Self-driving personal aircraft would probably be easier to implement than self-driving cars.
Definitely. The air is a universal medium... the ground is a mess.
Self-driving cars turned out to be harder than expected
221–230 of 287 posts
Re: Self-driving cars turned out to be harder than expected
#222When I was starting my engineering career, it was right around when the first DARPA challenges had started. The hype was beginning, and my optimism towards technology was strong. I thought the predictions and timelines would be correct, and I still feel strongly that self-driving will be safer than humans in the long term. Recently, I bought a newer Subaru, with EyeSight. It has adaptive cruise and lane keep assist.…
Earlier today I was driving on the highway with autopilot (I have a Model 3) and came to a section where the road is angled in such a way and the pavement is old enough that there is a fair amount of standing water. Driving manually, I steer to the right or left slightly to avoid the ruts filled with an inch or two of standing water. Autopilot, on the other hand, was perfectly happy to blast right through it. That's…
You have local information that cars don't yet know (but they probably will someday -- cars can send detailed road conditions to a central database, or they can communicate with other cars, so the car in front of you can say "watch out, there's a big pothole 8 inches from the left lane line" and your car will try to avoid it.
What do human drivers do there when they are unfamiliar with the road? Seems like the auto pilot should be able to do at least no worse than human drivers.
Re: Self-driving cars turned out to be harder than expected
#223I've been beating this drum for years (but I'm a nobody, so it's like pissing in the wind): 1. Anything less than 100% FULL automation is MORE dangerous than manual driving, because the "driver" will almost certainly lack any situational awareness. When the need for manual intervention happen, it will be at the moments where you need maximum awareness and split second reflexes. 2. There are SO many edge cases and nev…
1. Anything less than 100% FULL automation is MORE dangerous than manual driving, because the "driver" will almost certainly lack any situational awareness. When the need for manual intervention happen, it will be at the moments where you need maximum awareness and split second reflexes.
Airline pilots already face this -- it's hard to stay engaged in flying when the plane can fly itself. By the time something bad happens and the plane gives up and hands control back to the pilot, the pilot lacks the full situational awareness he would have had if he was flying the whole time.
Re: Self-driving cars turned out to be harder than expected
#224I am a traffic engineer and one of the things that I do regularly is write 10 year traffic plans for small to medium sized cities, think 60,000 people max. When a lot of the self driving hype was really kicking off, I was told to make sure to incorporate them into the plans. This mostly consisted of a few sentences about self driving and that was it. When modeling future traffic growth, the client would always say, "…
It will also restore mobility for many people who cannot drive yet or not anymore. Where I live, Taxis and Ubers are still too expensive and not ubiquitous enough to replace an owned car.
I'm counting on self-driving cars to be viable by the time I'm too old to drive -- it was very hard for my grandmother to give up her car and it took a lot of coaxing (and a little sabotage of her car to make her think it needed expensive repairs) to get her to stop driving. But it was necessary because she was becoming a dangerous driver.
Re: Self-driving cars turned out to be harder than expected
#225Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Am not, but your point has merit, if you mean a networked system without physical rails. As a drop-in replacement - I don't see how a human vs. robot driver, on the same vehicle footprint, helps congestion.
Re: Self-driving cars turned out to be harder than expected
#226Earlier quoted context omitted.
I assume, by then, you'll see massive insurance discounts if you provide the feeds to your insurance company. They'll use these feeds to evaluate your risk and the risk of every car around you. Cars, especially those with manual drivers, who are seen causing unsafe conditions will receive an eventual, or maybe immediate, notice: "Your premium has been increased for aggressive driving".
See, I come up with a tongue-in-cheek idea that with a creative could make for a great set of movies. HighwAI or HAIghway or AI-95 or Night on the Interstate where the plucky action hero has to save the day with the help of an old car, a grizzled mechanic, and his sweetheart from a malignant swarm of AI controlled cars that have terrorized and paralyzed the country by killing any humans they sense near the roadway. O…
It's a movie idea that's been had a million times before, so shrug.
Re: Self-driving cars turned out to be harder than expected
#227Earlier quoted context omitted.
the majority of the miles I drive are highway so for me "3 words" covers a large percentage of my usage. This is likely true of most people as well.
Indeed. The only way to call today's cars "self driving" is to narrow down the conditions of driving to the point where it's just as ridiculous as my "3 words" example, and then realize they're still not narrow enough. > the majority of the miles The "miles" metric that's not very relevant, not all miles are created equal. Driving in a straight line with almost zero challenges is nothing like driving as a whole. Woul…
> Would a power supply that's only able to take idle loads (majority of the time) be considered any good? How about a phone that can only make calls only most of the day?
When the models without those downsides require constant strong attention and nearly unbroken eyesight? Yes, sell me those models now. I'll switch between manual mode and somewhat-limited-feature mode when necessary.
Re: Self-driving cars turned out to be harder than expected
#228Earlier quoted context omitted.
In my experience, I have never been surprised by overly cautious drivers, only drivers who have an excess of confidence. How do you define 'excess caution'?
As a frequent pedestrian in Seattle, overly cautious/"courteous" drivers are a big nuance. Particularly drivers who are over-eager to stop at crosswalks, sometimes parking in the middle of the intersection to wait for the cross walk on the other side. Some drivers around here have a habit of stopping prematurely too, waiting for me to cross before I've even gotten to the intersection. Sometimes it gets truly absurd.…
I almost got run over today on Capitol Hill because of this. A driver in one direction was so insistent that I cross in front of them that I failed to be sufficiently attentive about the other direction and almost got hit.
Re: Self-driving cars turned out to be harder than expected
#229Re: Self-driving cars turned out to be harder than expected
#230In the debate over self driving, there are two schools of thought. One says that you can't solve it without machine learning because it's impossible to hand-engineer a system to cover all edge cases. The other says that you can't solve it with machine learning because any solution must have zero glitches. Both sides are correct.