US To Drive 3,000 Wi-Fi Linked Vehicles In Massive Crash Avoidance Trial 89
coondoggie writes "The U.S. Department of Transportation said it will run a massive road test of cars, trucks and buses linked together via WiFi equipment in what the agency says will be the largest test of automated crash avoidance technology to date. The test will be conducted by the University of Michigan's Transportation Research Institute (UMTRI), and feature mostly volunteer participants whose vehicles have been outfitted with vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure communication devices."
Ann Arbor drivers thinking about dissertations (Score:4, Funny)
Ann Arbor is a good place to start, its drivers are too preoccupied with their dissertations to watch the road...
Re: (Score:2)
Nonsense. They came up with jazz (as well as a number of other genres of music), technology, and so on.
Re: (Score:2)
Nonsense. They came up with jazz
Far more notable than his skin color is the fact that the inventor of jazz music was a schitzophrenic. But my question is, why are you feeding that troll? He's at -1 and invisible, don't encourage these jerks. Just ignore them.
Re: (Score:2)
A little education goes a long way. But sadly, I think you are correct.
Re: (Score:1)
Blacks do not innovate.
False. [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:2)
Alright, you've convinced me. The question now is, do you have some sort of ultimate answer to the black problem? How's that new flavor of Mt. Dew tasting by the way?
I don't know about an 'ultimate answer', but judging by what he wrote, I bet he has a 'final solution'.
Re: (Score:1)
Figures an anonymous coward posted this -- don't quite have the balls to say it with your name attached, do ya?
Of course, anonymous coward in your case also equals ignorant retard. That's one thing that's really frustrating about racism -- the people who practice it seem to actually be mentally deficient in addition to being hateful fucks who serve no purpose on the planet, except possibly as landfill or speed bumps. You almost feel sorry for people so rigorously stupid, but then you don't. It's like a g
Re: (Score:3)
Slashdot "nigger" trolls aren't necessarily racist. OK, yes, they use that word a lot, but that's simply evolution, they've learned (collectively, not individually) that using the N word is likely to get a reaction, and this promotes further troll activity of this nature. Res
Re: (Score:2)
That's one thing that's really frustrating about racism -- the people who practice it seem to actually be mentally deficient in addition to being hateful fucks
You have to realize that half the people on the planet have two digit IQs. Racism has one purpose -- to keep poor dumb whites and blacks at each others' throats and blame each other for their poverty and hopelessness (yes, there are more whites on food stamps than blacks) so they won't attack their real enemies, the 1% and their lapdog, the Tea Party.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
And with the forward facing radar, the bastard computers can tailgate you even worse than Ann Arbor drivers!
Of course, this would render my favorite method of retaliation on a tailgater null - riding my windshield washer for about 1/2 mile.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
This trick works best if the balloons are filled with hydrogen!
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I'd recommend Austin for a number of reasons:
1: Most major roads have not been upgraded since the 1970s, with the last real traffic improvement being done in '95 (183).
2: A ton of various driving styles, due to people coming from all backgrounds.
3: Drunk/drugged drivers due to multiple universities in the area (UT, TSU, even A&M sometimes.)
4: Very unforgiving roads in the city core. Run a light, and you might get hit by a train.
5: Lots of semis that act as radio wave blockers.
6: Lots of techies,
Re: (Score:1)
4: Very unforgiving roads in the city core. Run a light, and you might get hit by a train.
I like that. I say let's put railroad crossings at every intersection.
Re: (Score:2)
Disagree. Austin is considerably easier to drive in than several other places:
I think you also underestimate the amount of new road work being done -- 183 has
Re: (Score:2)
I agree that the bus system is awful -- but to correct a factual point, it isn't free-of-charge for the hobos, merely cheap (as they tend to buy day passes and use them to the max)... and not cheap for anyone on the express routes; I use those only if I have a month pass for the train, which has MetroExpress folded in. Moreover, being pri
Re: (Score:2)
I live in Austin, and it's a hell of a lot easier driving than Boston, which has all the features you mention plus angry Massholes who will cut you off as they lean on the horn and give you the finger.
3000 WiFi radios at once ? (Score:4, Interesting)
3000 WiFi radios emiting together on how many channels and using what bandwidth ? Even if they drop to 1Mbps and use all 11 US 802.11 2.4Ghz channels, the collisions caused by ~270 devices on the same channell will make that network unuseable.
What about the trolls with a WiFi jammer (like a microwave over with a screwdriver jammed in the door safety switch) ? Turn-it on and watch the pile-ups.
Or will they use all channels in the 802.11n 5Ghz spectrum ?
Re:3000 WiFi radios at once ? (Score:4, Funny)
..the collisions caused by ~270 devices on the same channell will make that network unuseable.
With that many collisions, that would make the road pretty much unusable too.
Re: (Score:1)
Sponsored by: Orville Redenbacher!
We need at least a couple drunk humans driving this circuit, preferably in 1970s-era pickups.
Re:3000 WiFi radios at once ? (Score:5, Informative)
Because of course the engineers building an automated network aren't aware enough to think about what the car should do if it loses connections to other cars...
If I had to hazard a guess, I'd say that the 3000 radios aren't all transmitting to each other. Rather, each one would lower its power to broadcast only to its immediate area, so other cars can avoid it. A jammer would force cars nearby to switch to backup systems, and other vehicles could increase their own transmission power to compensate for the noise.
