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I will take your self driving car seriously if you can drive it in all conditions in India. Until then its just an attempt to make something that breaks at the

by kamaal 9y ago

I will take your self driving car seriously if you can drive it in all conditions in India. Until then its just an attempt to make something that breaks at the next unanticipated exception.

fooker 9y ago
Human beings can not drive in all conditions in India. Just to get our car out of the garage, I had to plead and negotiate with N vegetable vendors with makeshift stores on the road. Also: bicycles, motorbikes, rickshaws(in human pulled, CNG and electric varieties!)and pedestrians mixed in traffic everywhere.
- kamaal 9y ago
  >>I had to plead and negotiate with N vegetable vendors with makeshift stores on the road. This is a very practical test case for a car on a road. Not just in India but anywhere in the world. Instead of N vegetable vendors you could have N traffic cops. How do you manage the human interaction part in the self driving car?
- owenversteeg 9y ago
  Yep, I have a feeling that for driving in India/Iran/Pakistan/Bangladesh you're going to need a strong AI to negotiate with the street vendors. In Iran I even had a particularly... enthusiastic flower seller actually maneuver himself to make it even harder to drive away. Not to take away from anyone's work in this area, but I have no idea how long it'll take to go from "works in America" to "works in India". In many countries the safest option (to evade disaster) can occasionally be "floor it and break the speed limit" to get away from x dangerous thing. I'm not sure if that's something that Google is willing to write into an AI.
  - manmal 9y ago
    This will require something like Rick's (from Rick and Morty) car/spaceship.
bjpirt 9y ago
Made me laugh but it's a very true statement. When I was driving whilst holidaying in India I realised that the main rule of the road was "largest vehicle wins"! This actually made for quite an easy to understand system with few questions of whose right of way it was. bike < car < van < truck which makes sense because if you're the one who's going to come off worse in an impact then you really want to give way - especially if you have a massive painted tipper truck hurtling towards you! It will be very interesting to see how self driving systems can cope with these local unwritten bylaws.
- danielbln 9y ago
  It will most definitely be interesting, but it's silly to say that self-driving cars can't be taken seriously, if they don't master these conditions (yet). Hell, I couldn't master those conditions myself, nor do I need to, because I live in the the inner city of a Western-European metropolis, so what I need my self-driving car to do varies massively from what people in other regions of the globe may need it to do, but that doesn't make it any less useful for me.
- kamaal 9y ago
  >>It will be very interesting to see how self driving systems can cope with these local unwritten bylaws. This is why self driving AI will require Hard AI. India is a perfect test bed for these people to test their algorithms. And for heaven's sake why would you test it in some place like the US. Cars in US are pretty much trains on road any way.
  - jamespo 9y ago
    Because that's where the (easy) money is
    - kamaal 9y ago
      I get it. They would want to release their cars in US or Europe as their primary markets. But even in those cases it makes sense to test in India. Why? Sooner or later you will have some situation in the US which may resemble daily traffic conditions in India. Imagine a law and order situation where people are running around without regards to traffic laws. Or some other situation where traffic is being rerouted through a wrong way, In US may be as an exception traffic is being routed through the left lane(being a right lane drive country) etc etc. For all these situations you will very soon need a test environment that provides you with all situations to test.
nl 9y ago
I wouldn't drive in India. And I'm human.
- geodel 9y ago
  You are only human. Its super human who can drive there.
saiya-jin 9y ago
that is important only if you live in india, or any other 3rd world country with similar disrespect to anything resembling a traffic rule from a mile away. western world will be perfectly happy with cars that can only drive on our roads, and eventually manufacturers will pick up on other places as well. look at the potential bright side - this might bring some order to mess one can see daily in bigger cities on roads.
jfoster 9y ago
I imagine a self driving car will drive there similarly to a human; slowly, because of the extreme risk. Potentially humans tend to take more risks than they should, so a self driving car in India might seem to drive differently than a human would. But the algorithm stays the same; drive at a speed matching the obstacle risk, and avoid hitting things. Perhaps the parking aspect would be the most different.
coldtea 9y ago
Well, most non-Indian drivers also can't make it in "all conditions in India" so that's a moot point.
tacomonstrous 9y ago
IMO, India has the simplest driving algorithm: Keep going where you're going and don't hit anything. Also, honk if you think you might be in someone's blindspot.

