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Volkswagen exec admits full self-driving cars 'may never happen'

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Re: Volkswagen exec admits full self-driving cars 'may never happen'

#321

Post by _greim_ »

colordrops wrote: post #165

I agree in part in that I am skeptical that full self-driving cars will happen in the next few years, but he is completely wrong when it comes to the long term. Not only will the tech get as good as humans, but most forget to account for the fact that the environment will meet the cars part way. We will eventually update markings and beacons on the roads to make it easier for the cars, implement networks in which the…

To put this in perspective, imagine this hypothetical conversation happening a century ago:

"I have this new auto-mobile concept which doesn't require a horse and which can go fast; I envision up to fifty miles per hour. It will require a smooth, hardened road surface, but that will be achievable someday."

"Forget about it. We already have millions of miles of roads, which are bumpy, made of dirt, and hard to build and maintain. Who will do the extra work to smooth them? Harden them? Maintain them? What if some jerk digs a hole in one as a prank? Maybe this could happen in a limited way in cities, but this is overall a pipe dream."

My point is, it isn't a question of whether this is feasible, it's a question of incentives. If the incentives lead society in this direction, it will happen.

Re: Volkswagen exec admits full self-driving cars 'may never happen'

#322

Post by 8ytecoder »

dmortin wrote: post #158
lostlogin wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most of the value is in taxi services I’m imagining how gross a taxi would be that doesn’t have a driver to provide passengers a low level of behaviour moderation.

If the taxi is soiled then the next passenger indicates this via the app. The taxi is sent for cleaning and the previous passenger is charged for the cleaning. Also, there will be cameras inside in case it has to be proven who made the car dirty. If people have to pay the cleaning bill they will be careful not to make a mess.

That’s the theory. If doing the right thing is not the default, it’s bound to get bad pretty fast.

Re: Volkswagen exec admits full self-driving cars 'may never happen'

#323

Post by alkonaut »

wwweston wrote: post #32

Opinion: level 5 autonomy would be cool, but it's not where most of the value of self-driving cars is. Most of the value in being able to travel by auto without attention is in trips longer than 15 minutes. Commutes, tourism, vacations. Shipping. Most of which is certainly highway driving. If it's possible to automate highway driving under most conditions (and safely transition either to a stop or human-piloting when…

I don’t mind driving 200 times one hour commuting a year. I want to a) not own a car but be picked up by one I can share with others b) be driven home after having a drink. Both of those use cases are only working if there is a 100% (or close to) self driving solution. Driving 95% of the way or 95% of the trips is nice, but I wouldn’t pay Tesla autopilot money for it.

The value in the 95/95 autopilot is because it will make commercial drivers be able to never need breaks (they sleep or rest until the autopilot is in trouble, and they can even remote control cars). And of course because a lot of people seem to hate driving and would pay to avoid it.

I don’t - I hate owning a car.

Re: Volkswagen exec admits full self-driving cars 'may never happen'

#324

Post by erik_seaberg »

anotheruser2020 wrote: post #280
colordrops wrote: post #165

I agree in part in that I am skeptical that full self-driving cars will happen in the next few years, but he is completely wrong when it comes to the long term. Not only will the tech get as good as humans, but most forget to account for the fact that the environment will meet the cars part way. We will eventually update markings and beacons on the roads to make it easier for the cars, implement networks in which the…

I like driving, I also like the assistance that modern vehicles provide on Motorways, however, would I ever fully hand over control? Probably not. A Boeing 747 has autopilot.. however 3 pilots sit behind hit to keep an eye on what it's doing.

Sometimes I like driving, but I also like sleeping or hacking or drinking, and it'd be great to have the choice.

Re: Volkswagen exec admits full self-driving cars 'may never happen'

#325

Post by notatoad »

Rhinobird wrote: post #259
notatoad wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do self-driving cars even need road markings? IIRC Google's self-driving car project started out ignoring road markings entirely, and relied on a centimetre-precision map of the test city instead. That obviously has downsides too, but unreliable road markings would be a pretty silly blocker to ever having a self-driving car. that's a solveable short-term problem.

all fun and games until some jack-ass spoofs the GPS and moves a road 20 feet to the left. https://www.wired.com/2012/07/drone-hijacking/

People in this thread are way too hung up on the "what if cars get attacked" problem. Just because you can't solve every problem, doesn't mean you can't have a usable product.

Cars today don't have any defense against people dropping bricks or pouring paint off an overpass, but somehow the system still works.

