[kijin]

I agree that "never" is a pretty strong word to use in the context of computing. But I don't think what you described is the most interesting or difficult aspect of the problems that remain.

We're talking about a car, not a mobile phone. It's a 3000-pound chunk of metal that moves fast enough to kill anyone who comes into contact with it, and sometimes even those who ride in it. The ability to consult with a remote server would be nice, but the car should perform just as well even when a neighborhood prankster jams the cell & GPS signals.

So the entire approach of relying on a map might be misguided, regardless of whether the map is precompiled or JIT-crowdsourced. It seems that the current generation of autonomous vehicles rely too much on maps and too little on situational awareness. The next generation will need to make a lot of advances on the latter. Ideally, a car should be able to make all millisecond-by-millisecond decisions by itself, offline if necessary, and use the map only as a hint.

[sebdiem]

And google's approach is not the only one that scientists are exploring at the moment. Some are relying on more "reactive" strategies see e.g. Professor Alberto Broggi's work with the university of Parma (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alberto_Broggi). His vehicle doesn't make use of such an heavy map as the one used by Google.

What I liked in this article is that it reveals to the public that google's communication on the topic is really skewed. They try to make people think that the problem of autonomous driving is basically solved while many big challenges remain.

[yen223]

To be fair, most of the hype around the self-driving car don't come from Google, they come from people who are ... let's just say enthusiastic but who lack exposure in the subject matter.