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Will the Google Car Turn Out To Be the Apple Newton of Automobiles?
An anonymous reader writes The better question may be whether it will ever be ready for the road at all? The car has fewer capabilities than most people seem to be aware of. The notion that it will be widely available any time soon is a stretch. From the article: "Noting that the Google car might not be able to handle an unmapped traffic light might sound like a cynical game of 'gotcha.' But MIT roboticist John Leonard says it goes to the heart of why the Google car project is so daunting. 'While the probability of a single driver encountering a newly installed traffic light is very low, the probability of at least one driver encountering one on a given day is very high,' Leonard says. The list of these 'rare' events is practically endless, said Leonard, who does not expect a full self-driving car in his lifetime (he’s 49)."
I'd imagine it's pretty damn hard. Harder still is figuring out whether that stop light applies to the lane you're in, and the direction you're turning. Stop lights don't always line up with lanes exactly, they don't always point straight, etc etc.
I think the problem is that "good accuracy" is not yet to the point where the driverless car is less likely to run over a pedestrian at an intersection than a car piloted by a human.
I very much disagree with this assessment. Google's SDC has been tested thousands of times with a huge range of pedestrian scenarios. It may not be better than an alert and primed human, but it is almost certainly better than an average human, which is the important criteria. If I was walking across an intersection, I would trust a Google SDC far more than someone late for an appointment, driving a Chevy Tahoe with a cellphone in one hand, a Starbucks latte in the other, and two screaming kids in the back seat.