Cutting Edge Computing

Will Self-Driving Cars Ever Be Truly So? January 7, 2019

The quick answer is we will not be in self-driving cars during my lifetime.  Nor your lifetime.  Nor any combination.  Despite pronouncements by so-called pundits, entrepreneurs, reporters, and GM, there is no chance of a self-driving car being so under all conditions, let alone everyone in a self-driving car, with all that that implies.

The fact of the matter is that the Waymo CEO has come out and said that he doesn’t imagine a scenario where self-driving cars will operate under all conditions without occasional human intervention.  Ever.  “Driverless vehicles will always have constraints,” he says.  Most of his competitors now agree.

So what do we have today?  We have some high-profile demonstrations under ideal conditions, some high-profile announcements that say we are all going to be in self-driving cars within a few years.  And one completely preventable death.  That’s about it.  I will guess that we are about 70 percent of the way there, but that last 30 percent is going to be a real slog.

What are the problems?

1. Mapping.  Today, self-driving cars operate only on routes that have been mapped in detail.  I’ll give you an example.  I was out running in my neighborhood one morning, and was stopped by someone looking for a specific street.  I realized that there was a barricaded fire road from my neighborhood leading to that street.  His GPS showed it as a through street, which was wrong (he preferred to believe his GPS rather than me).  If GPS and mapping cannot get every single street right, self-driving cars won’t work.  Period.
2. Weather.  Rain or snow interrupts GPS signals.  As does certain terrain.  It’s unlikely that we will ever have reliable GPS, Internet, and sensor data under extreme weather condition.  Which in most of the country happens several months a year.
3. Internet.  A highway of self-driving cars must necessarily communicate with each other.  This map (paywall) pretty much explains it all.  There are large swaths of America, especially in rural areas, that lack reliable Internet connection.
4. AI.  Self-driving cars look toward AI to identify objects in the road.  This technology has the most potential to improve over time.  Except in bad weather.  And poorly mapped streets.

So right now we have impressive demonstrations that have no basis in reality.  I won’t discount the progress that has been made.  But we should be under no illusions that self-driving cars are right around the corner.

The good news is that we will likely see specific application in practice in a shorter period of time.  Long-haul trucking is one area that has great potential for the shorter term.  It will involve re-architecting our trucking system to create terminals around the Interstate highway system, but that seems doable, and would be a nice application of this technology.