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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

#21

Post by chrisco255 »

takk309 wrote: post #15

I 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, "…

Yeah just collision detection and lane guidance are already helpful in modern cars. After driving in snow in Colorado I have to wonder how self driving cars perform under such conditions. I couldn't make out where the lines are and no one really does. A four lane road can easily become a two lane road under such conditions, as people cut a worn path through the snow.

I really think self driving could improve public transportation in urban cores by tracking preset paths. I could also imagine buses that are mostly autonomous, but where a remote driver could override the controls for exceptions.

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

#22

Post by close04 »

learc83 wrote: post #18
heynk wrote: post #3

When 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.…

>Recently, I bought a newer Subaru, with EyeSight. It has adaptive cruise and lane keep assist. The LKA is fine - it'll beep if you sway outside of a lane, and automatically adjusts the steering, but it won't keep you centered. It's more of a safety thing, and it works well from that perspective. I have 2020 Subaru and it has lane centering on top of that. On the highway, with clear lane markings it comes very close…

Today saying cars have "self driving capabilities" is like saying you're fluent in 3 words of a language. They have advanced driver assists but the insistence on the "self driving" terminology tricks enthusiasts and less tech savvy people alike into a false sense of confidence in the tech. Sometimes all the way to their deaths.

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

#23

Post by manmal »

takk309 wrote: post #15

I 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.

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

#24

Post by ghaff »

scottlocklin wrote: post #8

You mean the output of VC firm and Silly Con Valley marketing centipedes isn't strictly true? Perish the thought! Next thing you know, you'll be telling me the advocates of strong-AI, 3-d printing, Virtual Reality and Drones as revolutionary technology might not be exactly accurate.

I do wonder how much of the self-driving narrative at the peak of inflated expectations was the result of

1. Wild optimism fueled by how rapid the progress of ML had been in certain domains over the course of a few years combined with a lot of hype and general SV techno-optimism. (And the fact that a certain demographic so desperately wanted a robo-chaffeur to drive them around.)

vs.

2. Hypesters and scammers who knew it was mostly smoke and mirrors but it didn't matter so long as they got their payday.

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

#25

Post by skywhopper »

heynk wrote: post #3

When 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.…

Ultimately, the right place for most carmakers to focus on at this point would be situational awareness and safety features, gradually improving the situations where the car can prevent a crash.

Put it this way: If a driverless car would be safer than human drivers, then that would imply that all the necessary technology would already exist to allow humans to be the driver while the car still keeps them out of deadly situations. If such tech is not possible to develop, then it seems unlikely that true driverless tech (which would need to combine that safety tech with a lot of other technology) will happen.

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

#27

Post by tjpaudio »

To anyone with a detailed understanding of the current limits of machine learning, this should be no surprise; unsupervised learning is far from solved and ML in its current state will always be plagued by the cat and mouse game of edge cases. The reality is the industry has decided to go this way anyways because it has a good profit outlook if you can get it to work, which is the only thing funding the endeavor. Consider two ways of going about automated transportation:

1) AI. The car independently makes decisions and drives itself. 2) Networks. The car communicates with a grid to make decisions.

Why did we go for #1? Well, thats easy, capitalism. Consider:

AI: - Company gets to own the intellectual property to form a temporary monopoly. - Easier to sidestep governments involvement. - No need to build large infrastructure

Networks: - Shared, less opportunity for monopoly formation. - Will need the government to cooperate. Governments are slows.

If I had to guess, we will eventually go the network route. The research used for AI will drive safety features and failsafes, but not the meet of it. Anyways, why accelerate a line of stopped cars one at a time with autonomous vehicles when you could accelerate the entire line of cars simultaneously with a networked setup?

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

#28

Post by krm01 »

It’s really just a matter of time. Those that started out optimistic (when it was hyped) but are now saying that they don’t see self driving cars can do the complex situations we humans supposedly can should have some patience. As the tech improves, and more data is used to train models, it’ll surely surpass humans in driving ability.

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

#29

Post by wilg »

tjpaudio wrote: post #27

To anyone with a detailed understanding of the current limits of machine learning, this should be no surprise; unsupervised learning is far from solved and ML in its current state will always be plagued by the cat and mouse game of edge cases. The reality is the industry has decided to go this way anyways because it has a good profit outlook if you can get it to work, which is the only thing funding the endeavor. Con…

I think #1 is easier for lots of reasons.

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

#30

Post by skywhopper »

takk309 wrote: post #15

I 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, "…

I'm always baffled by folks who assume self-driving cars would reduce traffic. No matter what, even if they are privately owned, truly self-driving vehicles could only increase traffic. If they can be dispatched without a human driver to pick up groceries or take-out, for example, there'll be a lot more trips. And sharing self-driving cars rather than owning them would surely be more likely to increase the number of cars on the road since they have to make a trip to pick you up and another one after they drop you off.
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