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C00002 00002	  	             COMPUTER CONTROLLED CARS
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  	             COMPUTER CONTROLLED CARS

  	There have been a number of proposals for  automatic  control
of cars.  Mostly, they have involved simple servo-mechanisms that
sense a cable buried in the roadway  and  some  other  mechanism  for
sensing  the distance of the car ahead.  Such a scheme was studied at
RCA at the instigation of  Zworykin,  but  the  work  was  eventually
abandoned.

	In  science  fiction,  systems  in  which  a  single computer
controls all the cars in a wide area have been depicted  but  without
telling how the system would actually work.

	I am also proposing the computer control of cars.  My system
requires a computer in the car equipped with television camera input
that uses the same visual input available to the human driver.
Essentially, I am proposing an automatic chauffeur.

	The user of a car selects a destination with a keyboard, and
the car drives him there.  Other commands include:  change  destination,
stop at that rest room or restaurant, go slow, go at emergency speed.

	The user need not be a driver and need not even accompany the
car.  This would permit children, old people, and  the  blind
greater personal freedom.   It also permits a husband to be driven to
work, then send the car home for his wife's use, and permits  her  to
send it back for him at the end of the day.   The car can be sent for
servicing or to a store where a telephone-ordered  purchase  will  be
put  in  it.  If there is a suitable telephone system, the car can
deliver a user to a place where there is  no  parking,  go  away  and
park,  and  return when summoned.  It could also be instructed to take
a drunk home safely.  Thus, the system is to have almost all of the
capabilities of a chauffeur.

	In contrast to a system based on a central computer, the
proposed  system  will  be  of advantage to the first person who buys
one, whether anyone else has it or not. It will require no change  in
existing  roads, but will be able to take orders from traffic control
computers when they are installed.  When  freeway  lanes  can  be
dedicated to computer controlled cars they will multiply the capacity
of existing freeways by permitting 80 mile per hour  bumper-to-bumper
traffic  with greater safety than we have at present.  Since the
system is a product and  not  a  public  utility,  competition  among
suppliers will be possible.

	A key goal is to achieve greater safety than we have at
present.  A five-fold reduction in fatalities is probably required to
make  the  system  acceptable.  Much better is possible since humans
really  are  rather  bad  drivers,  but  complete  safety  cannot  be
guaranteed.

	Now  we shall consider the problems that have to be solved in
order to realize the system, beginning with the performance of the
computer, cameras, and associated electronics.

	Present super-mini computers seem to be fast enough and some are
small enough for the job.  The 1970 version of this section estimated
that a suitable computer would occupy the space of a large van, but
that the rate of development would very soon produce computers of more
practical size.  This has indeed been the case.  Some improvement in the
performance and compactness of television cameras is also required, but
it is not yet clear what those requirements are.

	The cost of this hardware needs to be considered also.  At
present prices, a computer capable of  controlling  a  car would cost
$20,000 to $50,000.  A few thousand dollars worth of other electronics
would be required.  Mass  production would reduce these costs by a factor
of three.  This would permit the system to be available as a luxury item.
Another five to ten years might required before computer control would 
only double the price  of the car.  These estimates must be regarded as
guesses.

	We  can  attempt  to  compute  the  required  reliability  of
the computer and other electronics by demanding that present traffic
fatalities be reduced to a fifth the present number, i.e. to 10,000 per
year, and by allocating only half of these fatalities to unreliability of
the electronics.  This further depends on the fraction of failures that
lead  to  fatality, which can be kept quite low by having the computer
check its health and that of the electronics every tenth of a second,
giving  it programs for dealing with partial failures, and providing a
"dead man switch" for stopping the car if the computer fails to reassure
it every  tenth-second.  There are many possibilities in this direction
and the expenditure of much cleverness is called for.

	Nevertheless, present computer failure rates would not be
acceptable even if they never led to accident simply because of the
inconvenience.  We estimate that an improvement of 1000 in
mean-time-between-failures is required.  Rapid progress is being
made in this field, and we expect that ten to fifteen years normal
progress of the computer field will give the required result.

	Developing  the  required  computer  programs  is  the   most
difficult  of  the  required tasks; it will probably take the longest
time; and the amount of time required is very difficult  to  predict.
At the Stanford University Artificial Intelligence Lab an experimental
vehicle was equipped with  a television camera and connected to the
computer with a two-way TV and radio link.  A simple program to guide the
vehicle in following  a white line like that in a road was successfully
checked out.  Unfortunately, this work has not been followed up.  A little
work is being done in various places, by the Japanese among others,  with
machines that follow roads by detecting edges or color regions, and which
predict what the next section of road will look like.  One can turn at
intersections.  All are very crude.  Before computer controlled cars become
a reality a much larger scale effort will have to be made.

