5 ms·

Back in 1991, when were you (and your team) predicting that self-driving cars would be viable?

sokoloff 8y ago
Based on that overall experience, I held the same opinion then as I do today: "never". (I was an intern at the time, though I quickly took over the implementation and operation of our speed control and vision system.) I have to admit: much more progress has been made than I expected in the intervening ~30 years. I still think that full self-driving with zero outside communications/support is "never", though "mostly self-driving with selective help sometimes" might be possible within the next 25 years. It is interesting to see logical descendants of work that group did appearing in road cars. (CAN bus, Adaptive Cruise, park assist, probably others that were lab projects at the time...)
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- newman8r 8y ago
  Interesting. By the time everything's fully automated, it might be hard to call them "cars" anymore anyway.
  - michelb 8y ago
    I hope that in 25 years cars are no longer the primary mode of transportation. If frequent, daily transportation will be a thing at all.
    - gambiting 8y ago
      I absolutely adore the bubble people on HN live in sometimes. 99.99% of people in the world are not computer engineers who have the luxury of doing their jobs from anywhere(including home). It takes a day of interacting with people in the real world(instead of reading about them on the internet) to realize that no, daily transportation to and from jobs is not going absolutely anywhere. And this is not meant to be a personal attack on you - just an observation of a very common sentiment displayed by many HN users.
      - Scarblac 8y ago
        The majority of those people never had access to cars in the first place. Thinking that daily transportation to and from job = car is its own bubble.
        deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
      - p1esk 8y ago
        When driving is automated, many kinds of cheap labor will be automated as well.
        wongarsu 8y ago
        Not nessesarily. Driving is one of the most common tasks worldwide, so it makes economic sense to pour large amounts of resources into automating it. Beyond sensors and computer components it also doesn't require any new hardware. Most forms of cheap labor in the West don't fit that description.
        p1esk 8y ago
        Automating driving requires solving very hard AI problems. Most likely novel ideas to solve them will be transferable to other domains.
      - belorn 8y ago
        Taking the top 3 most common professions here in Sweden by a large margin: sales, education and health care. Every year sales are converting into online sales. computer engineers and sale people go to the same office buildings, sit at similar desk at similar computers. Education is also converting into online education. Self study is increasing in practically all levels, and the cost of buildings and class rooms could be saved to pay for more teachers. Health care is similar transforming. A lot of primary care is done online to save costs and to filter out cases that actually need a doctor visit. Telepresence is also creeping up for elder care. In theory this pay for more doctors. So slowly the 99.99% of people of world are doing jobs which from a mechanical view is identical to computer engineers. Travel from home, enter office, do work, go home.
    - erikpukinskis 8y ago
      Why? You think we should be moving around in open air? Or you think we should all be moving though high density channels like trains? I don't see what's wrong with cars if they are minimally heavy, aerodynamic, and managed as a fleet. Busses are certainly not better. And trains only solve half of the problem. (Thoroughfares.)
- cameronh90 8y ago
  Since you think standalone self driving cars will never happen, I take it that you also believe an artificial general intelligence also will never happen?
  - sokoloff 8y ago
    Probably. There is a difference between artificial general intelligence and self-driving in that it could be the sensory acquisition/processing and/or the untethered mobility that is the limiting factor for self-driving rather than specifically computing advances. (IOW, artificial general intelligence in a datacenter does not necessarily imply untethered self-driving.)
- Barrin92 8y ago
  I share that sentiment and in light of that, do you think the better and more economic way forward is possibly to not improve self driving cars as much but the infrastructure around them? Geofencing, urban and street design conductive to autonomous vehicles and so forth?
- erikpukinskis 8y ago
  I don't mean this to be insulting, but if the intern is taking the point position on "speed" and "vision" you can hardly call that a serious engineering project. There are in fact experts on topics like computer vision, even 20 years ago. They are expensive though.
  - sokoloff 8y ago
    Implement/Operate point of certain subsystems, not theoretical or leadership point. (I take no offense to your comment as it's spot on if that were the case. My apologies if I misled.) I was implementing an improvement and operating our vision system (doubling frame rate and resolution using an existing algorithm across a scaled up processing system). Because of where our code sat in the overall architecture, that I had control systems coursework under my belt, and that I was "done" with my vision processing project much faster than expected, I took on coordinating signals from a variety of other subsystems [radar, lane keeping, sign reading, navigation, etc], computing an overall speed and lateral acceleration target, steer angle, etc, and emitting those and a series of additional signals to downstream systems that controlled the servos and vehicle. Ernst Dickmanns was my boss's project director. I was in no way a "point" on the overall project, which was by all accounts a serious engineering effort. This was part of the Prometheus project (~30-35 years ago, not 20): [0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eureka_Prometheus_Project https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eureka_Prometheus_Project [1] - The vehicle: https://driving.ca/mercedes-benz/auto-news/news/three-decades-ago-mercedes-benz-started-work-on-the-first-autonomous-car https://driving.ca/mercedes-benz/auto-news/news/three-decade...
    - erikpukinskis 8y ago
      I'm just saying, there are teams meant to give it a shot, and there are teams meant to provide certainty a thing will get done.

