5 ms·

It seems like instead of full self driving they should just paint down something like a yellow line that’s easier for the cars to follow.

alanbernstein 4y ago
I imagine that it we put all the money into expanding city road infrastructure to include sensor networks, rather than autonomous cars, we'd get to the end goal faster and the hardware would be cheaper.
- xnx 4y ago
  Sounds good in theory, but in the real world smart edges and dumb pipes are almost always the way to go (the Internet is a pretty good example of this).
- onethought 4y ago
  This some how feels like: "Cover the world in leather rather than just wear shoes" kind of approach.
  - alanbernstein 4y ago
    I guess that would be a fair comparison if shoes were unbelievably complicated to build?
    - onethought 4y ago
      Not really covering your feet with leather compared to the world is probably the same ratio of complexity as covering the world in sensors and autonomous driving terrain rather than deploying it on the cars.
      - alanbernstein 4y ago
        And yet we have covered the world in paved surfaces
        onethought 4y ago
        Well I guess if we already did it, it must be smart/the best way to do things
        alanbernstein 4y ago
        Ah, so you're suggesting all vehicles should be designed for heavy off-road use, and we can get rid of all the roads?
        onethought 4y ago
        No, just “we covered the world in cement” is not a good reason to keep covering it. Definitely doesn’t justify adding autonomous sensors and paint and whatever else to the whole world to achieve autonomous driving. So I was being polite leaving that conclusion for the reader. But I can see I wasn’t clear enough. Given we cycle cars much more often than we cycle roads (globally) makes sense to update the technology on the car.
gojomo 4y ago
There have been self-driving busses that use such painted guides on fixed routes; here's a story where Las Vegas was testing such a system using the tech of 22 years ago: https://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/26/technology/what-s-next-it-s-a-trolley-it-s-a-rail-car-no-it-s-an-optically-guided-bus.html https://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/26/technology/what-s-next-it... But, I doubt they'd be much help for passenger cars on diverse urban per-trip routes: * roads are constantly wearing & being trenched or resurfaced; the lines would often be broken or need refreshing, necessitating an effective 'lineless' mode * cars often need to improvise (including briefly into oncoming lanes) to get around temporary blockages, and need to pull away from the major maintained lanes – again requiring confident off-line operation * after car sensors/decisionmaking can handle all the other challenges & collisions/traps to avoid, merely following lanes (when needed) is not hard at all: guidelines help with an easy, essentially-solved problem but not the actual potential deployment blockers Full-unattended self-driving cars are working pretty well in SF right now - on a nighttime walk you'll see many, which are behaviorally only a little more cautious/tentative than human drivers. So, it's only the branding & empty driver's seat that distinguishes them.
danaris 4y ago
Are you familiar with our rural road infrastructure? There are roads out here that don't even have lines, because they go so long between maintenance cycles that if they did paint them, they'd fade fast enough that they'd still spend more time without lines than with. And how do you handle complicated intersections? Ones where there's 6 different roads all meeting in one place, with three separate pedestrian crosswalks, and traffic lights that handle directing the traffic to various different combinations of possible outflow roads?

alanbernstein 4y ago

I imagine that it we put all the money into expanding city road infrastructure to include sensor networks, rather than autonomous cars, we'd get to the end goal faster and the hardware would be cheaper.

xnx 4y ago
Sounds good in theory, but in the real world smart edges and dumb pipes are almost always the way to go (the Internet is a pretty good example of this).
onethought 4y ago
This some how feels like: "Cover the world in leather rather than just wear shoes" kind of approach.
- alanbernstein 4y ago
  I guess that would be a fair comparison if shoes were unbelievably complicated to build?
  - onethought 4y ago
    Not really covering your feet with leather compared to the world is probably the same ratio of complexity as covering the world in sensors and autonomous driving terrain rather than deploying it on the cars.
    - alanbernstein 4y ago
      And yet we have covered the world in paved surfaces
      - onethought 4y ago
        Well I guess if we already did it, it must be smart/the best way to do things
        alanbernstein 4y ago
        Ah, so you're suggesting all vehicles should be designed for heavy off-road use, and we can get rid of all the roads?
        onethought 4y ago
        No, just “we covered the world in cement” is not a good reason to keep covering it. Definitely doesn’t justify adding autonomous sensors and paint and whatever else to the whole world to achieve autonomous driving. So I was being polite leaving that conclusion for the reader. But I can see I wasn’t clear enough. Given we cycle cars much more often than we cycle roads (globally) makes sense to update the technology on the car.

gojomo 4y ago

There have been self-driving busses that use such painted guides on fixed routes; here's a story where Las Vegas was testing such a system using the tech of 22 years ago: https://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/26/technology/what-s-next-it-s-a-trolley-it-s-a-rail-car-no-it-s-an-optically-guided-bus.html https://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/26/technology/what-s-next-it... But, I doubt they'd be much help for passenger cars on diverse urban per-trip routes: * roads are constantly wearing & being trenched or resurfaced; the lines would often be broken or need refreshing, necessitating an effective 'lineless' mode * cars often need to improvise (including briefly into oncoming lanes) to get around temporary blockages, and need to pull away from the major maintained lanes – again requiring confident off-line operation * after car sensors/decisionmaking can handle all the other challenges & collisions/traps to avoid, merely following lanes (when needed) is not hard at all: guidelines help with an easy, essentially-solved problem but not the actual potential deployment blockers Full-unattended self-driving cars are working pretty well in SF right now - on a nighttime walk you'll see many, which are behaviorally only a little more cautious/tentative than human drivers. So, it's only the branding & empty driver's seat that distinguishes them.

danaris 4y ago

Are you familiar with our rural road infrastructure? There are roads out here that don't even have lines, because they go so long between maintenance cycles that if they did paint them, they'd fade fast enough that they'd still spend more time without lines than with. And how do you handle complicated intersections? Ones where there's 6 different roads all meeting in one place, with three separate pedestrian crosswalks, and traffic lights that handle directing the traffic to various different combinations of possible outflow roads?