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Wednesday, March 18, 2015

Robert Frost


From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Robert Frost
Robert Frost NYWTS.jpg
Robert Frost (1941)
Born Robert Lee Frost
(1874-03-26)March 26, 1874
San Francisco, California, US
Died January 29, 1963(1963-01-29) (aged 88)
Boston, Massachusetts, US
Occupation Poet, playwright
Notable works A Boy's Will, North of Boston[1]
Notable awards Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, Congressional Gold Medal,
Spouse Elinor Miriam White (1895–1938)
Children
  • Elliot (1896–1904)
  • Lesley (1899–1983)
  • Carol (1902–40)
  • Irma (1903–67)
  • Marjorie (1905–34)
  • Elinor Bettina (1907)
Signature

Robert Lee Frost (March 26, 1874 – January 29, 1963) was an American poet. His work was initially published in England before it was published in America. He is highly regarded for his realistic depictions of rural life and his command of American colloquial speech.[2] His work frequently employed settings from rural life in New England in the early twentieth century, using them to examine complex social and philosophical themes. One of the most popular and critically respected American poets of the twentieth century,[3] Frost was honored frequently during his lifetime, receiving four Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry. He became one of America's rare "public literary figures, almost an artistic institution." [3] He was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal in 1960 for his poetical works. On July 22, 1961, Frost was named Poet laureate of Vermont.

Biography

Early years


Robert Frost, circa 1910

Robert Frost was born in San Francisco, California, to journalist William Prescott Frost, Jr., and Isabelle Moodie.[2] His mother was of Scottish descent, and his father descended from Nicholas Frost of Tiverton, Devon, England, who had sailed to New Hampshire in 1634 on the Wolfrana.

Frost's father was a teacher and later an editor of the San Francisco Evening Bulletin (which later merged with The San Francisco Examiner), and an unsuccessful candidate for city tax collector. After his death on May 5, 1885, the family moved across the country to Lawrence, Massachusetts, under the patronage of (Robert's grandfather) William Frost, Sr., who was an overseer at a New England mill. Frost graduated from Lawrence High School in 1892.[4] Frost's mother joined the Swedenborgian church and had him baptized in it, but he left it as an adult.

Although known for his later association with rural life, Frost grew up in the city, and he published his first poem in his high school's magazine. He attended Dartmouth College for two months, long enough to be accepted into the Theta Delta Chi fraternity. Frost returned home to teach and to work at various jobs, including helping his mother teach her class of unruly boys, delivering newspapers, and working in a factory maintaining carbon arc lamps. He did not enjoy these jobs, feeling his true calling was poetry.

Adult years


Frost, 1959

In 1894 he sold his first poem, "My Butterfly. An Elegy" (published in the November 8, 1894, edition of the New York Independent) for $15 ($409 today). Proud of his accomplishment, he proposed marriage to Elinor Miriam White, but she demurred, wanting to finish college (at St. Lawrence University) before they married. Frost then went on an excursion to the Great Dismal Swamp in Virginia and asked Elinor again upon his return. Having graduated, she agreed, and they were married at Lawrence, Massachusetts on December 19, 1895.

Frost attended Harvard University from 1897 to 1899, but he left voluntarily due to illness.[5][6][7] Shortly before his death, Frost's grandfather purchased a farm for Robert and Elinor in Derry, New Hampshire; Frost worked the farm for nine years while writing early in the mornings and producing many of the poems that would later become famous. Ultimately his farming proved unsuccessful and he returned to the field of education as an English teacher at New Hampshire's Pinkerton Academy from 1906 to 1911, then at the New Hampshire Normal School (now Plymouth State University) in Plymouth, New Hampshire.

In 1912 Frost sailed with his family to Great Britain, settling first in Beaconsfield, a small town outside London. His first book of poetry, A Boy's Will, was published the next year. In England he made some important acquaintances, including Edward Thomas (a member of the group known as the Dymock poets), T. E. Hulme, and Ezra Pound. Although Pound would become the first American to write a favorable review of Frost's work, Frost later resented Pound's attempts to manipulate his American prosody. Frost met or befriended many contemporary poets in England, especially after his first two poetry volumes were published in London in 1913 (A Boy's Will) and 1914 (North of Boston).

