I'm wondering how much of that is due to how "hard" the tech is (the research had been done by Sebastian Thrun/Carnegie Mellon in the 90s) vs. the maker renaiss

I'm wondering how much of that is due to how "hard" the tech is (the research had been done by Sebastian Thrun/Carnegie Mellon in the 90s) vs. the maker renaissance spurred by the drastically falling cost of hardware? Though I suppose "true" fully autonomous self-driving cars that can handle things like rain, human driver non-verbal communication (like eye contact and the finger), and left turns onto oncoming traffic are still at least a decade away, at least according to MIT's John Leonard, the Cruise founder's likely protégé. [1] It goes without saying that California with its perfect weather and perfect highways is a rather unfair testing ground for autonomous vehicles, as unfortunate as it is the hotspot for a lot of the autonomous driving research. (Maybe that's why the researchers more grounded in reality are the ones in Pittsburgh and MIT/Boston?) I remember when a LIDAR unit was a $30,000 SICK laser unit, but now you have the same kind of sensor in your $100 Kinect. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5CZmlaMNCs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5CZmlaMNCs