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I think I'd trust Google more than a car company to make self driving cars. That right there is one of the problems though, which self driving car do you trust

by ceeK 14y ago

I think I'd trust Google more than a car company to make self driving cars. That right there is one of the problems though, which self driving car do you trust the most?

ewang1 14y ago
Issues of liability would be interesting to deal with...
taligent 14y ago
Car companies TODAY have been shipping en masse large number of self-parking and automatic accident avoiding cars and have decades of experience in building and shipping reliable control systems. Google can't even produce bug-free software, make high quality hardware or even ship anything at any decent scale.
- viraptor 14y ago
  > self-parking and automatic accident avoiding Unfortunately these are really simple systems relative to safely driving on the road without supervision. If we're talking about the same things, then self-parking is just a software for recognising the front/end of some vehicle parked on the side and where is the good parking space - in some models also a distance monitor for automatic stopping. It's not that difficult to implement and all the tricky conditions still have to be checked by people - for example my auto-parking car will completely ignore people in its way, anything on the street, will abort if it's on a slope down, will not check for lots of issues that you're supposed to correct manually. Collision avoidance is for now a simple break when some object is getting close fast. Only a handful of cars implement something more as far as I know, since actively changing the course is actually a rather large challenge to do it right... I have to disagree with "Google can't even produce bug-free software" too. There's a big difference between programming a web application and doing something that's close to safety critical software. It's a completely different set of skills and requires a specific approach in general. Even then... regarding bug-free at scale, I think they're doing fairly well so far.
- jan_g 14y ago
  Not that I'm arguing with your assessment of car companies' experiences, but self-parking and autonomous driving are completely different beasts. I wouldn't be surprised, if the first company that creates a viable driverless car isn't one of the incumbent car companies. As Tesla have shown with electric car.
- jfoster 14y ago
  I'm sure they could produce (mostly) bug-free software if the cost-benefit ratio made sense. The problem with trying to ensure a web application is bug-free is that your incremental spend is probably greater than the incremental revenue. Self-driving cars are a different story. They will get sued when the cars make mistakes.
Someone 14y ago
That of the car company, of course. I bet its car would beat any car Google built as far as passive safety goes, and don't see how any software could compensate for that. Even if software could, I do not think (but am less sure of it) Google's self-driving car software is that much better than those of car companies, if at all. In other words: “car companies have learned and struggled for a few years here figuring out how to make a decent car. Google is not going to just figure this out. They’re not going to just walk in.”

by ceeK 14y ago

I think I'd trust Google more than a car company to make self driving cars. That right there is one of the problems though, which self driving car do you trust the most?

ewang1 14y ago

Issues of liability would be interesting to deal with...

taligent 14y ago

Car companies TODAY have been shipping en masse large number of self-parking and automatic accident avoiding cars and have decades of experience in building and shipping reliable control systems. Google can't even produce bug-free software, make high quality hardware or even ship anything at any decent scale.

viraptor 14y ago
> self-parking and automatic accident avoiding Unfortunately these are really simple systems relative to safely driving on the road without supervision. If we're talking about the same things, then self-parking is just a software for recognising the front/end of some vehicle parked on the side and where is the good parking space - in some models also a distance monitor for automatic stopping. It's not that difficult to implement and all the tricky conditions still have to be checked by people - for example my auto-parking car will completely ignore people in its way, anything on the street, will abort if it's on a slope down, will not check for lots of issues that you're supposed to correct manually. Collision avoidance is for now a simple break when some object is getting close fast. Only a handful of cars implement something more as far as I know, since actively changing the course is actually a rather large challenge to do it right... I have to disagree with "Google can't even produce bug-free software" too. There's a big difference between programming a web application and doing something that's close to safety critical software. It's a completely different set of skills and requires a specific approach in general. Even then... regarding bug-free at scale, I think they're doing fairly well so far.
jan_g 14y ago
Not that I'm arguing with your assessment of car companies' experiences, but self-parking and autonomous driving are completely different beasts. I wouldn't be surprised, if the first company that creates a viable driverless car isn't one of the incumbent car companies. As Tesla have shown with electric car.
jfoster 14y ago
I'm sure they could produce (mostly) bug-free software if the cost-benefit ratio made sense. The problem with trying to ensure a web application is bug-free is that your incremental spend is probably greater than the incremental revenue. Self-driving cars are a different story. They will get sued when the cars make mistakes.

Someone 14y ago

That of the car company, of course. I bet its car would beat any car Google built as far as passive safety goes, and don't see how any software could compensate for that. Even if software could, I do not think (but am less sure of it) Google's self-driving car software is that much better than those of car companies, if at all. In other words: “car companies have learned and struggled for a few years here figuring out how to make a decent car. Google is not going to just figure this out. They’re not going to just walk in.”