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> A Slate article from 2014 stated that Google's cars wouldn't know a stoplight existed, and would simply run it, if it wasn't in Google Maps That muse be old.
by magicalist 11y ago
> A Slate article from 2014 stated that Google's cars wouldn't know a stoplight existed, and would simply run it, if it wasn't in Google Maps
That muse be old. In their TED talk from last year, they had it spotting and reacting to cyclist hand signals, school bus mechanical stop signs, and even a police officer directing traffic at an intersection.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tiwVMrTLUWg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tiwVMrTLUWg
edit: I see you mention this below.
Weird article, though. The author says:
> In fact, when I first wrote about the car for MIT Technology Review, Google admitted to me that the process it currently uses to make the maps are too inefficient to work in the country as a whole.
but his previous article he links to says
> Maps have so far been prepared for only a few thousand miles of roadway, but achieving Google’s vision will require maintaining a constantly updating map of the nation’s millions of miles of roads and driveways. Urmson says Google’s researchers “don’t see any particular roadblocks” to accomplishing that.
(and, incidentally, you quote the word "impractical", which appears in neither quote :)
- ocdtrekkie 11y agoI guess I did translate 'inefficient' to 'impractical' in my head. I am not certain I see a large difference though. There are arguably many roads where getting a constantly updating map is relatively doable, and many where it is not. Even if the cars themselves are able to update the map, how will they handle the trailblazing through an inaccurately mapped area? I also hesitate to trust the TED talk, to be honest. Even some of Google's earliest videos of their self-driving car project seemed to portray a level of capability beyond what their cars could actually do without a lot of hand-holding.