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Ha-le-freaking-lujah! I've been saying the same for years, ever since I completed the Udacity self-driving car AI course (taught by Sebastian Thrun, then head g

Ha-le-freaking-lujah! I've been saying the same for years, ever since I completed the Udacity self-driving car AI course (taught by Sebastian Thrun, then head guru of autonomous vehicle research at Google). 70% of the problem was solved in mid-90's, by Ernst Dickmanns et al, Daimler Benz had autonomous cars on the autobahn. After billions of dollars and two decades, we solved another 20% of the problem. The remaining 10% is not going to be conclusively solved in the next 20 years at least, not under the current constraints. Now if roads are outfitted with instrumentation for autonomous vehicles, _and_ human drivers are prohibited on such roads, _then_ we _might_ see full autonomy. But not before. If it were up to me, I'd focus on this instrumentation instead: RF guide wires/tags for car localization on the pavement, machine readable signage (even in fog, snow, and heavy rain -- conditions with which cameras and LIDARs cannot deal in principle), inter-car coordination mesh networks and security thereof, autonomous vehicle readable road work signage, police gear to direct traffic of autonomous vehicles, and so on and so forth. There. Hundred billion dollars worth of startups in one paragraph. As things stand, you can only be fully autonomous at 25mph in California where it never rains, as long as there's no fog, no road work, and no one has messed up the markings on the pavement.

mojuba 10y ago
> police gear to direct traffic of autonomous vehicles Absolutely, been saying this for years (yes, me too :). We will eventually achieve a lot more autonomy and robotization of driving, but it will require massive infrastructural changes, much like the transition from horses to cars.
exDM69 10y ago
Yes! A bit of common sense would be useful here. The current generation of self-driving cars is fairly impressive already, but what I'd like to see is a city full of them. I have a feeling that self-driving only works as long as the majority of drivers are human drivers. It's trivially easy to come up with traffic situations that could lead to a deadlock by blidndly following the rules. Humans will use hand signals, eye contact or someone will violate the rules a little or make way when they don't strictly have to in order to ensure that traffic flows. I think that car-to-car and/or car-to-road communications will be required before large scale deployment is possible. And I have not heard from a cross-manufacturer effort of creating a protocol for such communication. Although I do understand why the automotive industry is hell bent on getting their level 2 autonomy out there. Money from the customers is needed to keep the R&D effort going. I personally did not understand why anyone would want a Level 2 car where you have to be constantly on the lookout until I visited Silicon Valley and drove a stint on US Hwy 101 in rush hour. And I guess this is the initial target market for the self-driving car industry: wealthy individuals who have a stressful morning commute in stop'n'go traffic. Money from these early adopters will go to funding the R&D for the next generation in the hopes that Level 4/5 will some day become reality. But in my conservative estimate, that's still years away from being adopted en masse. There may be a significant minority of them on the road in 3-5 years but I can't imagine it working very well if they were in the majority.
- general_ai 10y ago
  At the moment I'd pay a lot of money for a car that I drive mostly myself, but that also had an advanced safety system which makes it much harder to get into an accident. I.e. fix my driving mistakes and lapses in judgment for me while I'm in control. I'd be willing to pay a hefty premium for this.

mojuba 10y ago

> police gear to direct traffic of autonomous vehicles Absolutely, been saying this for years (yes, me too :). We will eventually achieve a lot more autonomy and robotization of driving, but it will require massive infrastructural changes, much like the transition from horses to cars.

exDM69 10y ago

Yes! A bit of common sense would be useful here. The current generation of self-driving cars is fairly impressive already, but what I'd like to see is a city full of them. I have a feeling that self-driving only works as long as the majority of drivers are human drivers. It's trivially easy to come up with traffic situations that could lead to a deadlock by blidndly following the rules. Humans will use hand signals, eye contact or someone will violate the rules a little or make way when they don't strictly have to in order to ensure that traffic flows. I think that car-to-car and/or car-to-road communications will be required before large scale deployment is possible. And I have not heard from a cross-manufacturer effort of creating a protocol for such communication. Although I do understand why the automotive industry is hell bent on getting their level 2 autonomy out there. Money from the customers is needed to keep the R&D effort going. I personally did not understand why anyone would want a Level 2 car where you have to be constantly on the lookout until I visited Silicon Valley and drove a stint on US Hwy 101 in rush hour. And I guess this is the initial target market for the self-driving car industry: wealthy individuals who have a stressful morning commute in stop'n'go traffic. Money from these early adopters will go to funding the R&D for the next generation in the hopes that Level 4/5 will some day become reality. But in my conservative estimate, that's still years away from being adopted en masse. There may be a significant minority of them on the road in 3-5 years but I can't imagine it working very well if they were in the majority.

general_ai 10y ago
At the moment I'd pay a lot of money for a car that I drive mostly myself, but that also had an advanced safety system which makes it much harder to get into an accident. I.e. fix my driving mistakes and lapses in judgment for me while I'm in control. I'd be willing to pay a hefty premium for this.