Re: Maps are useful, but things change
"It does raise a point. How will an self drive car deal with things such as new roundabouts. If the car was to "scan" the area, it would think little has changed, as the old road, pretty much goes straight on as it did before (just with a little kink), but it now has to give way to traffic from junction that used to never have priority."
Hopefully, the AV designers will continue to, as now, give priority to what the car "sees" over what the probably out-of-date maps show.
As for online maps being out of date, there's no real need for that now. I don't see it being a hard thing to have a central OS mapping portal where all changes must be logged as part of the planning process. There's no practical reason why that can't happen since the only people making changes to the road network are national and local government. Changes already have to go through a planning process which involves all sorts of legally mandated processes. The AV will still need to identify short term blockages such as vehicle making deliveries etc., but that's a fundamental part of the design process anyway.
The really interesting bit will be the sudden appearance of sink-holes or weather related events such as flash flooding, mud slides and exploding manhole covers, not to mention identifying where the road is in heavy snow! I've driven down the A1 from Scotland and there are parts of the single carriage way stretches where a few inches of snow makes it almost impossible to identify the edges of the road. Yoiu really don't want to be the one in front in those parts.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
