AI Autos: Leave the Driving to Us
- 12:00 pm |
The 200-mile trip from San Francisco to Lake Tahoe can be a frustrating slog in the wintertime traffic on Interstate 80. Speeds in the fast lane swing from 90 to 30 for no discernible reason. Slow, fast, faster, slow. Hit rush hour in Sacramento—or Donner Pass on a snowy day—and you’ll see the speedometer’s needle tapping the 10 mph mark like a woodpecker on a tasty log.
Stick-shift drivers collapse with dead legs on the side of the road; even the P-R-N-D crowd can be seen massaging their sore knees at roadside burger joints and woodsy rest stops.
Not me. I’m playing the license plate game and humming through playlists with a few friends, happy and comfortable in a borrowed Mercedes-Benz S550, a luxury sedan that’s currently justifying the pants off its $100,000 window sticker. We’re bopping through the same unpredictable range of velocities as everyone else, but I haven’t touched a pedal in hours.
The neural nets are watching.
Credit card fraud costs US merchants and credit card companies more than $3.4 billion a year. That figure would undoubtedly be much higher without the use of computer surveillance systems to monitor every transaction.
One of the most proven antifraud systems is FICO’s Falcon Fraud Manager, which keeps tabs on more than 4 billion transactions a month and uses lightning-fast neural networks to scan for suspicious purchase patterns. Neural networks were originally designed to mimic human gray matter. Over time, however, the technology has moved far beyond brain simulation to become a basic building block of many computer systems capable of learning and pattern recognition. The networks typically consist of layers of interconnected “neurons,” each of which produces a signal only when its input exceeds a certain threshold. Though the individual neurons are simple, the net as a whole can learn to recognize complex patterns of inputs.
The Falcon system specializes in detecting things a human would never notice. For example, if you use your card to buy a tank of gas and then go directly to a jewelry store to make a purchase, your account will almost surely be flagged, especially if you’re not a person who buys a lot of bling. The reason: Over years of correlating variables, testing, and learning, the system has noticed that a criminal’s first stop after stealing a credit card is often a gas station. If that transaction goes through, the thief knows the card hasn’t yet been reported as stolen and heads off on a spending spree—often at some high-priced retailer.
The Benz is doing most of the driving, keeping us a comfortable distance from the cars ahead with its next-gen cruise-control system. The core of the setup is a pair of radar emitters—a narrow-banded one that pings vehicles up ahead and a wide-angle unit that watches the rest of the traffic and keeps a sharp eye out for jackasses weaving into our lane. All that locational info is fed to the car’s vehicle control unit, a computer that smoothly modulates the brakes and throttle to keep us moving with traffic. The driver specifies a maximum speed, and the car does its best to hit that number—without hitting anything else.
The first time you let the car do its thing is a magically scary experience: You see the cars ahead closing at a rate that activates the “I’m going too fast” reflex; your foot hovers over the brake pedal as your frontal cortex strenuously attempts to override your survival instinct. Cognitively, you know that this system has been meticulously tested by obsessive German engineers who would never let an unsafe car cross the threshold of their shiny factory.
And then, just as you’re contemplating the various safety regulations the car must have complied with on its way to the dealership, you feel yourself slowing—gently, autonomously, in perfect control. The cold cannonball in your gut turns back into warm muscle, and you chuckle softly to yourself for being so silly as to doubt such a well-engineered system. Getting used to these autonomous systems takes time. It turns out that we have to adapt to the machines more than they have to adapt to us.
Cruise control is just the most obvious sign of a particular kind of AI that has been accelerating for decades. Think about it: Antilock brakes know when to back off the pedal. Airbags know that you just smacked into something. Stability control knows that you just overcooked your Volvo into that hairpin and need a little help to stay out of the ditch. Your nav system knows where you are, your wipers know it’s raining, that annoying seat-belt chime knows you’re flouting the law. In short, modern cars are loaded with sensors and computing power. The 2011 Chevy Volt, for example, runs on some 10 million lines of code—more than Lockheed Martin’s new F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.
The marquee innovation that made intelligent cruise control possible is the drive-by-wire throttle: the introduction of motor skills to the automotive body. The throttle is a flap that lets air and fuel enter the engine. In the conventional setup, it’s linked to the gas pedal by a thin metal cable threaded through a grooved wheel. But many newer cars have done away with the cable. Instead, there is a sensor on the gas pedal and a small electric motor on the throttle. Step on the accelerator and an electrical impulse travels to the computer, telling it how far the pedal is depressed; the computer then tells that little electric motor how wide to open the flap. Electronics and software are mediating the whole process. Voilà You’re driving by wire.
Of course, by-wire technology isn’t just for throttles. The same exquisitely sensitive actuation systems are finding their way into brakes and steering as well. And where there are electronically controlled systems, there are sensors and software and processors that can command them. In other words, by-wire technology is paving the way to truly smart cars.
Drive-by-wire didn’t start in the automotive industry. It’s a descendant of an aerospace technology called, yes, fly-by-wire. The first aircraft to fly with it—a Canadian fighter jet called the Avro Canada CF-105 Arrow—took off in 1958. Most of the pilot’s controls, from the elevators to the rudders, were triggered electronically.
The advantages—instantaneous response and lighter weight—were compelling: Within a few decades, many commercial airliners were using fly-by-wire technology. It made every aircraft from the Concorde to the Boeing 777 possible and was integral to improving autopilot systems—including those that can land a plane. It’s nice to have Captain Sullenberger on board, but he’s only needed on special occasions.
The by-wire throttle first made its way into cars in 1988, in the BMW 750iL, and it now makes radar-assisted cruise control possible in any number of Fords, Lincolns, Volvos, Jaguars, and Mercedes. Some hybrids rely on it to switch nimbly between gas and electric power.