As in all manufactured products there is a chance of failure without the ability to compensate.
Anything which is self-guided by mechanical or electronic inputs and actuators has a chance to fail catastrophically.
Even biological control can be compromised by failure of the body's input/output system. ~ Drunk Drivers!
The problem with a self-driving car or truck is the fact when there is an electronic or mechanical failure that failure is not recoverable.
A person can make a mistake/misjudgement and compensate for it with their reaction. A self-driving vehicle has no reaction to unknown occurrences.
Once something fails, it remains failed.
The same condition applies to robotics. On an assembly line if a system fails and the widget gets aligned wrong, all the widgets will continue to be misaligned until the failure is repaired.
Robots are programmed.
Fail-safes can fail. Back-up systems can fail to engage. Unforeseen events and conditions can supersede programing parameters. People can compensate for the unforeseen. Robots can't.
Even programmed AI systems can't meet changes which are beyond their ability to recognize. An AI which is programmed to learn from its mistakes must first recognize the mistake and how to react before it can effectively compensate.
Even space probes and rovers are equipped with redundant back-ups on their back-ups and when a failure occurs which was not anticipated by the builders, the probe or rover experiences a catastrophic failure. Plus, many of them require a human control connection to send instruction to prevent problems the redundancies can't compensate.
The future I see for self-driving vehicles is a system which includes dedicated paths isolated from open paths. Highways and byways with self-driving lanes separated by lane barriers. I'm thinking more as a commercial cargo conveyance than personal conveyance. Sorta like the rail systems of today but self-driving unmanned truck convoys rather than piloted trains.
Even a verbal command override redundancy in a passenger vehicle would require a person to be aware while the vehicle is in operation. Plus it would still depend on the mechanical/electronic integrity of the systems installed.
Not a truly self-driving vehicle at all.
Try driving your car down the highway with no brakes or your steering disconnected. Even redundancy systems can't compensate for a mechanical failure and if the actuator at the brake pedal of a self-driving car fails, its not going to slow down or stop.
For self-driving vehicles to be safe on our roads requires 100% reliability in all systems which allow the vehicle to operate and we are not even close to that technology yet.
Edited by
Tom4Uhere
on Mon 04/19/21 10:20 AM