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From the description the BBC gave, it seems they're behind the curve: "A series of optical beacons on the roadside can detect the positions of pedestrians and o
by Qworg 14y ago
From the description the BBC gave, it seems they're behind the curve:
"A series of optical beacons on the roadside can detect the positions of pedestrians and obstacles, and relay information to the prototype about whether a traffic light is red or green, as part of ITS. The car can also independently monitor pedestrians' positions."
What roads are going to be set up with special optical beacons so the car knows where things are? If that was possible, we would have had self-driving cars a decade ago.
- TheAmazingIdiot 14y agoAn open problem that Google has admitted with their car automation project is a certain problem endemic to the northern part of this country: Snow and Ice. Admittedly, ice is rather difficult in any condition. However, many human drivers drive safely on snow cover with minimal problems. Accidents are higher during those times, but traffic still keeps flowing. Google-car-AI cannot handle these events at all (at this time).
- blhack 14y agoIf we're at a point where having to take manual control of a robot car during icey weather is a problem, then I'd say we are in a pretty good place.
- SoftwareMaven 14y agoI'm not sure I agree. If the only time perole's driving skills are used is during the most treacherous time to be driving, that will be scary. I already avoid driving during the first snow storm of the season because, after six months, people have inevitably forgotten that ice is slippery (seriously, it a frightening and dangerous to be on the roads during the first storm!). Now factor in the fact nobody has driven at all during the last six months and it will be exceedingly messy.
- protomyth 14y agoThe Twin Cities (MN) two year ago had about 400 accidents during the big blizzard at the start of the year. I hesitate to think what would have happened if those folks hadn't had to drive all summer.
- arrrg 14y agoYeah, that seems like an easy problem to solve, with both technology and regulation. Self-driving cars would only get certified for driving conditions they can handle, so driving below, say, 3°C or with ice or snow on the street would not be allowed if a car can’t handle ice or snow. (I assume that in the foreseeable future all self-driving cars will also have to support some sort of manual driving.) The first condition can even be enforced automatically. When self-driving cars get better those conditions can be relaxed.
- ilaksh 14y agoIt sounds like they just tested with those beacons as a backup or alternate system. Supposedly the Google driverless car uses a Velodyne lidar system that, after some processing, provides a 3d point-cloud describing the scene around the car. I assume that Toyota is using a similar system. I am pretty sure that lidar system is the whole key to making driverless cars feasible because it provides so much realtime data about the entire area around the car. http://velodynelidar.com/lidar/hdlpressroom/How%20Googles%20Self-Driving%20Car%20Works%20-%20IEEE%20Spectrum.pdf http://velodynelidar.com/lidar/hdlpressroom/How%20Googles%20... http://velodynelidar.com/lidar/hdlproducts/hdl64e.aspx http://velodynelidar.com/lidar/hdlproducts/hdl64e.aspx After reading about how that lidar provides a detailed 3d map of the environment for many meters out, I'm not even sure its really a particularly interesting or cutting edge AI project. I was thinking something similar might be true for natural language understanding: the more data points your map of natural language usage has, the less general your intelligence problem becomes.