4 ms·

What I don't understand about self-driving cars is that once all cars are 'self-driving' enabled then there won't be a need for the complicated AI and computer

by lalos 7y ago

What I don't understand about self-driving cars is that once all cars are 'self-driving' enabled then there won't be a need for the complicated AI and computer vision work since if all cars have the tech might as well just have a standard where they are constantly communicating their position with each other (add signs and traffic lights to the mix). The challenge then would be to how to efficiently route all cars simultaneously. I have the opinion that all this investment in the long run will be discarded and will only be useful in the transition period where roads are shared by humans and algorithms. Thoughts? Is this future vision shared by people involved in the self-driving world?

Mvhsz 7y ago
What about pedestrians?
- lalos 7y ago
  Crosswalks with buttons to signal a red light for traffic (this is quite common in big cities in the USA) and/or pedestrian bridges in highly transited areas (not as common).
  - scott_s 7y ago
    Assuming there will be no people walking in the roads is not realistic.
  - ghaff 7y ago
    It differs by locale--in my experience on the West Coast pedestrians tend to follow the signals more--but people don't reliably follow walk/don't walk signs.
kemiller 7y ago
As long as there are bicycles, pedestrians, pets, weird one-off accidents, there will always be a need for situational awareness.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
klodolph 7y ago
Figuring out where the other cars are is only a small part of the puzzle. Besides all of the other things you need to figure out (where are the lanes? pedestrians? what about deer?), it’s not obvious how to control the car even with total information.
eclipxe 7y ago
It can take decades for a competent company to migrate database systems. What you're describing is migrating every car on the road, everywhere to self driving/communication tech. That will take 50-75+ years IMO.
- lalos 7y ago
  True, you could minimize the requirements of self-driving systems by making license plates carry obligatory modules that transmit information to self-driving cars. The train of though is that this is an area where working together might have a bigger pay-off.
  - scott_s 7y ago
    Those modules will sometimes stop working, and then you're back to having the solve something that looks a lot like the current problem.
tnecniv 7y ago
The challenge will be reduced, sure, but you still need to be able to navigate roads. Those roads may or may not have random obstacles in them like garbage cans or people.
temporaryvector 7y ago
I think people conflate two different technologies when talking about self-driving vehicles. First, there's the self-driving car for the dense urban environment, which is basically a robo-taxi. You don't buy or own these cars, you hail them and they take you where you need to go. Basically mass transit with the option to go wherever you need instead of pre-defined stops, combining the best aspects of a taxi and a bus. There's no reason these need to be cars at all, aside from the fact that we have all the infrastructure for cars. They could just as well be small trains/"horizontal elevators", the tubes from Futurama, or whatever else your local sci-fi author can come up with. These types of vehicles could be centrally controlled and you could indeed replace complex AI with expensive infrastructure, but that is something we'd like to avoid (who knows if it's even politically possible), hence the push for using existing infrastructure. As an added bonus, these types of fully self-driving vehicles can take over tasks like delivery. The second type of self-driving car is the car for every other environment, basically the same cars we have now with an autopilot add-on. These vehicle would be for people who live in small towns, suburbs, rural areas or in general travel outside of dense cities. It makes more sense to own vehicles like these, but they must cope with a larger variety of environments. Personally, I would never buy a car that does not have some form of manual override so I could drive it myself. If the AI is advanced enough this manual override doesn't have to be a steering wheel, but for a car I own, having the ability to violate the law, crash it or tell it to go someplace it doesn't want to (or, god-forbid, run someone over intentionally) is essential. I suspect that making an AI that can cope with all kinds of driving conditions in the country is a task so monumentally complex that cars (the kind you own) without manual override mode will basically never be a thing, both because it would be expensive and because I don't think the kind of people who would need to buy a car to own would accept not having full control. A couple of instances of the AI failing in some basic way (failure to drive into a small garage, for example) would be enough to convince people that a manual mode is essential. What percentage of cars in the future will be of the first type and which will be of the second type is up for debate, but regardless I think the second type of car will be something you buy out of necessity or a luxury good, and overall car ownership will go down. However, with technologies like self-driving electric delivery vans, telepresence, improved solar power and battery storage as well as better internet coverage, it's not obvious to me that the future lies in dense cities. I speculate that a certain tipping point will come in the near future where less and less people will need to live in a large city for work and migrate to small and medium sized cities for better living conditions and larger homes. As technology advances, it will become more and more comfortable (and possible) to live in a less dense environment and population will spread out. I'll admit that this involves a bit of wishful thinking since I hate big cities, but the alternative where population keeps concentrating in urban areas seems like a terrible dystopia to me.

