This is mildly offtopic, but: I'm curious what LessWrongers' thoughts are on just how near robot cars are. The general impression I get from people is "they're going to be here any day now, and Google already has some". I wonder/suspect if Google's are actually very much demo-quality devices, meaning they only work under controlled conditions. If so, then the first 80% of the engineering is done, but the last 80% is still to go, and we may not see consumer robot cars for quite a while.
In particular, I'm curious about how they intend to solve problems like: navigating in the presence of work zones and human flaggers, navigating two-way streets too narrow for two cars to pass, 5/6/7-way intersections with specific lanes restricted in which way they can turn, etc.
I imagine some of these problems will be solved by blacklisting particular places for the robot cars to go, or even whitelisting a small set of places they're allowed (i.e. major highways) at first.
Thoughts?
I'm curious about how they intend to solve problems like: navigating in the presence of work zones and human flaggers, navigating two-way streets too narrow for two cars to pass, 5/6/7-way intersections with specific lanes restricted in which way they can turn, etc.
These are all solved problems or nearly so, as far as I can tell. Robot drivers are safer than humans in most cases.
Discussion article for the meetup : Berkeley: How Robot Cars Are Near
WHEN: 19 December 2012 07:30:00PM (-0500)
WHERE: Berkeley, CA
Location and time for this Wednesday's meetup are confirmed! It will be at 7:30pm (not 7pm) at Zendo. I will not be there, but Michael Keenan will be giving a talk about robot cars.
Michael Keenan is an entrepreneur, activist and futurist who works with The Seasteading Institute and the Center For Applied Rationality. His talk, How Robot Cars Are Near, describes how robot cars will save millions of lives, billions of hours and trillions of dollars.
Michael will also be speaking at the Extreme Futurist Fest on December 22.
For directions to Zendo, see the mailing list:
http://groups.google.com/group/bayarealesswrong
or call me at:
http://i.imgur.com/Vcafy.png
Discussion article for the meetup : Berkeley: How Robot Cars Are Near