Oops, Reality Is Finally Dawning

Puff piece....

Hey if farms were as level and smooth as a concrete assembly line floor, then no problem.

The first mesquite stump that trips a buster, and it will be acres and acres of "I dunno why the machine keeps failing to open furrow #3...!" Refer to autonomous tractor/planter section 4.3.3.3.3.3....on page xiiii/3.2 of the addendum for an answer.

In the old days, it was work, sweat, blood, and tears that made a farm productive. Not in that order, and not including cuss words.

Where is the regulatory agency for this? You can't have open loop safety. The DOT needs to adopt FAA regulatory steering for this sort of technology. Vehicles need to communicate with others so they can do intelligent lane changes. It also means that the speed limit will be externally controlled based on traffic density. Ideally you will have to program in your destination, and if road ways have too much traffic, you'll be notified to wait until there is an opening for you.

But we shall see how far they get until liability kills it for lack of a unifying system design.

And that's just the needs for the system to deal with its own functions.

What about that one vehicle off on a side road that is the first to travel there in several days only to find there's something laying in the road it can't properly register on it's sensors?

Or that the road itself is now impassable or whatever the last vehicle to pass through there has changed again?

What about those cows or other animals that are out? Or that unautomated farm machine that broke down that's not transmitting that it's sitting there taking up the whole road?

That's the reality that machine intelligence will not be able to deal with for a very long time no matter how much we wish it will.

TCM, there will be roadways, that only automated vehicles can operate on, and you folks out there in the "bad lands", will require manual operator at the wheel.

The bigger issue is phasing this in. I'm thinking the high congestion traffic of multilane limited access roads of city's and interstate. That's where high accident rates are currently.

Having an extremely 'smart' system that can recognize every single target, probably is not possible. What about a target that is purposely trying to run into an autonomous vehicle?

You already disqualify yourself from working on this by referring to human users of the roadway as "targets". We, I assure you, do not like be considered as "targets."

I watched a movie this weekend on pay per view ("Logan," I think it was) where the trucks on the highway appeared to be just boxes with wheels, no drivers, and their only reaction to traffic was to emit a horn signal without slowing down in the least. While I realize this is just a movie, could this be the future, where "cargo" is more important than humans, animals, etc.?

The whole reason for cargo in the first place is the humans, animals, etc., so be forewarned about that. Even when carrying humans, animals, etc., they should not be regarded as mere "cargo" anymore than a human body is to be regarded as "materials," a la Victor Frankenstein. The Victorian Era writers actually began this consideration of the human condition, and technology is yet to catch up with their vision of what it means to be human, to be an animal (especially mammals and birds).

Grow some kindness and God will be especially fond of you when you eventually meet face-to-face.

The reality is every machine will follow an exact program that tells it the practical value of something and weighs it against the value of its cargo. Something that for humans largely due to emotions do poorly.

Say a cargo truck is moving down a road and some person walks out in front of it. To the trucks brain that person is illegally there plus has a finite value which if below the value of the cargo dictates it puts a reasonable effort not avoiding that person but not to the point it does damage to itself or its payload.

The human may be valued at $500K (national statistical earning average for 10 years as a baseline value) the fact they were doing something illegal diminishes that value half. The truck is worth $500K and its payload is worth another $500K therefore try to avoid but if needed run the dummy over while recording it on a dozen HD sensors and cameras.

Now the same scenario with a human at the wheel has the driver try to avoid the person by going in the ditch destroying the $500K truck, plus cargo pus killing themself, plus sending debris flying into traffic which also damages other vehicles and hurts or kills other people costing millions of dollars plus the lives of innocents all to avoid running over some uneducated unemployed drunk hillbilly whose POS vehicle ran out of fuel and figured walking in the middle of the road would get them help faster than staying on the side like the law dictated they do.

Why does it always have to be the drunk hillbilly? Couldn't it just once be the hillbilly Bigfoot hunter that was momentarily stunned by a close encounter with the Beast, or the Hell Hound? ROFLMAO!!!

Because the data said so.

....but as for me and Santa, we believe.

I got chased (or hallucinated that) one night driving back to Amarillo from Lubbock area on a remote farm-market road east of Lubbock that runs south to north, and even has a lane for north to south also. The moon was off to the east, and I was going all of 65 mph, when I looked to my right and saw the outline of what appeared to be a speedy Bigfoot, either that, or a very large werewolf. Definitely not the hell-hound, as this guy was running as a bipedal, not a quadruped.

I sped up, as it was quite disturbing to me. That Bigfoot should be named The High Plains Roamer. If it was a werewolf, just name him Jack. (Remember Wolf-man Jack on the Radio back in the day?)

No, I was not drunk, or any other mal-state of consciousness.

Until all this happens, I still have my freedom to drive over to the hardware store for a part whenever I want.

I envision a time when future couch potatoes will hardly believe the ancients were capable of controlling their own vehicles.

Is that a reason to stop, then?

I have wondered why trains aren't self driving. Seems to me there are less variables. All it has to do is stop and go, yet we still have train accidents where the conductor failed to slow down to an appropriate speed. Lets start with the simplest machines before a car with so many variables out there on the road.

<...wondered why trains aren't self driving...>

Er, ah, they are already

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Docklands_Light_Railway

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victoria_line

Then why are most of the crashes due to high speeds? Must not be working very well. Maybe we don't want cars like that on the road then.

I believe the issue with removing train engineers is called "Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen."