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Slashdot Asks: How Long Before Self-Driving Cars Become Mainstream?
Here's the thing, regardless of one's stand on self-driving cars, they are no longer a futuristic idea. Major car companies such as Tesla, BMW, and Mercedes have already released an autonomous vehicle or plan to release one soon. Sergio Marchionne, an Italian-Canadian executive who is currently the CEO of Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, recently said: It isn't pie in the sky. People are talking about 20 years. I think we will have it in five years. ZDNet has published its interview of Jim McBride, technical leader in Ford's autonomous vehicles team, who thinks self-driving cars are five years away from changing the world. At the same time, we must acknowledge the talks about these smart vehicles killing many jobs, and the security vulnerabilities we read every once in a while. What's your take on this?
If every car on the road is radaring/lidaring everything within 100m/yards, won't the spectrum just become a clogged mess?
OT I have a feeling /. got better recently. Articles got little bit more interesting and strangely the inflow of obscenities from disturbed users (or their bots) decreased slightly. I hope the trend holds on.
In order to kill jobs, you have to have a fully autonomous vehicle which is not 5 years away.
Not so. The needs to replace long-haul truckers are a lot different from the needs to replace New York cabbies. A lot of jobs are of the low-hanging variety that can be easily replaced. Others may take more work, but suggesting that it won't happen until it can cover every specific need is like arguing that the printing press won't replace copying by hand because it can't do calligraphy.
As for concerns about sudden and unexpected obstructions, no amount of smarts, whether human or artificial, will allow a car to avoid hitting, say, a guy who suddenly lands in front of them after jumping off a highway overpass to commit suicide. But an autonomous car doesn't need to be able to do that to be better than us, since we can't do it either. For the stuff that is avoidable, the sensors on many of these cars are already good enough that they detect children running into the street and respond appropriately before a human has even noticed the issue. I've heard about a few cases where passengers wondered why their car was suddenly slowing down, only to realize as they moved forward that the car had apparently seen the feet of someone walking out from behind a parked car and taken the appropriate steps to ensure it didn't hit them.
Which isn't to say that the future is now, but it IS close.
no amount of smarts, whether human or artificial, will allow a car to avoid hitting, say, a guy who suddenly lands in front of them after jumping off a highway overpass to commit suicide.
Actually, the self-driving car is more likely to avoid an accident in a situation like that because it will react from 700 to 1500 milliseconds faster. At normal highway speed, that means about 100 feet (or 30 meters) of extra braking distance.
Pulling it is the worst thing you can do, even if it's a dupe, because *comments*.
If you can't detect dupes before putting them up, don't bother.
At the bottom of the
Others may take more work, but suggesting that it won't happen until it can cover every specific need is like arguing that the printing press won't replace copying by hand because it can't do calligraphy.
Best analogy yet.
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
Seriously this. People are always coming up with rare occurrences where a computer might fail when humans fail at driving in huge numbers across the country on a minutely (is that a word?) basis. Dear lord, I drive in Atlanta traffic and if a self driving car can use a blinker, stay in their lane, and navigate a roundabout it is already leagues ahead of meatbag drivers.
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?