The Robert Frost Farm in Derry, New Hampshire, where he wrote many of his poems, including "Tree at My Window" and "Mending Wall."

As World War I began, Frost returned to America in 1915 and bought a farm in Franconia, New Hampshire, where he launched a career of writing, teaching and lecturing. This family homestead served as the Frosts' summer home until 1938. It is maintained today as The Frost Place, a museum and poetry conference site. During the years 1916–20, 1923–24, and 1927–1938, Frost taught English at Amherst College in Massachusetts, notably encouraging his students to account for the myriad sounds and intonations of the spoken English language in their writing. He called his colloquial approach to language "the sound of sense."[8]

In 1924, he won the first of four Pulitzer Prizes for the book New Hampshire: A Poem with Notes and Grace Notes. He would win additional Pulitzers for Collected Poems in 1931, A Further Range in 1937, and A Witness Tree in 1943.[9]

For forty-two years — from 1921 to 1963 — Frost spent almost every summer and fall teaching at the Bread Loaf School of English of Middlebury College, at its mountain campus at Ripton, Vermont. He is credited as a major influence upon the development of the school and its writing programs. The college now owns and maintains his former Ripton farmstead as a national historic site near the Bread Loaf campus. In 1921 Frost accepted a fellowship teaching post at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, where he resided until 1927 when he returned to teach at Amherst. While teaching at the University of Michigan, he was awarded a lifetime appointment at the University as a Fellow in Letters.[10] The Robert Frost Ann Arbor home was purchased by The Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan and relocated to the museum's Greenfield Village site for public tours.

In 1940 he bought a 5-acre (2.0 ha) plot in South Miami, Florida, naming it Pencil Pines; he spent his winters there for the rest of his life.[11] His properties also included a house on Brewster Street in Cambridge, Massachusetts, that today belongs to the National Historic Register.

Harvard's 1965 alumni directory indicates Frost received an honorary degree there. Although he never graduated from college, Frost received over 40 honorary degrees, including ones from Princeton, Oxford and Cambridge universities, and was the only person to receive two honorary degrees from Dartmouth College. During his lifetime, the Robert Frost Middle School in Fairfax, Virginia, the Robert L. Frost School in Lawrence, Massachusetts, and the main library of Amherst College were named after him.

"I had a lover's quarrel with the world." The epitaph engraved on his tomb is an excerpt from his poem "The Lesson for Today."

In 1960, was awarded a United States Congressional Gold Medal, "In recognition of his poetry, which has enriched the culture of the United States and the philosophy of the world,"[12] which was finally bestowed by President Kennedy in March 1962.[13]

Frost was 86 when he read his well-known poem "The Gift Outright" at the inauguration of President John F. Kennedy on January 20, 1961. He died in Boston two years later, on January 29, 1963, of complications from prostate surgery. He was buried at the Old Bennington Cemetery in Bennington, Vermont. His epitaph quotes the last line from his poem, "The Lesson for Today (1942): "I had a lover's quarrel with the world."

One of the original collections of Frost materials, to which he himself contributed, is found in the Special Collections department of the Jones Library in Amherst, Massachusetts. The collection consists of approximately twelve thousand items, including original manuscript poems and letters, correspondence and photographs, as well as audio and visual recordings.[14] The Archives and Special Collections at Amherst College holds a small collection of his papers. The most significant collection of Frost's working manuscripts is held by Dartmouth.

Personal life


The Frost family grave in Bennington Old Cemetery

Robert Frost's personal life was plagued with grief and loss. In 1885 when Frost was 11, his father died of tuberculosis, leaving the family with just eight dollars. Frost's mother died of cancer in 1900. In 1920, Frost had to commit his younger sister Jeanie to a mental hospital, where she died nine years later. Mental illness apparently ran in Frost's family, as both he and his mother suffered from depression, and his daughter Irma was committed to a mental hospital in 1947. Frost's wife, Elinor, also experienced bouts of depression.[10]

