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I disagree with this idea self-driving cars aren't coming. Maybe later than expected, but they are. I don't see the "pogo stick" thing as an unsolvable issue.

I disagree with this idea self-driving cars aren't coming. Maybe later than expected, but they are. I don't see the "pogo stick" thing as an unsolvable issue. You don't need to recognize every single weird thing that could show up on a road, you just need to have a way to deal with an unexpected obstacle showing up, and defaulting to gracefully braking. If somebody decides to exploit this by randomly wandering into the road, they'll do it in front of multiple cameras per car, which can be easily used to fine such people until it stops happening with any frequency. For some reason the self-driving car discussion gets bogged down in things that don't really need realistic consideration. Eg, the Trolley Problem. There's no need for a car to make some sort of AI driven decision whether "child" or "woman" is the best thing to run over, when it can just detect a generic obstacle and brake. The big problem right now is more that Tesla is trying to do it on the cheap and trying to do the job with too few sensors.

YawningAngel 4y ago
The question isn't whether it's possible to constrain the road environment such that self driving cars can work, but whether it's desirable. The article is simply answering in the negative.
cryptonym 4y ago
> The big problem right now is more that Tesla is trying to do it on the cheap and trying to do the job with too few sensors. I think you are oversimplifying the current issues with self-driving car and a bit too optimistic on industry's capacity to build reliable software for a self-driving car.
belter 4y ago
Solving self driving is not a problem of using the correct sensors. Is a problem of understanding the semantics of the situation ahead of you. - Does this ball running into the road, means a child might be running behind it? - Does the pedestrian on the sidewalk with headphones and looking at the other side, not seeing my vehicle and the red light, is going to cross anyway? - Since there is crashed truck on the road ahead, does this police officer making me signs to temporarily cross to the other side of the road, wants me to drive ahead ? Do I see its Ok anyway, because his colleague on the other side is holding the traffic coming this way? - Can I go off road for 2 minutes because the hole in front of me is too big and the off road track looks good? The discussion of how sensors are better than humans, and the systems don't get tired compared to humans misses all these. You can't solve a problem you started to work on under false premises or considerations of the problem space.
- dale_glass 4y ago
  I think the answers to those are: > Does this ball running into the road, means a child might be running behind it? There's no ball. There's merely a non-car object on the road, which means you smoothly stop and alert the driver. > Does the pedestrian on the sidewalk with headphones and looking at the other side, not seeing my vehicle and the red light, is going to cross anyway? If an object intrudes on the road, and could collide with the car, brake as per above. > Since there is crashed truck on the road ahead, does this police officer making me signs to temporarily cross to the other side of the road, wants me to drive ahead ? Do I see its Ok anyway, because his colleague on the other side is holding the traffic coming this way? There's an obstruction on the road. Brake, alert the driver, have them figure it out. > Can I go off road for 2 minutes because the hole in front of me is too big and the off road track looks good? No. Self-driving cars only automatically drive on a proper road. > The discussion of how sensors are better than humans, and the systems don't get tired compared to humans misses all these. My view is that this kind of thing just tends to over-complicate the issue. The initial goal shouldn't be an AI version of a human driver, a system that recognizes and knows about balls, children and police officers. It should be the car equivalent of an elevator -- a dumb machine with safeties that automatically stops if anything isn't right and waits for a human to figure it out. An elevator doesn't know what's standing in between the doors. Something is, therefore the door doesn't close until it goes away.
  - belter 4y ago
    > There's an obstruction on the road. Brake, alert the driver, have them figure it out. That is the whole crux of the problem. There is no driver, it was supposed to be self driving. Like many of the "self-driving taxis" in San Francisco whose passengers might not even have a driving license. > No. Self-driving cars only automatically drive on a proper road. Not good enough. All those human driven cars handled the situation is seconds. Now all your "self-driving" cars are causing a huge traffic jam. In the meanwhile the police has just open a second lane for the human driven cars to overtake the AI ones....
    - dale_glass 4y ago

YawningAngel 4y ago

The question isn't whether it's possible to constrain the road environment such that self driving cars can work, but whether it's desirable. The article is simply answering in the negative.

cryptonym 4y ago

> The big problem right now is more that Tesla is trying to do it on the cheap and trying to do the job with too few sensors. I think you are oversimplifying the current issues with self-driving car and a bit too optimistic on industry's capacity to build reliable software for a self-driving car.

belter 4y ago

Solving self driving is not a problem of using the correct sensors. Is a problem of understanding the semantics of the situation ahead of you. - Does this ball running into the road, means a child might be running behind it? - Does the pedestrian on the sidewalk with headphones and looking at the other side, not seeing my vehicle and the red light, is going to cross anyway? - Since there is crashed truck on the road ahead, does this police officer making me signs to temporarily cross to the other side of the road, wants me to drive ahead ? Do I see its Ok anyway, because his colleague on the other side is holding the traffic coming this way? - Can I go off road for 2 minutes because the hole in front of me is too big and the off road track looks good? The discussion of how sensors are better than humans, and the systems don't get tired compared to humans misses all these. You can't solve a problem you started to work on under false premises or considerations of the problem space.

dale_glass 4y ago
I think the answers to those are: > Does this ball running into the road, means a child might be running behind it? There's no ball. There's merely a non-car object on the road, which means you smoothly stop and alert the driver. > Does the pedestrian on the sidewalk with headphones and looking at the other side, not seeing my vehicle and the red light, is going to cross anyway? If an object intrudes on the road, and could collide with the car, brake as per above. > Since there is crashed truck on the road ahead, does this police officer making me signs to temporarily cross to the other side of the road, wants me to drive ahead ? Do I see its Ok anyway, because his colleague on the other side is holding the traffic coming this way? There's an obstruction on the road. Brake, alert the driver, have them figure it out. > Can I go off road for 2 minutes because the hole in front of me is too big and the off road track looks good? No. Self-driving cars only automatically drive on a proper road. > The discussion of how sensors are better than humans, and the systems don't get tired compared to humans misses all these. My view is that this kind of thing just tends to over-complicate the issue. The initial goal shouldn't be an AI version of a human driver, a system that recognizes and knows about balls, children and police officers. It should be the car equivalent of an elevator -- a dumb machine with safeties that automatically stops if anything isn't right and waits for a human to figure it out. An elevator doesn't know what's standing in between the doors. Something is, therefore the door doesn't close until it goes away.
- belter 4y ago
  > There's an obstruction on the road. Brake, alert the driver, have them figure it out. That is the whole crux of the problem. There is no driver, it was supposed to be self driving. Like many of the "self-driving taxis" in San Francisco whose passengers might not even have a driving license. > No. Self-driving cars only automatically drive on a proper road. Not good enough. All those human driven cars handled the situation is seconds. Now all your "self-driving" cars are causing a huge traffic jam. In the meanwhile the police has just open a second lane for the human driven cars to overtake the AI ones....
  - dale_glass 4y ago