Quote:
Originally Posted by doogee
You may need to do some more research on the topic because you aren't very clear on it. Also, never did I mention this was going to happen anytime soon. And of course there is no answer to some of these questions yet. But a solution will be found.
1). Be drive-able to be serviced if something needed repair: i.e., a body panel, a tire losing air, a knocked-off mirror, a noncritical software glitch, etc.
This I am not sure, but it doesn't sound like an overly difficult problem. I can easily see autonomous tow vehicles though.
2). Be drive-able in countries without the infrastructure to support the system: i.e. [insert Second- and/or Third-World country here]
I wouldn't expect autonomous driving to be a thing in third world countries.
3). Be drive-able in remote areas where conventional GPS signals cannot or do not reach (i.e. parts of Nevada, Utah, Wyoming, Texas, Colorado, Oregon, etc.)
Easy, autonomous vehicle aren't being build to rely on GPS, this is pretty well known. Most manufacturers are already gathering driving data from everyday vehicle and mapping out exactly how traffic flows, how long red lights are, where the car is positioned etc. Tesla downloads this information to their cars through an update. So you can only imagine how powerful this will be in only a decade. If you don't think gathering enough data is possible, just take a look at what Google has done around the worth with Google Streetview. It's amazing.
4). Be drive-able below ground (i.e. tunnels, parking garages, etc.) where conventional GPS signals cannot or do not reach
Read my response to #3.
5). Be drive-able on a route not prescribed by the autonomous system (necessary due to everything from traffic issues to fulfilling, say, a distance-based restraining order)
Not sure how to answer this one.
6). Be drive-able for purposes other than simply going from Point A to Point B: i.e., hauling cargo with/without a trailer, going off-road, recreational use, etc. Not everyone has a use for an autonomous Chevy Bolt or somesuch ...
Again, I don't have an answer for this one. Lots of problems to be solved still.
7). Be drive-able during legitimate emergencies where reliance on the system is impractical, too slow, or life-threatening (example: a woman giving birth)
Don't have a solid answer to this one. But with traffic being greatly reduced, I wouldn't be surprised if emergency specific lanes were brought into areas with a large population.
And most of all:
8). Be drive-able because the system itself fails.
Unfortunately, this might not be a thing. With the way things are headed, cars aren't going to need nearly the same amount of maintenance, they'll become much more reliable and in the grand scheme of things accidents etc will be so much lower without human control that the end result is still a massive improvement.
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No offense, but I
have done a bunch of research on this, and I'm well aware that GPS isn't the sole method of geolocation for autonomous cars. Apologies for the lack of clarity, but nevertheless: these cars will need at least two completely failsafe systems -- again,
completely failsafe -- to operate even remotely well among both each other and manually operated vehicles:
- Geolocation
- Proximal location (i.e. radars, visual sensors, etc.)
Furthermore, the only one of my points that you were able to try to refute was #3 (and #4 since it is related). All others you conceded were not solve-able at this time. What that tells me, irrespective of your individual argument, is two things:
- There are no real solutions to these scenarios at this time
that have the possibility of becoming ultrareliable, and
- Manually operated vehicles will always be mixed among autonomous vehicles in areas where both can operate.
The second one is key and goes hand-in-hand with point #2 because the bottom line is this: our vehicular infrastructure -- roads, power grids, fuelling, even the roads themselves since traffic flow theory would change drastically -- will likely have to be near completely transformed, if not completely rebuilt, for autonomous vehicles to even begin to be viable on a majority scale.
Care to tell me how that will be paid for, and by whom, in each country where such a technology would possibly be viable? And all of this, just to save some lives -- not all, just some -- at the expense of the right to move about freely?
Come on. What automakers and entities like Google and Uber are doing is exploring the possibility for autonomous vehicles to serve their own business purposes, the bottom line of which is one thing and one thing only: revenue. That
alone will keep autonomous vehicles from becoming viable on a mass scale for several generations in this country, because by nature, competition
discourages collaboration unless it is mandated by a more powerful reality: a government, or fossil fuels running out, or alien invasion (sic), or what have you. And collaboration will be needed to create autonomous systems that are failsafe enough to be viable on a mass scale.