Perhaps it will be limited to specific "lanes" (it will be much more palatable to the masses if it must (like cars) keep to a limited area). But it will not need to recognize pedestrians and bikers and human driven cars, and some standard will be introduced to allow all them self driving cars to talk to each other.
At that point, Level 5 will be much easier, even obvious. All he effort invested in assistive driving will seem silly.
I think they may never happen because full self-FLYING “cars” (vtol drones) will very likely happen first (it’s more a regulatory thing than a tech thing).
And flying would be superior to driving (faster, no traffic, no need to maintain infrastructure, etc..) so there’d be little incentive to continue even trying to get to level 5 for self-driving.
I say they will. Autopilot is so much easier in the air than in the street, especially if the system is created with that in mind.
I would hate to have flying cars with people behind the wheel. We would have cars falling from the sky by the minute. If car drivers are bad, flying cars would be so much worst.
But if it becomes a mechanized system then it works. It's coming. I'm guessing 30 years. It won't be cheap.
There has been great progress made and I don't see any reason why we won't see them in less than a decade. However, this is only going to be in very specific areas. Really complex driving, like roads with no lines, a single lane but allows two directions, etc; I think that type of driving will take decades.
So in 8 years I can totally see getting off a plane, jumping into an autonomous car and having it drive me somewhere specific. But I can't see driving through all roads until much, much, much later.
Except we won't. Because flying cars is called "aviation" and aviation brings new dimensions of "hard" in addition to a third spatial dimension. And truly self driving cars that require no dynamic input from humans at any time is something we'll get asymptotically closer to, but will never quite achieve except in relatively specialized cases.
This is what I believe. I can't prove it, but it is what my gut feeling tells me.
And why would you want to? Of course, for typical highways it is obvious that it would probably be both faster and safer to have some sort of mandatory cooperative autonomous mode, but even that will be hard to achieve. I've met some of the people who work on developing and standardizing certain inter-car protocols to solve these types of problems. Most of the people I've met are neither brilliant nor capable. For the most part they illustrate to me a) how hard the problem is at scale (ie. get all manufacturers onboard) b) there will be a lot of idiots involved in this which means it'll take an awful lot of time to even come up with even baseline systems for proper crash-avoidance -- nevermind the real-time dynamic systems for controlling masses of fast-moving vehicles.
Flying cars will never be accepted in our societies until they completely eliminate the reliance on the user. If they are fully automated from point A to point B, all the time, then I could see us having flying cars eventually. But it could take another few decades at least.
Almost certainly self driving vehicles of all kinds. Even in the absence of any major ML algorithm breakthrough, I believe there is enough work already accomplished where the industry can grind out a well functioning solution in 20 years. This kind of time frame is long enough where I think that level 5 fully self driven cars will be available from major brands at prices that will make it affordable even for middle class buyers.
I think that we won't be able to have full self-driving on standard public roads, for a while, where non-self-driving vehicles (and pedestrians and cyclists) mix with self-driving cars.
I think, if we had fenced-in and dedicated roads for self-driving cars, we could have had them yesterday.
But that ain't gonna happen anytime soon.
And we definitely won't be getting flying cars (for the general public), until we have full-self-driving.
I think you're overly optimistic with that estimate -- we'll have "driver assist" cars in 3 - 5 years that can navigate most roads in normal conditions, but will still need the driver to step in from time to time to help with unexpected conditions.
10 - 20 years is more likely for true self-driving cars that can operate completely without human control.
I think that once driverless cars are mainstream, which I have no doubt will eventually happen, it can usher in the age of the (driverless) flying car... finally! There seems like quite a bit of technological overlap, and from a safety standpoint I would much rather have people flying around in automated vehicles than human controlled.
If this came to be, coupled with high speed wireless, I would go so far as predicting the end of cities as we know them. They would serve essentially no purpose anymore.
I think self-driving cars will be introduced very gradually. First only highways where it's really easy for a computer, then maybe American cities. The harder the street layout, the longer we'll have to wait for this technology. So maybe American cities will get the technology a few years before European.
1. Cars that are good enough to drive themselves most of the time.
2. Remote driving centers, run by the car manufacturers, that will have a human take over as soon as the car hits a spot it is unsure of. To the passenger, this is invisible and is considered self driving. (As long as the self-driving is good enough, one operator can handle a lot of cars. If there is an open standard, one remotely-led car can lead [or at least prompt] all the cars in back of it.)
3. Areas, such as urban centers, that only allow self driving vehicles and have no parking (as the vehicles can leave after drop off).
4. Improvements to self-driving in those areas, as they are geofenced, don't have human drivers, and have lots of cars hitting any given snag - all of which make debugging easier.
5. As problems are solved, and the pressure to move to self-driving goes up (due to said areas) the self driving part will handle more, and remote-control less, in ever widening circles.
Completely agree with this. It will be ridiculously difficult to get to Level 5 automation in cars. It's decades away, not years. Ironically though, part of the reason it's so difficult is that during the transition the roads will still be populated with human-driven cars. If we passed laws to the effect that "as of date X, no human-driven vehicles or pedestrians will be allowed on roads in the set {Y}", we could get to Level 5 much faster.
The key really is self driving only. No human drivers. Communication between cars and road systems. At that point, collision avoidance becomes only about pedestrians, animals, and other random objects that enter the street unexpectedly. The self driving car will be able to see, predict, and respond to that, and communicate the need to stop to the cars behind far faster than a human driver.
With inter-car communication, there won't be any confusion about where each car intends to go. No long waits for an opening.
Car design will push towards passenger comfort, and no longer towards "power" and "handling". This could mean smaller cars overall. 1-2 passenger vehicles could be common.
Yeah, it's definitely far down the road, and there will be a lot of forces that'll make it difficult to reach, but I think self driving cars are a chance to make things better.
Maybe after all cars become autonomous. Earlier there will be a hybrid period where both manned and unmanned cars drive together I think.
Even all cars become autonomous, the problem will still be hard I believe. Hard coded rules may solve the problem but relying on communication and cooperation will not be easy.
Perhaps it will be limited to specific "lanes" (it will be much more palatable to the masses if it must (like cars) keep to a limited area). But it will not need to recognize pedestrians and bikers and human driven cars, and some standard will be introduced to allow all them self driving cars to talk to each other.
At that point, Level 5 will be much easier, even obvious. All he effort invested in assistive driving will seem silly.
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