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From the Medium-article you posted: > In short, sensors on autonomous vehicles don’t work well in snow or rain—and that may never change. With that attitude,
by pkhamre 8y ago
From the Medium-article you posted:
> In short, sensors on autonomous vehicles don’t work well in
snow or rain—and that may never change.
With that attitude, you are stuck in the past and don't want to make progress with technology.
- simonh 8y agoI don't see how you get to accuse one of the most knowledgeable experts in the field, who's dedicated a career to building autonomous vehicles, of... not wanting fully autonomous vehicles. Wanting things isn't always a good measure of our ability to actually obtain them.
- EForEndeavour 8y agoHe (pkhamre) didn't say that John Krafcik (Waymo CEO) "not wanting fully autonomous vehicles" at all. He is criticizing the practice of confidently predicting the forever (im)possibility of something based on a projection of current technologies decades into the future. Krafcik's a world leader in the field of autonomous cars, so we have good reason to weight his opinions more heavily than those of random HN users. On the other hand, his "may never change" verdict on sensor tech is vague to the point of uselessness. Whatever happens, he will have had a point.
- xiphias2 8y agoAt the same time Waymo put a lot of money into working with lidars, which helps Waymo to get to Level 4 faster, which is great, but it seems like on long term Elon is right that to get to L5 autonomous cars have to improve enough to be able to work only with cameras and microphone. John may not want to say this.
- simonh 8y agoAny estimation based on probability can always claim to be right, after all a 1% chance can still happen, but sometimes all we can truthfully do is give an estimated likelihood. Maybe that's genuinely the best he can say, in which case I'd rather hear that than a definite pronouncement.
- zbentley 8y ago> With that attitude, you are stuck in the past and don't want to make progress with technology. The statement you quoted is qualified, not an assertion of impossibility. Your claim is silly; the alternative to breathless hype isn't Luddism, it's getting educated about a field and proceeding, if possible, in an informed way. Claiming delusional enthusiasm (with a side of hucksterism and a strong odor of financial incentives) is the only way to advance the state of the art encourages the very worst kinds of pseudo-innovation and chicanery. If acknowledging the difficulty (or impossibility) of something means someone is stuck in the past and is anti-progress, well, then I guess every safety board in existence is anti-progress.
- flyingpenguin 8y agoI have always wondered about this sensor thing. We drive and our only sensors are a pair of cameras on a mobile swivel and two microphones. I feel like at Some point we have to have enough computing power to just stick Multiple Cameras behind glass with wipers and dehumidifiers and alarms if they are obstructed. Basically just humans but better?
- homarp 8y agoyou forgot our brain...
- SomeHacker44 8y agoWe have additional sensors useful for driving: force sensors on the steering wheel (works better with lower levels of power steering) as well as our accelerometers in our inner ear. The latter has redundancies in pressure sensors located around the body, though to be fair I only used those back in my car racing days.
- sixothree 8y agoI never realized how oblivious people are force feedback from the steering wheel until I was passenger in a car on a windy day. We got out onto an open space and I could see him really correcting. I remarked about how much wind there was and he asked what I meant. My point is I have never heard about self-driving cars having an understanding of crosswinds. I just hope they aren't as oblivious as my friend.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]