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Re:The driverless truck is coming, and it’s going to automat... by gambiting on Tuesday April 26, 2016 @10:21AM (#11572068)
My point is that all of these are "simple" problems. Oh the truck will identify a plastic bag. Oh the truck will have a cargo manifest and drive accordingly.

But these are all new technologies. Our visual recognition libraries are nowhere near ideal. I said this elsewhere but I will say it here too - our best of the best software can't tell a zebra and a sofa in a zebra print apart. I'm pretty sure that all that LIDAR is seeing is a spherical object on the road, it has no idea what it is.

The same with the cargo manifest - it sounds simple, but no one has a system like this. It would need to be made and implemented, and it takes time and effort - I'm not saying that it's impossible, far from it, but it's one more obstacle to overcome to make this possible.

Re:The driverless truck is coming, and it’s going to automat... by visakanv on Tuesday April 26, 2016 @11:47AM (#11572848)
> I said this elsewhere but I will say it here too - our best of the best software can't tell a zebra and a sofa in a zebra print apart.

Really? I find this surprising. Do you have any links or sources? I'd like to learn more.

Re:The driverless truck is coming, and it’s going to automat... by gambiting on Tuesday April 26, 2016 @12:10PM (#11573073)
There was a few articles about this exact issue on HN previously, a cursory search returns at least one of them:

http://rocknrollnerd.github.io/ml/2015/05/27/leopard-sofa.ht...

Re:The driverless truck is coming, and it’s going to automat... by visakanv on Tuesday April 26, 2016 @01:07PM (#11573648)
Fascinating, thanks for sharing!