Elinor and Robert Frost had six children: son Elliot (1896–1904, died of cholera); daughter Lesley Frost Ballantine (1899–1983); son Carol (1902–1940, committed suicide); daughter Irma (1903–1967); daughter Marjorie (1905–1934, died as a result of puerperal fever after childbirth); and daughter Elinor Bettina (died just three days after her birth in 1907). Only Lesley and Irma outlived their father. Frost's wife, who had heart problems throughout her life, developed breast cancer in 1937, and died of heart failure in 1938.[10]

Work

Style and critical response

The poet/critic Randall Jarrell often praised Frost's poetry and wrote, "Robert Frost, along with Stevens and Eliot, seems to me the greatest of the American poets of this century. Frost's virtues are extraordinary. No other living poet has written so well about the actions of ordinary men; his wonderful dramatic monologues or dramatic scenes come out of a knowledge of people that few poets have had, and they are written in a verse that uses, sometimes with absolute mastery, the rhythms of actual speech." He also praised "Frost's seriousness and honesty," stating that Frost was particularly skilled at representing a wide range of human experience in his poems.[15]

Jarrell's notable and influential essays on Frost include the essays "Robert Frost's 'Home Burial'" (1962), which consisted of an extended close reading of that particular poem, and "To The Laodiceans" (1952) in which Jarrell defended Frost against critics who had accused Frost of being too "traditional" and out of touch with Modern or Modernist poetry.

U.S stamp, 1974

In Frost's defense, Jarrell wrote "the regular ways of looking at Frost's poetry are grotesque simplifications, distortions, falsifications—coming to know his poetry well ought to be enough, in itself, to dispel any of them, and to make plain the necessity of finding some other way of talking about his work." And Jarrell's close readings of poems like "Neither Out Too Far Nor In Too Deep" led readers and critics to perceive more of the complexities in Frost's poetry.[16][17]

In an introduction to Jarrell's book of essays, Brad Leithauser notes that, "the 'other' Frost that Jarrell discerned behind the genial, homespun New England rustic—the 'dark' Frost who was desperate, frightened, and brave—has become the Frost we've all learned to recognize, and the little-known poems Jarrell singled out as central to the Frost canon are now to be found in most anthologies." [18][19]

Jarrell lists a selection of the Frost poems he considers the most masterful, including "The Witch of Coös," "Home Burial," "A Servant to Servants," "Directive," "Neither Out Too Far Nor In Too Deep," "Provide, Provide," "Acquainted with the Night," "After Apple Picking," "Mending Wall," "The Most of It," "An Old Man's Winter Night," "To Earthward," "Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening," "Spring Pools," "The Lovely Shall Be Choosers," "Design," [and] "Desert Places."[20]
From "Birches"[21]
I'd like to get away from earth awhile
And then come back to it and begin over.
May no fate willfully misunderstand me
And half grant what I wish and snatch me away
Not to return. Earth's the right place for love:
I don't know where it's likely to go better.
I'd like to go by climbing a birch tree,
And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk
Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,
But dipped its top and set me down again.
That would be good both going and coming back.
One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.
Robert Frost

In 2003, the critic Charles McGrath noted that critical views on Frost's poetry have changed over the years (as has his public image). In an article called "The Vicissitudes of Literary Reputation," McGrath wrote, "Robert Frost ... at the time of his death in 1963 was generally considered to be a New England folkie ... In 1977, the third volume of Lawrance Thompson's biography suggested that Frost was a much nastier piece of work than anyone had imagined; a few years later, thanks to the reappraisal of critics like William H. Pritchard and Harold Bloom and of younger poets like Joseph Brodsky, he bounced back again, this time as a bleak and unforgiving modernist."[22]

In The Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry, editors Richard Ellmann and Robert O'Clair compared and contrasted Frost's unique style to the work of the poet Edwin Arlington Robinson since they both frequently used New England settings for their poems. However, they state that Frost's poetry was "less [consciously] literary" and that this was possibly due to the influence of English and Irish writers like Thomas Hardy and W.B. Yeats. They note that Frost's poems "show a successful striving for utter colloquialism" and always try to remain down to earth, while at the same time using traditional forms despite the trend of American poetry towards free verse which Frost famously said was "'like playing tennis without a net.'"[23]

