Originally Posted by
tdracer
...........You're making the same error of basing the future state on current technology. Sure, autonomous cars still struggle with certain scenarios, but that's changing fast. Fast forward 50 years and add in several orders of magnitude more computing capability and who knows what capabilities will have been invented.
Ah OK. Well I don't think I will exist in 50 years time
I just think of the human's visual ability to, say, distinguish the adverts from the programs on TV, and knowing when to hit the mute button. And that is the level we would need to make a safe autonomous passenger transport system. Just imagine trying to put that into computer code, or even a neural network:
These people moving across the screen are an advert, but
these people moving across the screen are in the film.
Or for an autonomous car:
that shape moving into the road is a dog - a driver shouldn't endanger themselves or others by avoiding it, or heavy braking. Whereas
that shape moving into the road is a child chasing a ball, who we must try to avoid at all costs. How do you program that? Basically, recreating the entire human eye-brain-memory processing system, which has taken millions of years to develop. Granted, a plane only taxis along defined paths, but there are still a lot of unexpected hazards that can arise that will need to be accommodated by an autonomous system.
I heard a chap on the radio who is trying to develop autonomous freight barges, so we will see
