Looks pretty promising, not bad, especially since the trend in software (and sensors) is to get better over time.
A human driver (well, at least myself) would simply have lifted the foot off the accelerator somewhat and drifted closer to the centre line when passing - seeing as there was no oncoming traffic.
Maybe it knows that if the joggers were to suddenly jump out, doing what you or I would do isn't enough, so it slowed down to a near stop just in case.
Also, it's a bit of a "blind corner", so drifting out toward the middle of the lane might not be the best idea (again, even though it's probably something I as a person in that scenario would have done).
Truth is, we all drive fairly irresponsibly, trusting in the rules of the road and human self-preservation to keep most stuff out of our way. And if we do hit somebody who dashes out on the freeway, well that's an accident or 'their fault' or 'nobody's fault' so no foul.
Will we allow automated drivers that privilege?
Computers are just an extension of ourselves. The people making these systems will make mistakes, these systems will kill people (and arguably already have), but hopefully they will kill less than we currently do by not having them.
There's this stigma around "computers" where people treat them differently than everything else. Yes, you're getting into a car whose programming could cause you to die, but you are always relying on this kind of thing. Getting in a regular car, you are relying on the engineer who designed the braking system to have been correct, you are relying on the factory worker to have been paying attention that day, and the QC robot to have been programmed correctly, etc...
We need to get away from that, we need to treat the computer in your car as you would treat it's braking system. Accidents will happen, people will get hurt, bugs will occur. If they are systemic, there will need to be changes, recalls, and fixes. But the car will never operate in 100% of conditions flawlessly, and neither will you.
Even though the statistics may point to self-driving cars being safer in the aggregate, would an individual be willing to give up control to software which might make a mistake and kill them? Even if, statistically, they might be safer?
Will people make the rational choice, or the emotional choice?
all crashes occur when the pilot overrides the flight system or the runway has no support for computer aided landing (ils).
thats the only reason flying is statistically safer than driving.
A video where a car manages to stop because a drunk falls into your lane will make the stock soar.
A video where a car hits an old lady who jumps in front of your car will make the stock crash.
There are people on either side who want this technology to succeed or fail (not self-driving, i mean electric cars)
getting there 30s later on average is worth killing grandmas? with automated cars you dont even have to pay attention or care. get in get out.
That being said, looking at that portion of the video again it looks like this may have just been the system having trouble figuring out if the people were in the road until it was closer.
90 - 95% of the time I am driving long stretches, I spend on highways. No problem if only that part would be done selfdriving. Those few minutes in busy town centers I do not mind to do myself. No problem of driving short stretches (10 - 15 min) either.
Buyers were convinced by "cruise control", which just (barely) keeps a set speed.
Doing those things right now in a Tesla is probably not safe just now, but it shows that level 5 autonomy is not so far fetched and 2020 is a realistic date.
The tech is impressive but it has to be absolutely bulletproof. I like Tesla but I find it annoying that Musk doesn't deliver anything on time and it seems like Tesla delivers way more demos than real products.
Autodriving 100% of the time is where it gets revolutionary (mass-layoffs of truck drivers, taxi drivers, summon features that park cheaply outside of downtown).
The former is great, but there's a lot of hype going around right now so it's not strange for people to be cynical.
It's all about predictability. Even just full motorway / major road driving would be pretty awesome, and the car would know when it's coming up to a section you need to drive and you can have plenty of warning. Not "HELP DRIVER I SAW EITHER A LEAF OR A CHILD QUICK TAKE OVER"
If/When it's good enough that I can sleep during a long highway trip (and pull into the last rest stop before my exit if I don't wake up) then I'll be happy.
live in the gonnies? own a car. hailing one would take forever. having cars near you in the gonnies,that you dont own wouldn't be economical.
basically, there would be less vehicule owners but not that many less.
For example, friends of mine recently bought a summer cottage. It's a little over an hour's drive. They don't have a car, so they currently rent one or try to borrow one when they want to go there. Once there, the car will probably sit still for a week.
Currently, there's no really good solution to this. Renting is expensive if you just need to drive a couple of hours a week. Buying a car might make more economic sense in the long term, but it's still pretty expensive for the purpose. Taxi rides like that cost an arm and a leg too. But if the car could drive itself out of the woods...
Of course it's a question of pricing, and I'm guessing we're still some way off from having self-driving cars navigate dirt paths that pass through people's yards as is the case here.
Anything less than 4 is asking for trouble.
I'm not talking about "oh hey, here's a situation I can't handle" and more "take over now".
Here's the first of 100 self-driving cars Volvo will put in customer hands in 2017.[1] This shows close-ups of all the sensors - high radar and camera behind the windscreen, low LIDAR and camera in the nose, and side and down-looking cameras on the door mirrors. No high-mounted LIDAR, though. These vehicles are intended for self-driving in all weather conditions in Gothenburg, Sweden.
They certainly are saying they'll only release a Level 4 vehicle - the Tesla is still expecting a human to take over.
Tesla's old system was Level 2. Google and Volvo have level 3 in test. Tesla's new system is supposed to be Level 3. There's a bright line between level 2 and 3 - NHTSA says that at Level 3 and above, the manufacturer is responsible for accidents and cannot blame the driver.
[1] http://www.nhtsa.gov/About-NHTSA/Press-Releases/U.S.-Departm...
However statistics say that most of the accidents happen at the beginning or towards the end of the trip. There are environmental reasons (city vs. sub-urbs vs. cross-country) and there are human reasons.
What's weird is the period we're entering, where the technology is becoming more and more capable, but we're still a very long ways away from full auto. Yet the hype machine says it's just around the corner. I'm betting we're still 10-15 years out. So how do we handle situations where the driver has to pay a little attention, but not that much? In airplanes, this has been a very dangerous area -- and things in airplanes usually happen much, much slower than they do in traffic.
I think it would be worthwhile to figure out how to shut down the hype machine, or at least tune it down a few notches. Dreams and visions are fine, but every time I switch the current tab from HN to Facebook, I get to see overhyped bullshit predictions about AI, nanotech, self-driving cars, etc. being just about the corner, as evidenced by whatever misinterpreted paper or video news sites could find that day. And the non-tech crowd is totally buying that. Not just regular folks, but also investors and politicians and all the other people who then end up causing resources to be wasted because they buy into the bullshit.
In 2013 an oft-cited and alarming study out of oxford suggesting most jobs will be automated over the next decade was released. It was followed by a series of influential books whose authors ran the lecture circuit: 'The Second Machine Age', 'The Zero Marginal Cost Society', 'Superintelligence', and 'The Rise of the Robots'.
There were some bold bold and well publicized statements from respected luminaries such as Bill Gates, Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking.
Aggressive maneuvering to hoover up machine learning talent, and bold investments from automakers pursuing autonomous driving has only added gasoline to the fire.
Automation became the talk of the town at Davos in Switzerland. There's been a rising chorus from Basic Income supporters.
Now the hype is out of control. Nobody is actually looking at the technology. It's okay, though. Hype is self-correcting.
Or, as we call it in China, "driving".
all at once: moped taking over from the right, in a round about, truck entering the roundabout without slowing down. donkey & cart on the side. woo hoo!