In providing an overview of Frost's style, the Poetry Foundation makes the same point, placing Frost's work "at the crossroads of nineteenth-century American poetry [with regard to his use of traditional forms] and modernism [with his use of idiomatic language and ordinary, every day subject matter]." They also note that Frost believed that "the self-imposed restrictions of meter in form" was more helpful than harmful because he could focus on the content of his poems instead of concerning himself with creating "innovative" new verse forms.[24]

Themes

In Contemporary Literary Criticism, the editors state that "Frost's best work explores fundamental questions of existence, depicting with chilling starkness the loneliness of the individual in an indifferent universe."[25] The critic T. K. Whipple focused in on this bleakness in Frost's work, stating that "in much of his work, particularly in North of Boston, his harshest book, he emphasizes the dark background of life in rural New England, with its degeneration often sinking into total madness." [25]

In sharp contrast, the founding publisher and editor of Poetry, Harriet Monroe, emphasized the folksy New England persona and characters in Frost's work, writing that "perhaps no other poet in our history has put the best of the Yankee spirit into a book so completely." [25] She notes his frequent use of rural settings and farm life, and she likes that in these poems, Frost is most interested in "showing the human reaction to nature's processes." She also notes that while Frost's narrative, character-based poems are often satirical, Frost always has a "sympathetic humor" towards his subjects.[25]

Pulitzer Prizes

Poet laureate of Vermont

In June 1922 the Vermont State League of Women's Clubs elected Frost as Poet laureate of Vermont. When a New York Times editorial strongly criticised the decision of the Women's Clubs, Sarah Cleghorn and other women wrote to the newspaper defending Frost.[26]

On July 22, 1961 Frost was named Poet laureate of Vermont by the state legislature through Joint Resolution R-59 of the Acts of 1961, which also created the position.[27][28][29][30]

Selected works

Poetry collections

Includes poems from first three volumes and the poem The Runaway
  • New Hampshire (Holt, 1923; Grant Richards, 1924)
  • Several Short Poems (Holt, 1924)[1]
  • Selected Poems (Holt, 1928)
  • West-Running Brook (Holt, 1928? 1929)
  • The Lovely Shall Be Choosers, The Poetry Quartos, printed and illustrated by Paul Johnston (Random House, 1929)
  • Collected Poems of Robert Frost (Holt, 1930; Longmans, Green, 1930)
  • The Lone Striker (Knopf, 1933)
  • Selected Poems: Third Edition (Holt, 1934)
  • Three Poems (Baker Library, Dartmouth College, 1935)
  • The Gold Hesperidee (Bibliophile Press, 1935)
  • From Snow to Snow (Holt, 1936)
  • A Further Range (Holt, 1936; Cape, 1937)
  • Collected Poems of Robert Frost (Holt, 1939; Longmans, Green, 1939)
  • A Witness Tree (Holt, 1942; Cape, 1943)
  • Come In, and Other Poems (1943)
  • Steeple Bush (Holt, 1947)
  • Complete Poems of Robert Frost, 1949 (Holt, 1949; Cape, 1951)
  • Hard Not To Be King (House of Books, 1951)
  • Aforesaid (Holt, 1954)
  • A Remembrance Collection of New Poems (Holt, 1959)
  • You Come Too (Holt, 1959; Bodley Head, 1964)
  • In the Clearing (Holt Rinehart & Winston, 1962)
  • The Poetry of Robert Frost (New York, 1969)
  • A Further Range (published as Further Range in 1926, as New Poems by Holt, 1936; Cape, 1937)
  • What Fifty Said
  • Fire And Ice
  • A Drumlin Woodchuck

Plays

  • A Way Out: A One Act Play (Harbor Press, 1929).
  • The Cow's in the Corn: A One Act Irish Play in Rhyme (Slide Mountain Press, 1929).
  • A Masque of Reason (Holt, 1945).
  • A Masque of Mercy (Holt, 1947).

Prose books

  • The Letters of Robert Frost to Louis Untermeyer (Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1963; Cape, 1964).
  • Robert Frost and John Bartlett: The Record of a Friendship, by Margaret Bartlett Anderson (Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1963).
  • Selected Letters of Robert Frost (Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1964).
  • Interviews with Robert Frost (Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1966; Cape, 1967).
  • Family Letters of Robert and Elinor Frost (State University of New York Press, 1972).
  • Robert Frost and Sidney Cox: Forty Years of Friendship (University Press of New England, 1981).
  • The Notebooks of Robert Frost, edited by Robert Faggen (Harvard University Press, January 2007). [2]

Letters

  • The Letters of Robert Frost, Volume 1, 1886–1921, edited by Donald Sheehy, Mark Richardson, and Robert Faggen (Harvard University Press; 2014); 811 pages; first volume of the scholarly edition of the poet's correspondence, including many previously unpublished letters.

