Commercialising autonomous vehicles：Gently does it
商业化自动驾驶：缓步而行
A six-month trial in Texas focuses on what self-driving technology can do now
在得克萨斯州一项为期六个月的试验将检验自动驾驶技术能做到什么
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.
没人喜欢出租车实际到达的时间比预期的来的晚。但这却是在自动驾驶车辆上发生的情况。繁忙的道路上充斥着骑行者、行人、道路施工以及应急车辆，而开发一辆可以处理以上情形的汽车就显得非常困难。在今年三月份，Uber 开发的自动驾驶汽车在亚利桑那州的 Tempe 地区撞死了一位行人，当时处于夜晚而这位行人正骑着自行车横穿一条无人的马路，汽车没有发现这位行人，车上的安全员也没有及时踩刹车。现在很多人发觉科技的发展被过高的逾期以及低于逾期的被实现。所以七月 30 日在德克萨斯开展的面包车自动驾驶测试以便验证目前的技术发展情况就显得非常实际和重要了。
Drive.ai, a startup, has deployed seven minivans to transport people within a limited area of the city that includes an office 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.
一家名为 Drive.ai 的初创公司，在城市的一些区域，包括一个办公区域以及一个零售区域，部署了七辆小型面包车来开展约束业务。“深度学习”技术，也就是增强目前的人工智能发展的一项技术，的领军人物和委员 Andrew Ng 表示“我们正通过这个试验来探索目前技术条件下无人驾驶技术的使用领域”。他表示，随着技术的发展，无人驾驶技术也会获得提升。但就现在而言，Drive.ai 仅仅在某些简单领域发力。
All pick-ups and drop-offs happen at designated stops, to minimise disruption as passengers get on and off. 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设计好的站点，以便减小乘客上下车所带来的干扰。乘客可以通过 APP 来打车，然后走向最近的停靠点。然后面包车变会过来将乘客接走。（这些汽车兵不像公交那样在固定往返，而是等待乘客呼叫，然后动态安排行驶路线）。目前这项服务尚处于免费阶段。
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.
这些面包车被喷涂城显眼的橙色，并清晰地标示为无人驾驶汽车。NG 先生表示“我们并不追求美观，我们要的是识别度”，他以黄色的校车打比方，人们知道某些车辆有一些特殊的用途，并会因此做一些相应的配合。车辆外面的屏幕会显示一些信息来和行人或者其他道路使用者沟通，比如告诉一位行人可以安全通过马路。而不是建造一辆无人驾驶的汽车来模仿有人驾驶的汽车，Drive.ai 正以无人驾驶的方式构建一套适宜无人驾驶的准则。
