美国国家公共电台 NPR Bikes May Have To Talk To Self-Driving Cars For Safety's Sake

 

RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:

Self-driving cars have reached the point where they can predict what cars or bikes or pedestrians¹ are going to do. And they lack the worst of human impulses. But until all cars are fully² autonomous³, sharing the road is still going to take some creativity. Margaret J. Krauss of member station WESA reports.

MARGARET KRAUSS, BYLINE⁴: It wasn't a normal lunch break on Google's campus. But Nathaniel Fairfield says it wasn't supposed to be.

NATHANIEL FAIRFIELD: We asked a whole bunch of people to come and hop⁵ on bikes and ride around and around the vehicle to collect data.

KRAUSS: Fairfield is principal software engineer for Waymo, the self-driving car company that began life in 2009 as a Google project. By tracking a flock of cyclists, Waymo's cars were learning how bikes move through the world.

FAIRFIELD: That's not enough. You want to predict what they're going to do next. Cyclists, like pedestrians, are some of the most vulnerable road users. And so we do want to treat them with extra caution and care.

KRAUSS: Biking is the fastest-growing commuting⁶ choice in the United States. Nearly 1,000 cyclists were killed in car crashes in 2015, the most recent year for which data was available; 45,000 were injured.

Waymo's cars are programmed to pass bikes according to state laws, usually with 3 feet of clearance⁷. And if they can't do that, they'll just wait. That kind of patience hasn't been lost on cyclists in Pittsburgh, one of three places where Uber is testing its fleet of self-driving cars.

ERIC BOERER: And honestly, I was predicting that people would be a bit more reluctant to ride around them or would be a little more critical of them.

KRAUSS: That's Eric Boerer. He's advocacy director for local pedestrian and cycling nonprofit Bike Pittsburgh.

BOERER: People did feel much more comfortable riding next to autonomous vehicles than they did next to human vehicles. I mean, autonomous vehicles - they don't get angry. They don't have road rage (laughter).

KRAUSS: The technology that helps make self-driving cars unemotional and conservative is showing up in today's cars. Forward collision warning or automatic braking systems help cars talk to one another and avoid collisions. But Anthony Rowe says they could use a little help when it comes to detecting cyclists.

ANTHONY ROWE: Cars have a very regular pattern with the way they move, whereas when people are riding bicycles, they change between either acting⁸ like cars on the side of the road... They might actually switch and become pedestrians and go up on sidewalks. They tend to move in a slightly more erratic⁹ way. It's much harder to predict.

KRAUSS: Rowe is an associate engineering professor at Pittsburgh's Carnegie Mellon University. And he wants to make it possible for bikes to feed information to cars - now and in the fully autonomous future.

ROWE: What we're trying to do is put as much instrumentation on a bike as we can to see if we can predict how it's going to move in the future so that it could, for example, signal a collision warning system on a car.

KRAUSS: Rowe pedals a white Bianchi Brava up and down a busy street near campus. The bike doesn't look particularly noteworthy, except for a slew¹⁰ of instruments...

ROWE: So we have a differential GPS unit, a small computer...

KRAUSS: ...Crowded where a rear rack might normally be.

ROWE: I would not be happy if I had to ride this every day. But hopefully, when all of this stuff just gets embedded¹¹ in a cellphone on the front, then it should be no problem.

KRAUSS: Rowe and his team are looking for the least amount of data a car would need from a cyclist for it to trigger an automatic braking system.

ROWE: Even hundreds of milliseconds helps - right? - because if a car's going to slam on the brakes, it'll slow down dramatically by the time it crashes into you.

KRAUSS: Rowe thinks self-driving cars will make the future a lot safer for cyclists and pedestrians. But while humans remain the primary pilots, he thinks a little help from bikes could compensate¹² for their weaknesses. For NPR News, I'm Margaret J. Krauss in Pittsburgh.

(SOUNDBITE OF MOONCAKE SONG, "MOONCAKE")

1 pedestrians   

n.步行者( pedestrian的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Several pedestrians had come to grief on the icy pavement. 几个行人在结冰的人行道上滑倒了。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Pedestrians keep to the sidewalk [footpath]! 行人走便道。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》

2 fully   

adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地

参考例句：

• The doctor asked me to breathe in,then to breathe out fully.医生让我先吸气，然后全部呼出。
• They soon became fully integrated into the local community.他们很快就完全融入了当地人的圈子。

3 autonomous   

adj.自治的；独立的

参考例句：

• They proudly declared themselves part of a new autonomous province.他们自豪地宣布成为新自治省的一部分。
• This is a matter that comes within the jurisdiction of the autonomous region.这件事是属于自治区权限以内的事务。

4 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

5 hop   

n.单脚跳，跳跃；vi.单脚跳，跳跃；着手做某事；vt.跳跃，跃过

参考例句：

• The children had a competition to see who could hop the fastest.孩子们举行比赛，看谁单足跳跃最快。
• How long can you hop on your right foot?你用右脚能跳多远？

6 commuting   

交换（的）

参考例句：

• I used the commuting time to read and answer my mail. 我利用上下班在汽车中的时间来阅读和答复给我的函电。
• Noncommuting objects are as real to the mathematicians as commuting objects. 对于数学家来说，不可交换的对象与可交换的对象是一样真实的。

7 clearance   

n.净空；许可(证)；清算；清除，清理

参考例句：

• There was a clearance of only ten centimetres between the two walls.两堵墙之间只有十厘米的空隙。
• The ship sailed as soon as it got clearance. 那艘船一办好离港手续立刻启航了。

8 acting   

n.演戏，行为，假装；adj.代理的，临时的，演出用的

参考例句：

• Ignore her,she's just acting.别理她，她只是假装的。
• During the seventies,her acting career was in eclipse.在七十年代，她的表演生涯黯然失色。

9 erratic   

adj.古怪的，反复无常的，不稳定的

参考例句：

• The old man had always been cranky and erratic.那老头儿性情古怪,反复无常。
• The erratic fluctuation of market prices is in consequence of unstable economy.经济波动致使市场物价忽起忽落。

10 slew   

v.（使）旋转；n.大量，许多

参考例句：

• He slewed the car against the side of the building.他的车滑到了大楼的一侧，抵住了。
• They dealt with a slew of other issues.他们处理了大量的其他问题。

11 embedded   

a.扎牢的

参考例句：

• an operation to remove glass that was embedded in his leg 取出扎入他腿部玻璃的手术
• He has embedded his name in the minds of millions of people. 他的名字铭刻在数百万人民心中。

12 compensate   

vt.补偿，赔偿；酬报 vi.弥补；补偿；抵消

参考例句：

• She used her good looks to compensate her lack of intelligence. 她利用她漂亮的外表来弥补智力的不足。
• Nothing can compensate for the loss of one's health. 一个人失去了键康是不可弥补的。