Software designers face a basic tradeoff here. If the software is programmed to be too cautious, the ride will be slow and jerky, as the car constantly slows down for objects that pose no threat to the car or aren't there at all. Tuning the software in the opposite direction will produce a smooth ride most of the time—but at the risk that the software will occasionally ignore a real object. According to Efrati, that's what happened in Tempe in March—and unfortunately the "real object" was a human being.
Yeah, unfortunately.
This is why self-driving vehicles are an absurd idea. You guys know how lousy the software is that detects obstacles ahead of you in big rigs. That's been around since I started driving in '93 and it's no better today than it was back then. It still detects false positives all day long - guardrails, parked cars on the side of the road, bridges, etc.
I'd love to know how the software came to the conclusion that a woman walking next to a bicycle was a false positive.
In my opinion "Self-Driving" anything is a logistical nightmare. For it to even be slightly feasible ALL automobiles of any sort would have to be equipped with software and hardware to detect each other. Then the roadways would have to have sensors and other equipment along it's route to constantly feed information in real time. This all would have to be hooked up into an extensive satellite network for it to all talk together.
Now this doesn't even take into consideration pedestrians, animals, and random objects. Those things would require the cameras and sensors to be able to detect what they really are for the programming to kick into whatever mode is required.
Granted I'm not an engineer, but I use to dabble in computer programming and networks, most likely I'm missing some things needed and over doing it on others.
Bran009, I agree completely. Anyone who has done any programming and messed with even the most basic algorithms knows how absurd this idea is. That doesn't stop billionaire investors from pouring billions into it though.
It reminds me of the tech rush of the late 90's where every investor on Earth was pouring money into every Internet startup there was. 99% of those companies are long gone now and most of them never accomplished anything in the first place except to make their founders super rich and lose a ton of money for investors.
That's all this hype about self-driving vehicles is now - media for attracting investment funds to start-ups and universities.
Definitely, it is a gimmick due to movies and books that say we would have it by now "We must go back..." if you get my drift. Not saying that in the future something like this wouldn't be possible, but our technology would have to really change.
The technology fields have this "boom" every so often and good comes out of it, but it isn't ever what we really expected. There use to be a million companies that provided dial up access and where are they now? Just like you said they are gone to the wayside and the companies that are still around have completely had to change their businesses.
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User=ActualFreakinHuman
{if "driver" = "User"
accelerate
else end}
>
Yeah, and it's funny because people always talk about the blistering pace of innovation. It doesn't seem possible that the iPhone came out in January 2007 and what has anyone come up with since that has made a major impact?
Nothing.
11 years and we're still doing tiny iterations on the iPhone. I still have my original iPod Touch 4. It still works! It works fine, in fact. My newest one is much bigger and quite a bit faster, but overall not much has changed.
We should be flying around in taxi cab drones and my new hiking boots should be parachuting down tomorrow from a drone. Now that would be innovation!
This sh** is being "stress tested" by the consumers of the technology. Living Crash-Test Dummies...
Madness!
This sh** is being "stress tested" by the consumers of the technology. Living Crash-Test Dummies...
Madness!
It is indeed madness--it's the number one reason this is so infuriating.
It's like the early days of Windows OS and DT.
Wild, Wild West.
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Just saw this in the news:
Software bug led to death in Uber’s self-driving crash