Originally Posted by
wolfchild
Over-cautious can be as dangerous as reckless...I can just imagine a self-driving car slamming on brakes and coming to a stop in the middle of a busy road and causing a chain reaction accident, all because of a squirrel or a skunk ran in front of it... After all, self driving cars are supposed to be programmed to save lives of both human and animal, right ??
Which human? Which animal? The type of "caution" exercised by the computer is easily mistaken for similar behavior in humans. In the case of the computer some of its algorithms have been specifically designed to be conservative in drawing conclusions from unreliable data. That is nothing that resembles the kind of thinking process you go thru as a person. In some cases this seems human like but that's because the circumstances keep fitting what the engineers that designed the car expect. Give it novel situations that have not been adequately anticipated by the engineering team and you see "irrational" or totally dysfunctional behavior.
Or try throwing mud on a couple sensors. The next tests will continue to operate in very dry clients with good weather. Bad weather is not a small problem when it comes to the sensors. It won't be cheap to solve and not all the technology exists and especially at affordable prices.