5 ms·
The tesla gets the easy parts down. Highway driving is largely uneventful straight travel. It's the rest of it that's hard, detecting stop signs and lights, p
by simcop2387 10y ago
The tesla gets the easy parts down. Highway driving is largely uneventful straight travel. It's the rest of it that's hard, detecting stop signs and lights, pedestrians and all the other corner cases that make it significantly harder for the tail end of the problem. Google's press releases about their cars make it seem like it's a few years off but I'd actually expect it to be about a decade instead, more because of testing and regulatory changes that need to happen before we see them sold. A Tesla has the capability to do the worst of that long haul trip, but it has the charger problem right now that they're trying to get more of them out there for it.
- ForHackernews 10y agoGoogle's cars have logged a lot of miles, but only over a few miles of actual road in Northern California--road for which Google has extremely detailed maps already in place. It's going to be a long time before a Google car can just drive anywhere you tell it to.
- Gatsky 10y agoIt might happen significantly sooner if we start modifying roads and intersections to be more robo car friendly.
- duaneb 10y agoThat's gotta be a bigger project in terms of man power and money than anyone has invested in self driving cars already. We need more testing to even establish the problem areas and figure out how to actively solve them.
- agumonkey 10y agoGoogle has more data. CPUs, GPUs are more potent. Yes society might take SDV in account now, a parallel 'iot' road information system. One thing that is to worry, IIRC, is that gCar sensors are only good for that climate and fail rapidly under other conditions. Fog, rain, snow have no good technology for now.
- Retric 10y agoGoogle streetcar has covered a lot of miles, so they could have good maps of most areas.
- ktRolster 10y agoThe mapping for a self-driving car needs to be much more detailed than what you see in google street-view. It includes things like the height of curbs. Here's an overview: http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/artificial-intelligence/how-google-self-driving-car-works http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/artificial-intel... Also, errors in street-view are minor annoyance; for a self-driving car, an error in its internal map could be deadly.
- goda90 10y agoAnd I wouldn't call heavy rain or snow a corner case everywhere outside California. I wonder if we'll tune our infrastructure to help autonomous cars drive in low visibility situations where human drivers are often guessing the lanes. For example digital markers that help the car orient itself without vision.
- bennettfeely 10y agoI would hope my tax dollars aren't spent embedding digital markers in public roads so that rich Tesla owners can sleep while being transported.
- baddox 10y agoWhat about your tax dollars being spent embedding digital markers in public roads so that the roads will become much safer and more efficient?
- khuknows 10y agoSimilar things could have been said about roads: "I would hope my tax dollars aren't spent on building roads so that it's quicker for rich car owners to travel between cities"
- ars 10y agoThat would be fine with me. If I handled the local roads and the car drove only on the freeway that would solve like 80% of the problem. And because such a thing would be a huge win for trucking companies I fully expect the US will eventually instrument the entire interstate system to make this happen. (i.e. there is enough money in it to make it happen.) Fully autonomous local driving is not likely to happen till we have real AI that can understand things like: the guy down the street is unloading a construction vehicle, so make a U-turn and go down a different street.
- Piskvorrr 10y agoWell, it's always "five years off." Has been for a century now ;)