Cybercar Human Problem

September 27th, 2007 • Related • Filed Under

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cybercar.jpg

I was reading about a scheme to bring Cybercars into towns in England today. The idea is that they create dedicated paths for these little electric cars and put up Cybercar stops at which people can press a button and summon a car. They then tell it the destination (no idea how) and then the Cybercar drives to that destination before then being re-routed to the next request.

My first thought was brilliant! I would love to get involved in writing the algorithm that would help optimize the cars in getting to their destination and scheduling which ones went to which Cyber stops when requested. This sort of the problem as a programmer really gets me excited and reminds me why I do the job that I do.

Then my second thought which comes from my ‘manager’ side of my brain was what the human aspect of this problem is. Humans love to do unpredictable things but in this instance there are a whole load of obvious problems which are going to be difficult to resolve.

What do kids do when they see a pedestrian crossing which has a button to press? They run up to it press the button then run away again even though they don’t want to cross the road and ignoring the fact it’s now delayed all the cars now waiting at the lights, it’s great fun! (And no I don’t do it anymore, honest)

So how are the makers of this Cybercar going to stop little miscreants from going to the Cybercar stop and randomly pushing the button? To make the system effective you really need the ability to summon multiple Cybercars so if the car can only take 4 people at a time and 12 people are waiting you need to press the button 3 times, if you can’t do this the whole thing breaks down, as do you really want to have to wait for the first car to arrive then press the button again to get another.

Imagine the fun little Jonny could have pressing the button 50 times and the whole fleet of Cybercars from the surrounding area converges upon the single location expecting 200 people to be picked up.

So what is the solution?

  • Key fobs to identify the user?
  • Closed circuit TV to verify who is at the Cyberstop?

How would you solve the problem?

There Are 4 Responses So Far. »

  1. Comment by Stuart Dallas on 27 September 2007:

    I highly doubt this would be a free service so some sort of identity and tracking system will be needed. That solves the problem but creates a challenge for the more technically minded - hacking together a fob to let them ride for free!

  2. Comment by Martin Stricker on 27 September 2007:

    In German cities, like Berlin, you can use bicycles from Deutsche Bahn (railway) which are standing around in the city. You registrate your mobile phone number and can request per text messaging an unlock code for the bike in front of you. When you are finished, you send again a text message, lock the bike, and the time is registered for billing. All bikes are tracked via GPS, so at the end of the day, all bikes standing around are collected and brought to some central places.

    Seems like an easy solution to transfer this concept for the Cybercar project.

  3. Comment by Rob Young on 27 September 2007:

    If they’re planning it around London they’ll probably tie it in with Oyster.

  4. Comment by Walter Wimberly on 27 September 2007:

    An article I read involved paying via a Credit Card or similar method. Once the transaction is successful it unlocks a car at that location/summons a car. If you need more, than one, you pay for more than one at the transaction time. It also eliminates most kids from tying up the system by “pressing a button”.

    The version I had heard about though was instead of summoning them, there were the car stations (like bus stations) and they would always have a few extra waiting there in a queue to be used. Insert your money and you get use of it (think of luggage carts at an airport that you can rent). When you return it, the unused portion of your fee is returned to your account, like when you rent a canoe and you put down a $25 deposit, when you return it you get $10 back. This reduces the chance that someone doesn’t return the canoe/car to an authorized station.

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