But it leaves me deeply suspicious. Having some insight into what it took the team at Google to get theirs to work I find that unless GM starts with that team, and their patent portfolio, this will be be a longer term thing. I'd put money on a self driving car from someone before 2020 but 2015 seems a bit early.
In spite of Google's fudging the delicate bits (see my comment on the drive thru non-experience) they have done a tremendous amount of work that a car company would be hard pressed to duplicate quickly. That and Lidar or their functional equivalent systems are still darn expensive.
That being said, I think it is AWESOME that we've got a major car company putting this stake firmly in the ground. If nothing else it will motivate a response from the others.
I remember back 15 years ago or so when I was a kid visiting Chrysler's proving grounds testing facility there were some self-driving mini vans that had robotic drivers. They were driving (I think) on predefined paths and not on the open road.
I know nothing more about them but it is evidence that people at car companies have not been totally ignoring the concept.
"Having some insight into what it took the team at Google to get theirs to work I find that unless GM starts with that team, and their patent portfolio, this will be be a longer term thing."
You write that as if Google's team is the only one in the world working on this, or far ahead of all others. Their PR department may be superior, but I do not think they are the only ones; many car companies have been working on this for years, sometimes decades (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Driverless_car#History). I cannot judge whether they are far ahead; please show data proving that if you know more.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Grand_Challenge shows Stanford and Carnegie Mellon switching places between the 2005 and 2007 versions. Also, in both cases, I would say the top three are so close together that chance may have affected the rankings more than 'being ahead'. For example, if the course would have been slightly different (tighter corners, different road signage, whatever), would the teams have finished in the same order? Also, in both challenges, I would say the third-placed team had similar performance as the top two.
So no, I do not think that that shows Google is far ahead of the field. Or did Google hire both teams? Even that would not totally convince me., as it looks as if only US teams took part in those races.
> I'd put money on a self driving car from someone before 2020 but 2015 seems a bit early
2 Weeks ago, I would have agreed with you entirely. It seems unimaginable that GM could even have a working prototype in 3 years.
But last week I found out there's companies working on mining astroids for real.... so now i'm just going to sit back with a healthy skepticism, i have no idea what's possible in terms of years any more.
But it leaves me deeply suspicious. Having some insight into what it took the team at Google to get theirs to work I find that unless GM starts with that team, and their patent portfolio, this will be be a longer term thing. I'd put money on a self driving car from someone before 2020 but 2015 seems a bit early.
In spite of Google's fudging the delicate bits (see my comment on the drive thru non-experience) they have done a tremendous amount of work that a car company would be hard pressed to duplicate quickly. That and Lidar or their functional equivalent systems are still darn expensive.
That being said, I think it is AWESOME that we've got a major car company putting this stake firmly in the ground. If nothing else it will motivate a response from the others.