As someone who can't drive, I think this is an amazing first step in a technological revolution I did not expect to start for at least another 10 years.
I have a degenerative eye disease, and while I can see well enough to take care of myself (and work for more than a decade as a copy editor), I have no problem saying that I don't see well enough to drive. For me, it's OK: I live in a walking-friendly city, go to a bar that's two blocks away and go to a grocery store six blocks away (as long as I don't need more than two bags of groceries at a time). And yes, I walk through ATMs that people usually drive through.
But something like this, when the kinks are worked out - I'd say a minimum of seven years from this stage to any sort of street-legal production - would allow for true independence.
Traffic lights are simple: tap into the change frequency from the lights themselves, then install a failsafe that will not allow the car to engage before the intersection is clear. Knowing bicycles are there and avoiding them is just a matter of fine-tuning the sensors to recognize smaller-than-motorcycle-sized objects (my guess is that by the time this hits the streets, it will take far more notice of bikers than most actual drivers do). I don't know how you solve the problem of pedestrians running out in front of cars, except that hopefully they'll learn after the first time.
Self-driving cars will come a whole lot sooner than flying cars, and the technology that's being developed here will probably be pivotal in their design. I'm just glad that someone has taken a functional first step in focusing this technology on people who truly need it, as opposed to those who are just don't want to drive themselves.
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I have a degenerative eye disease, and while I can see well enough to take care of myself (and work for more than a decade as a copy editor), I have no problem saying that I don't see well enough to drive. For me, it's OK: I live in a walking-friendly city, go to a bar that's two blocks away and go to a grocery store six blocks away (as long as I don't need more than two bags of groceries at a time). And yes, I walk through ATMs that people usually drive through.
But something like this, when the kinks are worked out - I'd say a minimum of seven years from this stage to any sort of street-legal production - would allow for true independence.
Traffic lights are simple: tap into the change frequency from the lights themselves, then install a failsafe that will not allow the car to engage before the intersection is clear. Knowing bicycles are there and avoiding them is just a matter of fine-tuning the sensors to recognize smaller-than-motorcycle-sized objects (my guess is that by the time this hits the streets, it will take far more notice of bikers than most actual drivers do). I don't know how you solve the problem of pedestrians running out in front of cars, except that hopefully they'll learn after the first time.
Self-driving cars will come a whole lot sooner than flying cars, and the technology that's being developed here will probably be pivotal in their design. I'm just glad that someone has taken a functional first step in focusing this technology on people who truly need it, as opposed to those who are just don't want to drive themselves.