Posted January 26, 2012 Report Share Posted January 26, 2012 (edited) I haven't seen a system where the car has to continually broadcast its final destination yet. Has that become part of Google's specs or something? Are they even required to transmit, considering they're also driving with humans on the road who can't use those signals? Is there an intervehicular automatic suspicious activity reporting meshnet being tested? This sounds like a lot of assumptions, where I'm basically talking about something out of the DARPA Grand Challenge competitions, with maybe a hack to detect radios on a certain frequency to spot the cops. Edited January 26, 2012 by fuchikoma Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
deanb Posted January 26, 2012 Author Report Share Posted January 26, 2012 We humans not being able to use those signals is why computers beat humans at driving cars safely. If we had the telepathic ability to know of each cars/drivers intentions there would be a lot less accidents. They'll also be running off GPS, which is a military system, bit harder to mess with. And no there's no meshnet in place, but when you've got automated cars with wireless communications up the wazoo, it'd be stupid not to place some kind of 999 type system in place for when say there's a car crash (accidents will happen) or the car has broken down or something. Yes I'm making some assumptions, but you're making just as many. Especially the one about there being no driver at all, as has been stated the cars still need a person behind the wheel, even if a computer is doing most of the driving. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheMightyEthan Posted January 26, 2012 Report Share Posted January 26, 2012 Even though I'm sure they'll make the cars to require a driver, if they're capable of driving without control input from that driver I don't think it's unreasonable to expect someone to figure out how to hack it so it can drive with no one in it. I mean, supposedly regular cars require keys but it's still possible to get them started without one. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fuchikoma Posted January 26, 2012 Report Share Posted January 26, 2012 (edited) There's no need to interfere with the vehicle/drone's GPS. It's a passive technology, so there wouldn't be a GPS signal coming from the car. It makes sense that automatic vehicles would adopt some kind of communications, but unless every car on the road was required to get a transponder, I don't see how they'd notice that an automatic vehicle didn't have one unless maybe they had special plates, and tested one another when following. My assumption is that if autonomous vehicles were made legal, someone might put a payload into what's been demonstrated already - apart from encryption, but since some of these cars already run Linux and Windows on desktop hardware, encryption would be trivial to implement. My misdirection idea wouldn't even be needed if they went to drop sites, but an amateur could still implement it by adding a radio receiver and if it picks up police band over a certain dBm value, it could go park at an alternate site for 6 hours or something before finishing the trip. I haven't seen the requirement for a driver, outside of competitions, but I agree it would probably be included in the first version of the law that allows them. In time, I could see it being relaxed as the safety record improves though, especially for things like long-haul trucking on highways and like I said, if the vehicle CAN go without a driver, then you may as well hack it to do so to avoid being arrested. If the police catch it, they'd just seize the goods and impound the car. Edited January 26, 2012 by fuchikoma Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thursday Next Posted January 27, 2012 Report Share Posted January 27, 2012 Why not just have police stop and search any unoccupied passenger vehicles? Cars are made to take people places. Vans are used to take things places with the people who use those things. Only trucks / goods vehicles have a redundant human component. Unmanned goods vehicles could all have to have registered "flight plans". Any unregistered, unmanned goods vehicle or any unmanned passenger vehicle would be stopped. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheMightyEthan Posted January 27, 2012 Report Share Posted January 27, 2012 So put a dummy in the driver's seat. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fuchikoma Posted January 27, 2012 Report Share Posted January 27, 2012 I'd think they wouldn't stop every unmanned vehicle for the same reason they don't open every domestic letter and package - manpower and maybe rights issues. Though there's the added concern of them blending in with traffic. I like your "flight plan" idea though. It may catch them as often as license plate checks foil car thieves, which is something. If the sender had to register the course of the car before sending it out, it may help (though it may be as effective as requiring auto insurance too - so many don't have it and just don't get pulled over.) I do know it wouldn't work to make the cars report their itinerary on demand, since they could lie about it. Still, if an officer checked a car in their registry and saw it didn't have a plan, they could pull it over and check it. I think that'd be the equivalent of port authorities checking cargo containers. I've been thinking of hypothetical ways to pull these things over too. Maybe some kind of pylon beacon system - so you could have road pylons (or police transmitters) that send a low-power signal that announces the location of the barrier. Drones have to comply with this standard and stop when requested until dismissed. That way you could pull them over, or keep them out of specially cordoned-off areas. If they failed to stop, the officers could use force to stop them immediately. The problem with this is that someone would find a way to use it to steal from the cars/trucks, so there would have to be some way it could generally interact with the public's cars, but only allow police and special parties to use it. (I'm thinking public key cryptography - so the cops could encrypt it for the car, the transmission couldn't be snooped, and the car could decode it, but even if someone read the car's key and deciphered the message, they wouldn't know how to encode it like the police would because they'd have the "private" key and lack the "public" one. That may become an issue eventually if they had to keep a big list of old, expired keys on the transmitters, but I guess updating those could be part of an occasional road certification for the drones...) Someone stop me if I'm getting way overboard here... I'm interested in firmware design and named after an autonomous vehicle, heh Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheMightyEthan Posted January 27, 2012 Report Share Posted January 27, 2012 For pulling them over I was imagining a system similar to the transmitters that police, firefighters and ambulances use to override stoplights. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheFlyingGerbil Posted February 3, 2012 Report Share Posted February 3, 2012 (edited) and so the robo-apocalypse begins... Edited February 3, 2012 by TheFlyingGerbil Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
deanb Posted February 3, 2012 Author Report Share Posted February 3, 2012 I was gonna post this, but I think I've posted them several times already. They're rather impressive. Albeit they send all the right audio signals to the "flight" part of my "flight or fight" instinct receptors. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheMightyEthan Posted February 3, 2012 Report Share Posted February 3, 2012 Luckily I live in an area with natural defenses against such things: near-constant 20 mph winds, with lots of gusting. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thursday Next Posted February 3, 2012 Report Share Posted February 3, 2012 So put a dummy in the driver's seat. With some of the driving I've seen out there, a dummy would be preferable, unmanned driving system notwithstanding. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
deanb Posted February 7, 2012 Author Report Share Posted February 7, 2012 So scientists have this injectable putty that can heal bones super fast: http://www.geek.com/articles/geek-cetera/fracture-putty-can-heal-a-broken-bone-in-days-2012027/ - laymans http://news.uga.edu/releases/article/uga-discovery-uses-fracture-putty-to-repair-broken-bone-in-days/ - full blown It has funding from DoD, so I assume they want to use this on soldiers out on the battlefield. If you can have someone combat ready in a few days after a fracture that'll be awesome for them. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheMightyEthan Posted February 7, 2012 Report Share Posted February 7, 2012 So what you're saying is they've invented Medigel? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fuchikoma Posted February 8, 2012 Report Share Posted February 8, 2012 Yow. I wonder what the odds are of bone spurs or arterial calcification, say, if you have it done 3-4 times in a few years? Still, it's sure to be a boon to combat medicine. I've also read about electrical stimulation to promote bone healing (I think that's based on old Russian research. Ultrasound has been used as well, but the studies I found had conflicting results. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Yantelope V2 Posted February 14, 2012 Report Share Posted February 14, 2012 http://www.hardocp.com/news/2012/02/14/camera_that_removes_people_from_background63/ Hmmm, gotta be a fake demo but I could see how the tech could work by merging several photos. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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