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Maybe lane marker tracking isn’t the way to go? I’ve always wondered if it would be possible (in the US; through a massive initiative) to just paint lines (or e

Maybe lane marker tracking isn’t the way to go? I’ve always wondered if it would be possible (in the US; through a massive initiative) to just paint lines (or embed something in or on the road) in the center of the lanes and have the cars just follow the lines. How much would that cost?

ashtonkem 7y ago
No paint will solve the problem of snow covering said paint. So you’ll have to embed them. The hardware alone would cost billions of dollars to purchase, and installation would cost either trillions of dollars to rework all the roads now, or decades to install as our road network ages out. Long story short, it’s not feasible.
- colejohnson66 7y ago
  But isn’t that what people said of the National Highway System? That it wasn’t feasible? And yet here we are almost half a century later...
  - ashtonkem 7y ago
    I doubt it. Sure, I’m sure there were complaints about the costs, but the value of a massive road network has been known for millennia. Spending a trillion ripping up a perfectly good road network in order to try out a new technology that’ll generate profits for a small number of companies is an insane plan, and genuinely might not work.
    - colejohnson66 7y ago
      We don’t necessarily need to rip up the existing roads. We could just put some radio based markers on the road. Then when they do construction, they could be easily moved, too.
      - ashtonkem 7y ago
        It’s true that markers on the pavement are cheaper to implement than markers in the pavement, I agree. I’m also not convinced it solves anything. In the scenario above the problem wasn’t the fact that the lines weren’t visible, the problem was other cars. This is particularly problematic when many of those other cars are human beings who will never have access to modified road information. In this scenario a smart car that knows where the lane should be is still forced to dynamically negotiate for space with other vehicles, sans communication protocols. That is a very hard problem, one I do not believe is currently solved.
    - JoeAltmaier 7y ago
      That's being needlessly negative. None of those superlatives are helpful.
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
- Animats 7y ago
  Sure it is. Volvo developed a system where magnetized nails are driven into the pavement to mark the center of lanes. It's an additional hint, for when the visual, LIDAR, and GPS systems could use a little help. As in heavy snow. Volvo also points out that it's useful for snowplow guidance. AGVs have been using wire guidance for years. You cut a notch in the floor, put in a wire, and fill in the notch. That's the technology GM used for the Firebird demo cars in the 1960s.
- JoeAltmaier 7y ago
  That's where new ideas come in. E.g. embed RFID tags in the paint, sense from car, look up database of geolocations. RFID tags are dead cheap, and would get cheaper if 100M were need to embed in road surfaces.
joshribakoff 7y ago
It would cost a lot more than just mapping the lines & state of the infrastructure like lanes & traffic lights in a database, which is what Waymo already does. Adding additional paint on the road(s) doesn't help the car know what to do when there are weird edge cases. Following lines on the road was already solved 10yrs ago and isn't really the problem.

ashtonkem 7y ago

No paint will solve the problem of snow covering said paint. So you’ll have to embed them. The hardware alone would cost billions of dollars to purchase, and installation would cost either trillions of dollars to rework all the roads now, or decades to install as our road network ages out. Long story short, it’s not feasible.

colejohnson66 7y ago
But isn’t that what people said of the National Highway System? That it wasn’t feasible? And yet here we are almost half a century later...
- ashtonkem 7y ago
  I doubt it. Sure, I’m sure there were complaints about the costs, but the value of a massive road network has been known for millennia. Spending a trillion ripping up a perfectly good road network in order to try out a new technology that’ll generate profits for a small number of companies is an insane plan, and genuinely might not work.
  - colejohnson66 7y ago
    We don’t necessarily need to rip up the existing roads. We could just put some radio based markers on the road. Then when they do construction, they could be easily moved, too.
    - ashtonkem 7y ago
      It’s true that markers on the pavement are cheaper to implement than markers in the pavement, I agree. I’m also not convinced it solves anything. In the scenario above the problem wasn’t the fact that the lines weren’t visible, the problem was other cars. This is particularly problematic when many of those other cars are human beings who will never have access to modified road information. In this scenario a smart car that knows where the lane should be is still forced to dynamically negotiate for space with other vehicles, sans communication protocols. That is a very hard problem, one I do not believe is currently solved.
  - JoeAltmaier 7y ago
    That's being needlessly negative. None of those superlatives are helpful.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
Animats 7y ago
Sure it is. Volvo developed a system where magnetized nails are driven into the pavement to mark the center of lanes. It's an additional hint, for when the visual, LIDAR, and GPS systems could use a little help. As in heavy snow. Volvo also points out that it's useful for snowplow guidance. AGVs have been using wire guidance for years. You cut a notch in the floor, put in a wire, and fill in the notch. That's the technology GM used for the Firebird demo cars in the 1960s.
JoeAltmaier 7y ago
That's where new ideas come in. E.g. embed RFID tags in the paint, sense from car, look up database of geolocations. RFID tags are dead cheap, and would get cheaper if 100M were need to embed in road surfaces.

joshribakoff 7y ago

It would cost a lot more than just mapping the lines & state of the infrastructure like lanes & traffic lights in a database, which is what Waymo already does. Adding additional paint on the road(s) doesn't help the car know what to do when there are weird edge cases. Following lines on the road was already solved 10yrs ago and isn't really the problem.