Based on that overall experience, I held the same opinion then as I do today: "never". (I was an intern at the time, though I quickly took over the implementation and operation of our speed control and vision system.) I have to admit: much more progress has been made than I expected in the intervening ~30 years. I still think that full self-driving with zero outside communications/support is "never", though "mostly self-driving with selective help sometimes" might be possible within the next 25 years. It is interesting to see logical descendants of work that group did appearing in road cars. (CAN bus, Adaptive Cruise, park assist, probably others that were lab projects at the time...)

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
newman8r 8y ago
Interesting. By the time everything's fully automated, it might be hard to call them "cars" anymore anyway.
- michelb 8y ago
  I hope that in 25 years cars are no longer the primary mode of transportation. If frequent, daily transportation will be a thing at all.
  - gambiting 8y ago
    I absolutely adore the bubble people on HN live in sometimes. 99.99% of people in the world are not computer engineers who have the luxury of doing their jobs from anywhere(including home). It takes a day of interacting with people in the real world(instead of reading about them on the internet) to realize that no, daily transportation to and from jobs is not going absolutely anywhere. And this is not meant to be a personal attack on you - just an observation of a very common sentiment displayed by many HN users.
    - Scarblac 8y ago
      The majority of those people never had access to cars in the first place. Thinking that daily transportation to and from job = car is its own bubble.
      - deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
    - p1esk 8y ago
      When driving is automated, many kinds of cheap labor will be automated as well.
      - wongarsu 8y ago
        Not nessesarily. Driving is one of the most common tasks worldwide, so it makes economic sense to pour large amounts of resources into automating it. Beyond sensors and computer components it also doesn't require any new hardware. Most forms of cheap labor in the West don't fit that description.
        p1esk 8y ago
        Automating driving requires solving very hard AI problems. Most likely novel ideas to solve them will be transferable to other domains.
    - belorn 8y ago
      Taking the top 3 most common professions here in Sweden by a large margin: sales, education and health care. Every year sales are converting into online sales. computer engineers and sale people go to the same office buildings, sit at similar desk at similar computers. Education is also converting into online education. Self study is increasing in practically all levels, and the cost of buildings and class rooms could be saved to pay for more teachers. Health care is similar transforming. A lot of primary care is done online to save costs and to filter out cases that actually need a doctor visit. Telepresence is also creeping up for elder care. In theory this pay for more doctors. So slowly the 99.99% of people of world are doing jobs which from a mechanical view is identical to computer engineers. Travel from home, enter office, do work, go home.
  - erikpukinskis 8y ago
    Why? You think we should be moving around in open air? Or you think we should all be moving though high density channels like trains? I don't see what's wrong with cars if they are minimally heavy, aerodynamic, and managed as a fleet. Busses are certainly not better. And trains only solve half of the problem. (Thoroughfares.)
cameronh90 8y ago
Since you think standalone self driving cars will never happen, I take it that you also believe an artificial general intelligence also will never happen?
- sokoloff 8y ago
  Probably. There is a difference between artificial general intelligence and self-driving in that it could be the sensory acquisition/processing and/or the untethered mobility that is the limiting factor for self-driving rather than specifically computing advances. (IOW, artificial general intelligence in a datacenter does not necessarily imply untethered self-driving.)
Barrin92 8y ago
I share that sentiment and in light of that, do you think the better and more economic way forward is possibly to not improve self driving cars as much but the infrastructure around them? Geofencing, urban and street design conductive to autonomous vehicles and so forth?
erikpukinskis 8y ago
I don't mean this to be insulting, but if the intern is taking the point position on "speed" and "vision" you can hardly call that a serious engineering project. There are in fact experts on topics like computer vision, even 20 years ago. They are expensive though.
- sokoloff 8y ago
  Implement/Operate point of certain subsystems, not theoretical or leadership point. (I take no offense to your comment as it's spot on if that were the case. My apologies if I misled.) I was implementing an improvement and operating our vision system (doubling frame rate and resolution using an existing algorithm across a scaled up processing system). Because of where our code sat in the overall architecture, that I had control systems coursework under my belt, and that I was "done" with my vision processing project much faster than expected, I took on coordinating signals from a variety of other subsystems [radar, lane keeping, sign reading, navigation, etc], computing an overall speed and lateral acceleration target, steer angle, etc, and emitting those and a series of additional signals to downstream systems that controlled the servos and vehicle. Ernst Dickmanns was my boss's project director. I was in no way a "point" on the overall project, which was by all accounts a serious engineering effort. This was part of the Prometheus project (~30-35 years ago, not 20): [0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eureka_Prometheus_Project https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eureka_Prometheus_Project [1] - The vehicle: https://driving.ca/mercedes-benz/auto-news/news/three-decades-ago-mercedes-benz-started-work-on-the-first-autonomous-car https://driving.ca/mercedes-benz/auto-news/news/three-decade...
  - erikpukinskis 8y ago
    I'm just saying, there are teams meant to give it a shot, and there are teams meant to provide certainty a thing will get done.