121–130 of 130 posts
Everything Google does feeds back, somehow, to data mining. How does self-driving cars fit in to Google's plans? ETA: Downvoted for asking a serious question? WTH?
Constantly updated Street view. Also, they could map all the roads of the world this way.
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> humans drive okay Seriously?
So in the US we have about 8 fatalities per 1B kilometers driven. Yes that's 8 too many, but that is a damn lot of km driven without incident. So yeah we do okay. Machines will do better, but we do okay.
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So in the US we have about 8 fatalities per 1B kilometers driven. Yes that's 8 too many, but that is a damn lot of km driven without incident. So yeah we do okay. Machines will do better, but we do okay.
Only counting the fatal accidents sounds like a mistake to me. I suspect that in many more instance, lim loss, paraplegy or even just serious material an psychological damage could be avoided by highly reliable automated driving.
My point was just to defend humans from the hyperbole that we drive all horribly today. We have cumulatively driven trillions of kilometers. Our cities and entire economies function because for the most part when you get into a car, you can expect to arrive at your destination. This is no small feat. But yes I look forward to self-driving cars vastly improving on "okay".
The technology is impressive, but humans drive okay without LIDAR, radar, or GPS. Maybe some day self-driving cars can drive using only two small visible-light sensors located above and behind the steering wheel. It might just be an AI challenge to operate that way, and commercial systems will always employ advanced sensors for better safety. But I don't think true parity has been reached until they can drive like we…
Don't anthropomorphise design. Computers are better at processing huge quantities of data in structured form. Humans are better at pattern recognition and adaption. Trying to design an autonomous robot by emulating the way humans or animals do it is a recipe for bad design.
But a self-driving car that uses only visual sensors is clearly possible in the long run. And having that technology would only benefit multi-sensor cars. What if one or more sensors breaks when you are doing 85 mph with the whole family asleep? I'd certainly welcome the resiliency to operate on less input.
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Constantly updated Street view. Also, they could map all the roads of the world this way.
This would be an extremely expensive way to map the world.
To the contrary, it makes for the biggest crowdsourcing project ever.
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If I were them, I would just run the vehicles as a fleet. The have many billions in cash and borrow any amount, so why not. Then innovate on the maintenance of the fleet with robots as well. Maybe start with franchising. Plus, they automatically set the rates for each individual journey dynamically and extract as much as possible.
Interesting, I can see how the taxi idea could be more efficient. On the other hand cars are a great way of signaling things (like wealth, trendiness etc) and I think people like the idea of having their car.
Does anyone know what languages are used to build the software brains for the car? I haven't found any information on the actual software architecture, more on the hardware.
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Don't anthropomorphise design. Computers are better at processing huge quantities of data in structured form. Humans are better at pattern recognition and adaption. Trying to design an autonomous robot by emulating the way humans or animals do it is a recipe for bad design.
They are taking the right track today by using a kitchen sink of radar, lidar, gps, visual. This is the way to deliver a self-driving vehicle soonest and safest. But a self-driving car that uses only visual sensors is clearly possible in the long run. And having that technology would only benefit multi-sensor cars. What if one or more sensors breaks when you are doing 85 mph with the whole family asleep? I'd certainl…
There are too many situations where one type of sensing isn't good enough (e.g. lasers scatter off snow and can't penetrate fog/dust, radar can get saturated by multiple corner reflectors, visual sucks at night, IR sucks in bright sun, etc). To reduce cost visual-only might be a good way to go, but it won't be versatile enough to cover all the necessary scenarios.
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They are taking the right track today by using a kitchen sink of radar, lidar, gps, visual. This is the way to deliver a self-driving vehicle soonest and safest. But a self-driving car that uses only visual sensors is clearly possible in the long run. And having that technology would only benefit multi-sensor cars. What if one or more sensors breaks when you are doing 85 mph with the whole family asleep? I'd certainl…
Aren't you conflating two issues? Getting visual sensing to the same level as radar/lidar is a great aim. Having redundant multi-modal sensing is a great aim. Switching over to visual- only isn't. There are too many situations where one type of sensing isn't good enough (e.g. lasers scatter off snow and can't penetrate fog/dust, radar can get saturated by multiple corner reflectors, visual sucks at night, IR sucks in…
I'm just advocating we do the research, create some visual-only cars as proof of concept, solve those thorny AI problems. It's an artificial constraint, one which will produce engineering innovations which can then be applied back to real world products.
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This is a pretty paranoid and far-fetched scenario. Generally, I'd expect that an automated taxi would operate under rules similar to current taxis - the obligation would be to take the customer to the destination via the most direct route specified, unless otherwise directed. Taking someone on another route might constitute kidnapping - you're essentially transporting them against their will to somewhere they did no…
I'd assume that a driverless taxi would have an "I want to get out, please drop me off at the next safe opportunity" as well as some method of disputing the fare. Besides, it would not necessarily even have to redirect you past a different location, it could just stream an advert to the speakers in the car. It could also be possible that some routes would be subsidized, like you could enter the location of one restau…
I'm sure any driverless cab would have the ability to ask to get out, but technically one might argue you're kidnapping someone as soon as you take them off the route they requested for any reason, if if there's an "opt-out"... at the level of an individual cab ride and human driver it's moot, but if you're operating a fleet of thousands of cabs, doing that over millions of rides, it could easily turn into a class-action suit.