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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'

#661

Post by wpietri »

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…

> Not only will the tech get as good as humans

[citation needed]

It's possible, sure. But it only seems likely to me because I grew up in an age of rapid progress in information technology. History, though, has plenty of examples of technological plateaus and regressions. To people in the 1970s, it seemed obvious that by 2000 they could vacation on the moon. But the rapid progress of the space race quickly dwindled; the problems were harder than we thought and the rewards smaller.

The notion that we can make a computer as smart as a human is one of those things that seems like it will be just around the corner. But it seemed that way 50 years ago, too. E.g. HAL from 2001. It's perfectly possible that humans aren't able to make anything smarter than themselves. Judging by most of the software I use, we're barely able to make things much dumber than ourselves.

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

#662

Post by hwillis »

stevenhuang wrote: post #654
hwillis wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't have a source for the detailed cost breakdown, but I can imagine the majority of the cost is labor and digging up/filling the road since the sensor itself should be less than a thousand. Those are installed with a massive handtruck saw while cutting off a lane of traffic all day. It takes a half dozen people working on-and-off, doing different jobs. It takes jackhammers, high pressure water from a tanker tr…

Creating a local mesh network for cars to communicate is an idea I've had for a while. Something like an open hardware and software stack/protocol for future autonomous cars. It's an inevitable thing that must exist to realize the full potential of autonomous cars, all a question if I'd be the one to build it :). Would be curious to know the current work in this area.

http://www.umtri.umich.edu/story/simultaneous-deployment-c-v...

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

#663

Post by beerandt »

sjy wrote: post #450
jstummbillig wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I doubt, that the software / hardware will have a common sense, like we humans have Aren't sanity checks basically common sense? I would suspect they already play a major role in making autonomous driving a reality.

Common sense is not just a large number of sanity checks, it also includes the ability to solve some of the problems identified by failed sanity checks. For example, common sense might lead you to break the road rules in an emergency, or drive a car with a safety problem for a short distance instead of getting it towed.

More then solving problems, common sense involves identifying a problem as a problem. Unknown unknowns.

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

#664

Post by brownbat »

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…

The "edge case" I worry about is driving on ice or snow.

Driving safely on frozen surfaces is not a solved problem for human drivers, but most of us insist it is a perfectly reasonable thing to do.

If the vehicle drives as slowly as it should in those conditions, it would probably frustrate a lot of people who really depend on their false sense of invincibility.

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

#665

Post by wpietri »

erikpukinskis wrote: post #467
joe_the_user wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think self-driving cars are like fusion reactors, they're perfectly possible on paper and, like, totally 15years away from now. There's a certain similarity but I don't know any paper that actually gives any assure that self-driving is going to ever be possible. The only theory is "we will prevent extraneous factors and then calculate".

I find these arguments—about how a certain thing is arguably “impossible”—to be the most tiresome arguments on HN. Everything that is possible today... used to be “impossible”. If something appears “impossible” to you... there’s no information there about whether it is possible.

> If something appears “impossible” to you... there’s no information there about whether it is possible.

I agree that an argument from personal incredulity is generally not a good one. But that doesn't mean we can't demonstrate that things are very unlikely to happen. E.g., there's good reason to think that perpetual motion machines are impossible.

It's also important to realize that "possible" in a colloquial sense often doesn't mean "having an non-zero chance of happening before the heat death of the universe". When people are asking whether self-driving cars are possible, they clearly are asking with implicit constraints on where, when, and how.

In that context, we can have quite a lot of information about how possible something is. E.g., Elon Musk predicted that Tesla would have one million robotaxis on the road by the end of 2020. Rodney Brooks, AI expert and iRobot founder, thinks that's impossible, and I agree. https://rodneybrooks.com/predictions-scorecard-2020-january-...

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

#666

Post by beerandt »

shagie wrote: post #549
tapland wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does it have to be visible? Couldn't it be tokens transmitting their location with great accuracy? 0 visibility in snow happens often.

The Advanced Snow Plow system that Caltrans used as a test on Interstate 80 near Donner Summit had four miles with embedded magnets. This cost about $25,000/mile in '98. The full description of the system can be read at https://path.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files/advanced_snowp... Alaska uses GPS for their precision plowing - https://www.truckinginfo.com/329914/how-alaska-dot-uses-gps-... . Note that to get the 2"…

It's called differential GPS. However the new block of GPS sats have higher accuracy without the need for the (multiple) expensive receivers.

However, I'd argue the lanekeeping and "where am I" problems this stuff solves is dwarfed by the common sense and logical reasoning & recognition problems.

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

#667

Post by onetimemanytime »

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…

>>but he is completely wrong when it comes to the long term.

Never means never, not even in 145 million years. But he probably meant not in our lifetimes and with current urban planning. When all cars are self-driving it will probably be better

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

#668

Post by nostrademons »

semi-extrinsic wrote: post #175
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…

We can't even bloody keep the yellow markings on the road visible, and "paint" is a technology we've had for thousands of years. Where in dog's name is the money for installing and maintaining all that smart infrastructure going to come from?

The impetus will be wartime, just as the impetus for the interstate highway system and most of the railway system was wartime.

In peacetime, self-driving cars are a nice-to-have that can save many billions of driver hours and a few traffic fatalities. In wartime, they're literally a matter of life or death. The side that can handle all of their logistics without exposing their precious humans to enemy fire has a huge advantage over the one whose supply lanes can get picked off one by one.

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

#669

Post by beerandt »

SECProto wrote: post #199
semi-extrinsic wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can't even bloody keep the yellow markings on the road visible, and "paint" is a technology we've had for thousands of years. Where in dog's name is the money for installing and maintaining all that smart infrastructure going to come from?

Paint is a wear item, the example of beacons would not be a wear item. If original commenter is correct that infrastructure meets halfway, I wouldn't expect self driving cars transition to happen fast at all - maybe on highways first, and busy city streets, later secondary roads. But that kind of thing would result in a decades long transition, and I would estimate it as never being fully autonomous (if beacons die,…

Pavement is a wear item.

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

#670

Post by beerandt »

93po wrote: post #341
semi-extrinsic wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can't even bloody keep the yellow markings on the road visible, and "paint" is a technology we've had for thousands of years. Where in dog's name is the money for installing and maintaining all that smart infrastructure going to come from?

It seems to me 99.99% of all road markings are perfectly visible

This just goes to show how even unperceptive humans are better than the most perceptive car logic.

Where the car would freak out and stop, you don't even notice anything is missing.

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