And when will the self driving car be able to orthogonal park a trailer by backing down and alley?
I'm fairly sure, if it's something mechanical and a human can do it, the computers won't be far behind. But even if not, we can redesign the vehicles to make it easier for a computer, eg we can make all axes or even all wheels independently steerable and control their velocity individually. A human would be overwhelmed with that, they can barely keep hold of a steering wheel, but a computer wouldn't mind too much.
Yes I considered independent wheels but a basic trailer is $3k, which doesn't leave much room for anything complicated.
The point is there's a million of these edge cases for which autonomy will not economically compete for another hundred years.
> The point is there's a million of these edge cases for which autonomy will not economically compete for another hundred years.
My prediction: anything a human can do by just manipulating the controls of the car (steering wheel, gas, breaks) will be automated fairly quickly. Especially stuff like parking maneuvers (I assume that's what you describe?), because those happen at low speeds and mostly involve fixed non-moving obstacles. And it's pretty easy to generate training data. When the autonomous system attempts these edge cases, they can simulate a myriad attempts with the on-board computer. There's not a lot of physics going on at low speeds. (Or rather, pretty simple approximations are enough.)
The harder parts are dealing with moving and ambiguous objects (pedestrians, other cars, cyclists etc) at speed. But the industry is well aware of that.
About what will take longer: at the moment a truck driver provides a lot of incidental labour around the truck. Like helping with loading and unloading, minor repairs, etc.
If you have no person on board, you need to redesign how the industry is organised. If you need human help to unload at the destination, you need to preposition a human there, you can't rely on the truck coming with a human.
I'd like to see cars with better autonomy features but theyre still far too expensive and non standardized. When the computer breaks or needs an upgrade the whole car is junked. The purchase data shows people aren't asking for autonomy.
Huh, what? Cars are getting better and better and last longer; that's why the average age of a car on the road keeps climbing.
Where I lived the average car has been about the same age for a few decades now. They are all really new.
> The logo of shopping lines is painted on containers because they own them.
Only some of the have a logo painted on them. (I happen to live within a five minute walk to a container port in Singapore.)
> I'd like to see cars with better autonomy features but theyre still far too expensive and non standardized.
Yes, this will get better.