[icoder]

It's an improvement in what it does now, but I think the point is it is not necessarily bringing the end goal closer. Like a side track that runs dead at some point.

No matter how much faster horses may have had become by selective breeding, that did not bring 100km/h travel closer.

[martin_a]

With regards to autonomous driving, improvements like this absolutely bring us closer to the end goal.

Each improvement in adaptive cruise controls, lane following/holding assistants and any other partly-autonomous assistance system does its part in acquiring experience and technology for "the end goal".