Why Self-Driving Cars Are Still a Long Way Down the Road

moon_unit2 writes "Technology Review has a piece on the reality behind all the hype surrounding self-driving, or driverless, cars. From the article: 'Vehicle automation is being developed at a blistering pace, and it should make driving safer, more fuel-efficient, and less tiring. But despite such progress and the attention surrounding Google's "self-driving" cars, full autonomy remains a distant destination. A truly autonomous car, one capable of dealing with any real-world situation, would require much smarter artificial intelligence than Google or anyone else has developed. The problem is that until the moment our cars can completely take over, we will need automotive technologies to strike a tricky balance: they will have to extend our abilities without doing too much for the driver.'"

Comments

Re:What's wrong with Google cars

[CanHasDIY]

Impressive and touching as this demonstration is, it is also deceptive. Googleâ(TM)s cars follow a route that has already been driven at least once by a human, and a driver always sits behind the wheel, or in the passenger seat, in case of mishap. This isnâ(TM)t purely to reassure pedestrians and other motorists. No system can yet match a human driverâ(TM)s ability to respond to the unexpected, and sudden failure could be catastrophic at high speed.

Google has cars driving around almost everywhere for their map feature, I'd have no problems with a first edition limited to what they already know. And they're legally obligated to have a driver ready to take over, even if they wanted to go solo. Miiiiiiiiinor detail.

Scenario - you get one of the first automated cars, and take it on a test drive down a road that has been mapped by one of Google's Streetview cars.

Unfortunately, it rained a LOT since the Streetview image was taken, and part of your route is 4 feet under water.

What happens next? I know, you, being a responsible person, will take control and stop the vehicle once you notice it's about to drive right into a lake. But what about the less responsible passengers (not really a driver if you aren't controlling the vehicle, regardless of what seat you occupy), who will be too busy Tweeting about how 'OMG Car iz driving itself!' instead of being prepared to take manual control?

If you really think about it, that "miiiiiinor detail" is a actually a pretty damn major one.