Omnibus volumes


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Autonomous car


From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Junior, a robotic Volkswagen Passat, at Stanford University in October 2009.

General Motors' Firebird II was described as having an "electronic brain" that allowed it to move into a lane with a metal conductor and follow it along.

An autonomous car,[1] also known as a driverless car,[2] self-driving car[3] and robotic car,[4] is an automated or autonomous vehicle capable of fulfilling the main transportation capabilities of a traditional car. As an autonomous vehicle, it is capable of sensing its environment and navigating without human input. Robotic cars exist mainly as prototypes and demonstration systems. As of 2014, the only self-driving vehicles that are commercially available are open-air shuttles for pedestrian zones that operate at 12.5 miles per hour (20.1 km/h).[5]

Autonomous vehicles sense their surroundings with such techniques as radar, lidar, GPS, and computer vision. Advanced control systems interpret sensory information to identify appropriate navigation paths, as well as obstacles and relevant signage.[6][7] By definition, autonomous vehicles are capable of updating their maps based on sensory input, allowing the vehicles to keep track of their position even when conditions change or when they enter uncharted environments.[citation needed]

Some demonstrative systems, precursory to autonomous cars, date back to the 1920s and 30s. The first self-sufficient (and therefore, truly autonomous) cars appeared in the 1980s, with Carnegie Mellon University's Navlab and ALV projects in 1984 and Mercedes-Benz and Bundeswehr University Munich's EUREKA Prometheus Project in 1987. Since then, numerous major companies and research organizations have developed working prototype autonomous vehicles.

Definition

Autonomous means having the power for self-government.[8] Many historical projects related to vehicle autonomy have in fact only been automated (made to be automatic) due to a heavy reliance on artificial hints in their environment, such as magnetic strips. Autonomous control implies good performance under significant uncertainties in the environment for extended periods of time and the ability to compensate for system failures without external intervention.[8] As can be seen from many projects mentioned, it is often suggested to extend the capabilities of an autonomous car by implementing communication networks both in the immediate vicinity (for collision avoidance) and far away (for congestion management). By bringing in these outside influences in the decision process, some would no longer regard the car's behaviour or capabilities as autonomous; for example Wood et al. (2012) writes "This Article generally uses the term "autonomous," instead of the term "automated." We have chosen to use the term "autonomous" because it is the term that is currently in more widespread use (and thus is more familiar to the general public). However, the latter term is arguably more accurate. "Automated" connotes control or operation by a machine, while "autonomous" connotes acting alone or independently. Most of the vehicle concepts (that we are currently aware of) have a person in the driver’s seat, utilize a communication connection to the Cloud or other vehicles, and do not independently select either destinations or routes for reaching them. Thus, the term "automated" would more accurately describe these vehicle concepts".[9]

In the United States, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has established an official classification system:[10]
  • Level 0: The driver completely controls the vehicle at all times.
  • Level 1: Individual vehicle controls are automated, such as electronic stability control or automatic braking.
  • Level 2: At least two controls can be automated in unison, such as adaptive cruise control in combination with lane keeping.
  • Level 3: The driver can fully cede control of all safety-critical functions in certain conditions. The car senses when conditions require the driver to retake control and provides a "sufficiently comfortable transition time" for the driver to do so.
  • Level 4: The vehicle performs all safety-critical functions for the entire trip, with the driver not expected to control the vehicle at any time. As this vehicle would control all functions from start to stop, including all parking functions, it could include unoccupied cars.

History


The RRL's modified 1960 Citroen DS19 to be automatically controlled at the Science Museum, London.