Also note that though the article uses the term "WiFi", these are likely not standard 802.11 devices. Rather, they are in the 5.9 GHz band [wikipedia.org], with 75MHz bandwidth.
Re: (Score:3)
But as you said, engineers probably have thought of what happens if data reliability turns to zero, but also implement some of the Ad-hoc/Mesh networking routing techniques to properly propagate sufficient data (it's not like all the 3000 vehicles will start transmitting HD video to each other, right?). To the GP, this experiment will
Re:3000 WiFi radios at once ? (Score:4, Insightful)
These aren't driverless cars. The crash-avoidance system is a supplement to help drivers avoid collision (giving them warnings of incoming cars at intersections, alerts of possible rear end collisions, stuff like that), rather than a replacement for the drivers. In other words, if the system goes down you simply don't get the benefits, which is exactly what we have now anyways.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
This is possible. You'd have to track car length (a tractor-trailer truck takes much longer to go through the stop light than a Prius, for instance) and that would prevent pedestrian crossings at stoplights, which is actually a pretty significant problem. Of course in some places you could build a bridge or tunnel for them, but that isn't feasible everywhere.
Such system are, however, a natural progression of automated driving and would massively decrease travel times and fuel wastage (in theory, every car c
Re: (Score:2)
Why pay for a new system? Get rid of traffic lights, stop signs, yield signs and one-way streets and reap the benefits of increases economy and shorter journey times.
Re: (Score:2)
If we could get rid of traffic lights, stop signs and yield signs, I am sure we could increase gas mileage enough to pay for the system.
The less gasoline is sold, the fewer taxes are collected. It would be good for the motorist, but bad for the city government that would be tasked with paying for it.
I suspect that's why Springfield has twice as many traffic lights and stop signs per capita than the average city -- to reduce your gas mileage and collect more tax (sales tax is collected on gasoline and diesel
Re: (Score:2)
Based on the experience of 802.11a/g/n in my house, you'd have to fit 270 cars in 10'.
Re: (Score:2)
Let's put them all in a big circle, pointed inward, and have them accelerate as fast as possible toward the center. Then see what happens! :D
That would be video worth watching!
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Without RTFA, I'm thinking that the typical message would only need to be about 100 bytes or less, every 100 msec. so the throughput per car would only be on the order of 1KiB to 2KiB per second, even taking encryption into account. So that's 10-20 Kbps per car - quite a bit better than 100Mbps. Just guessing, of course.
And I wouldn't be surprised if any production system would have its own set of channels that are illegal to use for anything but navigation. This wouldn't stop the jammers, but it would
Re: (Score:2)
3000 WiFi radios emiting together on how many channels and using what bandwidth ?
Yeah, all 3000 devices will have high gain antennas and be on the same stretch of road.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
It can't be difficult to build a powerful Wi-Fi jammer. Like almost anything wireless, this sounds like a dangerous thing to develop reliance on.
Screw that, MITM those bastards and send them all bad coordinates.
Or is this one of those closed "look how perfect everything works in a lab environment, which of course translates to identical real world results!" type of trials?
Re: (Score:2)
I can see it already... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Nonsense. It will be a 14-car pileup, with the rest working perfectly. It'll give the tea drinking engineers at DOT something to ponder over (bonus points if they find a reference to "Grassy Knoll" in the core dump).
Data release? (Score:1)
I'm sure there would be privacy concerns (maybe not, given that it's volunteer), but I would love to see som graphical animations of how these Wi-Fi-equipped cars interact with each other around a town. It would be interesting to see a heat map of overlap with regard to things like rush hour, sporting events, etc.
I have to assume they'll have Wi-Fi stations set up in various spots to monitor traffic. Could replace the old pressure tubes for estimating throughput.
mostly volunteer? (Score:4, Funny)
Will they at least tell the non-volunteers that their vehicle has been modified? I hope medical scientists don't pick up this new way of increasing the size of your test group.
I can't wait (Score:2)
...for the video of the resulting Blues Brothers style pile-up.
The results? (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
This is how it *really* starts.... (Score:2)
And this is how it begins. First the computers keep you from crashing your car. Then they are injected into every car.
Then they eliminate us all.
Re:eliminate us all. (Score:2)
"Powered by Windows 8"
Re: (Score:2)
"Powered by Windows 8"
Then we have nothing to fear, Hackers will still be in control of everything.
Is NASCAR selling tickets ? (Score:2)
Where do the spectators sit?
link to project page (Score:5, Informative)
Here is the DOT project page [dot.gov] on the experiment, which includes a nice FAQ, and a description of the purpose.
This particular 3,000-vehicle experiment, fwiw, is not intended to test the crash-avoidance technology in a live trial, but rather to collect a data set. The indicators aren't going to be displayed to the drivers on a HUD or anything, but just recorded for analysis, along with vehicle position/telemetry.
surely... (Score:5, Funny)
...they are using the wrong networking topology? Token ring is the way to go if you don't want collisions .
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
That will only work if you're driving in circles.
I thought that was why they started building roundabouts all over the place.
Re: (Score:2)
Ethernet doesn't have collisions anymore, either. Hubs are a thing of the past.
They missed something (Score:3)
Sounds like "Maximum Overdrive" just became viable (Score:1)
What a great idea (Score:1)
Put our safety in the hands of equipment operating in unlicensed spectrum that can be interfered with by every microwave, cordless phone, and cell phone hotspot within 200 yards.
Unintended consequence (Score:2)
Just like a free lunch, there ain't no such thing as a care-free autonomous car.
More likely (Score:1)