4 ms·
The lack of a turn signal made me chuckle. That is such a software development moment :) Probably too easy to implement, that's why they forgot it. But the fa
by fghh45sdfhr3 14y ago
The lack of a turn signal made me chuckle.
That is such a software development moment :) Probably too easy to implement, that's why they forgot it.
But the fact that the car often needs the human to intervene is a bit more interesting. Why would a human better know if there is enough space for two cars to pass each other in a narrow street?
- christiangenco 14y agoIf I was google I'd be erring on the side of extreme caution. The first public accident that happens with one of these cars is going to get plastered over every media outlet in the world. That they had the car in "super safe driving" mode for a media event seems entirely reasonable, even if the car probably could've navigated the narrow street with 95% confidence. The obvious path of attack is targeting the safety of an automated driver. Lose voter confidence and the whole thing comes crumbling down to be delayed another decade of legislation. That's my guess, anyway.
- jrockway 14y agoThe first public accident that happens with one of these cars is going to get plastered over every media outlet in the world. There's already been an accident, the car hit another car from behind. But supposedly this was in manual mode.
- uncoder0 14y agoSource? I thought the car was hit by someone else. edit: Found it, http://www.slashgear.com/googles-robot-car-accident-blamed-on-human-05169836/ http://www.slashgear.com/googles-robot-car-accident-blamed-o.... You were correct. I had thought they were rear ended by a human.
- Qworg 14y agoThe system likely has a bubble of safety around it to allow for sudden changes close to the car. This makes the "car" far larger than it would actually be.
- mertd 14y agoProbably depends on the accuracy of positioning and real time 3d modeling of the environment. I wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't down to the centimeter level yet.
- to3m 14y agoThe lack of turn signals makes me highly suspicious. There is more to this omission than meets the eye, I am quite sure of it. As you say, adding turn signals in should be straightforward. The computer presumably has its turns planned far enough in advance. So why doesn't it? I am actually even less inclined to trust these so-called "self"-driving cars now. Not like I even trust the human-driven variety all that much...
- elsurudo 14y agoThe lack of "support" for turn signals is probably a way to ensure that a human is always present and aware during operation. It's a really clever, simple solution. They've turned the absence of a feature into a feature. I don't know why the Google engineer would lie about it, though.
- haakon666 14y agoIf the turn signals are not on the CAN bus it could be annoying to implement. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAN_bus http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAN_bus
- to3m 14y agoThey've made a self-driving car. The merely annoying parts are going to be the fun bits! Everything else is going to be difficult, if not bordering-on-impossible. I find it very difficult to believe that there is any technical barrier to computer-operated indicators.
- nooneelse 14y agoTurn signals are a small subset of the "signal knowledge and intent" lights/outputs that a self-driving car might want to use to communicate with the humans and, some day, other self-driving cars around. The team might be working in the direction of a more general implementation of such things rather than hooking up a temporary system for just two sets of dumb on-or-off lights.