Experiments have been conducted on automating cars since at least the 1920s;[11] promising trials took place in the 1950s and work has proceeded since then. The first self-sufficient and truly autonomous cars appeared in the 1980s, with Carnegie Mellon University's Navlab[12] and ALV[13][14] projects in 1984 and Mercedes-Benz and Bundeswehr University Munich's EUREKA Prometheus Project [15] in 1987. Since then, numerous major companies and research organizations have developed working prototype autonomous vehicles. including Mercedes-Benz, General Motors, Continental Automotive Systems, Autoliv Inc., Bosch, Nissan, Renault, Toyota, Audi, Volvo, Peugeot, AKKA Technologies, Vislab from University of Parma, Oxford University and Google.[15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23] In July 2013, Vislab demonstrated BRAiVE, a vehicle that moved autonomously on a mixed traffic route open to public traffic.[24] As of 2013, four U.S. states have passed laws permitting autonomous cars: Nevada, Florida, California, and Michigan.[25][26][27][28][29]

In Europe, cities in Belgium, France, Italy and the UK are planning to operate transport systems for driverless cars,[30][31][32] and Germany, the Netherlands, and Spain have allowed testing robotic cars in traffic. In 2015, the UK Government launched public trials of the LUTZ Pathfinder driverless pod in Milton Keynes.[33]

Potential advantages

An increase in the use of autonomous cars would make possible such benefits as:
  • Fewer traffic collisions, due to an autonomous system's increased reliability and faster reaction time compared to human drivers.[34]
  • Increased roadway capacity and reduced traffic congestion due to reduced need for safety gaps[35][36] and the ability to better manage traffic flow.[34]
  • Relief of vehicle occupants from driving and navigation chores.[34]
  • Higher speed limit for autonomous cars.[37]
  • Removal of constraints on occupants' state – in an autonomous car, it would not matter if the occupants were under age, over age,[38] unlicensed, blind, distracted, intoxicated, or otherwise impaired.
  • Alleviation of parking scarcity, as cars could drop off passengers, park far away where space is not scarce, and return as needed to pick up passengers.
  • Reduction of physical space required for vehicle parking.[39]
  • Elimination of redundant passengers – the robotic car could drive unoccupied to wherever it is required, such as to pick up passengers or to go in for maintenance. This would be especially relevant to trucks, taxis and car-sharing services.[36][40][41]
  • Reduction in the need for traffic police and vehicle insurance.[42]
  • Reduction of physical road signage – autonomous cars could receive necessary communication electronically (although physical signs may still be required for any human drivers).[43][44][45]
  • Smoother ride.[46]
  • Reduction in car theft, due to the vehicle's self-awareness.[47]

Potential obstacles

In spite of the various benefits to increased vehicle automation, some foreseeable challenges persist:
  • Liability for damage.[48]
  • Resistance by individuals to forfeit control of their cars.[49]
  • Software reliability.[50]
  • A car's computer could potentially be compromised, as could a communication system between cars.[51][52]
  • Implementation of legal framework and establishment of government regulations for self-driving cars.[53]
  • Drivers being inexperienced if situations arose requiring manual driving.[54]
  • Loss of driving-related jobs.[42][55][56]
  • Loss of privacy.[57]
  • Competition for the radio spectrum desired for the car's communication.[58]
  • Self-driving cars could potentially be loaded with explosives and used as bombs.[59]
  • Ethical problems analogous to the trolley problem arise in situations where an autonomous car's software is forced during an unavoidable crash to choose between multiple harmful courses of action.[60][61][62]
  • Susceptibility of the car's navigation system to different types of weather. (As of 2014 Google's prototype has not driven in snow or heavy rain.) [63]
  • Autonomous cars may require very high-quality specialised maps to operate properly. Where these maps may be out of date, they would need to be able to fall back to reasonable behaviors.[63]
  • Current police and other pedestrian gestures and non-verbal cues are not adapted to autonomous driving.[63]
  • Current road infrastructure may need changes for autonomous cars to function optimally. Some examples include, traffic and street light upgrades that communicate with autonomous vehicles.[64]

Policy implications

If fully autonomous cars become commercially available they have the potential to be a disruptive innovation with major implications for society. The likelihood of widespread adoption is still unclear, but if they are used on a wide scale policy makers face a number of unresolved questions about their effects.[64] One fundamental question is about their effect on travel behaviour. Some people believe that they will increase car ownership and car use because it will become easier to use them and they will ultimately be more useful.[64] This may in turn encourage urban sprawl and ultimately total private vehicle use. Others argue that it will be easier to share cars and that this will thus discourage outright ownership and decrease total usage, and make cars more efficient forms of transportation in relation to the present situation.[65]

Legislation


U.S. States that allow driverless cars public road testing.

