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

thedrive.com

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

#721

Post by funnybeam »

jussij wrote: post #423
camjohnson26 wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They do actually, the humans driving the car can respond to a threat that an autonomous car would have to be programmed to avoid

I'm not sure humans have the reaction time to avoid an object thrown from an overpass. On the contrary, over the years I've read on many occasions how drivers and passengers have been seriously injured or killed by the morons who get a kick out of dropping objects from an overpass. https://www.tennessean.com/story/news/local/wilson/mt-juliet...

True, but humans can see a bunch of kids loitering on top of a bridge, get suspicious and change lane or slow down as a precaution

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

#722

Post by kohtatsu »

TwoBit wrote: post #573
aetherson wrote: post #562

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you destroy a yield sign, maybe it will eventually cause some problems, or maybe not. We could imagine a world in which destroying smart infrastructure could pretty instantaneously and reliably cause massive traffic jams, which seems like it would appeal more to certain trolls and perhaps protestors. We could also imagine a world in which more subtle attacks could reliably and fairly quickly cause injury/fatality…

If you destroy a yield sign, the system will immediately know because all the cars previously recorded it.

So presumably every self-driving vehicle is going to be constantly streaming all sorts of information in their purview to a central hub?

That is a privacy nightmare without regulation on scrubbing extraneous information, done before upload: for example blocking out of pedestrian data; not just faces but clothing and gait, and probably also any data captured through windows.

It would be ideal to have a limited view of just the roads and signage, and have a retention plan that gradually keeps less and less historical data.

For accident review more of the data might be required, so vehicles should keep the last 24 hours of raw data.

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

#723

Post by LargoLasskhyfv »

6510 wrote: post #677
LargoLasskhyfv wrote: post #674

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now imagine every car equipped to 'self-drive'. No manually driven cars anymore anywhere. No old timers, no exceptions. What would the daily dead rate be? 30k? 30m? Somewhere in between? Lower? It's easy to say they are better, when there are so few of them. (Compared to the amount of human driven cars)

Configurable! A reasonable amount of death. Not to much but enough to still allow for fast traffic. This kind of calc is already done for car safety features. It probably is as ridiculous as it sounds but who am I to judge.

Ascribe it to my typical german worryguts.

DELTA DASH NOVEMBER OSCAR NOVEMBER OSCAR

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

#724

Post by jnurmine »

SAE level 5 is unlikely to happen since the autonomous cases will be developed and optimized for the common case of a semi-clear weather mostly urban environment with plenty of signs and full mobile and GNSS coverage. The odd cases will simply not be a priority.

Can one take an "autonomous car" up a barely visible car wide path (not a real road) which squiggles through a forest (up to a cottage)?

Can one make an autonomous car understand a free-form textual sign when there's a roadwork or accident?

Drive in a place without marked roads?

There are plenty of edge cases and difficult situations.

Hitzinger says that level 4 might be achievable. I agree, it is conceivable that some day a lane of a motorway could get reserved for semi-autonomous vehicles; those vehicles can communicate with each other and are allowed to drive much faster (say, 250 km/h) since it's mostly a straight way, computers have faster reaction times especially given early warnings from cars ahead in the chain and so on.

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

#725

Post by kohtatsu »

kohtatsu wrote: post #722
TwoBit wrote: post #573

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you destroy a yield sign, the system will immediately know because all the cars previously recorded it.

So presumably every self-driving vehicle is going to be constantly streaming all sorts of information in their purview to a central hub? That is a privacy nightmare without regulation on scrubbing extraneous information, done before upload: for example blocking out of pedestrian data; not just faces but clothing and gait, and probably also any data captured through windows. It would be ideal to have a limited view of…

Self-driving vehicles should be implemented with the same care Apple has given Touch ID and Face ID in regards to protecting sensitive data.

Having a central database capable of being scraped and process to determine where any person is at any given time is a non-starter. Care needs to be taken to scrub all extraneous data from the fleet's network.

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

#726

Post by krn »

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 will eventually update markings and beacons on the roads to make it easier for the cars, implement networks in which the cars can talk to each other

In fact, the new generations of Volkswagen Golf, Škoda Octavia, Seat Leon, and Audi A3 (released between October 2019 and March 2020) will already be able to communicate with each other[1] and with the traffic authority[2] in real-time to prevent road accidents.

Volkswagen Golf, Škoda Octavia, and Seat Leon are #1 best-selling car models in multiple European markets, and Audi A3 is one of the most popular and affordable premium cars in Europe.

[1] https://innovationorigins.com/nxp-makes-volkswagen-golf-cars...

[2] https://youtube.com/watch?v=AM_NjfZX-F0

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

#727

Post by jve »

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…

What you are describing is Level 4-geofenced solution. Select roads, where infrastructure in place (be it 100% of aphalt, but that is not the single possible road type out there)

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

#728

Post by Kuinox »

einrealist wrote: post #257
semi-extrinsic wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I am more fearful of trolls, tricking the technology. I doubt, that the software / hardware will have a common sense, like we humans have. Its this common sense that keeps us alive in unexpected scenarios, like when the paint on the road is missing.

There is an ia that we try to learn it common sense.

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

#730

Post by ben_w »

umvi wrote: post #540
ben_w wrote: post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“We’re already doomed” isn’t a good reason to not be concerned about new ways to be doomed. Yes, we have security. Yes, cars can (probably) already be hacked, perhaps even en-mass rather than in targeted ways. But: one the big advantages of machine learning in cars is that every car can learn from the experiences of every other car. That makes them monocultures. Monocultures are fragile. You find the weakness of one,…

> I want the benefits of the former without the risks of the latter. I don’t know if that’s even possible. That's where competition comes in. Just like AMD vs. Intel or OSX vs. Windows. If you find a weakness in one, you don't necessarily find a weakness in the other. Hence, finding a weakness in Tesla doesn't mean it will work against Waymo or Uber.

To the extent that there is competition, there is an identical loss of opportunity to learn from each other’s mistakes.
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