5 ms·

Just drove about 8 hours and experienced heavy fog along the way. Visibility was reduced to maybe a hundred yards. The entire time I wasn't thinking "self-dri

Just drove about 8 hours and experienced heavy fog along the way. Visibility was reduced to maybe a hundred yards. The entire time I wasn't thinking "self-driving cars would fail here" but rather that a self driving car with it's multitude of sensors would probably do much better considering what it could "see" and also the reduction in "eye fatigue" as driving in heavy fog can wreak havoc on your eyes and perception of movement (not a problem for a computer).

rayiner 12y ago
Funny. I just had my Uber driver take me on a 50 minute trip from the Kennedy Center to Union Station, a trip that usually takes 15 minutes, because he blindly followed the GPS straight through downtown. The entire time I was thinking: "it's 2014 and we still haven't gotten basic route-finding right; self-driving cars are a long way off."
- TwiztidK 12y ago
  I think a network of self-driving cars might actually help with that. All the cars can communicate where they are going and could agree to take paths that reduce traffic and get everyone to their destination faster. EDIT: Also, these features should be coming soon thanks to devices like Automatic and apps like Waze.
  - rayiner 12y ago
    So one of the things I used to work on is software for cognitive radios: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_radio http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_radio. One of potential features of cognitive radio networks is that each node can share information about its local RF environment, to allow the network to make frequency-selection decisions based on global information. It's easy to describe, very hard to implement. Very, very, hard to implement in a way that works every time, like anything that goes in a car must. Heck, we have so far to go even within the scope of the technology we have today. One of the things I've noticed as a heavy Uber user is that drivers tend to get confused when they're first hailed, and again when they pick you up. GPS systems tend not to give you a good fix on your orientation until you're moving,[1] and when you get a hail on the other side of town, they're really not very useful for giving you the optimal "first turn." This is a really simple thing, that's probably worth a lot of money to a company like Uber, that's really hard to get right with existing technology. With distributed decision-making of autonomous vehicles, you're talking about something orders of magnitude more complicated. [1] My wife and I get a kick every time Siri says "proceed to the route." Which is a lot.
  - saosebastiao 12y ago
    http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braess%27s_paradox http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braess%27s_paradox How will they decide amongst themselves which one gets the suboptimal route?
- afterburner 12y ago
  Which app was he using?
- josefresco 12y ago
  Downtown city driving is certainly a high bar. Even veteran taxi drivers make mistakes or bad decisions when choosing a route. But certainly it seems like a a solvable problem, given that most apps/GPS units can track, and aggregate data to find the optimal route. I was impressed on my trip that Google Maps actually recommended alternate routes (on the fly), with time estimates based on traffic. I was able to cut off a dozen or so minutes based on it's suggestions. Also very impressed with the foresight that an app like Waze offers. During my 8 hour trip I navigated for 4-6 hours and was easily able to warn my driver about hazards (cops, wind, accidents, construction). The kicker is that Waze is "powered" by human reporting - which suggests the ideal solution is a hybrid of sorts.

rayiner 12y ago

Funny. I just had my Uber driver take me on a 50 minute trip from the Kennedy Center to Union Station, a trip that usually takes 15 minutes, because he blindly followed the GPS straight through downtown. The entire time I was thinking: "it's 2014 and we still haven't gotten basic route-finding right; self-driving cars are a long way off."

TwiztidK 12y ago
I think a network of self-driving cars might actually help with that. All the cars can communicate where they are going and could agree to take paths that reduce traffic and get everyone to their destination faster. EDIT: Also, these features should be coming soon thanks to devices like Automatic and apps like Waze.
- rayiner 12y ago
  So one of the things I used to work on is software for cognitive radios: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_radio http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_radio. One of potential features of cognitive radio networks is that each node can share information about its local RF environment, to allow the network to make frequency-selection decisions based on global information. It's easy to describe, very hard to implement. Very, very, hard to implement in a way that works every time, like anything that goes in a car must. Heck, we have so far to go even within the scope of the technology we have today. One of the things I've noticed as a heavy Uber user is that drivers tend to get confused when they're first hailed, and again when they pick you up. GPS systems tend not to give you a good fix on your orientation until you're moving,[1] and when you get a hail on the other side of town, they're really not very useful for giving you the optimal "first turn." This is a really simple thing, that's probably worth a lot of money to a company like Uber, that's really hard to get right with existing technology. With distributed decision-making of autonomous vehicles, you're talking about something orders of magnitude more complicated. [1] My wife and I get a kick every time Siri says "proceed to the route." Which is a lot.
- saosebastiao 12y ago
  http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braess%27s_paradox http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braess%27s_paradox How will they decide amongst themselves which one gets the suboptimal route?
afterburner 12y ago
Which app was he using?
josefresco 12y ago
Downtown city driving is certainly a high bar. Even veteran taxi drivers make mistakes or bad decisions when choosing a route. But certainly it seems like a a solvable problem, given that most apps/GPS units can track, and aggregate data to find the optimal route. I was impressed on my trip that Google Maps actually recommended alternate routes (on the fly), with time estimates based on traffic. I was able to cut off a dozen or so minutes based on it's suggestions. Also very impressed with the foresight that an app like Waze offers. During my 8 hour trip I navigated for 4-6 hours and was easily able to warn my driver about hazards (cops, wind, accidents, construction). The kicker is that Waze is "powered" by human reporting - which suggests the ideal solution is a hybrid of sorts.