7 ms·

I can't prove it but I will say 10x your prediction, between 20 and 50 years to get a real self driving car, a car with no wheel, fully automated. Maybe 10 year

by lz400 9y ago

I can't prove it but I will say 10x your prediction, between 20 and 50 years to get a real self driving car, a car with no wheel, fully automated. Maybe 10 years to have automated highway-only trucks. I think expectations are completely unrealistic in this.

joshuamorton 9y ago
For technological or regulatory reasons? (for context, I often see cars without steering wheels tooling around Mountain View)
- luca_ing 9y ago
  How often does it snow in Mountain View?
  - joshuamorton 9y ago
    Why is that relevant? The person stated that they expected autonomous vehicles to take 20-50 years to have no steering wheels. My point is, such vehicles already drive on the roads in some places. The limits are already often more regulatory than technological.
    - lawnchair_larry 9y ago
      What do those do when an intersection light is out and a crew is directing traffic?
      - erikpukinskis 9y ago
        Ask the human to confirm when it is safe to proceed.
        luca_ing 9y ago
        ...and have some kind of UI to explain to the car whether to pass the work crew on the left or on the right. I dunno, maybe some kind of wheel in front of the human, which they could turn left or right to command the car to change direction ;-P
        erikpukinskis 9y ago
        No, just ask.
    - luca_ing 9y ago
      I wasn't replying to the person, I was replying to /you/. The impression I got from your statement was that you consider fully autonomous vehicles not far off. I disagree. The point I was making was that the vehicles you see driving around are literally fair-weather vehicles. A vehicle which can navigate autonomously 95% of the time might not be that far off (I still call it a decade though), but those last 5% (thus, no steering wheel at all) are going to be way harder. To give but a few examples: humans are taxed by navigating roads in snowy weather at night, but they usually pull it off. Or intersections controlled by traffic police. Or intersections with undisciplined drivers pushing in. I'll be interested to see an autonomous system deal with such situations gracefully. I agree that there are difficult regulatory issues to figure out, but don't underestimate the technical hurdles.
      - mentat 9y ago
        There are fully autonomous vehicles driving around Mountain View all the time. They are not 10 years off, it is now.
        tomp 9y ago
        "fully autonomous around Mountain View" is not equivalent to "fully autonomous". In particular, Uber can't just take the former and deploy it everywhere.
        erikpukinskis 9y ago
        They don't need to deploy it everywhere. Even if it can only navigate between SFO and Mountain View, that's ready to deploy as a commercial venture. There will be an adoption ramp anyway. It will just follow the driving difficulty gradient. In practical terms, it's ready now. Driving people home from the ski area in a blizzard will be the final task, but it doesn't need to be solved to put both Uber and GM out of business.
        luca_ing 9y ago
        There is a bit of a misunderstanding in this thread I think. I (and others, I believe) were arguing when a car we would want to buy could forgo a steering wheel. You're right that e.g. Uber could have a steering-wheel-less fleet that they simply retire in adverse conditions, sooner than that.
- rayiner 9y ago
  I grew up thinking we'd have supersonic airliners any day now.
  - dpark 9y ago
    We had supersonic airliners for nearly 30 years.
    - rayiner 9y ago
      That's the joke. We had a supersonic airliner, just like we have some cars driving around without steering wheels. But in 30 years the technology never got good enough to become mainstream.
      - dpark 9y ago
        The Concorde wasn't a case of us not being able to build it, though. It was a case of it just not being worth it to operate. Concorde technology was generally fine (27 years in operation). But supersonic transport is a niche even for wealthy people.
- lz400 9y ago
  And I have seen robots that answer carefully worded questions by their creators, does it mean robots can talk? I think it will be easy to get to the 80-90% but the last bits are going to kill this. Bad weather conditions, night, extreme situations, etc. Self driving cars have to drive better than the median, because the median includes drunk and elderly drivers dragging it down. I'm sure a self driving car will drive better than a drunk but that's not the goalpost, the goalpost is you and me, intelligent rational drivers who basically never have accidents (that are our fault). This is going to be very difficult as the situations that arise often times require an intelligent decision, intelligent prediction. I just don't see all those machine learning dumb systems getting there, not removing the wheel. And until the wheel is removed its useless. A car that drives but requires me to be aware enough I can take over on a split second is not self driving, so the bar is very high.
ghaff 9y ago
And it's not just snow and things like that. I'm in NYC this weeek which I think we can agree is not some rural backwater irrelevant to the rollout of vehicles. Has anyone who thinks the vehicles tooling around Silicon Valley suburbs with a driver to take over seriously think they can navigate Times Square at rush hour (or theater getting out)? People are everywhere. Bicycles are flying in and out. Cars are jamming themselves into turns. Etc. I find this sort of driving difficult and I have plenty of experience with urban driving.

