The future race car 150mph and no driver Chris Gerdes

so how many of you have ever gotten

behind the wheel of a car when you

really shouldn’t have been driving maybe

you’re out on the road for a long day

and you just wanted to get home

you’re tired but you felt you could

drive a few more miles maybe you thought

I’ve had less to drink than everybody

else I should be the one to go home or

maybe your mind was just entirely

elsewhere does this sound familiar to

you now in those situations wouldn’t it

be great if there was a button on your

dashboard that you could push and the

car would get you home safely now that’s

been the promise of the self-driving car

the autonomous vehicle and it’s been the

dream since at least 1939 when General

Motors showcased this idea their

Futurama booth at the World’s Fair now

it’s been one of those dreams that’s

always seemed about 20 years in the

future now two weeks ago that dream took

a step forward when the state of Nevada

granted Google’s self-driving car the

very first license for an autonomous

vehicle clearly establishing that it’s

legal for them to test it on the roads

in Nevada now California is considering

similar legislation and this would make

sure that the autonomous car is not one

of those things that has to stay in

Vegas

now in my lab at Stanford we’ve been

working on autonomous cars - but with a

slightly different spin on things you

see we’ve been developing robotic race

cars cars that can actually push

themselves to the very limits of

physical performance now why would we

want to do such a thing well there’s two

really good reasons for this first we

believe 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 now

if you’re like me and the other 70% of

the population who know that we are

above-average drivers you understand

that’s a very high bar there’s another

reason as well just like racecar drivers

can use all of the friction between the

tire in the road all of the cars

capabilities to go as fast as possible

we want to use all of those capabilities

to avoid any accident we can now you may

push the car to the limits not because

you’re driving too fast but because

you’ve hit an icy patch of road

conditions have changed in those

situations we want a car that is capable

enough to avoid any accident that can

physically be avoided I must confess

there’s kind of a third motivation as

well you see I have a passion for racing

in the past I’ve been a race car owner a

crew chief and a driving coach although

maybe not at the level that you’re

currently expecting one of the things

that we’ve developed in the lab we’ve

developed several vehicles is what we

believe is a world’s first autonomously

drifting car it’s another one of those

categories where maybe there’s not a lot

of competition

but this is p1 it’s an entirely

student-built

electric vehicle which through using its

rear-wheel drive and front wheel steer

by wire can drift around corners

it can get sideways like a rally car

driver always able to take the tightest

curve even on slippery unchanging

surfaces never spinning out we’ve also

worked with Volkswagen Oracle on Shelly

an autonomous race car that has raced at

a hundred and fifty miles an hour

through the Bonneville Salt Flats gone

around Thunderhill Raceway Park in the

Sun the wind and the rain and navigated

the 153 turns and 12.4 miles of the

Pikes Peak Hill Climb route in Colorado

with nobody at the wheel

I guess it goes without saying that

we’ve had a lot of fun doing this but in

fact there’s something else that we’ve

developed in the process of developing

these autonomous cars we have developed

a tremendous appreciation for the

capabilities of human race car drivers

as we’ve looked at the question of how

well do these cars performed we wanted

to compare them to our human

counterparts and we discovered their

human counterparts are amazing now we

can take a map of a racetrack we could

take a mathematical model of a car and

with some iteration we can actually find

the fastest way around that track we

line that up with data that we record

from a professional driver and the

resemblance is absolutely remarkable yes

there are subtle differences here but

the human race car driver is able to go

out and drive an amazingly fast line

without the benefit of an algorithm that

compares the trade-off between going as

fast as possible in this corner and

shaving a little bit of time off of the

straight over here not only that they’re

able to do it

lap after lap after lap they’re able to

go out and consistently do this pushing

the car to the limits every single time

it’s extraordinary to watch you put them

in a new car and after a few laps they

found the fastest line in that car and

they’re off to the races it really makes

you think we’d love to know what’s going

on inside their brain so as researchers

that’s what we decided to find out we

decided to instrument not only the car

but also the race car driver to try to

get a glimpse into what was going on in

their head as they were doing this now

this is dr. Lena Harvick applying

electrodes to the head of john morton

john morton is a former can-am and EMSA

driver who’s also a class champion at

Lamar fantastic driver and very willing

to put up with graduate students and

this sort of research she’s putting

electrodes on his head so that we can

monitor the election

activity in John’s brain as he races

around the track now clearly we’re not

gonna put a couple of electrodes on his

head and understand exactly what all of

his thoughts are on the track

however neuroscientists have identified

certain patterns that let us tease out

some very important aspects of this for

instance the resting brain tends to

generate a lot of alpha waves

in contrast fatal waves are associated

with a lot of cognitive activity like

visual processing things where the

driver is is thinking quite a bit now we

can measure this and we can look at the

relative power between the theta waves

and the alpha waves this gives us a

measure of mental workload how much the

driver is actually challenged

cognitively at any point along the track

now we wanted to see if we could

actually record this on the track so we

headed down south to Laguna Seca we’re

gonna take as a legendary Raceway about

halfway between Salinas and Monterey it

has a curve there called the corkscrew

now the corkscrew is a chicane followed

by a quick right-handed turn as the road

drops three stories now the strategy for

driving this has explained to me was you

aim for the bush in the distance and as

the road falls away you realize it was

actually the top of the tree alright so

thanks to the revs program in Stanford

we were able to take John there and put

him behind the wheel of a 1960 Porsche

Abarth Carrera life is way too short for

boring cars so here you see John on the

track he’s going up the hill Oh somebody

like that and you can see actually his

mental workload measuring here in the

red bar you can see his actions as he

approaches now watch he has to downshift

and then he has to turn left look for

the tree and down not surprisingly you

can see this is a pretty challenging

task you can see his mental workload

spike as he goes through this as you

would expect with something that

requires this level of complexity but

what’s really interesting is to look at

areas to the track where his mental

workload doesn’t increase I’m gonna take

you around now to the other side of the

track turn 3 and John’s gonna go into

that corner of the rear end of the car

is going to begin to slide out he’s

gonna have to correct for that with

steering so watch as John does this here

watch the mental workload and watch the

steering the

car begins to slide out dramatic

maneuver to correct it and no change

whatsoever in the mental workload not a

challenging task in fact entirely

reflexive now our data processing on

this is still preliminary but it really

seems that these phenomenal feats that

the race car drivers are performing are

instinctive they are things that they

have simply learned to do it requires

very little mental workload for them to

perform these amazing feats and their

actions are fantastic this is exactly

what you want to do on the steering

wheel to catch the car in this situation

now this has given us tremendous insight

and inspiration for our own autonomous

vehicles we started to ask the question

can we make them a little less

algorithmic and a little more intuitive

can we take this reflexive action that

we see from the very best racecar

drivers introduce it to our cars and

maybe even into a system that could get

on your car in the future that would

take us a long step along the road to

autonomous vehicles that drive as well

as the best humans but it’s made us

think a little bit more deeply as well

do we want something more from our car

than to simply be a chauffeur do we want

our car to perhaps be a partner a coach

someone that can use their understanding

of the situation to help us reach our

potential can in fact the technology not

simply replace humans but allow us to

reach the level of reflex and intuition

that we’re all capable of so as we move

forward into this technological future I

want you to just pause and think of that

for a moment what is the ideal balance

of human and machine and as we think

about that

let’s take inspiration from the

absolutely amazing capabilities of the

human body and the human mind thank you