How much computing and “cloud” power do you need operate an autonomous vehicle across the country? How about the equivalent of a 486DX/2 and, um, none at all?
In 1995, a student and a faculty member from Carnegie Mellon took a Delco-donated Trans Sport across the country without so much as GPS positioning.
We built the vehicle and software over about a four-month time frame for under $20,000. We had one computer, the equivalent of a 486DX2 (look that one up), a 640×480 color camera, a GPS receiver, and a fiber-optic gyro.
Yes, they had GPS, but because Selective Availability was still turned on back then, they only used GPS for speed, not position. Food and fuel for the trip was obtained through the sales of commemorative T-shirts. And, regrettably, not a single venture capitalist was harmed!
The most interesting part of the story is the note that many of the current players in self-driving cars trace their research and personnel to the pre-Cambrian explosion of self-driving car knowledge that happened at CMU in those days. So when the robots arrive, we’ll know who to blame, right?
So when the robots come (and they will) I can add this to the long list of reasons that I don’t like Pittsburgh.
Flame on.
“After the troubles, people scavenged what they could, even going so far as to couple things such as Raspberry Pi’s & Saturn Ions with cheap knock-off Chinese made flux capacitors where their internal combustion engines used to sit.”
Hey, since Robots can be programmed, maybe that’s how Cadillac will sell its CT4, Am I right, Deadweight?
Ah never mind, they’ll be smart robots.
/takes bow
/show’s self out.
Pimpbot 5000 will at least enter a showroom, but he’s probably going to be looking for a big Eldorado not a girly ATS. C3P0 is a Benz snob and R2D2 drives an Infiniti G37. Maybe the Lost in Space robot will at least look at an XTS? Oh wait, that’s being discontinued…
What about Vincent and Bob?
(Probably no one will get that reference.)
I hope that long list of yours starts with the accent.
The accent, the roads, the food, the cigarette smoke, the accent again, Gyant Iggle, nasty ham, Primanti Bros garbage sandwich, absurd football culture, Sheetz gas stations without latches on the gas pumps, the complete lack of freeway system, the unavoidable blight, state stores, dahntahn, using closed businesses as landmarks, Eat ‘n’ Park, the Ft. Pitt tunnel descent into madness featuring ALL of the brake lights, ok that’s enough getting wound up now.
Wait, you forgot DVE.
The radio station that’s played the same 15 songs all day, every day for the guys whose last significant accomplishment was being members of Sto-Rox Class of ’77.
Goes back further than that. I remember them broadcasting to Johnstown, summer of ’69. At the time WDVE was the radical, progressive rock FM station (AM was still strong with music back then), and the main advertisers were for albums by Atomic Rooster (good album actually, I have it) and a new solo act, reputed to be the “best talent out of England since the Beatles” . . . a guy named Elton John.
Whatever happened to him?
You forgot Donnie Iris.
26:28… here we come!
They would have displayed infinitely more class by getting a donated Silhouette.
You’re noting the lack of class because they’re driving a Pontiac but say nothing about the pleated khaki shorts?! Doing Lewis and Gilbert proud they are.
I don’t know that reference. :( But pleated khaki shorts are 90s class.
lmgtfy.com/?q=lewis+and+gilbert
Kids these days.
That took more effort than doing something helpful.
Old men these days!
Gathering fans for Classy Corey’s Cool Car Club eh?
Go on then sport, go get ’em.
You mean that I have to replace my collection (khaki, blue, olive, beige) of pleated shorts?
Then what? They won’t let me golf in my underwear.
Oldsmobile Silhouette – The Cadillac of minivans.
“a Delco-donated Trans Sport”
Is there a more appropriate vehicle for a nerdy endeavor?
Only if painted like a Starfleet Shuttle. ;-)
The vehicle was not fully autonomous, as the driver still controlled throttle and brake inputs. It’s still quite an achievement.
Yeah, for the time it’s pretty awesome even without doing more than it does – which is just lane-following and curve warning.
That’s pretty good for a 640×480 camera plugged into a Sparc LX.
-Sir, why did you kill that robot?
-He looked at my wife funny
So that’s what Jon Cryer did before Two and a Half Men
Maybe that’s why Jon always wore long pants on that show. Charlie Sheen always wore the shorts.
Oh, and doesn’t Sajeev wear shorts in his avatar, showing off his hairy spider legs?
Okay, I couldn’t resist geeking out a bit:
The system on the car doing the task is generally not the system that’s doing the learning. The learning process is many orders of magnitude more computationally intensive than execution. I wouldn’t be surprised if they had a supercomputer compile a driving model to run on that 486.
I was involved in a project that used a webcam to detect other vehicles. That system ran on a Raspberry Pi, but we used a desktop to train the algorithm. This is the same way the cloud is being used in the current autonomous cycle- data is uploaded to the cloud to re-train learning algorithms, and the resulting models are sent back to the tiny computers on the car to execute.
Neural networks are absolutely fascinating, and it’s exciting to see compute power finally reaching the point where they are viable.
I actually enjoy vehicles that scream “NINETIES!”, “SEVENTIES!”, etc. more than those that have “aged well.”
If that picture was a little lower we could see if they were wearing black socks and sandals.
PAWN TEE ACK!
We got to the moon on a whole lot less computer.
I’m amazed how wasteful a lot of modern consumer software is- but it is possible because the hardware is so good. I don’t say this to slight programmers, because indeed they create products that get the job done with the resources available… and they turn a profit.
“a 640×480 color camera”
PLEASE tell me it was that Sony Mavica with the built-in 3.5″ floppy drive. When I first held that, it felt like THE FUTURE WAS IN MY HANDS.