I am not a proponent of self driving cars any more than I am of having pilotless planes (I am a pilot, call me old school), but for over a decade now, differential GPS has been used for autonomous control of vehicles, specifically for example agricultural tractors where the DGPS allowed the tractor to plow perfect rows to within a centimeter. I cant speak to how much of an impact that has been on the farming industry, but just thought I'd make that comment.
“specifically for example agricultural tractors where the DGPS allowed the tractor to plow perfect rows to within a centimeter”
Yes, you are 100% correct there :-). That’s a totally different problem though :-). I’m throwing around the idea of making a self-driving lawn mower using a bunch of spare parts I have in the garage ... I’d be using GPS for that :-). To prevent someone from being attacked by a lawnmower, I only need a sensor/algorithm to detect something in or near the path of the lawnmower so that it stops until it feels safe enough to continue (I don’t have to worry too much about random lifeforms jumping in front of it ... this is just for personal use / fun and games and nothing I’d ever sell).
I should have specified autonomous automobiles on our roads (so called self-driving cars). It’s a totally different scenario with a vastly different number of problems to solve.
I work in the industry (robotics in general) ... I have mixed feelings when it comes to self-driving cars personally. I can see *how* they work. I can see how we have the technology to make it happen rather quickly. I can see how it *could* be very safe.
What I don’t see is the patience these companies are going to be required to have to meet 99.99999% safety standards nor do I see the discipline required by engineers to implement the hardware and software properly given today’s trend of overpromising results and understaffing projects.
I mean, look at what VW and some other companies do just to bypass environmental regulations. If you perform similar tricks with autonomous cars, no matter how benign they seem, you WILL increase the probability of killing people. That’s what scares me. I guess its more of a question of being mature enough as a society to let these things run in the wild.