Harder yet, Southeast Asia. Hundreds of pedestrians, tons of vehicle variety (some entirely makeshift), uncontrolled intersections, very little regard to any regulations.
In my mind structured road conditions are a prerequisite for driverless cars.
I've been in many situations where conservative driving according to the rules of the road is not possible. In the West this is more limited to dense cities and exceptional situations. In India, though, this is the rule.
If you waited for pedestrians to finish crossing or for cars to clear intersections, maintained a safe following distance, signaled before turning, waited for other parties to yield, etc, you would never leave your driveway.
It's difficult for me to imagine a computer deciding to gently nudge pedestrians with its bumper in order to proceed through a green light, which I've had to do several times while driving there.
@zimbatm (because there isn't a reply option at this level)
I'm also sure there are screenwriters already working on incorporating such scenes into movies. Likely we'll see it on the big screen before we see it in real life.
Which is why Self Driving Cars™ will never be legal without strong AI.
There's no such thing as "Structured Road Conditions" anywhere in the world. Whether it's the ice storms of the Northeast US, radar interference, one lane two-way roads, potholes that can devour a wheel or roads that turn into mud -- the analog world is a harsh and unrealistic place for a technology that has never made its way out of cherry-picked municipalities in ideal conditions.
The last chapter is not city driving. It's the first chapter. So far Google has tackled only the lowest hanging fruit.
That's an important point, I never expected lanes count and lane direction to be interpreted as suggestions until I saw people going through a roundabout on both sides at the same time.
Yeah I was just biking in Vietnam and Cambodia and it's quite a different system with stuff all over the place. There is a kind of logic to it - you project their trajectory and yours and if there's no impact you keep going, otherwise you modify speed and direction in a minimal way to avoid impact regardless of going the wrong way on the wrong side of the road etc. It takes quite a bit of getting used to as a western driver though from a computational software point of view the above is probably a fairly simple algorithm.
I will give you a more harder test environment. Try driving in any major Indian city, especially in the city core.
Super narrow roads. Zero adherence to traffic rules. Kids playing on the roads, sudden reactions from people on the road when they have to cross. Unsignalled sudden breaking, turns, U-turns, people popping up in front of the vehicle from no where etc etc.
What's more how should you expect the car to react when a dog comes chasing. Or when a traffic police guy asks you to stop or take a diversion(You won't believe how common this is here). How will you negotiate frequently occurring speed breakers and pot holes. The list is endless.
I believe starting to test some where in the streets of a city like Bangalore/Mumbai would help.