by lz400 9y ago

joshuamorton 9y ago

For technological or regulatory reasons? (for context, I often see cars without steering wheels tooling around Mountain View)

luca_ing 9y ago
How often does it snow in Mountain View?
- joshuamorton 9y ago
  Why is that relevant? The person stated that they expected autonomous vehicles to take 20-50 years to have no steering wheels. My point is, such vehicles already drive on the roads in some places. The limits are already often more regulatory than technological.
  - lawnchair_larry 9y ago
    What do those do when an intersection light is out and a crew is directing traffic?
    - erikpukinskis 9y ago
      Ask the human to confirm when it is safe to proceed.
      - luca_ing 9y ago
        ...and have some kind of UI to explain to the car whether to pass the work crew on the left or on the right. I dunno, maybe some kind of wheel in front of the human, which they could turn left or right to command the car to change direction ;-P
        erikpukinskis 9y ago
        No, just ask.
  - luca_ing 9y ago
    I wasn't replying to the person, I was replying to /you/. The impression I got from your statement was that you consider fully autonomous vehicles not far off. I disagree. The point I was making was that the vehicles you see driving around are literally fair-weather vehicles. A vehicle which can navigate autonomously 95% of the time might not be that far off (I still call it a decade though), but those last 5% (thus, no steering wheel at all) are going to be way harder. To give but a few examples: humans are taxed by navigating roads in snowy weather at night, but they usually pull it off. Or intersections controlled by traffic police. Or intersections with undisciplined drivers pushing in. I'll be interested to see an autonomous system deal with such situations gracefully. I agree that there are difficult regulatory issues to figure out, but don't underestimate the technical hurdles.
    - mentat 9y ago
      There are fully autonomous vehicles driving around Mountain View all the time. They are not 10 years off, it is now.
      - tomp 9y ago
        "fully autonomous around Mountain View" is not equivalent to "fully autonomous". In particular, Uber can't just take the former and deploy it everywhere.
        erikpukinskis 9y ago
        They don't need to deploy it everywhere. Even if it can only navigate between SFO and Mountain View, that's ready to deploy as a commercial venture. There will be an adoption ramp anyway. It will just follow the driving difficulty gradient. In practical terms, it's ready now. Driving people home from the ski area in a blizzard will be the final task, but it doesn't need to be solved to put both Uber and GM out of business.
        luca_ing 9y ago
        There is a bit of a misunderstanding in this thread I think. I (and others, I believe) were arguing when a car we would want to buy could forgo a steering wheel. You're right that e.g. Uber could have a steering-wheel-less fleet that they simply retire in adverse conditions, sooner than that.
rayiner 9y ago
I grew up thinking we'd have supersonic airliners any day now.
- dpark 9y ago
  We had supersonic airliners for nearly 30 years.
  - rayiner 9y ago
    That's the joke. We had a supersonic airliner, just like we have some cars driving around without steering wheels. But in 30 years the technology never got good enough to become mainstream.
    - dpark 9y ago
      The Concorde wasn't a case of us not being able to build it, though. It was a case of it just not being worth it to operate. Concorde technology was generally fine (27 years in operation). But supersonic transport is a niche even for wealthy people.
lz400 9y ago
And I have seen robots that answer carefully worded questions by their creators, does it mean robots can talk? I think it will be easy to get to the 80-90% but the last bits are going to kill this. Bad weather conditions, night, extreme situations, etc. Self driving cars have to drive better than the median, because the median includes drunk and elderly drivers dragging it down. I'm sure a self driving car will drive better than a drunk but that's not the goalpost, the goalpost is you and me, intelligent rational drivers who basically never have accidents (that are our fault). This is going to be very difficult as the situations that arise often times require an intelligent decision, intelligent prediction. I just don't see all those machine learning dumb systems getting there, not removing the wheel. And until the wheel is removed its useless. A car that drives but requires me to be aware enough I can take over on a split second is not self driving, so the bar is very high.

ghaff 9y ago

And it's not just snow and things like that. I'm in NYC this weeek which I think we can agree is not some rural backwater irrelevant to the rollout of vehicles. Has anyone who thinks the vehicles tooling around Silicon Valley suburbs with a driver to take over seriously think they can navigate Times Square at rush hour (or theater getting out)? People are everywhere. Bicycles are flying in and out. Cars are jamming themselves into turns. Etc. I find this sort of driving difficult and I have plenty of experience with urban driving.