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I walk/drive/bike in a city. I'm wondering if we'll ever get to fully autonomous. The thing is I'm often looking at other drivers and when driving pedestrians

I walk/drive/bike in a city. I'm wondering if we'll ever get to fully autonomous. The thing is I'm often looking at other drivers and when driving pedestrians look at me. You can send them across a crosswalk you are stopped at in a car with a wave or a tilt of your head. You can tell that person isn't going to cross the street and is waiting for a ride because they are looking at their phone and then cars. Sometimes pedestrians wave me though when I'm in my car. I had a situation where an adult waved me across at an intersection but her kids kept going. I stopped, kids stopped after mom told them to and we were back to square one of our intersection dance. Things that sensors are going to have a hard time doing. I think we'll get driver assisted as sensors can look 360 and further ahead. highways and less dense areas seem ideal for self driving.

mee_too 9y ago
I'm wondering if we'll ever be able to replace horses with cars. The thing is I'm often looking at the horses and they are looking at me :)
- Symbiote 9y ago
  That's not such a daft comment. Various old people in England have told me about when goods were delivered by horse and cart (milk, bread etc). The horses knew the route, a man would walk alongside the cart and make the delivery while the horse waited, before proceeding to the next customer's house. Usually, the purpose of telling me this story has been the time the delivery man was absent; either through a sudden illness or drunkeness. The customer notices the horse stop outside, but then goes to investigate when the horse walks away but there's been no delivery.
rockinghigh 9y ago
Self driving on highways is already working. There are solutions for interacting with periastrians. Mercedes had a prototype where a virtual cross walk was displayed in front of the car to show it was waiting for the pedestrian.
- Piskvorrr 9y ago
  #1 cause of pedestrian injury right there: car in lane 1 stops and {driver waves at pedestrians/car displays crosswalk}; pedestrians start walking; car in lane 2 doesn't stop. A protocol incompatibility issue? Oh well, can't make an omelette without killing a few people :-/ In other words, this requires precise cooperation from multiple parties involved; one fancy car implementing this is insufficient.
deevolution 9y ago
Just attach lasers to your helmet and you should be able to divert all the autonmous vehicles away from your path. They're pretty easy to fool right now.
- Piskvorrr 9y ago
  That's not as daft as it looks - current autonomous vehicles remind me of the early interwebs: open, trusting and insecure by default.
savanaly 9y ago
I have to admit that self driving cars are not better in all circumstances. They don't have to reach that bar for me to prefer them though. If they do better in enough situations to outweigh the situations where they do worse, they should displace non-self driving cars. The biggest advantage I see is that they always perform to their standard, whatever it may be, instead of wildly deviating as humans tend to since humans are often drunk, tired or distracted. Their biggest disadvantage is dealing with real life context clues like you mentioned, or times when the road is different than what the map suggests and you need some common sense.
rpenm 9y ago
Adding additional methods for self-driving vehicles to signal state to other road users would be helpful in this regard.
DonHopkins 9y ago
"Monderman found that the traffic efficiency and safety improved when the street and surrounding public space was redesigned to encourage each person to negotiate their movement directly with others." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Monderman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Monderman
xg15 9y ago
I remember reading about some design studies for "car-to-pedestrian communication" a while ago. I think one idea was to project a zebra crossing in front of the car to let pedestrians know it's safe to cross. I think ideas like that show that there might be ways to solve those problems - but interaction with a self-driving car will likely be very different than interaction with a human-driven one. (And you'd have to teach/convince people to accept this new mode of communication) In any case I agree it's very early days to even attempt to solve those problems. (Of course it's possible things will go the easy route and self-driving cars will more be regarded like trains and restricted to special routes strongly off-limits to pedestrians.)

mee_too 9y ago

I'm wondering if we'll ever be able to replace horses with cars. The thing is I'm often looking at the horses and they are looking at me :)

Symbiote 9y ago
That's not such a daft comment. Various old people in England have told me about when goods were delivered by horse and cart (milk, bread etc). The horses knew the route, a man would walk alongside the cart and make the delivery while the horse waited, before proceeding to the next customer's house. Usually, the purpose of telling me this story has been the time the delivery man was absent; either through a sudden illness or drunkeness. The customer notices the horse stop outside, but then goes to investigate when the horse walks away but there's been no delivery.

rockinghigh 9y ago

Self driving on highways is already working. There are solutions for interacting with periastrians. Mercedes had a prototype where a virtual cross walk was displayed in front of the car to show it was waiting for the pedestrian.

Piskvorrr 9y ago
#1 cause of pedestrian injury right there: car in lane 1 stops and {driver waves at pedestrians/car displays crosswalk}; pedestrians start walking; car in lane 2 doesn't stop. A protocol incompatibility issue? Oh well, can't make an omelette without killing a few people :-/ In other words, this requires precise cooperation from multiple parties involved; one fancy car implementing this is insufficient.

deevolution 9y ago

Just attach lasers to your helmet and you should be able to divert all the autonmous vehicles away from your path. They're pretty easy to fool right now.

Piskvorrr 9y ago
That's not as daft as it looks - current autonomous vehicles remind me of the early interwebs: open, trusting and insecure by default.

savanaly 9y ago

I have to admit that self driving cars are not better in all circumstances. They don't have to reach that bar for me to prefer them though. If they do better in enough situations to outweigh the situations where they do worse, they should displace non-self driving cars. The biggest advantage I see is that they always perform to their standard, whatever it may be, instead of wildly deviating as humans tend to since humans are often drunk, tired or distracted. Their biggest disadvantage is dealing with real life context clues like you mentioned, or times when the road is different than what the map suggests and you need some common sense.

rpenm 9y ago

Adding additional methods for self-driving vehicles to signal state to other road users would be helpful in this regard.

DonHopkins 9y ago

"Monderman found that the traffic efficiency and safety improved when the street and surrounding public space was redesigned to encourage each person to negotiate their movement directly with others." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Monderman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Monderman

xg15 9y ago

I remember reading about some design studies for "car-to-pedestrian communication" a while ago. I think one idea was to project a zebra crossing in front of the car to let pedestrians know it's safe to cross. I think ideas like that show that there might be ways to solve those problems - but interaction with a self-driving car will likely be very different than interaction with a human-driven one. (And you'd have to teach/convince people to accept this new mode of communication) In any case I agree it's very early days to even attempt to solve those problems. (Of course it's possible things will go the easy route and self-driving cars will more be regarded like trains and restricted to special routes strongly off-limits to pedestrians.)