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It seems impossible that they could have it be fully autonomous to the point of not needing a steering wheel though. You can tell an autonomous car "take me to
by NickM 11y ago
It seems impossible that they could have it be fully autonomous to the point of not needing a steering wheel though. You can tell an autonomous car "take me to the mall", or "pull out of the garage", but there are so many edge cases that seem like they would still require manual control.
How do you tell it which spot to pick in a parking garage? Or how do you tell it to, say, drive on to a lift while inside a building with no GPS reception? It seems like they must still have some kind of manual controls: even if they somehow implement full autonomy, and take care of all the edge cases, and get past the regulatory hurdles...people just like to drive cars sometimes.
So I could believe you're right, and they have massively improved autonomous driving features, but to me that still doesn't quite explain his comments about the steering controls being massively different and "feeling like a spaceship".
- Laaw 11y agoSelf driving cars don't use GPS, it is not reliable or granular enough.
- rpedela 11y agoAt all? How would it drive to the mall on the other side of town without GPS?
- TillE 11y agoA map, plus the assumption that it never moves without being powered on. (I'm sure it does use GPS for navigation. But it's hypothetically possible to do without.)
- talmand 11y agoSeems like it might need GPS at times, or some other means to know where it is at certain moments. Once it establishes where it is then I could see it no longer needing GPS, as it should be bright enough to keep track of location by itself using a map.
- chucksmash 11y agoUsing just dead reckoning you would pretty quickly have issues with accumulated error.
- gregmac 11y agoApparently not. There's a pretty fascinating story about Etak, who made a dead reckoning-based car navigation in the mid 1980's: http://www.fastcompany.com/3047828/who-needs-gps-the-forgotten-story-of-etaks-amazing-1985-car-navigation-system http://www.fastcompany.com/3047828/who-needs-gps-the-forgott...
- Laaw 11y agoDirections plus a bevy of road sensors. Basically the same way you do. It may use GPS supplementally, but never primarily.
- joantune 11y agoWhat do you mean? Automatic parking comes before self driving. Google's cars already do all of that https://www.google.com/selfdrivingcar/reports/ https://www.google.com/selfdrivingcar/reports/ They don't use GPS for driving, perhaps general orientation, they use cameras and LASER based RADARs (called LIDARs)
- the_economist 11y agoMy Model X drives itself on the freeway extremely well well. I don't have to do a thing from San Francisco to Sacramento, for example. But the self parking barely works, and can't handle anything complicated.