Curious to know how long folks here think it will be till we see AVs rolling around cities in America? I'm (literally) banking on less than 5 years, but curious what others think.
https://www.theverge.com/2017/11/8/16626224/las-vegas-self-d...
https://www.theverge.com/2017/11/7/16615290/waymo-self-drivi...
Every major city has construction zones. Right now this is a no-go for self-driving cars.
And lots of this stuff is reactive or generated on the spot and the city will have no knowledge of it.
Bureaucracy and public safety are mis-aligned to the point where a service relying on bureaucracy with a direct impact on public safety is going to be an uphill battle.
It also comes with some very interesting liability issues, such as: if the input data to that service is faulty and you then broadcast it to a bunch of AVs which react to it leading to an accident where would you assign blame?
OTOH, even if it becomes a safety non-issue, advance knowledge of construction, 911 responses in progress, and other events on the potential routes can be useful to route planning in computer navigation systems whether or not they are used in self-driving vehicles.
As with detailed maps, other types of information would probably improve the overall safety and reliability of an autonomous vehicle. But, at some level, it needs to be able to drive on its own based on the environment it can directly sense.
If your are talking about a lower level of AV then I would expect some cool stuff in 5 years.
And even when there are true AVs available, adoption won't come without some pains and legal changes. If my AV runs over a pedestrian, who is at fault?
I hope we see AVs available for limited uses in the 5 year time-frame. Possibly limited to restricted areas and designated roadways. Or, maybe faster adoption in the commercial space, as there are potentially huge cost savings for shipping/transport companies.
They will be remote monitored and remote controllable.
Instead of having a driver per car you will have a team in some control center that monitors all the driverless cars and can take over if any get into trouble.
Full autonomous is a pipe-dream, but cars are a symbol of freedom in America, and just the idea of giving up control to a computer is enough to put off most people.
If people knew that autonomous cars will require giving full remote control to a corporation or government agency the idea would be dead in the water, so this part is kept in the fine print.
Yes, people will be skeptical of shared self driving cars, but to suggest the problem is the self driving aspect seems a bit off.
Not necessarily. Part of the freedom is that you don't have to have a destination in mind. You can simply drive to wherever you want, whenever; you can explore. This also does not mention issues about surveillance, corporate control, privacy, etc.
Driving provides a very real sense of freedom and power to people that they may not find in many other aspects of their life.
Most people will also remember being teenagers and having their parents controlling the keys.
Autonomous cars are like going back to being a teenager except now the government or some corporation owns the keys and tells you what is allowed.
Tech people don't always think about these things but they will have a major impact on how the technology is adopted or not adopted.
Additionally, I just think we'll have to see about that later part. For me the freedom is freedom of transport, the cars are just an expression of that.
So, -1 months?
And if we are counting test vehicles, they have been rolling around American cities for decades.
How?