In the United States, state vehicle codes generally do not envisage — but do not necessarily prohibit — highly automated vehicles.[66] To clarify the legal status of and otherwise regulate such vehicles, several states have enacted or are considering specific laws.[67] As of the end of 2013, four U.S. states, (Nevada, Florida, California, and Michigan), along with the District of Columbia, have successfully enacted laws addressing autonomous vehicles.

In June 2011, the Nevada Legislature passed a law to authorize the use of autonomous cars. Nevada thus became the first jurisdiction in the world where autonomous vehicles might be legally operated on public roads. According to the law, the Nevada Department of Motor Vehicles (NDMV) is responsible for setting safety and performance standards and the agency is responsible for designating areas where autonomous cars may be tested.[26][27][68] This legislation was supported by Google in an effort to legally conduct further testing of its Google driverless car.[28] The Nevada law defines an autonomous vehicle to be "a motor vehicle that uses artificial intelligence, sensors and global positioning system coordinates to drive itself without the active intervention of a human operator." The law also acknowledges that the operator will not need to pay attention while the car is operating itself. Google had further lobbied for an exemption from a ban on distracted driving to permit occupants to send text messages while sitting behind the wheel, but this did not become law.[28][69][70] Furthermore, Nevada's regulations require a person behind the wheel and one in the passenger’s seat during tests.[71]

A Toyota Prius modified by Google to operate as a driverless car.

In 2013, the government of the United Kingdom permitted the testing of autonomous cars on public roads.[72] Prior to this, all testing of robotic vehicles in the UK had been conducted on private property.[72]

In 2014 the Government of France announced that testing of autonomous cars on public roads would be allowed in 2015. 2000 km of road would be opened through the national territory, especially in Bordeaux, in Isère, Île-de-France and Strasbourg.

Vehicular communication systems

Individual vehicles may benefit from information obtained from other vehicles in the vicinity, especially information relating to traffic congestion and safety hazards. Vehicular communication systems use vehicles and roadside units as the communicating nodes in a peer-to-peer network, providing each other with information. As a cooperative approach, vehicular communication systems can allow all cooperating vehicles to be more effective. According to a 2010 study by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, vehicular communication systems could help avoid up to 79 percent of all traffic accidents.[1]
In 2012, computer scientists at the University of Texas in Austin began developing smart intersections designed for autonomous cars. The intersections will have no traffic lights and no stop signs, instead using computer programs that will communicate directly with each car on the road.[73]

Public opinion surveys

In a 2011 online survey of 2,006 US and UK consumers by Accenture, 49% said they would be comfortable using a "driverless car".[74]

A 2012 survey of 17,400 vehicle owners by J.D. Power and Associates found 37% initially said they would be interested in purchasing a fully autonomous car. However, that figure dropped to 20% if told the technology would cost $3,000 more.[75]

In a 2012 survey of about 1,000 German drivers by automotive researcher Puls, 22% of the respondents had a positive attitude towards these cars, 10% were undecided, 44% were skeptical and 24% were hostile.[76]

A 2013 survey of 1,500 consumers across 10 countries by Cisco Systems found a full 57% "stated they would be likely to ride in a car controlled entirely by technology that does not require a human driver", with Brazil, India and China the most willing to trust autonomous technology.[77]

In a 2014 US telephone survey by Insurance.com, over three-quarters of licensed drivers said they would at least consider buying a self-driving car, rising to 86% if car insurance were cheaper. 31.7% said they would not continue to drive once an autonomous car was available instead.[78]

In a February 2015 survey of top auto journalists, 46% predict that either Tesla or Daimler will be the first to the market with a fully autonomous vehicle, while (at 38%) Daimler is predicted to be the most functional, safe, and in-demand autonomous vehicle.[79]

