Is This A Good Idea : Science Channel

June 07, 2011

I'm a specimen of that endangered human subspecies, Homo sapiens pedestrian, who actually still use bipedal locomotion to get from one place to another. We find our vanishing migratory habitat -- that is, the crosswalk -- increasingly encroached upon by automobile drivers, who are loathe to interrupt their texting or Angry Birds obsession simply so that those of us on foot can get from one street corner to the next without risking becoming a hood ornament. I have come to accept the necessity of waving my arms and yelling loudly and profanely from the moment that I step off the sidewalk, with the intent of jarring oncoming drivers out of their digital reverie just enough for them to slow down, but not startling them so much that they accidentally stomp on the accelerator rather than the brake. I'm concerned, however, that over the long term, the odds are not in my favor.

For that reason, I'm not happy to hear that the automotive industry, in an effort to market to a new generation of 24-7 wired drivers, is eagerly implementing onboard communication systems that enable not just hands-free texting, but also hands-free use of social networks while you're behind the wheel. Gizmodo reported last September, for example, that GM's OnStar communication-navigation system is being augmented with Audio Facebook, which will read back your news feed to you and let you update your status with an audio recording. And in January, according to this item from Mashable, car audio and electronics maker Pioneer is introducing technology that will connect to Twitter and Facebook accounts, read friends' status updates and tweets aloud, and even display their faces on the dashboard screen. This Ohgizmo.com article also informs us of a recently developed car stereo that allows you to dock your iPhone and utilize its apps and touchscreen. And though it's not designed to facilitate gaming, one can imagine the potential for misuse. The Angry Birds addicts aren't going to be deprived of their fun.

You might think that hands-free Internet devices are the solution to distracted driving, but the science doesn't back that up. To the contrary: According to this 2006 study published in the journal Accident Analysis and Prevention, when drivers perform demanding cognitive tasks -- i.e., coming up with a witty reply to a friend's latest Twitter bon mot -- their visual behavior changes, so that they spend more time staring straight ahead and less often scan the periphery. That means they're less likely to spot another car -- or a pedestrian -- until it is directly in front of them. Additionally, they scan traffic signals less frequently, increasing the risk of plowing through a red light. When they do perceive a hazard up ahead, digitally distracted drivers tend to hit the brake harder in response, and they generally also have a higher rate of cognitive errors.

On the other hand, I'm not sure that I want the roads full of Internet addicts grappling with the irritability and concentration woes that result from being forced to go cold turkey whenever they're behind the wheel. That's assuming they'd even have the willpower to do that. This Autoguide.com article reports on a recent insurance company study that found nearly one in five drivers surf the Internet while driving. Instead, I think, we just have to face the reality that more and more drivers are going to be online -- and paying less and less attention, and driving more and more badly -- and try to find a technology that will compensate for that rising risk.

One possible answer, of course, is to build robotic cars, an idea that I previously blogged about a few years back. Since then, the development of robotic vehicles has made giant strides, and the concept recently gained some new impetus when Google started testing its own experimental robot car, which it demonstrated in March at the TED (Technology, Engineering and Design) conference in Long Beach, Calif. Here's a YouTube clip of the vehicle displaying its tire-squealing, high-speed maneuvering abilities on a closed track.

This New York Times article notes that Google's car is built around artificial intelligence software and sensors that can detect anything around the car -- other vehicles, objects, people -- and make the sort of decisions that a human driver would. Reportedly, the robocar has been able to travel 1,000 miles without any human control and 140,000 miles with occasional intervention from an engineer. According to the Times, proponents of robot vehicles say they react faster than human drivers, have 360-degree perception, and do not get distracted, sleepy or intoxicated.

I'm sure Google's robocar is very capable. Even so, I'm wondering how well an autonomous robot vehicle would cope, no matter how sophisticated its AI software, when confronted with the vast universe of weird, inexplicable stuff that the conventional meat-body motorists around it might do. As science fiction novelist Robert Heinlein once noted: "There is no underestimating the power of human stupidity." What if the guy who's texting his girlfriend in the left lane suddenly realizes that he's about to miss his exit and cuts straight across four lanes, causing a series of chain reactions as other humans swerve out of his way and into each other? How would the Google-mobile react to a drunk driver or one possessed with road rage?

That's why we might need an even more radical solution. Since human drivers are such a problem, what if we simply banned humans from getting behind the wheel and required everyone to have a robot car? And instead of having a horde of autonomous robots out there on the roads, each one individually trying to figure out what all the other vehicles were doing and react to weather and traffic conditions, what if we connected every car on the road into an immense network that would organize and coordinate their movements? As this Physorg article details, GM already is trying to develop urban networks of small, semi-robotic electric vehicles. But I'm thinking of something much bigger and more ambitious: essentially, relying upon the cloud to drive your car, as if it were a smartphone or a netbook. Such a system would employ swarm robotics, a new concept in which robots are programmed to emulate the "hive mind" group behavior of bees and other insects.

Networked robotic cars would have tremendous advantages. For one, the individual vehicles wouldn't have to be outfitted with high-end computing hardware and software and sensors, because they would tap into the collective power of the network itself. Second, all the behavior on the road would become predictable and logical -- and planned. In theory, accidents could be eliminated completely. And finally, since humans would be relegated to going along for the ride, we could sit there and tweet and update our Facebook status and comment on YouTube videos or whatever else sates our electronic addiction.

So what do you think? Post your reaction below.