谷歌自動駕駛汽車的冒險旅程

After 500,000 miles of road tests, Google's self-driving car team gave New Yorker writer Burkhard Bilger unusually deep access for a profile this week.

經過50萬英里的道路測試之後，谷歌(Google)的自動駕駛汽車團隊本週不同尋常地讓紐約作家比爾格(Burkhard Bilger)深度瞭解了這款汽車的情況。

It's still unclear whether the larger idea of autonomous cars will work at all - the most optimistic estimate seems to be that they will come to market in five to 10 years.

現在還不清楚自動汽車這一宏大概念能否行得通――最樂觀的估計似乎是，它們將在5到10年內進入市場。

But self-driving cars are what put Google on the map as a company that tries to make science fiction into reality, so the tale of how they came to be is compelling.

但自動駕駛汽車讓谷歌成爲出了名的試圖將科幻變成現實的公司，因此關於其概念如何形成的故事也引人注目。

The hero of Bilger's story is 33-year-old engineer Anthony Levandowski, who joined Google after building a self-driving motorcycle for the DARPA Grand Challenge (though it sounds like that didn't work all that well). Levandowski was toiling away on Google Street View with the more-famous inventor/professor Sebastian Thrun before the two of them got the go-ahead from Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin to start working on self-driving cars.

比爾格報道的主角是33歲的工程師萊萬多斯基(Anthony Levandowski)，他加入谷歌之前爲美國無人駕駛汽車挑戰賽(DARPA Grand Challenge)設計了一款自動駕駛摩托車（不過聽上去這款車運行起來不怎麼樣）。萊萬多斯基在谷歌與更有名的發明家兼教授特龍(Sebastian Thrun)一起埋頭開發谷歌街景(Google Street View)，後來他們二人得到谷歌聯合創始人佩裏(Larry Page)和布林(Sergey Brin)的許可，開始致力於自動駕駛汽車專案。

What made the difference? A TV show producer's wacky idea for a stunt, believe it or not.

對無人駕駛汽車這個概念產生重大影響的是什麼？信不信由你，這個項目始於一個電視節目製作人想出來的雷人噱頭。

From Bilger's piece:

比爾格的報道中說：

'In February of 2008, Levandowski got a call from a producer of 'Prototype This!,' a series on the Discovery Channel. Would he be interested in building a self-driving pizza delivery car? Within five weeks, he and a team of fellow Berkeley graduates and other engineers had retrofitted a Prius for the purpose. They patched together a guidance system and persuaded the California Highway Patrol to let the car cross the Bay Bridge-from San Francisco to Treasure Island. It would be the first time an unmanned car had driven legally on American streets.'

2008年2月，萊萬多斯基接到探索頻道(Discovery Channel)系列節目“Prototype This!”一位製作人的電話，問他有沒有興趣打造一款自動駕駛的披薩配送車？在五個星期內，他和一個由伯克利校友以及其他工程師組成的團隊就改造了一輛普瑞斯(Prius)。他們拼湊出一個導航系統，並說服加州高速公路巡警(California Highway Patrol)讓這輛車駛過海灣大橋――從舊金山行駛到金銀島。這是無人駕駛汽車首次合法地在美國街道上行駛。

The successful bridge crossing earned Page and Brin's go-ahead within a few months, according to Thrun.

特龍說，這次成功的“過橋行使”讓他們獲得了佩奇和布林的首肯，在接下來幾個月的時間裏繼續從事這項研究。

Then the two Google co-founders, 'like boys plotting a scavenger hunt,' gave the self-driving car team a set of 10 100-mile itineraries. 'The roads wound through every part of the Bay Area- from the leafy lanes of Menlo Park to the switchbacks of Lombard Street. If the driver took the wheel or tapped the brakes even once, the trip was disqualified.' The team completed all 10 in a year and a half.

接下來，谷歌的兩位共同創始人像計劃着進行“尋物遊戲”的孩子一樣，給自動駕駛汽車團隊設定了10條100英里的路線。這些路線經過了灣區的每一個部分，從門洛帕克(Menlo Park)的林蔭道到隆巴德街(Lombard Street)之字爬坡路線。如果駕駛者動了方向盤或是踩了剎車，這次行程就算沒通過。在一年半的時間裏，團隊完成全部10條路線。

There's a lot more to the story, but the real question is, what's next for the self-driving car? There are challenges on multiple fronts, now that the scavenger-hunt phase is over. 1) Jumping over legal hurdles. 2) Figuring out how to bring the cars to market, given carmakers are allergic to the word 'self driving' (though they're OK with smaller and subtler tweaks, where machine smarts help drivers out). And 3) Making next technological leaps forward in sensors and machine learning. Even if autonomous cars are statistically safer, any mistake will tarnish the entire endeavor.

關於這個故事，還有很多東西可講，但真正的問題在於，自動駕駛汽車的下一步往哪裏走？“尋物遊戲”這一階段走過之後，這個項目在很多方面都面臨着挑戰。1）越過法律上的障礙；2）在市場已經對“自動駕駛”一詞過敏的情況下，找出把汽車推向市場的方法（不過把這這個詞稍微改動一下，表明機器智能能爲駕駛者提供幫助，市場就會接受）；3）在傳感器和機器學習方面再一次實現技術飛躍。即便有統計數據表明自動駕駛汽車更安全，但如果出現任何錯誤還是會讓全部努力受到損害。

As Bilger reports, 'The car has trouble in the rain, for instance, when its lasers bounce off shiny surfaces. (The first drops call forth a small icon of a cloud onscreen and a voice warning that auto-drive will soon disengage.) It can't tell wet concrete from dry or fresh asphalt from firm. It can't hear a traffic cop's whistle or follow hand signals.'

比爾格在報道里寫道，比如，這種車在下雨的時候會遇到麻煩，因爲這時候激光會在光滑的表面反射。（最初的幾滴雨水會讓屏幕上出現一個雲朵狀的小圖標，然後就有聲音提醒自動駕駛功能即將關閉。）這種車無法區分溼混凝土和幹混凝土，剛鋪好的瀝青和已經堅實的瀝青。它聽不見交警的哨音，也無法遵從交通手勢的指引。

At the same time, the car is often smarter than a human. For instance, it can prepare to brake preemptively based on traffic data about a slowdown coming ahead, or slow to a crawl at nighttime on a wooded road when it senses a deer walking on the shoulder.

與此同時，汽車通常比人更聰明。比如，汽車可以通過交通數據發現前方需要減速，因此做好制動減速的準備，或是在夜間林地行車發現路肩上有一頭行走的鹿的時候減速慢行。

And improvements are coming, says Bilger: 'At the tech meeting I attended, Levandowski showed the team a video of Google's newest laser, slated to be installed within the year. It had more than twice the range of previous models - eleven hundred feet instead of two hundred and sixty - and thirty times the resolution. At three hundred feet, it could spot a metal plate less than two inches thick. The laser would be about the size of a coffee mug, he told me, and cost around ten thousand dollars-seventy thousand less than the current model.'

比爾格說，會不斷地有所改進。他說，在我參加的這次科技會議上，萊萬多斯基向團隊展示了一個谷歌最新激光裝置的視頻，按計劃該激光裝置將在今年內裝備到汽車上；新裝置的探測範圍是以前型號的兩倍――從260英尺增加到1,100英尺，分辨率是以前型號的30倍。在300英尺遠的地方，該裝置可以發現厚度小於兩英寸的金屬牌；他告訴我，這一激光裝置的尺寸只有一隻咖啡杯大小，價格爲1萬美元，比當前的型號要低大約7萬美元。