Final Review

Gerdes, C. (May 2012) “The future race car – 150mph, and no driver.”

Retrieved from:

https://www.ted.com/talks/chris_gerdes_the_future_race_car_150mph_and_no_driver#t-624603

For my report, I decided to review a Ted Talk by Chris Gerdes. He is a professor of mechanical engineering at Stanford University and he previously was the project leader for vehicle dynamics at the Vehicle Systems Technology Center of Daimler-Benz Research and Technology. He works closely with cars and engines. The video I watched is called “The future race car – 150mph, and no driver.” I chose this video because I’m majoring in mechanical engineering and want to do something with engines when I graduate from college. During his speech, Gerdes describes how technology is changing with automobiles and how his research team is pressing forward in autonomously moving vehicles. His audience would be anybody interested in cars and technology. He states that people have been doing work with autonomous cars, but his research group is developing autonomous racecars. This is because he believes “that before people turn over control to an autonomous car, that autonomous car should be at least as good as the very best human drivers.” The autonomous car has to account for different variables while driving and need to account for them accordingly. Professional racecar drivers are able to react to most driving scenarios as if it’s natural for them and that’s how Gerdes believes autonomous cars should run too. Gerdes’s message is mostly informative, but he also wants his audience to think about what course the advancement of technology should take. I believe Gerdes has a lot of brilliant ideas and is doing an excellent job as him and his team are engineering these types of cars.

Gerdes begins by putting into context why people might want to use an autonomous car. He then explains that the idea of an autonomous car was a dream since General Motors showcased this idea at their Futurama booth at the World’s Fair in 1939. He mentioned that the dream has taken a step forward when Nevada granted Google’s self-driving car the first license that will allow them to test their car on the roads within the state. He then explains how at his lab at Stanford, they are building robotic racecars that can push themselves to the edge of physical performance. His reasoning for this is that autonomous cars should be capable of driving like the best drivers in the world which he states is racecar drivers. His team is trying to develop cars that can sense when road conditions change such as it becomes icy. Once this happens, the car needs to correct its driving to account for this new condition and drive safely. He says that he wants “a car that is capable enough to avoid any accident that can physically be avoided.” He then lists a few projects that they have worked on. These include building the world’s first autonomously drifting car and working with Volkswagen Oracle to create Shelley, an autonomously racecar that has successfully navigated long and difficult racetracks. While working on these projects, Gerdes said that he has “developed a tremendous appreciation for the capabilities of human racecar drivers.” They can find the fastest path around a track at high speeds and without any technology that can solve for the fastest route. He then explains a n experiment where they measured the mental workload in a racecar driver’s brain as they’re driving. They discovered that a lot of what the drivers do is entirely reflexive or instinctive. This has caused him to think: do they want their autonomous cars to be based on algorithms or should they be more intuitive like racecar drivers? He then ends by asking the audience to think, what is the perfect balance between human mind and machine?

Gerdes does a very good job at explaining what an autonomous car is and how they are beginning to take shape in our world. He does this by giving a little history of the subject and then showing clips of projects he has taken part in. He then emphasized the point that human racecar drivers are extraordinary in what they do. He gives evidence of this by showing the experiment that was done on the mental workload of a driver as he goes around a difficult course. He then accomplishes the task of making his audience think about the future and what place autonomous cars will hold in it. For what he tried to accomplish, he didn’t leave any information out and did a very nice job at explaining his topic.

I had an interest in Gerdes’s topic from the start because of my fascination of cars. I loved watching the videos of the autonomous racecars. What I found really interesting was the idea “that before people turn over control to an autonomous car, that autonomous car should be at least as good as the very best human drivers.” This caught my attention because throughout history, most people created in invention and then would try to perfect it, but Gerdes is trying to push this idea to the max right away. Gerdes was also successful in making me think about how these types of cars will take root in the future.

Chris Gerdes’s Lecture on autonomous racecars was incredibly intriguing. He was able to show the past, the present, and make the audience think about the future in his lecture. He gave a lot of good examples to prove his points and make the audience agree with them too. Technology has played a major part on the world, but Gerdes is able to challenge the course it is taking and make people truly think about how it should continue.