Volkswagen exec admits full self-driving cars 'may never happen' • Hacker News Board

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

#181

Post by hwillis » Sat, Jan 18, 2020, 9:06 PM UTC

bstar77 wrote: post #42

lern_too_spel wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Staying inside a lane isn't the hard problem.

The point is that (primarily) the road needs to be smart, not the car. There should ideally be a synergy between the car and road, but the road has to be the primary vector to guide the car.

Why? There's very little information that would be better coming from the road. To drive you want to know where you are, what the road surface conditions are like, where the road goes, and what else is on the road.

Road conditions can easily come from anywhere. Weather radar is at least good enough to know when roads might be wet or cold. Making roads smart enough to sense oil spills or even wetness would be incredibly hard.

Knowing where the road goes is certainly far better done by cellular. Connection to each segment of road would be fraught with hard to repair problems. Traffic conditions likewise are far better done from somewhere else, and cars would be much more able to see things on the road etc.

The only argument I can see as at all reasonable is that locating cars is difficult, and doing it with vision is incredibly challenging. You may not be aware how much GPS has improved. With a good view of the sky you can get (somewhat slow) accuracy to about a foot. Realistically that's just as good as you could possibly expect from a roadside device like RFID, bluetooth, or induction. The last inches may be important, but billions of dollars spent burying things in the road will not help.

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

#182

Post by seanmcdirmid » Sat, Jan 18, 2020, 9:07 PM UTC

nordsieck wrote: post #125

brians wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By offering laminar rather than turbulent flow. Take a two lane highway where traffic moves at 100 kph. It contracts to one lane at 100kph. Humans will pull up close, stall in one lane, do a flaky and awful zipper merge. Latency will be higher than necessary and throughout lower. Self driving cars can plan the whole exchange, negotiate (or be directed by an intersection controller) to decelerate, align, merge, and ma…

> By offering laminar rather than turbulent flow. That's only going to work on roads that are AI-only.

There are already cities where buying a car is difficult and/or expensive because of traffic concerns. Singapore, Beijing, Shanghai, Tokyo, ...

I don’t see an AI requirement to be a huge hurdle for those cities.

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

#183

Post by shoulderfake » Sat, Jan 18, 2020, 9:08 PM UTC

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?

Perhaps take 10% of the military budget and you might just have some $ for that

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

#184

Post by Barrin92 » Sat, Jan 18, 2020, 9:09 PM UTC

Booktrope wrote: post #111

Or perhaps, VW exec hopes full self-driving cars may never happen, because it would imply a fleet approach where transportation would be a service instead of cars being a prized possession. That, of course, would mean far less cars. So don't expect a traditional car manufacturer to lead the way. This is incidentally one reason for Tesla's huge market value. The company actually has a plan to transition from individua…

>Or perhaps, VW exec hopes full self-driving cars may never happen, because it would imply a fleet approach where transportation would be a service instead of cars being a prized possession.

Cuts both ways. Tesla execs have the same reason to overhype autonomous driving, because their market value depends on being perceived as a hypermodern tech company.

So far reality has proven VW right. Elon himself had to walk back on grandiose claims about full autonomy and robotaxi fleets, or advertising cars with slogans like "the driver is only there for legal reasons, the car drives itself" a bunch of years ago.

Full autonomy on a human level requires human levels of intelligence and 'common sense', it's a ridiculously hard problem that requires several leaps in AI and plenty of other fields.

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

#185

Post by seanmcdirmid » Sat, Jan 18, 2020, 9:09 PM UTC

peteradio wrote: post #148

coolspot wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When roads belong exclusively to self-driving cars, they can increase speed, reduce gaps between cars and eliminate traffic wave effect. Imagine highway where everyone drives 80mph with 5ft of distance between cars. No one suddenly changes lanes, no one suddenly slows down for no reason. Here is illustration from Waymo testing facility: https://youtu.be/hKfEivMfDPU

Lol that is going to lead to the mother of all pile-ups not if but when something just so slightly goes wrong. Imagine somebody dropping shit from an overpass or really anything. Better build a giant cage over all the highways!

Those kind of pile ups already happen now when people drop crap from overpasses, how would it be any different?

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

#186

Post by semi-extrinsic » Sat, Jan 18, 2020, 9:10 PM UTC

URSpider94 wrote: post #173

jimktrains2 wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if there is no reaction time, 5' of space at 50mph is silly. You still need room to maneuver if whatever caused the vehicle ahead to throw on its breaks comes back or halts the vehicle ahead faster than your breaks can stop you.

It’s basically a virtual tandem semi. The presumption is that you are delegating command and control to the lead vehicle, and there is bidirectional communication between the lead and follow vehicles.

Well, why don't we go a step further then and physically connect the vehicles? Maybe we can also make them longer and fit more passengers? And we could optimize the rolling friction, replace rubber on tarmac with something better like steel on steel, and use some sort of tracks to provide the sideways forces?

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

#187

Post by oblio » Sat, Jan 18, 2020, 9:11 PM UTC

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…

> implement networks in which the cars can talk to each other

And sing kumbaya, holding hands together....

What about adversarial car AIs? Malicious actors, etc.?

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

#188

Post by furyofantares » Sat, Jan 18, 2020, 9:12 PM UTC

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…

People who can't, or shouldn't, drive themselves at all are totally unaccounted for in this logic. Full autonomy would be hugely freeing to the elderly, for example. Presumably it would enable travel for people too young to get a driver's license as well. And I have to assume driving patterns for capable drivers would change too, in ways that are likely hard to predict or appreciate right now.

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

#189

Post by judge2020 » Sat, Jan 18, 2020, 9:12 PM UTC

threeseed wrote: post #78

rgbrenner wrote: post #18

Since when has VW been at the forefront of self driving cars? Is there a reason their insight would be especially accurate? This just reflects VWs ideas to accomplish the goal... ie: they have none. Let me know when Google says it's not possible.

Apple is in the top tier of self driving cars though. And since he recently worked there I am sure he knows quite a bit about where the industry is at.

> Apple is in the top tier of self driving cars though.

I mean all we have to support that they're working on self driving cars at all is DMV records, articles, and pictures of their car efforts. We have no idea how far along they are.

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

#190

Post by chrischen » Sat, Jan 18, 2020, 9:13 PM UTC

giancarlostoro wrote: post #170

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…

Heck. With Toyota building a city of the future. They might make self driving cars entirely common once you are free to design roads for them.

Yea they could put down visual markers on the road to make it easier for CV or ML models to be trained against, or maybe even physical tracks to mechanically guide these cars so that minimal software is needed. Multiple cars can be linked together for efficiency.