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Being totally serious here, given how terrible their mapping software is, I'm not really surprised they're not crushing autonomous vehicles. I'm by no means try

Being totally serious here, given how terrible their mapping software is, I'm not really surprised they're not crushing autonomous vehicles. I'm by no means trying to say mapping is an easy problem but if you couldn't pull together a competent version of the much easier problem, chances are you won't do much better with the harder one.

malisper 10y ago
I thought Uber uses Google Maps. When I open the app, I see "Google" in the bottom left.
- athenot 10y ago
  They are moving away from Google Maps. It's too important of a component for them to entrust to another company. It's the same reason Apple implemented their own mapping.
- skywhopper 10y ago
  Alas, Google Maps has a ton of errors and omissions that can only be corrected with a lot more human work than these companies are ever going to be willing to put in.
yaur 10y ago
From the article it looks like one of these incidents, not knowing that a street was one way during or after the incident, was probably a mapping problem. I don't want to diminish the difficulty of autonomous vehicles but I'm not sure that keeping up to date on every road and driving regulation change is that much easier. There also places, Iceland comes to mind but also in the rural US, where speed limits are completely divorced from what is a reasonable speed even ideal conditions. So anyone that wants to do autonomous vehicles outside of urban centers is going to have to do a better job at understanding the road network than local government is doing.
- alistproducer2 10y ago
  This is why mapping and GPS, as a solution to AVs will only get so far and the guys who really understand this problem know it. There's starting to be people coming forward saying this problem is nowhere near solved by 2020 like marketing departments would like to have us believe.
- mc32 10y ago
  This brings up a question, how will fully automated systems deal with temporary detours, the signs for some of which are badly placed and hard to understand by humans, at times. Sometimes it's a construction worker waving confusing indications. Some detours last just a few minutes or hours, so it's not likely a source of truth map would get updated. Or maybe they would.

malisper 10y ago

I thought Uber uses Google Maps. When I open the app, I see "Google" in the bottom left.

athenot 10y ago
They are moving away from Google Maps. It's too important of a component for them to entrust to another company. It's the same reason Apple implemented their own mapping.
skywhopper 10y ago
Alas, Google Maps has a ton of errors and omissions that can only be corrected with a lot more human work than these companies are ever going to be willing to put in.

yaur 10y ago

From the article it looks like one of these incidents, not knowing that a street was one way during or after the incident, was probably a mapping problem. I don't want to diminish the difficulty of autonomous vehicles but I'm not sure that keeping up to date on every road and driving regulation change is that much easier. There also places, Iceland comes to mind but also in the rural US, where speed limits are completely divorced from what is a reasonable speed even ideal conditions. So anyone that wants to do autonomous vehicles outside of urban centers is going to have to do a better job at understanding the road network than local government is doing.

alistproducer2 10y ago
This is why mapping and GPS, as a solution to AVs will only get so far and the guys who really understand this problem know it. There's starting to be people coming forward saying this problem is nowhere near solved by 2020 like marketing departments would like to have us believe.
mc32 10y ago
This brings up a question, how will fully automated systems deal with temporary detours, the signs for some of which are badly placed and hard to understand by humans, at times. Sometimes it's a construction worker waving confusing indications. Some detours last just a few minutes or hours, so it's not likely a source of truth map would get updated. Or maybe they would.