51–60 of 244 posts
What is smart with Uber pushing this tech is they have incentive to test a lot with a human operator, they can earn money driving people during the test, but Google doesn't earn anything when they do, limiting their tests.
Uber is not going to make anymore money with those than their regular service, since they have to pay the driver anyway.
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Everybody wants to jump straight to 4, because 3 is actually dangerous and likely to cause deaths as people are lulled into a false sense of safety. The question is how long will it take? Some people say 2 years, some people say 20.
How much has the recent interest and investment in self-driving cars impacted this estimate? 5 years ago, I would have said that level 4 automation is 20 years away. With all these billions pouring in, I'd cut that projection in less than half. I'm certain that I won't be driving a car ever in 2030
Wheel less driving, first show me it drives in the pouring rain at night when the roads aren't lit. Show it having the ability to obey posted speed limits, adjust to construction, and the like.
I am still surprised at how much current systems love to tail gate let alone don't suggest obeying posted limits.
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You could drive down every road in the US for under 10 million dollars. So as long as you can keep them updated I don't think highly detailed maps are a problem. Especially if this is supposed to be a backup for GPS.
The maps Google uses for their self-driving cars, as I understand it, require constant maintenance. Also just the amount of data is huge. If this weren't the case, surely they would have driven in many other places by now? I would actually love for someone who works at Google to chime in here. It'd be great to find out their system is more robust than I think it is.
I saw one of these a month ago when I was biking around the North Shore (downtown Pittsburgh). Its cameras on top were far more conspicuous than the renders in the article, though. This article said it would pick people up downtown, but how far would they go to drop off? The golden triangle is mostly grid-based, but go elsewhere in the city and the road topology gets jacked up fast (like Boston), especially in the so…
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There were 4 million miles of road in the USA in 2013. Sure you could drive them - but drive them in a special sensor-equipped vehicle? In a fleet of such vehicles? In a reasonable time? Its a big job, and $2.50 a mile seems pretty low.
2.50$ is more than double what trucking costs per mile that should cover every lane mile at normal speeds. Now building 100 cars with this equipment is not going to be free, but trucks also burn far more fuel. Anyway, you doing this is hard, for a multi billion dollar per quarter company it's pocket change.
Still point taken that its just millions.
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How much has the recent interest and investment in self-driving cars impacted this estimate? 5 years ago, I would have said that level 4 automation is 20 years away. With all these billions pouring in, I'd cut that projection in less than half. I'm certain that I won't be driving a car ever in 2030
I think it actually doesn't make that much difference. The problem, I believe, is that people are used to rapid advances in software. Lots of small iterations can take you a long way, but sometimes you just reach a hurdle which requires a breakthrough. A fully self-driving car would need a huge breakthrough in perception (which most people categorize under AI) in order to work. Computer vision actually started out in…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
How much has the recent interest and investment in self-driving cars impacted this estimate? 5 years ago, I would have said that level 4 automation is 20 years away. With all these billions pouring in, I'd cut that projection in less than half. I'm certain that I won't be driving a car ever in 2030
Same view here, current solutions are nothing more than Sunday drivers to me. They work well in good to near perfect conditions only where we actually need the least amount of self driving. Wheel less driving, first show me it drives in the pouring rain at night when the roads aren't lit. Show it having the ability to obey posted speed limits, adjust to construction, and the like. I am still surprised at how much cur…
Can anyone comment on the connection between Uber a company based in S.F. and Pittsburgh? Does this have to with proximity to CMU? Something else?
http://www.wsj.com/articles/is-uber-a-friend-or-foe-of-carne...
Ubiquitous comment, as a person within the industry: there's a big difference between cars that have a hands-free driving mode, and cars that do not have a driver. The latter will be an absolute game-changer; the former can yield some marginal gains in safety and congestion, but does not really shatter any paradigms. This is the former. The latter will certainly happen eventually, but is orders of magnitude more chal…
And with current approaches to self driving cars you need lots of data, sensors, fast and reliable internet connection, accurate maps and so forth, all of which are not at the level needed to have autonomy on all roads. So even if the algorithms would be good enough you'll need much more than that to get to self driving cars.
On the other hand a human only needs one working eye and a way to steer the car to be able do drive pretty much anywhere.