[beefjerkins]

> How to solve self-driving for cars: build digitaly aware roads

Putting aside the physical aspects of replacing existing roads, how would a digitally-aware road work? A bunch of bluetooth devices? And in what schema would the road 'speak' to the car? Ideally it would be an open format, but who would decide upon that?

[mettamage]

That's something I haven't thought about. I hand waived it with pretending that people be just as motivated to do this as they are with self-driving cars.

It is an interesting question though! I think of a few things that could be done quite easily:

Communication can happen via low latency with relatively little data. I wouldn't know what's best for that.

* Roads can broadcast. Roads can listen through sensors and determine the position of every car.

* Cars can broadcast. Cars can listen.

* Things can go wrong. There'd be huge demand for any distributed system engineer :P

A use-case sketch:

A road can determine if it almost goes out of bounds. A road can determine if two cars are about to collide, but so could two cars.

So this would work well in places where there are only roads and cars (e.g. highways and "road only" type of roads -- i.e. no bicycle lanes).

Cyclists can communicate as well. They need to chip their bike.

Pedestrians can communicate as well. They need to chip their coat. Though I'm not happy with that solution (what if the coat gets lost?).

Anyways that's my rough sketch. I'd need to research the technologies needed for this.

This would make for a fun systems design interview.

Whomever wants to brainstorm with me on it, feel free to email me. I don't think I'm particular talented in this area but I can be a rubber ducky.

[intended]

I liked the idea of simply using mobile data services to update cars from a network. Keep a series of cat eyes or pressure monitors on regular tarmac roads, have a collector station every few meters and use that to relay information.

In areas without network you dont use self driving tech.

Driving data is cultural data, its not some natural phenomenon which is clean and periodic. If a truck transporting cows breaks down and there’s a herd of cattle running all over the highway, I seriously doubt the models are going to perfectly handle that situation.

Level 5 self driving is impossible, but with road data and external coordination, we can achieve the same effect.

[nradov]

We have wild deer crossing the roads here. Will you ask them to chip their antlers?

[b112]

How else will they get groceries?