Commercialising autonomous vehicles：Gently does it

商業(yè)化自動駕駛：緩步而行

A six-month trial in Texas focuses on what self-driving technology can do now
在得克薩斯州一項為期六個月的試驗將檢驗自動駕駛技術能做到什么

NOBODY likes it when a taxi takes longer than expected to arrive. But that is what is happening with self-driving cars. Building a vehicle that can handle a busy street, with cyclists, pedestrians, roadworks and emergency vehicles, is a tall order. In March a pedestrian was killed in Tempe, Arizona when a self-driving Uber vehicle failed to spot her as she wheeled her bicycle across an empty road at night, and the vehicle’s safety driver failed to hit the brakes. There is a growing sense that the technology has, so far, over promised and under delivered. So a trial of self-driving vans that began in Frisco, Texas on July 30th is notable for its realistic approach to what the technology can do today.

沒人喜歡出租車實際到達的時間比預期的來的晚。但這卻是在自動駕駛車輛上發(fā)生的情況。繁忙的道路上充斥著騎行者、行人、道路施工以及應急車輛，而開發(fā)一輛可以處理以上情形的汽車就顯得非常困難。在今年三月份，Uber 開發(fā)的自動駕駛汽車在亞利桑那州的 Tempe 地區(qū)撞死了一位行人，當時處于夜晚而這位行人正騎著自行車橫穿一條無人的馬路，汽車沒有發(fā)現(xiàn)這位行人，車上的安全員也沒有及時踩剎車?，F(xiàn)在很多人發(fā)覺科技的發(fā)展被過高的逾期以及低于逾期的被實現(xiàn)。所以七月 30 日在德克薩斯開展的面包車自動駕駛測試以便驗證目前的技術發(fā)展情況就顯得非常實際和重要了。

Drive.ai, a startup, has deployed seven minivans to transport people within a limited area of the city that includes an o?ce park and a retail area. “We are identifying a valuable use case that we can deploy with today’s technology,” says Andrew Ng, a board member and a pioneer of “deep learning”, the technique that underpins the current boom in artifcial intelligence. As the technology evolves, he says, so will autonomous-vehicle services. For now, though, Drive.ai is keeping things simple.

一家名為 Drive.ai 的初創(chuàng)公司，在城市的一些區(qū)域，包括一個辦公區(qū)域以及一個零售區(qū)域，部署了七輛小型面包車來開展約束業(yè)務?！吧疃葘W習”技術，也就是增強目前的人工智能發(fā)展的一項技術，的領軍人物和委員 Andrew Ng 表示“我們正通過這個試驗來探索目前技術條件下無人駕駛技術的使用領域”。他表示，隨著技術的發(fā)展，無人駕駛技術也會獲得提升。但就現(xiàn)在而言，Drive.ai 僅僅在某些簡單領域發(fā)力。

All pick-ups and drop-o?s happen at designated stops, to minimise disruption as passengers get on and o?. Riders hail the vans using an app and go to the nearest stop; a vehicle then appears to pick them up. (The vehicles do not circulate continuously like shuttle buses, but wait to be called, and plan their routes dynamically.) Use of the service is free of charge for now.

所有的上下客都只定于在某些設計好的站點，以便減小乘客上下車所帶來的干擾。乘客可以通過 APP 來打車，然后走向最近的?？奎c。然后面包車變會過來將乘客接走。（這些汽車兵不像公交那樣在固定往返，而是等待乘客呼叫，然后動態(tài)安排行駛路線）。目前這項服務尚處于免費階段。

The vans are painted a garish orange and clearly labelled as self-driving vehicles. “We weren’t going for pretty, we were going for distinctive,” says Mr Ng, who draws an analogy with yellow school buses: people understand that some kinds of vehicles behave in particular ways, and accommodate them accordingly. Screens mounted on the vans’ exteriors let them communicate with pedestrians and other road users, for example to tell a pedestrian that it is safe to cross a road. Rather than trying to build a vehicle that mimics a human-piloted one, Drive.ai is making the self-driving nature of its vehicles explicit.

這些面包車被噴涂城顯眼的橙色，并清晰地標示為無人駕駛汽車。NG 先生表示“我們并不追求美觀，我們要的是識別度”，他以黃色的校車打比方，人們知道某些車輛有一些特殊的用途，并會因此做一些相應的配合。車輛外面的屏幕會顯示一些信息來和行人或者其他道路使用者溝通，比如告訴一位行人可以安全通過馬路。而不是建造一輛無人駕駛的汽車來模仿有人駕駛的汽車，Drive.ai 正以無人駕駛的方式構建一套適宜無人駕駛的準則。