TUESDAY 2 SEPTEMBER 2014 • [email protected] • www.thepeninsulaqatar.com • 4455 7741 Guardians of the inside Galaxy tops this CAMPUS • HBKU’s TII welcomes class year’s box office of 2016 universe P | 4 P | 8-9 RECIPE CONTEST • Send in your best recipe and win a dinner voucher for two Carnegie Mellon University’s prototype driverless car and its P | 6 counterparts at Google and abroad are pretty capable of handling city WHEELS traffic. By the time they come into • BMW i8 hybrid’s mass production they will be better sci-fi looks leave at negotiating urban streets. But Tesla in shadows it figures to be a while — maybe a generation — before people are P | 7 comfortable letting these cars loose without someone near the controls. HEALTH • Fujifilm vs Ebola: Japanese giants turn hands to medicine P | 11 TECHNOLOGY • Star Wars meets Clash of Clans in free-to-play Star Wars: Commander P | 12 FUTURE OF CARS: LEARN ARABIC • Learn commonly used Arabic words DRIVERLESS and their meanings P | 13 2 PLUS | TUESDAY 2 SEPTEMBER 2014 COVER STORY Driverless cars: 15 things you need to know By Ashley Halsey III between vehicles (and highway beacons) to help The quick take is greater mobility for the blind, them coexist better. The connected-car technology the elderly, people with disabilities and those too hen are these things coming? could be an asset to autonomous cars, but it’s not the young to drive. Professions that figure to suffer: Nissan last year announced an steppingstone some experts once thought necessary. cab drivers, truck drivers and bus drivers. If crash “ambitious goal” of having an afford- Connected cars still will need an active driver. rates plummet, body shops, insurance companies, able autonomous car ready by 2020. chiropractors and emergency rooms will see less Others who see that as overly ambi- Will a car with no hands on the wheel be safer? business. Wtious think you’re more likely to see them in serious Yes, experts say. Driver error causes the over- production a few years after that — say, 2025 or 2030. whelming majority of crashes — 93 percent of them, Will there be less traffic congestion? according to one federal report — and there are more Probably yes, but maybe no. Cars moving along How much will they cost? than 5 million crashes each year. Just getting intoxi- briskly — no rubbernecking, distracted drivers Right now, the technology alone adds $70,000 to cated drivers from behind the wheel could reduce or left-lane slowpokes — clears up a lot of the $100,000 to the cost of a vehicle. Few people could pay fatalities by 39 percent. headache right off the bat. There will be less that much more for a magic flying carpet, let alone a stop-and-go and smoother passage through inter- car. Automakers are wrestling to make it affordable, Does that mean there will be zero crashes? sections, and cars will be able to travel much and there are projections that by the time autocars Nobody dares make that claim, and for good rea- closer together. But two things may put more go into mass production, the additional cost might son: Too many things can go wrong on the roadway. cars on the road: Those who can’t drive now (see fall to between $3,000 and $5,000. But there could be a dramatic reduction. above) will be on the road, and since being in a vehicle that doesn’t need to be driven will be more How do they work? Who are the winners and losers if these things enjoyable and productive, people may spend more Lots of sensory equipment feed into the vehicle’s come to rule the road? time on the road (see below). computers. Radar, lasers and cameras collect data on the distance to objects and their speed if they’re Carnegie Mellon University’s self-driv- moving. GPS helps, and an inertial navigation system ing Cadillac SRX. in the computer uses dead reckoning to continuously calculate position, orientation, direction and speed of the vehicle and surrounding objects. Without getting too deep into the weeds: Cloud- based data could be used to continually update the onboard computer, including data collected from other cars. Can they deal with work zones, or cyclists and a kid in the street? They’re pretty good at it now, and their develop- ers are working to make them better. Sensors on the vehicle keep track of everything in its path, and the vehicle stops for obstacles or to navigate around them. Are autonomous cars and connected cars the same thing? No. An autonomous car uses onboard technology to find its way around and keep from running into things. Connected cars, a concept also in active devel- opment, provide direct short-range communication PLUS | TUESDAY 2 SEPTEMBER 