Volvo's self driving car, with no human assistance needed, will be ready in 2020! 4 Years!!

[FrodosPet]

38. "but its not to difficult to be better than humans"

Actually, it is very difficult to be better than competent human drivers.

At least 20 times a second, self driving cars need to turn gyroscopic G force data, hundreds of thousands of LiDAR dots and millions of pixels of visual data into a complete 3-D understanding of the world. The car has to know: Is that a shadow, a pothole, a pavement patch or discoloration, a piece of debris that can safely be run over, or avoided at all costs? Then they must calculate how the vehicle's current trajectory and control settings (steering, braking, and acceleration) will affect it for the next several seconds of travel. But that alone is not enough. They must constantly recalculate optimum, safe, and emergency paths, and decide what circumstances they must select that path.

And considering that they will have to share the roads for decades with conventional vehicles, they will need to start doing all this in a way that does not confuse human drivers and make the roads even less safe.

http://www.umich.edu/~umtriswt/PDF/UMTRI-2015-34.pdf

As for widespread adoption, they will have to prove themselves to be A LOT better than humans before people accept SDC technology for themselves.

Motorists' Preferences for Different Levels of Vehicle Automation

https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/114386/103217.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

Brandon Schoettle and Michael Sivak

University of Michigan
Transportation Research Institute
Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109-2150

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Preferred level of vehicle automation

When respondents were asked about which level of vehicle automation they
preferred (see the appendix for the definitions of each level of automation that were provided to respondents), the most frequent preference was for no self-driving (43.8%), followed by partially self-driving (40.6%), with completely self-driving being the least preferred (15.6%). Figure 1 summarizes the results for all respondents, while Table 2 presents a complete summary of responses by gender and age.

Females most frequently preferred no self-driving (47.6%), while males preferred partially self-driving (41.2%).

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Concern about riding in self-driving vehicles

In two different questions, respondents were asked how concerned they would be about riding in a completely self-driving vehicle (Q2) and a partially self-driving vehicle (Q5). The respondents were more concerned about riding in a completely self-driving vehicle than in a partially self-driving vehicle. For example 35.6% were very concerned about riding in a completely self-driving vehicle (and 68.3% were very or moderately concerned), as opposed to 14.1% for a partially self-driving vehicle (with 48.8% being very or moderately concerned). Conversely, 10.6% were not at all concerned with riding in a completely self-driving vehicle, as opposed to 16.2% for a partially self-driving vehicle. Figure 2 summarizes the results for all respondents, while Tables 3 and 4 present complete summaries of responses by gender and age.

Females expressed greater concern than males for riding in completely self-driving vehicles (very concerned: 40.1% versus 30.7%), but the difference was smaller for partially self-driving vehicles (very concerned: 15.7% versus 12.2%).

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