[seanmcdirmid]

> but we are still decades (or more) away from full level-5 autonomy that would make drivers behind the wheel unnecessary.

Do you have a citation for that? I often see this asserted, and I see many assertions the other way. Whenever I personally see self-driving cars in the wild, I'm astounded at their effectiveness on uncontrolled access roads. What makes you think controlled access roads will be much more difficult? Or to be more specific, why is industry consensus that we are decades (or more) away from this goal? Or is this just your personal opinion?

[xfs]

> none of us in the automobile or IT industries are close to achieving true Level 5 autonomy

- Gill Pratt, Toyota Research Institute http://spectrum.ieee.org/cars-that-think/transportation/self...

> It will be 25 years before self-driving cars take off in America

- Bill Gurley, Uber investor http://www.cnbc.com/2017/04/06/bill-gurley-uber-investor-sel...

[nl]

> It will be 25 years before self-driving cars take off in America

The actual quote is:

Venture capitalist Bill Gurley thinks it will be more than 25 years before the majority of rides in any major American city are performed by autonomous vehicles with no steering wheel.

Note that this is actually an argument against us being "still decades (or more) away from full level-5 autonomy that would make drivers behind the wheel unnecessary." (to quote the OP).

If in 25 years time more than 50% of trips are in autonomous vehicles with no steering wheel, and assuming the average age of the car remains roughly the same (11 years)[1], then completely autonomous cars will have to be available much earlier than 25 years.

However, I'd note that he said "more than" (so who knows exactly what he meant) and also self-driving long-haul trucks are a different subset of the problem. It may be easier to make long-haul trucks which just drive between cities and drop off items at depots than cars which drive though city streets.

[1] https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2015/07/29/new-car-sale...

[Animats]

Pratt has to say that because Toyota is so far behind. He was hired to build up a self-driving group within Toyota.

[xfs]

TRI's association with UMich and MIT makes them more biased towards issues about the difficulty of running self-driving cars in adverse weather conditions because that's the problem that all the researchers at UMich and MIT have had all the time and it's a problem that Google/Stanford have never had in always sunny California.

I have personally heard of the complaints of John Leonard (MIT) and Edwin Olson (UMich) about the severe lack of research of self-driving car robustness in weather conditions. The issue is real.

[abalone]

Ok then, how about Waymo's ex-lead Chris Urmson. "If you read the papers, you see maybe it's three years, maybe it's thirty years. And I am here to tell you that honestly, it's a bit of both."[1]

He goes on to explain that easier domains may come sooner (so maybe level 4), but his comments certainly pour some cold water on level 5.

[1] http://spectrum.ieee.org/cars-that-think/transportation/self...

[dkarapetyan]

How is Toyota behind? Don't they have an entire robotics division? Google, Uber, and all the other guys had to cobble together something that looks like a robotics division but Toyota has all of that already figured out.

I think if anyone pulls this off it is Toyota.

[seanmcdirmid]

Robotics has little to do with self-driving cars at this point, which is heavily ML dependent while the former hasn't been so far (yet, that's changing).

[dkarapetyan]

So if you were a betting man what would you go with. A bunch of software folks that don't really understand robotics. Or a bunch of robotics folks that learn some ML.

I think the ML is the easy part. The real engineering in making these things truly production ready is the hard part. Only few places in the world have that kind of production expertise. Toyota being one such place.

[seanmcdirmid]

You keep assuming a self driving car strongly resembles a traditional industrial robotics at all.

The actual actuating part of a self-driving car is fairly easy (just turn the wheel, apply the breaks), it is the control system and sensing that is key to success, the former being software, and the latter (LIDAR) that Google is heavily invested in while Toyota is very late to that game.

Right now, if I was a betting man, Google will beat Toyota. Of course, Toyota could always flip the table and take some risks, but that isn't what Toyota is known for. If it happens great! But I don't think any smart money sees Toyota having a clear advantage ATM.

[seanmcdirmid]

Is that industry consensus? Also, I think closed-access freeways are very well mapped, is level 5 needed to disrupt the trucking industry, or will level 4 do?

[sdenton4]

Yeah, my guess is that for trucking, we'll be looking at two drivers per N trucks, moving as a convoy. (Two drivers means one can sleep, and the convoy never needs to take long breaks.) You have to have someone there to take over if a truck goes down half way between Boise and East Nowhere. All the better if they can keep an eye on the monitoring systems for the convoy; taking over driving the lead truck will presumably also be an option for as long as it needs to be.

[Ma8ee]

Gurley says 25 years until majority of trips with self driving cars in the US, and that's because of legal hurdles, not technological ones. I don't have time to watch the video with Pratt.

[seanmcdirmid]

Why are we limiting ourselves just to the states? Markets like China with severe traffic and parking problems and authoritarian governments to push through changes are more likely to adopt self driving cars than developed markets with plenty of roads and parking.

[77pt77]

Good luck having a machine driving in the absolutely chaotic Chinese traffic.

I've seen full size buses driving at night on low visibility with lights off.

Bikes just doing illegal 90 degree sharp turns against oncoming traffic.

Pedestrians crossing 5 lane roads frogger style.

You name it...

[seanmcdirmid]

Ya, it seems like the last place! But the need is strong, the will is there. Baidu and many other Chinese companies are making big self drive car investments.

Self driving cars are just a toy in the USA, but in china they could optimize infrastructure that is extremely limited and unable to grow to meet demand. They are also not above changing the rules as needed (like when they put up fences in our office so we couldn't easily cross the street to our other building, all in the name of keeping pedistrians off what was otherwise a very untrafficed road.

[Ma8ee]

I think that was Gurley's point. In many Asian countries the need is greater and the ability to sue lower, so self driving cars will be on public roads much earlier than in the US.

[sroussey]

At the point of level 4, the roads and conditions will change to better accommodate, likely pushing cities and villages farther apart (particularly in America).

[freeone3000]

How would they be pushed father apart? Where would they be pushed to? America isn't exactly known for its density.