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My take on this is always: we will see first fully automated airplanes and railroad trains before we will see a widespread of autonomous cars. Airspace is an h

My take on this is always: we will see first fully automated airplanes and railroad trains before we will see a widespread of autonomous cars. Airspace is an highly controlled area. We have many years of actual autopilots. We have many years of guided take-offs and landings. But still we relay on the skilled human. The same applies to railroads. Here in Nuremberg we have an highly automated train running on a railroad track that is even partly shared with trains operated by a driver. But the costs of running the automated trains seems not to benefit so that further development has been stopped, because of costs reasons. Even has we have a huge shortage in drivers, which would suggests that automation would be the solution. AFAIK there are only isolated airport shuttles that run fully automated. That means, if can't run automated systems in highly controlled areas. Then why would it work with cars in highly uncontrolled areas?

matthewmacleod 4y ago
AFAIK there are only isolated airport shuttles that run fully automated. There are several fully-automated rail systems worldwide. Paris M14 and the Copenhagen Metro among others are fully automated; things like the DLR in London are level 3 (driverless with a staff member on board).
martindbp 4y ago
It doesn't make economic sense to automate trains and airplanes because 1. Much smaller part of the cost and 2. Very high stakes. Driving is high stakes too of course but two orders of magnitude less so. That said, we are seeing massive amounts of money being made in ADAS systems (Tesla FSD, MobilEye) while robotaxi plays are losing billions. Self driving cars will grow out of increasingly capable ADAS systems rather than robotaxis because they are already profitable and there's a gradual path to full autonomy. In the coming recession I expect most robotaxi companies to go under (Argo being the first yesterday), with Waymo being perhaps the only player left. Even Waymo may have to reduce spending quite a bit if Google is facing headwinds.

matthewmacleod 4y ago

AFAIK there are only isolated airport shuttles that run fully automated. There are several fully-automated rail systems worldwide. Paris M14 and the Copenhagen Metro among others are fully automated; things like the DLR in London are level 3 (driverless with a staff member on board).

martindbp 4y ago

It doesn't make economic sense to automate trains and airplanes because 1. Much smaller part of the cost and 2. Very high stakes. Driving is high stakes too of course but two orders of magnitude less so. That said, we are seeing massive amounts of money being made in ADAS systems (Tesla FSD, MobilEye) while robotaxi plays are losing billions. Self driving cars will grow out of increasingly capable ADAS systems rather than robotaxis because they are already profitable and there's a gradual path to full autonomy. In the coming recession I expect most robotaxi companies to go under (Argo being the first yesterday), with Waymo being perhaps the only player left. Even Waymo may have to reduce spending quite a bit if Google is facing headwinds.