Didn’t I read somewhere recently that when they tried a driverless car in the U.S. they found that the dividing lines and road markings that the car needed to navigate and keep in their own lane were in such poor shape and were missing in so many cases that the car couldn’t safely get from point A to point B? Why should trucks be different?
They safely go places. Close to 2 million driverless vehicle miles have been logged on US road. Crappy road maintenance causes them some problem, but they’re working with it, much like we do.
In all honesty, if road lines were the only barrier, then that would be fixed via gov’t mandate. The ultimate test would be safety while driving at night...in the rain or snow.
That said, my own suspicion is that we’re probably less than 20-30 years away from having enough total highway support to make this happen universally.
“tried a driverless car in the U.S. they found that the dividing lines and road markings”
You don’t need that stuff. I’m being serious. You can determine your lane by sampling the textures in front of the vehicle to determine what constitutes ‘road’ and restrict a vehicle to remain in an area that would be determined to be a lane. Moreover, it can sample other vehicles on the road and determine that safe area as well.
Anyone who develops any kind of intelligence system that relies on painted road markers to remain safe should not be allowed to develop such a system :-). I mean, what happens when there is a dust storm or snow storm! :-).
Google has been gathering insane amounts of GPS road data. They can probably run cars purely off that data alone, save for obstacle detection. They don’t need lines on the roads, they already know exactly where it is.
One of the problems I’ve read about driverless cars recently is merging into traffic...interpreting when another driver is signalling to let them in. And other cars rear-ending them because they don’t complete the merge when the human driver expects them to...the robot car is being too cautious.
All these are bugs that will eventually be worked out though. Human drivers don’t have a perfect safety record either, so the standard probably won’t be 100% perfection.
GPS, military grade?