Revelation wrote:SheikhDjibouti wrote:My own assumption is that the price of all this tech will inevitably go down. ..... some of us can remember our parents driving around in cars that didn't have electric windows, electric adjustable mirrors or electric central locking; these were ridiculously expensive options only available on luxury limousines.... And look where we are now!
None of these things were making life or death decisions autonomously.
Do I really have to explain to you that the principle of my argument was that costs of technology come down with mass production and mass uptake?
But since you are unaware of all the things in cars that already make autonomous life-saving decisions;
Automatic windscreen wipers; that enable us to see more clearly and thus could save lives.
Automatic headlights, that come on when light conditions deteriorate, and might thus save lives. (Have you never seen a car where the driver forgot to put his lights on? I see them every day. And sometimes I am the guilty one...)
Electric windows, that sense when they are obstructed, for instance by a child's hand (or neck), and reverse direction.
And of course the big one; anti-lock brakes. They don't decide when to brake, but they do decide when to modify our braking behavior.
Each of these are piecemeal elements, and not obviously life-savers in their own right. But that is because they are currently subservient to the actions of a human driver, although in several cases already they are designed to over-rule the (human) drivers decision. Let me repeat that - the machine sometimes over-rules the human driver!! Shocking, isn't it. How did we allow that to happen?
But that really wasn't the actual point I was making.
None of these things create issues with privacy, hacking, government abuse, etc.
True. And neither does the basic concept of an autonomous self-driving car. These fears are your own construct, and if they happen will merely be add-ons.
Again - taking parallels from the aviation world; currently you can take a car, bus or train from Anytown USA, to Somewhere Else, USA, without the government or anyone else necessarily knowing who you are or exactly when you made the journey.
But get on board a plane, and your identity is known to all sorts of agencies, together with your exact itinerary. Or do you still have airlines that take cash and don't insist on proof of identity? Elsewhere in the world that is certainly the case. But do we blame air travel for creating issues with privacy, hacking, government abuse etc? It's not the plane that is the problem. And neither is it the self-driving car that infringes our privacy. It's the baggage that comes with these modes of transport. And I confess I don't like it either, but that ship sailed quite some time ago. (Ship...sailed.... geddit?)
Revelation wrote:SheikhDjibouti wrote:As for your contention that the sensors that provide data could be degraded by rain/snow/fog/etc , and that conflicting data could cause the 'puters to get their knickers in a twist; errm - this is a.net isn't it? And aren't those exactly the sort of problems that Airbus & Boeing have successfully dealt with?
The airplane isn't really guessing about the road, it's following a radio beam right to the destination, and even still the pilots make the go/no-go decision and fly the touchdown. Since the problem was solveable using 70s era tech I think it's clear that it's a simpler problem to solve.
Say what???
Not all flights follow pre-determined paths. And the technology developed by A & B does so much more, such as preventing pilots from dropping the u/c at Mach 0.89, or stalling the aircraft on final approach. And then we have ACAS and ASAS, which are indirect cousins of what robo-cars will need to have. These function because most aircraft now have transponders, but there is as yet no means to avoid collisions with non-transponder air traffic, such as birds or drones. Or in the case of road vehicles; pedestrians, cyclists, and stray animals. I don't know how you can argue that the problem was simpler to solve using 70s era tech?
And the reason we still have pilots? That is because the fears a minority have about robo-cars are vastly more widely shared when it comes to unmanned aircraft. The technology does already exist, and a small number of aircraft have already flown without a pilot in the cockpit, or indeed a back-up pilot on the ground. But no commercial flights with passengers....yet.
Revelation wrote:SheikhDjibouti wrote:Not to mention your concerns over the additional weight and cost of all this new technology..... with weight being a particular concern in the case of aircraft (and slightly less so for cars)
I think on a percentage basis the self-driving car is adding more weight and more power consumption than the airplane auto-land systems.
Quite possibly, but ground based vehicles can take that increase far far far better than anything with wings. And as the systems are developed, the technology will shrink and become smaller & lighter. Just look at how much they can cram into a cellphone. Mine can be a camera, a satnav, a g-force meter, a builders spirit level, or a hundred other things. And it weighs almost nothing.
.... how do you get from the case of 0 out of 40 being self-driving cars to 1 out of 40 to ... 20 out of 40 to ... 40 out of 40. So many people seem to think this happens at the snap of a finger without any complications. What if the Volvo self-driving car makes a different decision than the Audi self driving car? How do you make sure all of the combinations of human driven cars vs N different implementations of robo-cars interoperate correctly under all conditions?
Fair questions.
I'm not one of those people who believes it is going to be easy.
On the subject of Volvo & Audi having different programs; it will be down to each manufacturer to demonstrate that their vehicle is compatible with the herd. But it shouldn't matter anyway. The Volvo robot needn't treat the Audi robot any differently from a human driven vehicle; if it sees the Audi as a potential threat, it will execute a safety manoeuver & vice versa. Why would either manufacturer create a control program that would escalate the situation? The default is that all traffic slows down, and if necessary stops.
If we apply your concerns to a non robo-car future; how do you propose to train all future human drivers to execute the correct manoeuver in every case when faced with N different implementations of other human drivers? You wouldn't even know where to start.
Perfection might not be ultimately achievable, but automated vehicles don't have to be that special before they exceed the very poor standards currently exhibited by human drivers.
One solution could be lanes (or indeed entire highways) allocated purely to self-drive cars, pretty much like bus lanes and HOV lanes.
That's why I asked above "what problem are we trying to solve?". If it's less deaths, here in the US we can do more for less by changing gun laws.
I'm more than happy to agree with you on that point.