|
|
|
|
|
|
by gmisra
3593 days ago
|
|
|
> "Supervised by humans in the drivers seat" Ah, borrowing from the Musk marketing playbook, just say "self-driving" often enough, and enough uninformed people who have never seen contemporary luxury assisted-driving features will be impressed. Calling out Autopilot as "souped-up cruise control" is a nice touch. > For now, Uber’s test cars travel with safety drivers, as common sense and the law dictate. These professionally trained engineers sit with their fingertips on the wheel, ready to take control if the car encounters an unexpected obstacle. A co-pilot, in the front passenger seat, takes notes on a laptop. That doesn't seem very scalable. How many cars are in this so-called "fleet"? Is there anybody working on autonomous vehicle tech that believes there's any substance here, or is it just adverjournalism? |
|
|
I can tell you that there is absolutely substance here. I have no idea what's going on inside Uber, but they have a group of people there (some of the only ones in the world) with experience building actual production-worthy fully-autonomous ground vehicles.
Having a safety driver in place during development and testing is common practice, and for sure they're still very much in the development and testing phase. Full autonomy on public roads is a harder problem that full autonomy in a more controlled environment like a mine site, for reasons that have discussed here and elsewhere, and I don't know how much progress they have made in dealing with those challenges. However, I have no doubt that they are working toward the goal of a fully-autonomous no-driver vehicle, not just the type of assisted-driving features you may have already seen in production.