don’t generalize these things. self driving in every possible scenario yes is probably a while off. self driving in specific circumstances is already here, such as airport shuttles and moving shipping containers in docks. you don’t need to solve the general case to be useful
pfft, we’ve had self driving trains for more then half a century. What you are describing is basically that with more fancy sensors instead of the rails, and perhaps the rails are probably a superior guidance technology in most of these cases anyway... unless the purpose is to impress rather then to automate.
I think you've just redefined self-driving as such as a trivial achievement moving shipping containers in docks resembles large scale pick and place far more closely than self-driving cars.
This. And in fact I think that may be the path forward - just update all the main roads to be self driving friendly, like a train network, and keep the smaller roads as manual driving only.
So why “just update” the highways to operate like a train network, instead of just building a train network? What benefits will autonomous highways bring which normal traditional (or even automated) trains don’t?
If you are suggesting we update all but minor streets, it is actually not that simple, since we have to think about pedestrian crossings, bike lanes, parked delivery vans, emergency vehicles etc. Accommodating dumb self driving cars will have to be at the cost of access for all other modes, and that will never happen outside of highways. And if we are going to be spending a bunch of money on intercity travel infrastructure, a well served train line is always a better choice.
I love trains but building a train network is expensive, adding a few signs to restrict traffic would be a lot cheaper than laying hundreds of kms of rail.
It really does seem like the self driving problem becomes so much easier when you remove variables. Something like an HOV lane would be perfect for self driving. You could put sensors under the road bed to stay in lane even without visual feedback. You could limit it to self driving vehicles pretty easily too compared to a surface street, where you have to account for probably an order of magnitude more variance in conditions.
And yet train crashes and derailments are something that happens fairly regularly, despite it being a tight closed-loop system with manual controllers and operators. Cars are not even close.
