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Self-driving cars turned out to be harder than expected

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Re: Self-driving cars turned out to be harder than expected

#191

Post by jfoster »

vorpalhex wrote: post #112
mullingitover wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Once a driver knows the car next to them isn't driven by a person it changes their behaviour. If the car next to me isn't driven by a person, but is bristling with high resolution cameras that will immediately upload footage of my face to the authorities if I collide with it, I would indeed change my behavior.

I can see you've never tried to actually get charges brought against someone using dashcam footage...

Well, Waymo are.

https://www.azfamily.com/news/police-say-man-deliberately-ca...

Re: Self-driving cars turned out to be harder than expected

#192

Post by puranjay »

I've become increasingly jaded about the tech hype cycle. We had 3D Printing, VR/AR, crypto, and self driving cars hyped to no extent in 2-4 year cycles. We were told that they were going to change our world in the next few years.

Turns out that the underlying technology was far from maturity in each case and the use cases limited to a handful of enthusiasts.

Re: Self-driving cars turned out to be harder than expected

#193

Post by allhacks »

puranjay wrote: post #192

I've become increasingly jaded about the tech hype cycle. We had 3D Printing, VR/AR, crypto, and self driving cars hyped to no extent in 2-4 year cycles. We were told that they were going to change our world in the next few years. Turns out that the underlying technology was far from maturity in each case and the use cases limited to a handful of enthusiasts.

I worked at a car marketplace company. The number of time people told us back in 2014-2016 that Americans would no longer own cars in “2-3 years” and that consequently our market would vanish over night ... btw this group of people included very respectable folks, many of whom have a lot of fans here on HN :)

Re: Self-driving cars turned out to be harder than expected

#194

Post by mango7283 »

kumarvvr wrote: post #175

And they are just getting started with in Developed countries. The real test for a self driving car would be on roads in third world countries. That would be a real test of capability. Meanwhile, I just wish I could drive my car without moving my legs or hands so often. Why can't somebody make a car such that it can be driven by, say a simple joystick like thingy.

I think if you actually tried to drive with a joystick you will appreciate the appropriateness of the steering wheel as a means to control a car.

Re: Self-driving cars turned out to be harder than expected

#195

Post by rootusrootus »

erobbins wrote: post #183
nomel wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The only way 100% fully self driving cars will ever happen is for the infrastructure itself to be built to accommodate them. I think we'll see 100% automation for freeways within a short time. I think the only way we'll see 100% automation for arbitrary point a to point b in 50 years, that a standard human could "safely" do, is if we get flying transport.

I agree with you. I think freeway travel can be 99% automated in the very near future. I also think that's where the MAJOR wins will come from. Long haul trucking can flow 24/7 at that point, with the drivers keeping their jobs and doing last mile delivery.

How do you define 'near future'? If I want to reliably autopilot any significant distance, I do it by camping in the middle lane. Even then, AP isn't any better now than it was a year ago, it still ping pongs, turns late, cuts off merging traffic, etc. The freeway certainly seems like a good first candidate for automation, but I don't feel like we're anywhere near 99% automation of it.

Re: Self-driving cars turned out to be harder than expected

#196

Post by seanmcdirmid »

Piskvorrr wrote: post #155
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you'll find no shortage of people arguing that they're just around the corner Ya, but around the corner no one thought that would be 2020. The strawman is always to place around the corner as tomorrow, but many people just mean in a decade or two.

Yeah. It's been juuust beyond reach, but within five years to mass adoption, for a century now.

I don’t think anyone was hyping self driving cars in the 1920s. If they were, they already had horses that could do that anyways.

Re: Self-driving cars turned out to be harder than expected

#197

Post by seanmcdirmid »

Piskvorrr wrote: post #147
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cities have the problem (congestion, limited parking) in the first place while rural areas generally don’t. Many cities are limited on resources so can’t change the problem as much as they want to, so generalized self driving cars would be a huge economic boon in that case. It is the cheap solution to an expensive urban problem, but getting there requires software that is smarter than what we have right now. Rural ar…

Or rather, SDVs are a solution looking for a suitable problem space - which may turn out to be imaginary (or, more charitably, significantly more constrained, e.g. "long-distance freeway travel")

You are only thinking about the USA, but there are places outside of the USA where SDVs can be transformative. Specifically, huge Chinese mega cities with really really crappy traffic and pollution problems.

Re: Self-driving cars turned out to be harder than expected

#198

Post by oblib »

>some researchers have argued we won’t have widespread self-driving cars until we’ve made major changes to our streets to make it easier to communicate information to those cars.

It feels to me like those working on the concept are expecting that if they keep adding sensors and twiddling with AI they can avoid that.

I get why. It's a vast and expensive undertaking that is out of their control and they want to sell their product asap. But if we started with major city streets and highways it could be a quicker and safer route to get it to market.

Years ago (around the late `90s) I worked on an "Intelligent Traffic Systems" project for the city of Branson, Missouri. The 3M Corporation demonstrated a magnetic tape for street lines and a snow plow truck outfitted with sensors that could detect the lines connected to vibrators on each side of the drivers seat. When the truck got too close to the line the seat would vibrate on the side they were close to. I got to ride in the truck for a demo of the tech and worked well.

We also had street cameras that detected autos and could estimate speed and traffic congestion. These sent video and data to the local 911 center. I created a "traffic congestion map" that ran on a web server using that data that worked pretty much the same as Google Maps that show congestion.

We need "smart streets" to really make this work. Without adding that to mix corporations could be banging their heads against the wall and spending billions of dollars to try and never make the last mile.

Re: Self-driving cars turned out to be harder than expected

#200

Post by zelly »

Self-driving stops being a (difficult) AI problem if you force all cars to be self-driving and network with each other. It converts the behavioral/theory-of-mind problem into a distributed computing problem. We could have had self-driving in the 80s with this approach. Imagine where we would be today if we had decades of 24/7 trucks and ubiquitous robotaxis. It would be a completely different world. It's a shame humans are so bad at cooperating. But still, this is not out of the question today. Obviously the only way to pull this off would be with massive government subsidies. It would be worth experimenting in a small country like Luxembourg.
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