> I think what needs to happen is that you need programs tailored to specific routes/roads. As you drive any distance, you download/cache the programs for the routes and execute them.
Wow. That's so obvious in retrospect. I wonder why I haven't considered it before, nor why I haven't read of it before either.
I imagine having stationary "traffic controllers", semi- or completely automated, that keep real-time information about conditions on the segments of the roads they monitor, and which continuously assign "travel plans" to cars. An autonomous car wouldn't have to recognize weather conditions or static obstacles in fraction of a second, because there would be a static sensor network and processing centres responsible for this. All a car would have to do is follow assigned route at assigned speeds, and monitor its environment for dynamic obstacles.
This makes more sense than trying to pack all the intelligence into the car, and doubly more sense than having the car hooked up to the cloud. Unfortunately, I feel companies of today may find it difficult to coordinate on designing such a system.
"Wow. That's so obvious in retrospect. I wonder why I haven't considered it before, nor why I haven't read of it before either."
Get ready to have your mind blown because the next leap in this line of logic is to physically fix "tracks" to the road and run the cars on these "rails" - possibly on a schedule.
It's a future star-trek world we in the United States can only dream of ...
Trains work incredibly well, but they don't solve the last mile problem. Hi-rail trucks are pretty common in railway maintenance. There is probably some sort of steam-punk past that could have happened where we're all driving hi-rail cars on almost all highways, and just using cars for the few last mile trips.
Am I the only one who's terrified of the security implications of such a system? You're talking about running (from the car's perspective) untrusted code on a fleet of cars, dynamically and in real time. Even if it's cryptographically signed or whatever, you're one or a handful of exploits away from remote attackers having the capability to crash every autonomous car, simultaneously, at least in a geographical region and possibly (inter)nationally.
If security matters today, it's going to matter orders of magnitude more in a world with autonomous cars.
I read the other day about geofencing being used to enforce speed limits for rental ebikes and scooters in some jurisdictions. It's not hard to imagine it progressing from speed limits to top-down traffic control programs. This probably is the future we're hurtling towards, as unprepared as ever.
Who would be responsible for maintaining static sensor networks and processing centers? The current transport authorities who do such a great job maintaining dumb roads?
A lot of the problems with AVs are not just technological, but political and social in nature.
The responsibility for these systems obviously falls to the transportation authorities.
Scaling this capability up may not be easy but it's absolutely possible. As we expand our fleet of autonomous vehicles that can respond to these inputs it will become more and more useful and necessary.
Wow. That's so obvious in retrospect. I wonder why I haven't considered it before, nor why I haven't read of it before either.
I imagine having stationary "traffic controllers", semi- or completely automated, that keep real-time information about conditions on the segments of the roads they monitor, and which continuously assign "travel plans" to cars. An autonomous car wouldn't have to recognize weather conditions or static obstacles in fraction of a second, because there would be a static sensor network and processing centres responsible for this. All a car would have to do is follow assigned route at assigned speeds, and monitor its environment for dynamic obstacles.
This makes more sense than trying to pack all the intelligence into the car, and doubly more sense than having the car hooked up to the cloud. Unfortunately, I feel companies of today may find it difficult to coordinate on designing such a system.