Volvo Testing Autonomous Cars On Public Roads 98
cartechboy writes: "Multiple automakers have already committed to selling autonomous vehicles by 2020, but only a handful of them have actually started testing and developing them. Now Volvo is putting self-driving test cars on real public roads in Sweden among other, non-autonomous traffic. 'The test cars are now able to handle lane following, speed adaption and merging traffic all by themselves, Volvo engineer Erik Coelingh said in a statement. 'This is an important step towards our aim that the final Drive Me cars will be able to drive the whole test route in highly autonomous mode.' The goal for the Drive Me project is to deliver 100 autonomous cars to customers in Gothenburg by 2017."
only viable in small countries (Score:0, Interesting)
You need to augment the roads for this tech to really work.
Here in the southern US, we can't even fill pot holes. The roads and bridges are crumbling beneath us.
Not to mention that there is a lot of miles of road in total that would need to be updated to work with this stuff.
Basically, for the same reason we have shitty internet, we're not going to have this stuff by 2020.
Re:highly autonomous mode ? (Score:5, Interesting)
It's the mode created by lawyers to maintain that you are responsible for the vehicle's operation. because if the software fails, it's Volvo's fault. Imagine you drive through a oil slick, the vehicle takes a corner too fast before becoming aware of the reduced traction. In automatic mode, it's the car's fault, in "highly autonomous mode" it's still yours.
Re:only viable in small countries (Score:2, Interesting)
You mean the computer with cameras facing everywhere that is always paying 100% attention, will hit more potholes than a half-awake driver looking wherever the fuck he feels like at any given moment?
No, I'm pretty sure he means that the computer is going to put the "stay between the lane lines" rule before the "dodge the pothole" rule in the list.
But please, don't let a little thing like reason keep you from being an unbearable dickhead about it, that will surely convince the fence-sitters to side with you.
Ass.