Google Self-Driving Car Project  Monthly Report  May 2016   

ON THE ROAD 

   

 

SOUNDS OF THE SELF-DRIVING CAR 

  Every day, we hear a chorus of sounds on the road: cars accelerating, music playing, cyclists whirring past. This  month, we explore how we’re developing the voice of a self-driving car.     Down with the tyrannical horn: Teaching a self-driving car to honk    In his 1983 essay, The Tyranny of the Horn, Eugene Garfield describes the car horn as an “instrument of  torture” — something anyone who’s ever sat in a traffic jam can tell you. When the car horn was first  developed, “a predictable thing happened. Any usefulness that the horn had was quickly negated by the fact  that people in cities were constantly tooting at one another.”     The human act of honking may be (performance) art, but our self-driving cars aim to be polite, considerate,  and only honk when it makes driving safer for everyone.     

Google Self-Driving Car Project  Monthly Report  May 2016  Our self-driving cars are designed to see 360  degrees and not be distracted, unlike human  drivers, who are not always fully aware of their  surroundings. Our self-driving software is  designed to recognize when honking may help  alert other drivers to our presence — for  example, when a driver begins swerving into our  lane or backing out of a blind driveway. During  testing, we taught our vehicles to distinguish  between potentially tricky situations and false  positives, i.e. the difference between a car facing  the wrong way during a three-point turn, and one  that’s about to drive down the wrong side of the  road. At first, we only played the horn inside the  vehicle so we wouldn’t confuse others on the road  with a wayward beep. Each time our cars sound  the horn, our test drivers take note whether the  beep was appropriate, and this feedback helps  our engineering team refine our software further. 

  As our honking algorithms improved, we’ve begun broadcasting our car horn to the world. We’ve even  taught our vehicles to use different types of honks depending on the situation. If another vehicle is slowly  reversing towards us, we might sound two short, quieter pips as a friendly heads up to let the driver know  we’re behind. However, if there’s a situation that requires more urgency, we’ll use one loud sustained honk.     Our goal is to teach our cars to honk like a patient, seasoned driver. As we become more experienced  honkers, we hope our cars will also be able to predict how other drivers respond to a beep in different  situations.    ++++++++++    The hum of our prototype vehicle    For many people who live in our test cities, the design of our prototype vehicles makes them easy to  distinguish from other vehicles on the road. But those with a keen ear may also recognize the distinct  sounds of our self-driving prototype.     Because our prototype is an electric vehicle, our engine does not purr or rev like combustion engines. But  quiet isn’t always a good thing. Pedestrians and cyclists often rely on sound to alert them to a nearby car,  particularly if they’re about to cross the street or change lanes. For people with visual impairments, the  sound of an approaching vehicle can be critical information. 

Google Self-Driving Car Project  Monthly Report  May 2016    We’ve designed the hum of our vehicle to be familiar so that pedestrians and cyclists around know what to  expect. Our prototype mimics the sound characteristics of traditional cars, such as increasing the pitch when  it accelerates, and decreasing the pitch when it decelerates.      But we also wanted to insert a little personality and create a unique voice for our self-driving car, so we  looked to different places for inspiration — from other vehicles and modes of transport to consumer  electronics products to ambient art sculptures (we even previously experimented with the sound of an  orca!). From these explorations, we’ve aimed to have a voice that matches our face: neighbors often tell us  our prototype vehicles look friendly and a little futuristic, and we hope we sound like it, too.       

TRAFFIC COLLISIONS INVOLVING AUTONOMOUS FLEET 

  Given the time we’re spending on busy streets, we’ll inevitably be involved in collisions; sometimes it’s impossible to  overcome the realities of speed and distance. Thousands of minor crashes happen every day on typical American  streets, 94% of them involving human error, and as many as 55% of them go unreported. (And we think this  number is low; for more, see here.)    (CA regulations require us to submit CA DMV form OL316 Report of Traffic Accident Involving an Autonomous  Vehicle for all collisions involving our cars. The following summaries are what we submitted in the “Accident  Details” section of that form.)    May 4, 2016: A Google self-driving prototype vehicle in manual mode and proceeding west on Latham St. in  Mountain View struck a median while travelling at 9 mph near the intersection of Chiquita Ave. There were  no other vehicles involved and no traffic in the vicinity. There were no injuries. The Google AV sustained  minor damage.       

WHAT WE’VE BEEN READING 

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  Financial Times: Driverless cars: When robots rule the world [Video] (May 2016)  New York Times: It’s no accident: Advocates want to speak of car ‘crashes’ instead (May 2016)  Automotive News: Silicon Valley and Detroit: The best of frenemies (May 2016)  Outside Magazine: Want to Keep Roadies Safe? Get Google on It. (May 2016) 

Google Self-Driving Car Project Monthly Report (PDF)

May 4, 2016 - our engineering team refine our software further. As our honking ... Thousands of minor crashes happen every day on typical American streets ...

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