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I don't know if Tesla originated the approach, but they're the first I'd ever heard of doing it by my camera or radar or anything like that. I remember my first

I don't know if Tesla originated the approach, but they're the first I'd ever heard of doing it by my camera or radar or anything like that. I remember my first reaction was befuddlement, when highways cost like $xxx million per mile, why would the trivial cost of dropping electronic friendly markers for lanes and such be anything but a trivial 0.1% cost that should facilitate self driving from the road construction end as a primary means of situating self-driving vehicles? Instead you have cars with that forever risk of death to their passengers when self-driving due to the non deterministic factor of not having a highway equivalent of train rails.

f1shy 4y ago
This is what I wanted to say. Autonomous driving without changing a thing, will not happen soon. But changing some things, is totally possible.
phpnode 4y ago
exactly, NFC-like technology would be extremely inexpensive in the scheme of things and could be deployed into road surfaces without much difficulty. I remember seeing a video of self driving technology from the 90s that used a similar approach - magnets in the road IIRC
cameronh90 4y ago
It's inevitable that roads will eventually be built with electronic assists. However, there are good reasons to develop cars that can still drive without them. Given that the government would have to do it, it's going to be a really long time to completely retrofit our roads with these devices. We're still not putting them into new roads right now, nor am I aware of any international standard for doing so. A common standardised database of road works would have been useful for decades of GPS navigation but we still don't have that either - most countries don't have one at all, and the ones that do aren't standard (often even varying from city to city) and tend to be incomplete. Relying on the governments of the world to sort this out is a risky strategy. Secondly, even assuming we do get these systems in place, you can bet good money they will frequently be wrong. Some contractor will come and dig up the road but forget to move/disable/update the electronic markers. So having a parallel visual self driving system to help identify these situations is essential. Third, pedestrians, bicycles, kids, animals, etc. are unlikely to contain these markers. For trains, we just ban them from the track, put fences around it, etc. but that's clearly not going to work for most roads.
blakesterz 4y ago
They actually did try this in CA in the mid 90s: https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1996-06-28-mn-19436-story.html https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1996-06-28-mn-19436-... And a follow up story from 2016: https://laist.com/news/self-driving-cars-debuted-on-californias-highways-20-years-ago https://laist.com/news/self-driving-cars-debuted-on-californ...

f1shy 4y ago

This is what I wanted to say. Autonomous driving without changing a thing, will not happen soon. But changing some things, is totally possible.

phpnode 4y ago

exactly, NFC-like technology would be extremely inexpensive in the scheme of things and could be deployed into road surfaces without much difficulty. I remember seeing a video of self driving technology from the 90s that used a similar approach - magnets in the road IIRC

cameronh90 4y ago

It's inevitable that roads will eventually be built with electronic assists. However, there are good reasons to develop cars that can still drive without them. Given that the government would have to do it, it's going to be a really long time to completely retrofit our roads with these devices. We're still not putting them into new roads right now, nor am I aware of any international standard for doing so. A common standardised database of road works would have been useful for decades of GPS navigation but we still don't have that either - most countries don't have one at all, and the ones that do aren't standard (often even varying from city to city) and tend to be incomplete. Relying on the governments of the world to sort this out is a risky strategy. Secondly, even assuming we do get these systems in place, you can bet good money they will frequently be wrong. Some contractor will come and dig up the road but forget to move/disable/update the electronic markers. So having a parallel visual self driving system to help identify these situations is essential. Third, pedestrians, bicycles, kids, animals, etc. are unlikely to contain these markers. For trains, we just ban them from the track, put fences around it, etc. but that's clearly not going to work for most roads.

blakesterz 4y ago

They actually did try this in CA in the mid 90s: https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1996-06-28-mn-19436-story.html https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1996-06-28-mn-19436-... And a follow up story from 2016: https://laist.com/news/self-driving-cars-debuted-on-californias-highways-20-years-ago https://laist.com/news/self-driving-cars-debuted-on-californ...