The auto manufacturer approach is also showing progress. In CA and NV you can buy and operate a Mercedes with Drive Pilot, which is Level 3 certified. In the right (very restrictive conditions which essentially come down to "sitting in highway traffic on your commute") you legally do not have to pay attention to the road and can read/watch/work/etc.
I'd personally never trust an autopilot unless it's either backed by human-level AI which has also had years of driving experience, or it's in some very highly constrained environment (maybe airport bus going from gate to plane). Out on a highway or public road system is the most unpredictable environment possible.
> All it takes is for something non-routine to happen such as a car ahead reacting to an animal, or swerving as the driver reaches for something or spills coffee on themself, or a wheel come off a car (I've seen it happen to a car in front of me), or a car crosses the center median in opposite direction (which left my ex-boss hospitalized for 6 months)
However, the human has the major advantage of having a brain and being able to understand the consequences and potential outcomes of something in real-time as it is unfolding. I doubt most autopilots would understand the situations I mentioned - certainly not unless they were specifically pre-programmed/trained into the system. Would an autopilot even see what is going on inside a car if a driver is bending down below dashboard, or fighting with passenger, for example?
Your average driver is already at the limits of human capabilities with no room for improvement unless they go train to drive like F1 racers. So comparing humans to the current state of tech seems silly given that the tech will assuredly one day be faster than a human.
I'll be happy to take it seriously after that happens. In the meantime, I'm sticking with my belief that unreliable automation is worse than no automation.
You just dreamed up this statement and immediately believed it.
You cannot train a F1 driver for highly dynamic events at 20k rpm and 4000 NM forces at the axles, you need automated controllers for that. You can train him for simple things, like gear switching (5ms) and hitting the breakpoints right. But an AI will be at least 10.000 better than a human on this.
You need a slow human brain for the stupid mistakes instead.
This is nowhere near true. The skill range from average driver (who knows nothing about car control or reacting correctly) to F1 drivers is vast. There's a huge gray area between these extremes that would be improve safety is people chose (or were forced to) get some training.
Even something as basic as taking a car control clinic once a year would improve the average driver skill and safety by a huge amount.
If we had the same lawyers available that Tesla does, humans too would be not responsible for much of anything.
I merged hard right before it was clear. I assumed the car on my right would do the same, and the driver further behind would break in time. They either made the same assumptions as me or took my queues and acted accordingly and everything turned out ok.
It is pretty amazing how people can coordinate on-the-fly.
This is about the peak of what you can get with automated lane keeping and braking. I don't see any route from this point to anything like level 4.
> This is about the peak of what you can get with automated lane keeping and braking.
Are you saying that within 5y, say, we won't see a level three system that's able to handle full highway speeds?
well yeah, that is the definition of level 3. That's not going to change.
They are limited by:
> Our technology relies on a digital high-definition map that provides a 3D image of the road and the surroundings with information on road geometry, route characteristics, traffic signs and special traffic events
IMHO Tesla's "F--- it all just use NN" approach does get around the pre-generated 3D map requirement. Even if it is not much more than Level 3.5 at the moment. Pretty funny to see it accelerate to 65mph in a parking lot b/c it thought it was on the nearby highway though.
It's not even level 3, and couldn't be certified as such. It's not reliable enough for the person in the driver's seat to focus their full attention elsewhere.
>> level 3 is still basically lane keeping and auto cruise control
> well yeah, that is the definition of level 3
No, it's the definition of level 2: https://www.sae.org/blog/sae-j3016-update ("example features: lane centering and adaptive cruise control at the same time")
Am I missing something? Lane keeping, cruise control and offset keeping is level 3. That's what this feature offers according to a few posts up.
It makes no difference to the conversation. I'll stop poking the bear here.