Re: Volkswagen exec admits full self-driving cars 'may never happen'

#327

Post by ThrustVectoring »

robbrown451 wrote: post #51
wwweston wrote: post #32

Opinion: level 5 autonomy would be cool, but it's not where most of the value of self-driving cars is. Most of the value in being able to travel by auto without attention is in trips longer than 15 minutes. Commutes, tourism, vacations. Shipping. Most of which is certainly highway driving. If it's possible to automate highway driving under most conditions (and safely transition either to a stop or human-piloting when…

I have to disagree. Most of the value is in taxi services, where you get dropped off / picked up exactly where you want, there is no need to dedicate so much land and structures to parking, there is no need to have cars sit idle for 95% of their existence, and no need to search for parking spots and walk long distances. Of course, I live in a city, where parking is a major pain. But the other things still hold. It it…

A car also functions as a usually-secure place to store a good chunk of stuff, rather than taking it with you. This is more relevant if you have children (carseats) or take multiple-destination trips.

Re: Volkswagen exec admits full self-driving cars 'may never happen'

#328

Post by _greim_ »

_red wrote: post #277
macinjosh wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are millions of miles of roads just in the US that will never have that sort of infrastructure because the cost of keeping beacons running and marking in place would be astronomical. Sure maybe California will have some of that around big population areas but that's probably about it. What happens to all these markings when it snows a couple centimeters?' Fully self driving cars won't happen in our lifetime, pr…

its not only lines on the road though: Imagine you are following a pickup-truck and out of the back an obviously empty box floats out of the bed and lands directly in front of your car. For a human its trivial to know the box is empty and its ok to hit it....does "AI" know that? Multiply that case x1000 and you have the conditions self-driving cars will need to handle on a daily basis.

> For a human its trivial...

I anecdotally question this based on both personal experience and stories I've heard. It seems like it would be a hard problem for both humans and AIs, however AIs have the edge in the long run due to sheer processing speed.

Re: Volkswagen exec admits full self-driving cars 'may never happen'

#329

Post by ericd »

spookthesunset wrote: post #289
colordrops wrote: post #165

I agree in part in that I am skeptical that full self-driving cars will happen in the next few years, but he is completely wrong when it comes to the long term. Not only will the tech get as good as humans, but most forget to account for the fact that the environment will meet the cars part way. We will eventually update markings and beacons on the roads to make it easier for the cars, implement networks in which the…

What about dirt forest service roads? What about the dirt parking lot at that wedding you just went to? How will it find a parking spot? How will it get into a ferry where people direct you to the correct spot? How will it deal with an accident up ahead where some drunk bystander is trying to direct traffic? How will it know to ignore the drunk guy? What if it isn’t a drunk guy but a sober person directing traffic? D…

How will it deal with an accident up ahead where some drunk bystander is trying to direct traffic? How will it know to ignore the drunk guy? What if it isn’t a drunk guy but a sober person directing traffic? Does the car obey in that case?

Most people wouldn't instantly know how to handle those cases either. Many people would obey the drunk guy. Maybe that's the right thing to do.

None of those are edge cases because every time it drives it will encounter some novel edge case that has never happened before and it will have to perform better than a human.

That's why these things could never be rule based, there are too many small exceptions. When they're not overfitting/able to memorize all your training examples, neural nets learn heuristics, just as people do. Different people learn different heuristics. Granted, they don't have much of the same context about the world that people do, it will take a long time to build enough examples for them to infer all of that. But Tesla's fleet is getting more driving experience every day than you will get in your entire life, and every time they train on one of those exceptions, the entire fleet will benefit.

Don’t even get started with liability. Once you take away the steering wheel the manufacturer is on the hook for every single mistake and every single accident. You’d be insane to be a manufacturer and sign up for that.

If drivers no longer carry their own insurance, this is probably going to be handled by insurance at the manufacturer level, and baked into the price. The insurance will demand certain processes to prevent large-scale bugs being rolled out.

I don't see any fantasy here, just a lot of work.

Re: Volkswagen exec admits full self-driving cars 'may never happen'

#330

Post by tempsy »

colordrops wrote: post #165

I agree in part in that I am skeptical that full self-driving cars will happen in the next few years, but he is completely wrong when it comes to the long term. Not only will the tech get as good as humans, but most forget to account for the fact that the environment will meet the cars part way. We will eventually update markings and beacons on the roads to make it easier for the cars, implement networks in which the…

What happens during major power outages though, which isn’t an infrequent event? Like the one that happened in NYC last year when you had citizens directly traffic in the dark? I’m struggling to understand how self driving cars would react to that.
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