Predictions

Autonomous vehicles are still a developing technology; a large number of companies and researchers have speculated about future developments and the possible effects of the cars.
  • By 2016, Mercedes plans to introduce "Autobahn Pilot" aka Highway Pilot, the system allow hands-free highway driving with autonomous overtaking of other vehicles.[80]
  • By 2016, Mobileye expects to release hands-free driving technology for highways.[81]
  • In 2016 (2017 model year), GM plans to offer a "super cruise" feature on select Cadillac models, with autonomous lane keeping, speed control, and brake control, so that parts of trips can be made without touching the wheel or pedals.[82]
  • By early 2017, the US Department of Transportation hopes to publish a rule mandating vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communication by an as-yet unspecified deadline.[83] GM says that by the 2017 model year, the Cadillac CTS will be V2V equipped.[84]
  • By 2018, Mobileye expects autonomous capabilities for country roads and city traffic.[85]
  • By 2018, Nissan anticipates to have a feature that can allow the vehicle manoeuver its way on multi-lane highways.[86]
  • By 2020, Volvo envisages having cars in which passengers would be immune from injuries.[87] Volvo also claim vehicles will effectively be "crash free." [88]
  • By 2020, GM, Mercedes-Benz, Audi, Nissan, BMW, Renault, Tesla and Google all expect to sell vehicles that can drive themselves at least part of the time.[58][89][90][91][92][93][94]
  • 2020, ABI Research forecasts that truly self-driving cars would become a reality by 2020 and that 10 million such new cars would be rolling out on to United States' public highways every year by 2032.[95]
  • By 2020, Google autonomous car project head's goal to have all outstanding problems with the autonomous car be resolved.[96][97]
  • By 2024, Jaguar expects to release an autonomous car.[98]
  • By 2025, Daimler and Ford expect autonomous vehicles on the market.[99][100] Ford predicts it will have the first mass-market autonomous vehicle, but released no target date for this.[101]
  • By 2025, most new GM vehicles will have automated driving functions as well as vehicle-to-vehicle communication technology.[102]
  • By 2035, IHS Automotive report says will be the year most self-driving vehicles will be operated completely independent from a human occupant’s control.[103]
  • By 2035, Navigant Research forecasts that autonomous vehicles will gradually gain traction in the market over the coming two decades and by 2035, sales of autonomous vehicles will reach 95.4 million annually, representing 75% of all light-duty vehicle sales.[104]
  • By 2040, expert members of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) have estimated that up to 75% of all vehicles will be autonomous.[105]
  • In 2014 Raj Rajkumar, director of autonomous driving research at Carnegie-Mellon University said that the artificial intelligence necessary for a driverless car would not be available "anytime soon" and that Detroit car makers believe "the prospect of a fully self-driving car arriving anytime soon is 'pure science fiction.'"[106]
With Autonomous vehicles,
  • Columbia University's The Earth Institute forecasts the reduction of United States' fleet of vehicles by a factor of 10.[107]
  • PricewaterhouseCoopers forecasts a reduction of traffic accidents by a factor of 10 and it concludes that the fleet of vehicles in the United States may collapse from 245 million to just 2.4 million.[108]
  • KPMG LLP and the Center for Automotive Research (CAR) foresee improvements in productivity and energy efficiency as well as new business models.[109]
  • Morgan Stanley estimates that autonomous cars could save the United States $1.3 trillion annually by lowering fuel consumption ($169 billion), reducing crash costs ($488 billion) and boosting productivity ($645 billion).[110]

In fiction

In film and television


Minority Report's Lexus 2054 on display in Paris, France in October 2002.

I, Robot's Audi RSQ at CeBIT in March 2005.
  • The 2004 film I, Robot, set in Chicago in 2035, features autonomous vehicles driving on highways, allowing the car to travel safer at higher speeds than if manually controlled. The option to manually operate the vehicles is available.
  • "Driven", series 4 episode 11 of the 2006 TV series NCIS features a robotic vehicle named "Otto," part of a high-level project of the Department of Defense, which causes the death of a Navy Lieutenant, and then later almost kills Abby.
  • The éX-Driver anime series features autonomous electric-powered vehicles driven by Artificial Intelligences (AIs). These sometimes malfunction or are taken over by malicious users, requiring interception and intervention by éX-Drivers operating manually controlled gas-powered vehicles.

In literature

at
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