41–50 of 287 posts
One day we'll look back and say "aww, they tried so hard with the limited tech they had and got so close but what they needed to make it good just didn't exist yet".
Maybe machine learning can be used to tell the difference between a dog and a plastic bag, but you'll need some hard code to describe how to react to either.
Expected by who?
Alternate headline: Some people overstated how simple this problem was because they didn't know what they were talking about, could promote themselves as experts, could get funding for a self-driving startup or some combination of the above. I guess that isn't as pithy but it's closer to the truth. When it became clear that Uber's strategy (under Kalanick anyway) was premised on replacing drivers with AIs before the…
The AI car will have sufficient cameras to record your actions and report them directly to your insurance company if not the police.
This will be MORE effective at deterring stupid driving, not less.
Disclaimer up front: I work for GM, I don't work on SDC. As I see it, self-driving is a cursed[0][1] problem. If you could choose a different problem space, or to ignore some complications, self-driving would merely be very hard. But the requirement to handle ANY external behavior with ANY external conditions and navigate to ANY destination, while also maintaining safety is impossible* satisfy. One cursed corner of t…
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 never-seen-before situations that happen when driving "at scale" that the automation features will fail unexpectedly and in strange ways.
3. G and Cruise might be exceptions, but most of the companies in this space are cowboys with reckless disregard for public safety and terrible "iterate quickly" coding practices.
4. At some point there will be an accident that kills a photogenic "middle America" person or people and at that point the government will crush this industry with regulation, with the financial backing of automakers, UAW, and other people who benefit from the status quo.
The only way 100% fully self driving cars will ever happen is for the infrastructure itself to be built to accommodate them. Mixing regular cars, parking, trucks, bicycles, scooters, pedestrians, dog walkers, hoverboards, etc all together on the same roads ensures that the problem is unsolvable.
Alternate headline: Some people overstated how simple this problem was because they didn't know what they were talking about, could promote themselves as experts, could get funding for a self-driving startup or some combination of the above. I guess that isn't as pithy but it's closer to the truth. When it became clear that Uber's strategy (under Kalanick anyway) was premised on replacing drivers with AIs before the…
For example, I avoid doing things on the road that an inattentive other driver might be slow to react to and hit me, such as suddenly cutting across 3 lanes of traffic.
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 t…
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.