4 ms·

They just have to be significantly safer than humans, and that's not hard.

zackbloom 12y ago
If only that were true. A single crash right now would make big headlines.
webignition 12y ago
I think you would have to experience first-hand what it is like to drive in almost any country that is outside the US, Europe or most of the commonwealth to really appreciate the difficulty of developing a self-driving car that could handle such conditions more safely than humans. It very much is hard. I've driven in and around India. Aside from the fact that the majority of vehicles have four wheels and generally move forwards more often than backwards, the similarities to driving in countries with more regulated driving environments are few to none. Try circumnavigating Connaught Place on any day for a taster, or try taking the main highway north from New Delhi any distance. The smaller more fragile vehicles give way, in the interests of self-preservation, to the larger, heavier vehicles. Approaching in an intersection in a truck? Blast your horn to warn others of your approach so that they can get out of the way. Slowing down to carefully approach the junction is not what happens. Need to cut across some lanes of traffic in a school bus to make a turn? Have your co-pilot hang out of the side door waving, shouting and berating other vehicles to make them give way. That's your turning indicator in many cases. Need to take the same school bus on a circuit to collect kids in the morning and are running a bit late? Why not head straight through some empty fields. Roads can be optional. All of the above I have experienced first-hand.
- kamaal 12y ago
  >>Try circumnavigating Connaught Place on any day for a taster, or try taking the main highway north from New Delhi any distance. That's like the easiest of the tests you give. The difficult ones require record precision gear-clutch-accelerator usage, to move vehicle in measures of inches in case of grid locks in some places in India. This is beyond the fact that it may raining heavily, and you might be navigating through huge pot holes, with garbage, beggars and stray dogs on streets. Well then nothing can give you true idea until you drive here.
- prawn 12y ago
  Can you imagine the sensors and speeds that might be available within one decade let alone two or three? Compare that to a human looking in just one direction at any given time and with imperfect reaction time. You know those larger, heavier vehicles you mentioned? What if they're self-driving long-haul transport? They'll likely be able to make it through. Cost will be the thing that prevents self-driving cars from dominating roads in India before the technology itself is a problem.
  - thewarrior 12y ago
    I'm not trying to be snarky or anything but take a look at this : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=twMj9MTs3lw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=twMj9MTs3lw A self driving car would just sit there frozen as there would be no 100 % safe action to take.
    - prawn 12y ago
      Yes, I've seen crazy intersections in person - I considered exactly that sort of thing with my comment. But I can also see that a self-driving car could edge forward gradually until it had the opportunity to take a larger advantage. A lot of those vehicles and bikes are not travelling at full speed and are also prepared to brake if need be. A self-driving car would be able to judge all of these things almost immediately unlike the reaction lag we get with humans.
yen223 12y ago
The self-driving car has trouble telling whether a white object on the road is a piece of paper or a rock. Most humans don't have that problem. I don't why we like to think that all people are stupid. At the moment, the human brain is still significantly more intelligent than computers.
- kruczek 12y ago
  But a self-driving car doesn't need to be more intelligent than a human brain, it just needs to be better at driving. Human brain is certainly a better general-purpose compuing machine, but there are many situations where technology can vastly improve its performance for specific cases (e.g. reaction time). As for distinguishing rock and paper, humans also often fail at similar tasks - "is it a lump of snow on the road ahead, or is it a rock?". Better to just avoid uncertain objects in such cases. But true that there is certainly some room for improvement (for cars, because we are unable to improve brains).
  - scottlocklin 12y ago
    An autonomous vehicle needs to be at least as good as people at crap like reading numbers and street signs. There is no such thing as a computer which can do this task, though all drivers can do it, or they wouldn't pass their driver tests. That's why these are still considered challenging data sets for machine vision people: http://ufldl.stanford.edu/housenumbers/ http://ufldl.stanford.edu/housenumbers/ http://benchmark.ini.rub.de/ http://benchmark.ini.rub.de/

If only that were true. A single crash right now would make big headlines.

I think you would have to experience first-hand what it is like to drive in almost any country that is outside the US, Europe or most of the commonwealth to really appreciate the difficulty of developing a self-driving car that could handle such conditions more safely than humans. It very much is hard. I've driven in and around India. Aside from the fact that the majority of vehicles have four wheels and generally move forwards more often than backwards, the similarities to driving in countries with more regulated driving environments are few to none. Try circumnavigating Connaught Place on any day for a taster, or try taking the main highway north from New Delhi any distance. The smaller more fragile vehicles give way, in the interests of self-preservation, to the larger, heavier vehicles. Approaching in an intersection in a truck? Blast your horn to warn others of your approach so that they can get out of the way. Slowing down to carefully approach the junction is not what happens. Need to cut across some lanes of traffic in a school bus to make a turn? Have your co-pilot hang out of the side door waving, shouting and berating other vehicles to make them give way. That's your turning indicator in many cases. Need to take the same school bus on a circuit to collect kids in the morning and are running a bit late? Why not head straight through some empty fields. Roads can be optional. All of the above I have experienced first-hand.

kamaal 12y ago
>>Try circumnavigating Connaught Place on any day for a taster, or try taking the main highway north from New Delhi any distance. That's like the easiest of the tests you give. The difficult ones require record precision gear-clutch-accelerator usage, to move vehicle in measures of inches in case of grid locks in some places in India. This is beyond the fact that it may raining heavily, and you might be navigating through huge pot holes, with garbage, beggars and stray dogs on streets. Well then nothing can give you true idea until you drive here.
prawn 12y ago
Can you imagine the sensors and speeds that might be available within one decade let alone two or three? Compare that to a human looking in just one direction at any given time and with imperfect reaction time. You know those larger, heavier vehicles you mentioned? What if they're self-driving long-haul transport? They'll likely be able to make it through. Cost will be the thing that prevents self-driving cars from dominating roads in India before the technology itself is a problem.
- thewarrior 12y ago
  I'm not trying to be snarky or anything but take a look at this : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=twMj9MTs3lw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=twMj9MTs3lw A self driving car would just sit there frozen as there would be no 100 % safe action to take.
  - prawn 12y ago
    Yes, I've seen crazy intersections in person - I considered exactly that sort of thing with my comment. But I can also see that a self-driving car could edge forward gradually until it had the opportunity to take a larger advantage. A lot of those vehicles and bikes are not travelling at full speed and are also prepared to brake if need be. A self-driving car would be able to judge all of these things almost immediately unlike the reaction lag we get with humans.

yen223 12y ago

The self-driving car has trouble telling whether a white object on the road is a piece of paper or a rock. Most humans don't have that problem. I don't why we like to think that all people are stupid. At the moment, the human brain is still significantly more intelligent than computers.

kruczek 12y ago
But a self-driving car doesn't need to be more intelligent than a human brain, it just needs to be better at driving. Human brain is certainly a better general-purpose compuing machine, but there are many situations where technology can vastly improve its performance for specific cases (e.g. reaction time). As for distinguishing rock and paper, humans also often fail at similar tasks - "is it a lump of snow on the road ahead, or is it a rock?". Better to just avoid uncertain objects in such cases. But true that there is certainly some room for improvement (for cars, because we are unable to improve brains).
- scottlocklin 12y ago
  An autonomous vehicle needs to be at least as good as people at crap like reading numbers and street signs. There is no such thing as a computer which can do this task, though all drivers can do it, or they wouldn't pass their driver tests. That's why these are still considered challenging data sets for machine vision people: http://ufldl.stanford.edu/housenumbers/ http://ufldl.stanford.edu/housenumbers/ http://benchmark.ini.rub.de/ http://benchmark.ini.rub.de/