[Igor Antunov]

With a distance of 32.6 km, the intercity road from Zhengzhou to Kaifeng has 26 traffic lights in total. Despite this and busy traffic, Yutong driverless bus successfully completed a series of highly complex driving acts, such as automatic lane change, overtake, and responding traffic lights. Without any human assistance, the bus arrived at its destination with its highest speed reaching 68 km/h (42 mph). According to some experts, the much improved active safety standard is the biggest advantage of unmanned vehicles as they are very likely to eliminate all kinds of traffic accidents.

http://www.citylab.com/tech/2015/10/chi ... us/408826/

[youtube]lceQtP1-h5Y[/youtube]

[Harmattan]

It's the second most impressive demonstration I saw so far, far beyond European constructors but still very far behind Google.

Basically they seem to have:
* The ability to recognize cars, road marks and traffic lights. Good enough for high-speed roads.
* The navigation flow part (interpolating cars' position, inferring the best path and speed and controlling the car to perform it).


However they probably do not yet have:
* The ability to recognize the thousands of situations one may find on roads and around them: policemen regulating the navigation flow when the traffic lights are shut off, joggers on the sidewalk, pedestrians willing to cross the road, animals, snow, ice, rain, leaves, construction works, emergency vehicles, accidents, damaged roads, trees, etc.

* An AI safe enough that you never need to depend on the driver's attention: a human abruptly trying to retake the control would be very dangerous since he would not be focused and not aware of the current state of the vehicle (wheels' direction), and since the vehicle would not know if him touching the steering wheel is deliberate or unfortunate. Including the capacity to minimize casualties when an accident is unavoidable.

* An AI reliable enough that you dot even need need a driver at all (the car can autonomously travel from city A to city B).


I would say they have completed 5% of the work. Google is already above 50%. European constructors do not even have 1% given their demos.

[Political Interest]

It is not a good idea to trust transport to machines.

Furthermore, what will happen to those people who work as bus drivers, they will suddenly become unemployed. A whole sector of the economy will be eliminated for the working class.

Unemployment will go up.

[Harmattan]

It is not a good idea to trust transport to machines.

It is not a good idea to trust transport to humans.

Humans are crappy drivers, impatient, with a ridiculous attention span, a limited perception, too often high, drunk, sleepy or angry.

For most activities it is only a matter of time before machines do better than humans. And this time is very near for transport and only a little farther for surgery. Good news, because I advise you to never undergo surgery on a Friday afternoon: this is where the mortality rates are the highest.

Furthermore, what will happen to those people who work as bus drivers, they will suddenly become unemployed. A whole sector of the economy will be eliminated for the working class.

Unemployment will go up.

Yes, THAT is a problem, but I have two things to say:

* It is not about the working class, it is about everyone. Not quite: there will still be plenty of hairdressers, car sellers and nurses after all programmers, legal counselors and physicians got laid off. Basically the jobs that will survive are the jobs where being human is actually important.

* Before hairdressers all own luxurious villas there will be a lot more hairdressers, each working 10h a week, as the job becomes more attractive. Of course unemployment will still rise but not that much, and it will become more and more normalized and viable. People will simply work for their swimming pool or whatever is a status symbol at this time. Yet capitalism will slowly smothers itself, good news.

[Rich]

Yet capitalism will slowly smothers itself, good news.

What exactly was so good about Feudalism that makes you hate this so called Capitalism?

[Harmattan]

What exactly was so good about Feudalism that makes you hate this so called Capitalism?

I do not hate capitalism: it is despicable but useful and certainly better than everything tried so far. And I embraced in in my personal life.

But I believe that if core goods become extremely affordable, thanks to the wedding of capitalism and innovation, then we will reach something better where people only have to work on a voluntary basis, not because their survival is threatened, and more often than not under agreeable conditions. A humanist derivative of capitalism.

[Godstud]

Replace crappy Chinese drivers with a machine? Brilliance!!

Machines tend to be more trustworthy, as mentioned, than humans. Sounds good.

[Igor Antunov]

Asian drivers only tend to be crappy here in the west. In Asia they have to be amazing drivers just to survive on a daily basis. Those who drive sub-amazing end up killing or getting killed.