Ex-Uber Engineer Claims a Self-Driving Car Drove Him Coast-To-Coast (theguardian.com)

"Anthony Levandowski, the controversial engineer at the heart of a lawsuit between Uber and Waymo, claims to have built an automated car that drove from San Francisco to New York without any human intervention," reports the Guardian. Levandowski told the Guardian that he completed the 3,099-mile journey on October 30th using a modified Toyota Prius, which "used only video cameras, computers and basic digital maps." From the report: Levandowski told the Guardian that, although he was sitting in the driver's seat the entire time, he did not touch the steering wheels or pedals, aside from planned stops to rest and refuel. "If there was nobody in the car, it would have worked," he said. If true, this would be the longest recorded road journey of an autonomous vehicle without a human having to take control. Elon Musk has repeatedly promised, and repeatedly delayed, one of his Tesla cars making a similar journey. A time-lapse video of the drive, released to coincide with the launch of Levandowski's latest startup, Pronto.AI, did not immediately reveal anything to contradict his claim. But Levandowski has little store of trust on which to draw.

Comments

Re:Trust in Ability vs. Trust in Ethics.

[postbigbang]

Having drive across the USA on probably similar roads, I can tell you that this isn't really a test, even if he did do it.

In that 3000 miles, everyone was going the same direction with multiple lanes for most all of the way. There were no pedestrians, no animals, no left turns, no stop lights, no school buses, no varying speeds in lanes for most of the distance, probably good weather and no random variations. Were there interesting obstacles, I'm sure they'd be pointed out in the video for their points-value.

So is this a real trial, or just PR? I say: PR. Nothing to see here, move along, sort of stuff.