|
Videos
March 4, 2013 By News Staff
Self-driving vehicles are the future, according to futurists everywhere. And perhaps having Google at the forefront of autonomous vehicle development partially accounts for our level of confidence in the technology. But according to a Business Insider writer with ties to someone “close to the company,” Google is facing some problems with its self-driving vehicles.
Here are the three challenges the company is currently facing with the cars, according to Business Insider:
Snow: The vehicles, like humans, largely rely on the use of visual sensors to navigate roads. But snow is reportedly problematic for Google’s vehicles because it can cover lane markers and other visual cues needed by the vehicle to continue driving safely.
New or Changing Roads: One of the advantages of Google’s automated cars is that they contain every road, highway and sidestreet documented in Google Maps. When a Google autonomous vehicle comes across a road not yet entered into its map system, however, the car can get lost. Someday, autonomous vehicles may be able to learn and improvise in such situations, but solving such a complex artificial intelligence problem may take some time.
Taking Human Direction: Google’s autonomous vehicles also have trouble navigating through areas where traffic is being directed by a human using hand signals, such as a construction zone or a crowded parking lot, according to Business Insider. Much of Google’s work in making its autonomous vehicles work well has been a matter of designing the car’s sensors to identifty signs and combine “knowledge” of maps and data with discrete sensory input. The problem of decoding human behavior and ambiguous hand gestures is a separate problem that engineers may need to overcome before Google’s cars are considered safe enough to enter mass distribution.
And according to an engineer Business Insider spoke with, none of these problems are insurmountable. The engineer's view, according to the article, is that self-driving technology will enter cars gradually and eventually progress toward the fully-automated electronic chauffeur.
You may use or reference this story with attribution and a link to
http://www.govtech.com/transportation/3-Challenges-Face-by-Googles-Autonomous-Vehicles.html
Collaborative Justice: Transforming Criminal Justice Services Through Unified Collaboration
Cloud-Based Services Accelerate Public Sector Adoption of Video Collaboration
Have to wonder about repaving of roads before stripes are painted and other road hazards like lumber that fell off a pickup or re-tread tire scraps that seem to litter our highways.
I think this is all stuff that will come in time. Google's already come up with a temporary answer though. Touch the wheel or the gas and the driver gets control over the car. I mean, the examples you gave (snow, new roads, etc) happen, but they are often only a small fraction of time on the road. So there's no reason why Google should be concerned as long as the driver does their job. The cars will be great for times where you need to talk on the phone or send a text message, but there will still be times where a human driver will be needed. Maybe someday in the more distant future, cars can figure it out, but until then, people will still have to know how to drive, at least a little bit.
Why in this day and age are humans even allowed to operate 3k lbs speeding sleds of steel when at any given moment their heart could stop, they could fall asleep, or have pharma imparements or alcohol in their systems( 80% of Americans) ??? Think of what it could mean! TRUE FREEDOM! Children and elderly could navigate to places on their own, no more insurance rape, no more signage litter, no more speed limits, no more local municipalities harvesting your wallet for their budgets, no more gashole autohalics destroying the planets with idling machines, no more oil leaks, a world where bicycles could be safe! WHY OH WHY CAN WE NOT HAVE THIS TECH NOW?
It's going to be awhile before no more speed limits or signage litter as the rules setup by Nevada, Florida and California require that for an AV to pass any kind of muster, it must obey all traffic laws. I wonder how many folks are going to let their AV do the driving if it will only go the highway at whatever the speed limit sign says(55mph anyone)?