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Comment by markbnj | Hacker News Reader

Yeah, agreed. The overlap technologies of position fixing and mechanical control have actually been solved for a long time now. The current interest in self-driving vehicles is based on advances in sensors and processing to detect environmental conditions and hazards on roadways and in places where people commonly drive cars.

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You don't think farm equipment has to navigate unexpected hazards or coordinate with other moving equipment or people?

I'll agree that roadways have much more to do with avoiding traffic, but I don't think that the restrictions on vehicle operation or avoiding hazards on the terrain or having to understand and plan according to layouts devised by and primarily for humans is substantially different between the two, but rather, a difference of parameters. (Farm equipment maintains a lower speed and for a different reason, but still has to monitor and obey rules about maximum speed under various conditions, for instance.)

I think you're underestimating the degree to which the two tasks are fundamentally the same.

>> You don't think farm equipment has to navigate unexpected hazards or coordinate with other moving equipment or people?

Coordinating with other moving equipment I did not address, because that is too broad a description. As far as hazard avoidance is concerned I don't know the state of the art for farm equipment, but I don't think they are as focused on fully autonomous operation, which has been the goal on the transportation side for some time now. In any event, there is obvious overlap in a number of areas, but I simply don't think the premise of the posted article holds up. Farm equipment is not the "real revolution" in autonomous transportation. It's merely one area in which some of the dependent technologies have already seen the light of day.

"You don't think farm equipment has to navigate unexpected hazards or coordinate with other moving equipment or people?"

Nope, they don't need to worry about those things. Self driving cars and tractors adhere to ISO-25119 and within that, tractors adhere to agricultural performance level which doesn't have the same risk. Self driving tractors are required to have an operator in the cab and they are not allowed on public roadways with "auto guidance" engaged.

I work for Case New Holland - John Deere competitor.

It would seem that at 10mph all you really need are some sensors looking forward that have the ability to provide enough warning that the vehicle can stop before it hits an obstruction. Kind of like the auto-brakes that some cars have.

That's a lot different than having a car which can at 70mph successfully swerve enough to avoid a wreck while still not swerving so far as to cause another wreck.

I agree with the larger point that robotractors have an easier job, but I really wonder how close we are to a robocar "which can at 70mph successfully swerve enough to avoid a wreck while still not swerving so far as to cause another wreck."

I think there was some discussion about the ethics of the software in google's cars because they would solve driving problems with a view to minimizing harm to all involved, not merely the car's occupants. So I think this kind of thing is very much in development, and indeed more sophisticated than that (e.g. The car might swerve into another vehicle to avoid hitting pedestrians).

Ah, forgive me. I wasn't suggesting that such a robotic car exists already. More that successfully navigating such a situation on a freeway would be an acceptance test that I would like to insist on before entrusting my life to one, and would DEFINITELY insist upon prior to purchasing one.

Were I in need of a self-driving tractor given the much lower speeds and whatnot I might be much more willing to accept a fairly primitive autopilot rather than something truly self-driving. Freeing me from needing to constantly be on the alert to keep a combine from straying from the optimal path is far, far more important that something that'll drive itself from the barn to the diesel pump and then onwards to the field. Were I wealthy enough to afford so much land to where owning such a vehicle was necessary then either driving it myself or hiring someone else to handle that would be entirely reasonable.

> but I really wonder how close we are to a robocar "which can at 70mph successfully swerve enough to avoid a wreck while still not swerving so far as to cause another wreck."

Automated cars can already do this far more reliably than your average driver.

Even if the tractor has to be aware of such hazards, the degree is totally different. The tractor may need to identify that something unexpected has occurred, but it doesn't need to know anything about it other than that, most likely; it can likely deal with all unexpected occurrences by stopping and waiting for someone to come manually fix it. Self-driving cars need to make complex decisions about hazards, because stopping in the middle of a public street is probably not an acceptable behavior, it may not be practical given the speeds, etc. That means the car needs to know a lot about the hazard in order to figure out what to do about it (swerve? honk? alter speed?).

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