by kamaal 9y ago

I will take your self driving car seriously if you can drive it in all conditions in India. Until then its just an attempt to make something that breaks at the next unanticipated exception.

fooker 9y ago

Human beings can not drive in all conditions in India. Just to get our car out of the garage, I had to plead and negotiate with N vegetable vendors with makeshift stores on the road. Also: bicycles, motorbikes, rickshaws(in human pulled, CNG and electric varieties!)and pedestrians mixed in traffic everywhere.

kamaal 9y ago
>>I had to plead and negotiate with N vegetable vendors with makeshift stores on the road. This is a very practical test case for a car on a road. Not just in India but anywhere in the world. Instead of N vegetable vendors you could have N traffic cops. How do you manage the human interaction part in the self driving car?
owenversteeg 9y ago
Yep, I have a feeling that for driving in India/Iran/Pakistan/Bangladesh you're going to need a strong AI to negotiate with the street vendors. In Iran I even had a particularly... enthusiastic flower seller actually maneuver himself to make it even harder to drive away. Not to take away from anyone's work in this area, but I have no idea how long it'll take to go from "works in America" to "works in India". In many countries the safest option (to evade disaster) can occasionally be "floor it and break the speed limit" to get away from x dangerous thing. I'm not sure if that's something that Google is willing to write into an AI.
- manmal 9y ago
  This will require something like Rick's (from Rick and Morty) car/spaceship.

bjpirt 9y ago

Made me laugh but it's a very true statement. When I was driving whilst holidaying in India I realised that the main rule of the road was "largest vehicle wins"! This actually made for quite an easy to understand system with few questions of whose right of way it was. bike < car < van < truck which makes sense because if you're the one who's going to come off worse in an impact then you really want to give way - especially if you have a massive painted tipper truck hurtling towards you! It will be very interesting to see how self driving systems can cope with these local unwritten bylaws.

danielbln 9y ago
It will most definitely be interesting, but it's silly to say that self-driving cars can't be taken seriously, if they don't master these conditions (yet). Hell, I couldn't master those conditions myself, nor do I need to, because I live in the the inner city of a Western-European metropolis, so what I need my self-driving car to do varies massively from what people in other regions of the globe may need it to do, but that doesn't make it any less useful for me.
kamaal 9y ago
>>It will be very interesting to see how self driving systems can cope with these local unwritten bylaws. This is why self driving AI will require Hard AI. India is a perfect test bed for these people to test their algorithms. And for heaven's sake why would you test it in some place like the US. Cars in US are pretty much trains on road any way.
- jamespo 9y ago
  Because that's where the (easy) money is
  - kamaal 9y ago
    I get it. They would want to release their cars in US or Europe as their primary markets. But even in those cases it makes sense to test in India. Why? Sooner or later you will have some situation in the US which may resemble daily traffic conditions in India. Imagine a law and order situation where people are running around without regards to traffic laws. Or some other situation where traffic is being rerouted through a wrong way, In US may be as an exception traffic is being routed through the left lane(being a right lane drive country) etc etc. For all these situations you will very soon need a test environment that provides you with all situations to test.

nl 9y ago

I wouldn't drive in India. And I'm human.

geodel 9y ago
You are only human. Its super human who can drive there.

saiya-jin 9y ago

that is important only if you live in india, or any other 3rd world country with similar disrespect to anything resembling a traffic rule from a mile away. western world will be perfectly happy with cars that can only drive on our roads, and eventually manufacturers will pick up on other places as well. look at the potential bright side - this might bring some order to mess one can see daily in bigger cities on roads.

jfoster 9y ago

I imagine a self driving car will drive there similarly to a human; slowly, because of the extreme risk. Potentially humans tend to take more risks than they should, so a self driving car in India might seem to drive differently than a human would. But the algorithm stays the same; drive at a speed matching the obstacle risk, and avoid hitting things. Perhaps the parking aspect would be the most different.

coldtea 9y ago

Well, most non-Indian drivers also can't make it in "all conditions in India" so that's a moot point.

tacomonstrous 9y ago

IMO, India has the simplest driving algorithm: Keep going where you're going and don't hit anything. Also, honk if you think you might be in someone's blindspot.