The moral choice of the robot. Can cars with autopilot win the market?

Last week, Tesla announced the start of production of a car with a full -fledged autopilot, which, according to Ilon Mask, will begin to work in a year. Will serial robots will appear in 2017?

Autopilot or assistant

In September, the US Department of Transport first issued a document regulating the use of autonomous vehicles. There is nothing fundamentally new in it - all standards are taken from industrial robotics. But the fact of political and legislative support for the industry, descriptions of financing mechanisms and its development are noteworthy. Now in the USA, in fact, the rules of the game are defined. This can reduce the time of implementation of technology by 3-5 years and help attract additional state and private financing. The main political slogan of the document: “In the United States, 35 thousand people die in accidents annually in accidents due to human mistakes. This can be fixed and saved hundreds of thousands of lives. ” In Russia, as you know, the situation with death on the roads is no better. How can autonomous cars change this?

There are two most famous classifications of autopiloted cars in the world - NHTSA and SAE. All modern driver assistants (Driver Assistant), including installed on Tesla, are now moving from the first level according to these classifications. If the zero level of autopilot is a warning system that is unable to control (for example, parking sensors, for example, are included), then the first and second imply a full transfer to the robot of the car control functions - braking, parking, maintenance of the strip and steering.

The difference in levels, in fact, is the degree of control by the driver for autopilot. At the first level, the driver should not take his eyes off the road and be ready at any second to duplicate the actions of the autopilot. On the second, it is enough for him to monitor the situation on the road as a whole and be ready to take control in case of approaching the intersection. The first level of autopilot requires the driver to independently rebuild from the strip to the strip, and in the case of an error, it takes control and blocks the restructuring. On the second, he is rebuilt independently - it is enough to give a command, for example, as in Tesla, turning on the corresponding turn signal.

The third level involves the full control of the car autopilot in certain sections of the road, for example, on autobahns. Volvo has already announced a full -scale test of a hundred cars on public roads next year. Level 4 involves the full control of the car autopilot in all situations, except for force majeure-for example, strong rain or winter Moscow. Level 5 is already like in films about the future: you can send a car with an autopilot to bring a mother -in -law from a dacha by sticking a point on the map.

Each driver with an assistant will say that a couple of times the system really helped him out

Modern assistants initially severely annoy the driver, they want to turn it off. I rolled on cars with different assistants of the driver at least one thousand kilometers. Some do not allow to rebuild in another row, if the turn signal is not turned on, others, when turning even at low speeds, can incorrectly evaluate the trajectory and turn on the emergency braking system. In bad weather conditions, these systems work even worse, and some situations do not recognize at all - for example, a white car with a bright sun on a bright asphalt. But most drivers nevertheless note that assistants more often help with a loss of concentration than they fail. Each driver with an assistant will say that a couple of times the system really helped him out.

Now I go to Tesla and after a loud accident I can say that The company's problem is that in pursuit of PR the manufacturer called his assistant incorrect in this case the word “autopilot”. From Ilon Mask, everyone is waiting for miracles so much that it simply cannot present a car with the functionality that competitors for a couple of years.

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