| The Tesla "autopilot" is comparable to what BMW[1] and Mercedes[2] have been shipping for years. Self-driving is much harder. The first-order problems of driving on a empty road were solved by the DARPA Grand Challenge, ten years ago. The second-order problems involve dealing with other road users. That's hard, and that's what Google is working on, with considerable success. So is the CMU/Cadillac consortium, which has demonstrated their self driving car to politicians in Washington traffic.[3] Nobody seems to pay much attention to that effort, although they may be closer to a production product than anyone else. (Or not; Uber hired some of the people involved away from CMU.) Self-driving cars need and have a lot more sensors than semi-auto cars. There's a lot more sensing to the sides and rear, and more forward sensing than just being able to detect the next obstacle ahead. Vision processing is far more elaborate. Google's vision system explicitly recognizes humans and bicycles. Google's little 25MPH driverless car is a way for them to enter the market. At 25MPH, slamming on the brakes is a good solution to situations the system can't handle. Those things are going to be all over senior communities in a few years. Google already has higher-performance cars on the road; they can be seen all over Mountain View most days. [1] http://www.bmw.com/com/en/insights/technology/connecteddrive...
[2] http://www.mercedes-benz-intelligent-drive.com/com/en/1_driv...
[3] https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/trafficandcommuting/dri... |
I just youtubed 25mph frontal crashes and it doesn't look pretty...