Self driving autonomous pipe dream
 

How about questioning the billions spend on this pipe dream?

Despite High Hopes, Self-Driving Cars Are ‘Way in the Future’ - The New York Times

Are We There Yet? A Reality Check on Self-Driving Cars | WIRED

Man on the moon is a pipe dream.

I believe that self driving cars are definitely the future of driving, and it will make transportation much safer than it is now. However, I am not in favor of using taxpayer money to fund it. I don't like that taxpayers have funded electric cars through tax credits, and I hope taxpayers are not funding self driving cars. Let competition drive the market.

and takes his dog...….

Trains can travel without operators, even the signals are automated.
Aeroplanes can fly, take off, and land by themselves.
Ships self navigate across oceans.
Cars are in the early stages of self driving.
My wife has been driving our car from the back seat for years.
Patience grasshopper.

Yes but there is still a human present to watch over the machine. On a long trip I would love to be able to set back and read a book or watch a movie in my car but I'm not ready to trust a computer with my safety. Considering how often my home computer hands up or the internet goes out, we are a long way off from this being a reality.

If it really works some day, crawl in bed at night and be a long ways by morning. Lot of work to get to that point and a lot of cars to phase out.

My Dad said the same thing about spending money on the Space Program. But here we are with the Internet, Cell Phones, Satellite TV, Auto Pilot for Jets, WIFI, GPS and too many more to mention. So maybe it's not such a Bad Thing. Len the retired half of Investment Painting.

Audi, BMW, GM, Ford, Hyundai, Jaguar Land Rover, Nissan are a few that are working and investing in Autonomous driving vehicles. I doubt our generation will fully embrace it, nor do I believe we are even close to the demographic needed, our grand kids will and it will be part of their lives. Most don't get drives licenses in the large metro areas, they are big on rail, bikes, scooters and Uber. They have a different view then we have and that will be the market. The big car manufacturers see that.

I see the big problem being the mix of "smart" cars and older cars with human drivers. While humans can sometimes guess or anticipate an unusual operation by another human, I do not see computers being able to do this, at least not in my lifetime. If we had a magic wand, and could convert all of the cars in a very short time, and have the necessary infrastructure installed, then I would be much more in favor of autonomous cars.

What I think is going to be a bigger problem will be people ignoring the manufacturers warnings, and letting the vehicle do the driving while they zone out doing something else. If there is not a solution found for this type of misuse, it could very well spell a very significant delay or the end of these types of vehicles. There have been several stories within the last 1 to 2 years of major accidents causing death when the driver (or monitoring driver) were doing something else and an accident occurred, in some cases, the autonomous vehicle was clearly "at fault".

I am watching these developments, maybe there will be a break through.

With the rise of autonomous vehicles, it's only a matter of time until there's a country song where the guy's truck leaves him :icon_wink:

Fully autonomous self driving (level 5) is still a bit off but the existing technology is very impressive. Waymo has self driving cars in Phoenix (level 4 but geo-fenced, I believe). Teslas are very impressive and don't rely on geo-fencing (in other words, it will work anywhere). If you haven't had a chance to drive a Tesla with autopilot then a trip to Orlando would be an eye opener. They are fully capable of driving themselves on highways - steering, braking, accelerating, lane changes, off-ramps - you must keep your hands on the wheels, a light touch is all that is needed. Teslas can now recognize stop signs and stop lights (some of the time) so non-highway self driving is now starting to become a reality also - you will still need to keep your hands on the wheel and will need to assume control in some circumstances. Since their software is based on a neural net, it continually learns based on the data collected from most of the Teslas on the road. The amount of hardware on a Tesla, the compute power to run the neural net and the array of sensors (cameras, ultrasonics, and radar), is impressive. The regulatory issues are probably more of a challenge than the technology issues. The technology issue is software as Teslas contain all the necessary hardware for full self driving. I would not be surprised to see Tesla at level 3, or possibly level 4, self driving in a couple of years and fully autonomous level 5 self driving within 10 years. Tesla is currently at somewhere between level 2 and 3.

I think there will be a lot of problems getting the rolling stop at stop signs. They will probably stop the car and not slide through.

And takes his dog, too.:a040:

Ethics morality question. Since the car knows exactly how long it takes to stop at any given speed what will happen when a child runs out to fetch a ball. The situation is as follows. The car calculates stopping distance and the answer is can not stop in time to avoid the child. The only other option is to swerve but car realizes there are a group of people at the bus stop and calculates that distance also as impossible to stop. What programer get to write the decision into the software program I.E. take one life or several but the one life is that of a child and the bus stop was adults.