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The dream of driverless cars is dying

spectator.co.uk

71–80 of 124 posts

Re: The dream of driverless cars is dying

#71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>We still don’t have flying cars Why does no one consider a helicopter to be a "flying car"? What can a flying car do that a helicopter can't? The only difference I see is that a flying car would be cheaper and owned by more people, which a helicopter could easily be if people actually wanted a flying car. Helicopters are expensive because they're very niche devices. The fact that almost no one owns a helicopter prov…

Helicopters do not, in fact, do what people want flying cars to do. The fact that the masses are not using helicopters to go to the mall shows this, and by reflecting on what would happen if this were tried, you can figure out why helicopters are not flying cars.

But that doesn't answer the question of "what do people want to do with flying cars that can't be done with a helicopter"... it only answers the question "are people using helicopters as flying cars". You're making an extremely false assumption that "because people aren't using helicopters, that means helicopters aren't flying cars, and we all know people want flying cars". Extremely faulty.

Let's beg the question and assume people want to go to the mall with their flying car, that's their primary use case. They can't do this right now because there are no parking spaces at the mall for their helicopter. There are no parking spaces for their helicopter because no one is flying to the mall with their helicopter. If people did, the mall would build parking for them. This is shown by the fact that places where people regularly fly helicopters, there is dedicated helicopter parking. It's just as valid for me to say "the fact that helicopters exist but are uncommon proves people don't want flying cars" as it is for you to say "helicopters are not flying cars".

I'll ask the question again: why do people not consider helicopters to be flying cars? They do exactly what people want a flying car to do: they take off and land vertically, they can fit in a reasonably sized parking space, they can easily maneuver in three dimensions, and they hold passengers and cargo. I argue that helicopters are flying cars, and they're proof that most people don't actually want flying cars.

Re: The dream of driverless cars is dying

#72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>We still don’t have flying cars Why does no one consider a helicopter to be a "flying car"? What can a flying car do that a helicopter can't? The only difference I see is that a flying car would be cheaper and owned by more people, which a helicopter could easily be if people actually wanted a flying car. Helicopters are expensive because they're very niche devices. The fact that almost no one owns a helicopter prov…

Helicopters are complex machines that require lots of maintenance and significant training to fly safely. It's hard to see how you would reduce even the maintenance costs enough to make them practical for universal use. To your second point, people with enough money and training do commonly buy them for personal use. (I know this anecdotally from a relative involved in sales of Airbus helicopters.) If you addressed t…

>Helicopters are complex machines that require lots of maintenance and significant training to fly safely.

So did cars when they were first introduced. Since they solved a need, there was a great incentive to make them easier to use and easier to repair. That incentive doesn't exist for helicopters because most people don't own helicopters.

>To your second point, people with enough money and training do commonly buy them for personal use.

I'm glad you pointed this out, I didn't make that argument because it would ruin the surprise, but yeah. People do use flying cars, and they're called helicopters. They're just used by very rich people or people with enough training to operate them. But think in cities like NYC, helicopters are used just like cars would be, because using a car can be unpractical. Functionally there is no difference between Michael Bloomberg traveling to Newark via a limo versus via a helicopter: both park at his building and can transport him from his home to his destination. It's a flying car.

>If you addressed the cost and safety issues no doubt more people would buy them.

The incentive to improve cost and safety only exists if demand exists. Cars only got cheaper and safer when the public began buying them. Flying cars (helicopters) will only become safer and cheaper if people start demanding them as well. The fact that they're not, IMO, proves people don't actually want flying cars.

Re: The dream of driverless cars is dying

#73
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure why anyone would say the "dream" is dying. If anything is dying, it's unrealistic hopes that fully autonomous vehicles will be widespread and dirt cheap to be driven around in by the end of this decade. I suspect the hype's been fueled by--in addition to the usual suspects--the growth of young professionals in urban areas who have this vision of never having to own a car and being driven around everywher…

> For that to be a reality... Those on demand trip services (Uber, Lyft, etc) are already cheaper than owning a car. What you describe already exists.

It depends on where you live and your lifestyle. They certainly wouldn't be for me. And there are many situations where I have to drive myself, even if it's a rental car.

Re: The dream of driverless cars is dying

#74
post #42

People just expect it to happen much too quickly, there's no patience. The time it takes to get from say a car that just drives about randomly to a car that drives pretty well 75% of the time is about a day's worth of work with today's technology. Going from 75-80% is a week or two. 80-85% is months. Getting to the 90% is years, and who knows what we need for 99+%. I did a self-driving car in GTA V project that strea…

I watched some of the progress updates that you posted on youtube for that project and I was amazed by what you could acheive at home with a powerful GPU and publicly available software.

Here's the playlist with all of those videos if anyone else is interested: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLQVvvaa0QuDeETZEOy4Vd...

