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Lofty promises for autonomous cars unfulfilled
The first driverless cars were supposed to be deployed on the roads of American cities in 2019, but just a few days before the end of the year, the lofty promises of car manufacturers and Silicon Valley remain far from becoming reality.
Recent accidents, such as those involving Tesla cars equipped with Autopilot, a driver assistance software, have shown that "the technology is not ready," said Dan Albert, critic and author of the book "Are We There Yet?" on the history of the American automobile.
He questioned the optimistic sales pitch that autonomous cars would help reduce road deaths—40,000 every year in the United States, mostly due to human error—because these vehicles themselves have caused deaths.
As a result, self-driving maneuvers in the technology-laden vehicles are limited to parking, braking, starting or driving in a parking lot.
[...] "Automation may be used in areas such as closed campuses, where speeds are low and there is little or no interaction with other vehicles, pedestrians or cyclists or inclement weather," said Sam Abuelsamid, engineer and expert at Navigant Research.
The big problem is "perception": the software's ability to process data sent by the motion sensors to detect other vehicles, pedestrians, animals, cyclists or other objects, and then predict their likely actions and adapt accordingly, he said.
And that part is key, said Avideh Zakhor, engineering and computer science professor at the University of California-Berkeley.
"The perception part is not solved yet. The most advanced publicly available is 80-85 percent (reliable). That means that 15 percent of the time, it's going to hit objects and kill and destroy them," she said.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday December 16 2019, @05:39AM (6 children)
Close, but not exact. In any case, my assertion** is closer to reality than the position of "Blame Tesla for the current perception of over-promise and under-deliver"
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** "More difficult that initial estimated" => "don't hold your breath, cause if you do, for sure it won't happen in your life-time. Otherwise, it may or may not happen in your life time, but that's because the difficulty of the problem, not because of the lack of trying or because some scapegoat".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 16 2019, @07:46AM (3 children)
That isn't my position, but mistaking me for the OP is understandable. Regardless, I also doubt I'll see it in my lifetime, but then again I am sort of old. I do think that my children will see limited use of self-driving cars. Things like follow truck convoys on controlled-access roadways to get around driving restrictions. Driving on uncontrolled city streets is probably a pipe dream even in my grandkids time, barring some sort of paradigm or other unforeseen change.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday December 16 2019, @07:59AM (2 children)
If you look closer, I never attributed to you the position of the OP.
I just made my position clearer (I hope) - not Tesla but the problem's difficulty is to blame; given that, noone should expect a full/proper solution soon
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 16 2019, @10:29PM (1 child)
You are right. The denotation definitely didn't but the connotation did. At least for me. But it might also have something to with the fact my screen reader starts to sound sarcastic after awhile due to its flat tone.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday December 16 2019, @10:55PM
If that's not quip material, I don't know what else is.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 4, Interesting) by MostCynical on Monday December 16 2019, @11:15AM (1 child)
Mr Musk is, primarily, as salesman.
Do all salesmen lie? Black swan territory for most of us - as I doubt any would have met any that don't lie (capabilities, speed, delivery date, availability, configurability, integration, cost... pick all of the list)
However, that one salesman has managed to make electric vehicles an available, viable (for the consumer) option for private transport is quite remarkable.
That he convinced his customers to also be beta testers for new features is even more. Many (most?) of the Tesla crashes seem to be from over-confidence (or just stupidity) on the part of the person in the driver's seat
If people didn't buy what salesmen sell, we'd probably all be subsistence farmers using rocks and blunt sticks to defend ourselves.
Hype wins - especially when something like the P100D S and X types exist, and have dragged all the world's manufacturers along with them.
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday December 16 2019, @02:34PM
I think you misspelled "engineers" (Thomas Watt and Richard Trevithick) and "chemists" (Fritz Haber and Carl Bosch) as the ones responsible to industrial and, respectively, agricultural revolutions.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford