Re: Robocar--a decade away?

Ken from Chicago wrote:
> "Sea Wasp" <seawaspObvious@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message 
> news:4784CCD3.8050805@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> 
>>Ken from Chicago wrote:
>>
>>>Hi, I'm Ken. I'm from Chicago. You may know me from such memes as
"Magic 
>>>= science we don't understand yet" and "Experience has no relevance to 
>>>accuracy (tho it does affect trustworthiness)" and, of course,
"Robocar", 
>>>the robot car, the self-driving car, the automated automobile. I 
>>>suggested robocars could be on the road in 20 years, back in 2005,
around 
>>>2025:
>>
>>Maybe. Though given current art (and I work in the area of smart
sensors, 
>>autonomous systems, etc.), I really would have a hard time believing it.
>>
>>More im****tantly, it's not just the tech you need to consider. If I had 
>>KITT itself today, I couldn't take him out on the road. Laws have to be 
>>modified, and regulatory hurdles are sometimes almost as hard as the 
>>entire tech development path.
> 
> 
> Aside from the legal hurdles, they are likely to be reluctance by some 
> people to choose em, but they are balanced out by early adopters.

	Unless a single one of the early adopters has an accident. Then the 
automated car is blamed, the company is sued, and it'll be 20 years 
before another company tries that trick again.

> 
> 
>>And if any of your robocar's needs include additions to infrastructure, 
>>you can forget about it.
> 
> 
> That's the point, that's what differentiates 21st century conceptions of

> robocars versus 20th century conceptions of "automated highways". The
latter 
> requires infrastructure changes while the former simply modifies the
cars.

	Then you ain't getting it in 10 years. 20, maybe 30.

	Oh, in 10 they may have a demonstrator car that does what you want. 
It will have cost 3.4 million to build, plus all the prior development 
costs, and there will be nowhere in America you can actually use it. 
After 10 or 20 more years, the laws will have been changed and the 
price may come down.



-- 
                      Sea Wasp
                        /^\
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