Re: The dream of driverless cars is dying

#75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is how everything happens, and it's why we're living in the future even though we never realized it. We have a small square in our pockets that can do real-time translation, you talk into it and it'll say the same thing in another language. I remember reading about this exact thing in the 90s and thinking that it was completely incredible, but I didn't even notice it when it happened. We first got computers that…

Your car has approached the point of difficulty for incremental improvement, which is when human attention is needed, but only very rarely. The way for an incremental approach to get beyond this is to have clearly-defined and well separated domains, one being where automation works safely without a human overseer, and the other being where advanced automation is not used. Furthermore, it must be obvious to drivers wh…

Limited access highway driving, a la an iteration or two on what GM is doing with Cadillac today, seems a pretty logical use case. Many people do a lot of it, it's boring, it's easy to get over-tired.

It doesn't fire up the people who want robo-Ubers but it would have a lot of benefits, including safety, and seems like a much more boundable problem. I could actually imagine something like this being approved for consumer use decades before the more general case.

Re: The dream of driverless cars is dying

#76
post #42

People just expect it to happen much too quickly, there's no patience. The time it takes to get from say a car that just drives about randomly to a car that drives pretty well 75% of the time is about a day's worth of work with today's technology. Going from 75-80% is a week or two. 80-85% is months. Getting to the 90% is years, and who knows what we need for 99+%. I did a self-driving car in GTA V project that strea…

> People just expect it to happen much too quickly, there's no patience.

> It's just dying for the people who never understood how absolutely challenging the problem actually is.

You're laying a lot of blame at the feet of the excited people, but in their defense, much of their excitement is thanks to hucksters (cough Elon cough) who've been insisting that fully autonomous cars are just a year or two away. It's not like these people can be reasonably expected to understand how difficult the problem domain is, especially when they've seen recent AI successes at other problems that were popularly considered impossible (e.g. AlphaGo).

Re: The dream of driverless cars is dying

#77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Helicopters do not, in fact, do what people want flying cars to do. The fact that the masses are not using helicopters to go to the mall shows this, and by reflecting on what would happen if this were tried, you can figure out why helicopters are not flying cars.

But that doesn't answer the question of "what do people want to do with flying cars that can't be done with a helicopter"... it only answers the question "are people using helicopters as flying cars". You're making an extremely false assumption that "because people aren't using helicopters, that means helicopters aren't flying cars, and we all know people want flying cars". Extremely faulty. Let's beg the question an…

Saying 'extremely' twice, and in italics, does not make a point more correct. Nor does repeating a faulty argument, even if not in italics. I will leave it for someone who knows a thing or two about the realities of owning and operating helicopters to decide for herself whether helicopters match up to peoples' imagination of what a flying car would be. I was apparently mistaken in thinking that, on reflection, you would figure it out for yourself.

Re: The dream of driverless cars is dying

#78

One thing I have never understood about the driverless vision is how it seems to ignore economically significant problems like (a) traffic congestion and (b) extremely inefficient energy use in transportation, especially personal vehicles. Just looking at the first problem, a four lane highway is a four lane highway, regardless of how vehicles comport themselves. It seems more productive to solve congestion by gettin…

> Just looking at the first problem, a four lane highway is a four lane highway, regardless of how vehicles comport themselves.

Lanes are as wide as they are and following distances are as long as they are because people are terrible at driving. A mostly-driverless 4-lane highway could more than double capacity just by reducing following distances when computers rather than human beings are making the decision when to brake and how hard to brake.

Humans also cause traffic jams by causing accidents or rubbernecking at accidents - that'll get better too.

Re: The dream of driverless cars is dying

#79
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure why anyone would say the "dream" is dying. If anything is dying, it's unrealistic hopes that fully autonomous vehicles will be widespread and dirt cheap to be driven around in by the end of this decade. I suspect the hype's been fueled by--in addition to the usual suspects--the growth of young professionals in urban areas who have this vision of never having to own a car and being driven around everywher…

> For that to be a reality... Those on demand trip services (Uber, Lyft, etc) are already cheaper than owning a car. What you describe already exists.

[deleted]

Re: The dream of driverless cars is dying

#80
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure why anyone would say the "dream" is dying. If anything is dying, it's unrealistic hopes that fully autonomous vehicles will be widespread and dirt cheap to be driven around in by the end of this decade. I suspect the hype's been fueled by--in addition to the usual suspects--the growth of young professionals in urban areas who have this vision of never having to own a car and being driven around everywher…

> For that to be a reality... Those on demand trip services (Uber, Lyft, etc) are already cheaper than owning a car. What you describe already exists.

Really? For a family of 4 or 5? Does lift even have car seats for children? We still need a minivan, and we pay 300 a month + gas when our car isn't paid for (which it is). We generally use used cars that are a decade old to save money.

How is uber cheaper?

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