I work at Ames. Nobody had a conversation about the Google car project, and I am not happy to be a guinea pig. NASA tests can be dangerous, but people are trained for this, and it's to benefit the american public. Google's project is for the benefit of Google's profit margin.

is this link working?

It's an interesting issue.

One thing the article doesn't make clear is why Google seeks to jump directly from the current California practice with these vehicles (operating under driver control, with the self-drive instrumentation in a passive or measurement role) to completely driverless cars, without the intermediate step of self-driving cars with a driver onboard who can still intervene. The article indicates that this is done now in some other states where it's legal, but doesn't mention any plans for that driver-supervisor mode as a preliminary, and perhaps confidence-building, step at Ames.

Note that the "News" web page for this article has a bug -- it appears not to take posted comments, but they actually record on the "Town Square" version of the same article, which is a separate web page. That's why there are duplications.

The web master has been notified and will, I hope, clean up the duplicated comments here, as well as the off-topic ones near the top -- and is welcome to delete this comment too, when that happens.

@True, Not every NASA employee signed up for dangerous assignments and not all of them were exposed to it. C'mon, you can do better than that can't you?
Tell your story to the admins, or better yet, don't. You'll look smarter by not continuing on your "logic" trail.
Everybody has lots and lots of advice about what the other guy should tolerate.

Aren't we all Google guinea pigs, really?

Aren't we all Google guinea pigs, really?

(Written from Google Chrome browser)

I work at Ames. Nobody had a conversation with me about the Google cars, and I’m not happy to be a guinea pig. NASA is a dangerous place to work, but people have been trained to work safely. This work is for the benefit of the American public. Google’s project is for the benefit of Google’s profit margin.

My first question to Google would be, what does your 200K mile data show in regards to a driver having to take over a situation that the car may have not been able to discern on its own? I suspect the passenger, who I've seen holding a laptop, would have made such an entry. Some statistical inference can then be made and factored in the NASA Ames discussion.

I had the opportunity to talk with one of Google’s self-driving car project leaders Thursday evening, August 28, at the Academy of Science in Golden Gate Park. He told me that while progress is being made, it is still a development project and Google has no firm date for implementation.

He mentioned the Google press release about building cars: Google has begun building a fleet of 100 experimental electric-powered vehicles that will dispense with all the standard controls found in modern automobiles. The two-seat vehicle looks a bit like the ultracompact Fiat 500 or the Mercedes-Benz Smart car if you take out the steering wheel, gas pedal, brake and gear shift. The only thing the driver controls is a red “e-stop” button for panic stops and a separate start button.

The car would be summoned with a Smartphone application. It would pick up a passenger and automatically drive to a destination selected on a Smartphone app without any human intervention.

So, when your trip is completed the car would go on to pick up other passengers. If there are no more passengers to pick up, like at night, the car would return to its garage, which would be built away from neighborhoods and downtown.

Imagine no more cars in your garage, parked in front of your home, or in a parking lot at work. We could convert parking lots into parks or use them to build housing!

Imagine living where you want, working where you want, and commuting while you drink your morning cup of coffee, read the newspaper, answer your email, or play your favorite computer game!

And why can't they experiment on the Google campus?

And why isn't Google experimenting with driverless cars on their own campus?
Just sayin'

Is this an example of Luddite Union Management? Did they even bother to poll their members? I worked at NASA Ames several decades ago. I am not a Google employee. I have never joined a union. But this position by the Union seems totally ridiculous to me.

So this is different behavior on the part of Google in what way, exactly?

Due to repeated violations of our Terms of Use, comments from this poster are automatically removed. Why?

Due to repeated violations of our Terms of Use, comments from this poster are automatically removed. Why?

Due to repeated violations of our Terms of Use, comments from this poster are automatically removed. Why?

Due to repeated violations of our Terms of Use, comments from this poster are automatically removed. Why?

Due to repeated violations of our Terms of Use, comments from this poster are automatically removed. Why?

is this link working yet?

2 copernicus7
The answer is in the article:
"...the state of California and other jurisdictions are not allowing them to test them out driverless on their populations....California law does not apply on a Federal base."

Why the hurry to remove the safety driver? Google admits there are still corner cases to be worked out. They should be able to track whether or not the safety driver has to take action. If the don't, then the driverless car is working the same as if there were no safety driver. If the safety driver DOES have to intervene, well, we will all be glad they were there.

On a humorous note, "might treat a plastic bag in the road as if it were a boulder" - is this the impetus behind the plastic bag ban?

Look out... here comes a car!

I find it sad when a newspaper runs a headline phrased as a question. All it does is feed to comment machine with all the speculative thoughts.

Going forward,I truly wish the Voice would do some patient work to answer their own question, then report that answer as news.

As far as I can tell, NASA Ames is obsolete now that the US Manned Space Flight program is dead. The horribly designed & murderous shuttle is dead, and the so-called international space station is obsolete and nearly dead. The Mars and Moon colony missions are impossible due to solar and cosmic radiation radiation exposure --- hidden by NASA of course. NASA makes great cartoons for propaganda and entertaining school kids, but its only remaining and truly valuable mission is its unmanned missions like the Hubble Telescope and other similar stuff. Guess what? They are managed by the geniuses at Cal Tech through JPL and not NASA Ames or Houston. It's time for NASA to clean house and concentrate on JPL.
BayAreaBill, Ph.D Physics, Engineering, and Computer Science, U of Illinois

@BayAreaBill
I suggest that you try to attend NASA Ames' Open House on October 18. Before you start saying that Ames is dead, perhaps you should check on what facilities are there and just what tests are conducted.

Did you know - NASA's Arc Jet facility is at Ames. Reentry is impossible without thermal protection, and Ames has the test capabilities - not at JPL.
Ames has the world's largest wind tunnel - the Mars spacecraft tested their parachutes in this wind tunnel - not at JPL.
Ames has the Vertical Motion Simulator - a six degree of freedom piece of equipment where human factors issues are researched. Cabs for different aircraft/spacecraft are installed into the facility. It's a one of a kind research facility for not just NASA, but the world, and Ames has it.
There are more research facilities at NASA Ames, but only so much that I can write here for the MV Voice. I suggest that before you kick an agency that struggles to get all the work done that the President and Congress ask for (for 1/2 a penny on the dollar of the US Budget), you do a bit of research yourself.