	The  nature  and extent of this effort are not easy to foresee
yet.  We are far from having exhausted the possibilities of our
present equipment, but eventually the radio link to the computer will
have to be replaced by a computer in the vehicle, and television
equipment capable of seeing better into shadows in the presence of
bright areas will be required.  We need to be able to  identify  many
different types of objects on the road such as:   persons, vehicles,
animals, traffic police, shadows, pieces of paper,  cardboard  boxes,
objects that have dropped from vehicles, traffic signs and other
signals, intersections, house numbers, and other information required
for navigation.  It will have to be equipped with programs to
recognize and deal with a variety of emergency conditions.  It will
surely be possible to make it better at this than humans since its
attention won't lapse, it can sense the mechanical condition  of  the
car continuously, and it can look to the side, underneath the car,
and behind every second. The most intricate single problem is the  
visual pattern recognition.

	After the required performance is demonstrated and before the
system can be trusted without a human driver an extensive testing
program is required.  To demonstrate that the system is five times
safer than a human driver approximately 25,000 automobile years will
be required. This might be reduced somewhat by concentrating  testing
on situations in which humans make most of their fatal mistakes, but
we would still need to be sure that situations in which  the  program
made fatal blunders peculiar to the computer system were rare enough.
Developments in the mathematical theory  of  computation  may  permit
getting rid of ordinary programming errors and proving that they are
absent, but possible inadequacies in the algorithms themselves can
only be obviated by testing.

	Automobiles without qualified human drivers will require
changes in the law.  Fortunately, testing such systems with a driver
present to take over if necessary will not. Moreover, computer driven
cars will not be able to obey oral instructions from policemen , so a
digital system will have to be developed.  A  general  resistance  to
technological innovation on the part of the literary culture will
have to be overcome, but it seems to me that after the test phase the
advantages will be clear enough so that this will not be difficult.
	
	Computers are already coming into use in some systems of some cars.
Some luxury and sports cars use computers in their non-skid braking
systems, in which the computer senses an impending skid and reduces
traction accordingly.  This may encourage acceptance of computer control
of the car itself.

	The development of computer controlled cars will cost several
billion dollars.  A computer program capable of reliably taking care of 
all the contingencies that can arisen driving a car will have to
be more complex than any ever written, and adequate testing will require
a complex  organization.   Fortunately, the commitment of large amounts of
money will be required only after spectacular though unreliable performance
will have been demonstrated. There ought to be more than one group working
on the problem to ensure adequate diversity of approach.

	This problem is within the jurisdiction of the Department of
Transportation, but, like the  automobile  companies and the computer
companies who also might be expected to help, their  past record of
seeing beyond the ends of their noses is not encouraging.  Because the
programming is the pacing item, more support at this time will hasten the
day when computer control of cars is achieved, but the possibilities will
be much more obvious in fifteen years  with  the advances in hardware and
programming that are already taking place for other reasons.  Some new
mechanisms for financing several billion dollars worth of research and
development will have to be found.

	Finally, I would like to deal with some arguments that might
be raised against supporting research aimed at computer-controlled
cars:

	"Cars must be done away with because they produce smog,
require too much space, and use up too many natural resources."
	I believe the smog devices will eventually be made  to  work
well,  or if not, another form of propulsion can be found.   Computer
controlled cars will require less space than equivalent present  cars
because they can go faster and closer together on streets, roads and
freeways, because they can park at a distance from a place where they
discharge passengers, and because a computer driven car can be shared
more easily than a conventional car.  If hydrocarbon fuel runs out
and is still required for cars, then with nuclear energy, the burning
reaction can be driven backwards and fuel synthesized from carbon
dioxide and water.

	Many propulsion systems for cars have been studied.  In my
view the most promising long term system is the aluminum-air battery
powering an electric car.  It promises the ability to use nuclear
produced electricity in a system with the performance and range
of a gasoline powered car.

	"A simpler scheme of automatic control is preferable."
	The buried cable and other simple  schemes  do  not  increase
human freedom and convenience.  They  only permit us to use the
freeways a bit more efficiently.  Because of their inability to
detect dogs, children, potholes, and objects that have fallen from
trucks they may require unrealizable control of access to the highway
in order to achieve safety.

	"Some form of automated mass transportation is obviously
better."
	The automobile can go point to point in areas of both low and
high density.  I believe that these advantages should not and will
not voluntarily be given up.  I favor the development of improved
mass transportation, but predict that the automobile will be given up
only for something that works better in all ways, such as an
individual computer controlled flying machine  capable  of  point  to
point transportation.