2014 3 Will it affect where people decide to live? It might. On one hand, people may be willing to travel farther to and from work if their vehicle becomes a mini- office in which they can be productive. That invites suburban sprawl. On the other hand, if parking no longer is an issue, people may be more eager to live in the heart of the action downtown. What does this mean for parking? Imagine getting dropped off at the door whereever you go. That could happen. The estimated 31 percent of land devoted to parking in urban cores could be used for something else if cars toddle off on their own to park in more distant satellite lots or garages that aren’t in prime-time space. Won’t this take a massive rewrite of traffic laws? You bet it will. Driving is the most complicated and regulated thing most people do. The industry has begged regulators not to pass a lot of new laws until the technology is all worked out, for fear that premature reaction could yield restraints or restrictions that prove unnecessary when all is said and done. But state legislatures — and states write traffic laws — will need time to wrestle with the new order. And imagine the retooling required for the insurance industry to get comfort- able with a computer potentially being to blame for a collision. Drivers make moral decisions — sometimes poorly — in fractions of a second: Better to run off the road and hit a tree or run into a woman cross- ing the street with a baby stroller? Computers are more pragmatic than people, but would they make the wrong moral decision in a case like that? How soon will these cars be on the assembly line? There are plenty of things that need to be worked out first — some techni- cal, some not. GPS and inertial navi- gation are a potent combination, but GPS can be off by several feet. That’s okay if it’s dispensing driving directions but not so great if it’s being used to gauge the precise distance to the next left turn. Backup systems have to be integrated so that if one system fails there’s a seamless transition to prevent a collision. Humans are the ultimate fail-safe anyway? mass production they will be better at year by the Pew Research Center system, and cognitive scientists are Truth be told, they don’t. Right now negotiating urban streets. But it figures said they wouldn’t. College graduates studying how to get them on the ball you could put your dog in Carnegie to be a while — maybe a generation (59 percent) were more likely to say fast in an emergency. There are fears Mellon University’s prototype car on — before people (and the states that they would. People with a high school that drivers may be asleep at the wheel Interstate 95 and have the car drive write traffic laws) are comfortable let- diploma or less (62 percent) were or too engrossed by distractions to Fido to Maine (provided you teach ting these cars loose without someone inclined to pass up the chance. A slight refocus on the road if the car needs Fido to pump petrol). The car — and its near the controls. majority of city and suburban residents human assistance. counterparts at Google and abroad — said they would, but only 36 percent of already are pretty capable of handling Would you ride in one? people in rural areas thought they’d try Why do they need drivers, city traffic. By the time they come into Half of the people surveyed this it. WP-Bloomberg 4 PLUS | TUESDAY 2 SEPTEMBER 2014 CAMPUS HBKU’s TII welcomes class of 2016 record number of graduate stu- the United States, Belarus, and the Language Center, explained the sup- engaging and challenging students dents have been welcomed to Ukraine. port that the Language Center offers to strive toward excellence in their A Hamad bin Khalifa University’s “The MA programmes are the first all MA students in terms of Academic academic and professional career,” (HBKU) Translation and Interpreting two among a suite of specialised pro- Writing support via a dedicated course Kahlout said. Institute (TII). Orientation events were grammes that TII is set to offer. The and a writing clinic. The newly admitted students were organised for the Class of 2016 students MA programmes qualify graduates to Asaad Kahlout, Director of then given a visit to the library where who are enrolled in TII’s already estab- pursue a PhD degree in Translation Professional Services Center (PSC), students were introduced to the librar- lished MA in Translation Studies pro- Studies and Interpreting as well as detailed the vocational opportuni- ian, Elizabeth Thompson and handed gramme (MATS) and its inaugural MA giving them the skills necessary to ties that are granted to students.