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| Driverless taxi service getting approved in SF |
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| Bassman59:
--- Quote from: sleemanj on June 12, 2022, 02:06:07 am ---Heh, that video is from Dec 2020, but I note the route the vehicle took was... all right-hand turns :-) --- End quote --- The dumb thing didn't even stop to go record shopping at Zia Records. |
| james_s:
--- Quote from: rdsi on June 12, 2022, 11:32:44 am ---All this flak seems reminiscent when the horseless carriage was introduced. It’s gonna happen and things will change. What you & I think might be the best route is not always true. UPS found that if their drivers never turn left (almost) they save time & fuel. Also, the autonomous vehicle can pick-up traffic reports and adjust their routes accordingly. Lot’s improvements. Anyway, right now there’s nothing better than a good application to push technology. This one is improving AI, computing power, sensor technology and others by orders of magnitudes. Who would of thought that a 77 GHz phased array radar would become a consumer thing on cars… There are even microwave sensors at 60 GHz that can pickup your heartbeat, respiration & determine the number of people in an area! I think this is great for both humans & the economy! --- End quote --- It's not going to happen in our lifetime. Self driving cars are stupid, they're a solution looking for a problem. I already ride a bus when I go to the office, that's close enough to self driving, you only need one driver for a whole pile of passengers. For a taxi the human driver is not an enormous expense and it gives somebody a job. For personal cars it's just dumb, the whole point of owning a car is I get to drive it. I am never, ever going to give up my manually driven car for as long as I'm physically fit to drive it and I am far from the only person. We should be focusing on alternative energy sources for propulsion, not silly robotic gimmicks. There are always going to be edge cases like floods, snow, black ice, pedestrians, bicycles and situations such as the one I had yesterday where I had to drive across an unmarked grassy field to park in a rural area, how is a self driving car going to manage that? As long as edge cases exist there is going to be a need for at least some manually driven cars with steering wheels and other controls and as long as there are some of those, we need all of the street signs and signals and everything else. |
| Bassman59:
--- Quote from: james_s on June 21, 2022, 03:56:13 am ---It's not going to happen in our lifetime. Self driving cars are stupid, they're a solution looking for a problem. --- End quote --- The problem is a matter of perspective. If you are an automobile manufacturer, then one problem is people using mass transit instead of buying new cars. It's no accident that many public transit systems in cities were shut down or neglected. It's no accident that towns and cities are "planned" around the single-person automobile instead of around mass transit. It's no accident that there are few railway easements for passenger trains next to interstate highways. So from the perspective of an automobile manufacturer who needs to sell more product, the self-driving car makes perfect sense. "someone" can buy a fleet of these cars and have them ready and available for use by customers who will, after all is said and done, pay more for the convenience of not owning a car than the cost of actually owning the car (and that includes maintenance). And, really, car manufacturers hate people who buy a car and keep it for 15 years. That's the problem self-driving cars are meant to solve. |
| SiliconWizard:
--- Quote from: james_s on June 21, 2022, 03:56:13 am --- --- Quote from: rdsi on June 12, 2022, 11:32:44 am ---All this flak seems reminiscent when the horseless carriage was introduced. It’s gonna happen and things will change. What you & I think might be the best route is not always true. UPS found that if their drivers never turn left (almost) they save time & fuel. Also, the autonomous vehicle can pick-up traffic reports and adjust their routes accordingly. Lot’s improvements. Anyway, right now there’s nothing better than a good application to push technology. This one is improving AI, computing power, sensor technology and others by orders of magnitudes. Who would of thought that a 77 GHz phased array radar would become a consumer thing on cars… There are even microwave sensors at 60 GHz that can pickup your heartbeat, respiration & determine the number of people in an area! I think this is great for both humans & the economy! --- End quote --- It's not going to happen in our lifetime. Self driving cars are stupid (...) --- End quote --- But you're assuming our leaders aren't. |
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