by lalos 7y ago

Mvhsz 7y ago

What about pedestrians?

lalos 7y ago
Crosswalks with buttons to signal a red light for traffic (this is quite common in big cities in the USA) and/or pedestrian bridges in highly transited areas (not as common).
- scott_s 7y ago
  Assuming there will be no people walking in the roads is not realistic.
- ghaff 7y ago
  It differs by locale--in my experience on the West Coast pedestrians tend to follow the signals more--but people don't reliably follow walk/don't walk signs.

kemiller 7y ago

As long as there are bicycles, pedestrians, pets, weird one-off accidents, there will always be a need for situational awareness.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

klodolph 7y ago

Figuring out where the other cars are is only a small part of the puzzle. Besides all of the other things you need to figure out (where are the lanes? pedestrians? what about deer?), it’s not obvious how to control the car even with total information.

eclipxe 7y ago

It can take decades for a competent company to migrate database systems. What you're describing is migrating every car on the road, everywhere to self driving/communication tech. That will take 50-75+ years IMO.

lalos 7y ago
True, you could minimize the requirements of self-driving systems by making license plates carry obligatory modules that transmit information to self-driving cars. The train of though is that this is an area where working together might have a bigger pay-off.
- scott_s 7y ago
  Those modules will sometimes stop working, and then you're back to having the solve something that looks a lot like the current problem.

tnecniv 7y ago

The challenge will be reduced, sure, but you still need to be able to navigate roads. Those roads may or may not have random obstacles in them like garbage cans or people.

temporaryvector 7y ago

I think people conflate two different technologies when talking about self-driving vehicles. First, there's the self-driving car for the dense urban environment, which is basically a robo-taxi. You don't buy or own these cars, you hail them and they take you where you need to go. Basically mass transit with the option to go wherever you need instead of pre-defined stops, combining the best aspects of a taxi and a bus. There's no reason these need to be cars at all, aside from the fact that we have all the infrastructure for cars. They could just as well be small trains/"horizontal elevators", the tubes from Futurama, or whatever else your local sci-fi author can come up with. These types of vehicles could be centrally controlled and you could indeed replace complex AI with expensive infrastructure, but that is something we'd like to avoid (who knows if it's even politically possible), hence the push for using existing infrastructure. As an added bonus, these types of fully self-driving vehicles can take over tasks like delivery. The second type of self-driving car is the car for every other environment, basically the same cars we have now with an autopilot add-on. These vehicle would be for people who live in small towns, suburbs, rural areas or in general travel outside of dense cities. It makes more sense to own vehicles like these, but they must cope with a larger variety of environments. Personally, I would never buy a car that does not have some form of manual override so I could drive it myself. If the AI is advanced enough this manual override doesn't have to be a steering wheel, but for a car I own, having the ability to violate the law, crash it or tell it to go someplace it doesn't want to (or, god-forbid, run someone over intentionally) is essential. I suspect that making an AI that can cope with all kinds of driving conditions in the country is a task so monumentally complex that cars (the kind you own) without manual override mode will basically never be a thing, both because it would be expensive and because I don't think the kind of people who would need to buy a car to own would accept not having full control. A couple of instances of the AI failing in some basic way (failure to drive into a small garage, for example) would be enough to convince people that a manual mode is essential. What percentage of cars in the future will be of the first type and which will be of the second type is up for debate, but regardless I think the second type of car will be something you buy out of necessity or a luxury good, and overall car ownership will go down. However, with technologies like self-driving electric delivery vans, telepresence, improved solar power and battery storage as well as better internet coverage, it's not obvious to me that the future lies in dense cities. I speculate that a certain tipping point will come in the near future where less and less people will need to live in a large city for work and migrate to small and medium sized cities for better living conditions and larger homes. As technology advances, it will become more and more comfortable (and possible) to live in a less dense environment and population will spread out. I'll admit that this involves a bit of wishful thinking since I hate big cities, but the alternative where population keeps concentrating in urban areas seems like a terrible dystopia to me.