The fundamental part of a self driving system, before ANYTHING else, is being able to see - i.e. decent cameras. I don't care what clever tricks you can come up with in terms of radar/lidar/ultrasonics, no camera (that would be fitted to a car anytime soon) can match the human eye's abilities. As humans, if our vision becomes impaired, our license is taken away. Until a camera can match the human eye, self driving is a dangerous pipe dream. In fact, even if there were cameras that could match or beat the human eye's abilities (and were cost effective enough to put in a car - all about the margins remember), self driving cars are an accident waiting to happen - especially the ones planned with no manual controls! What happens when there's a system crash - software never has bugs, right? System hack - auto makers are great at security, right? EMP? Radar jamming? IR floodlight? What about all the other cars with ultrasonics pinging about, telling me they're all going to happily co-exist?
It's progress for the sake of progress, it's already killed once, it won't be the last time and it'll lull the great unwashed into a false sense of security, then they die.
Fuck ABS, fuck traction control, fuck parking sensors. Strip all that shit back and teach people how to drive properly. Gimme a Mk2 Escort with a roll cage and harnesses any day of the week.
</rant> :)
Biting the hand that feeds IT
