It's the sophisticated behaviors necessary to safely drive through that world model that are the issue.
The success of emergency breaking systems (that aren't advertised as "driving" assist) are pretty good evidence that the sensors can serve well as input to safe behaviors.
And what about beacon maintenance? Seems like most cities have a hard enough time keeping up with pot holes, lines, etc. as is.
Following the beacons safely would be a vastly easier problem than trying to completely replace a human driver in all situations, but it would still give you about 90% of the benefits.
The first thing I thought when I read beacons: Hackers are going to have a field day with them. Add malicious beacons to streets and cars will drive off road at high speeds.
I assume they’re more expensive to install than just painting a few lines, but they’re very robust and long-lasting, and they’re fantastic for human drivers. It’s not a stretch to imagine something similarly useful for computerized cars, that links to a standard road database.
Hacking is a risk, sure. I envisage you’d lock it down by having a cryptographically signed master map; if the observed beacons diverge from the map, the autopilot system would refuse to proceed. (OK, I guess that allows a DoS attack at least.)
I don't know what the answer is but it feels like GM's super cruise does a more adequate job of acknowledging the realistic limits of the technology and explicitly white lists roads where the technology is available for use.
I personally think that without some sort of sensors or beacons in the road, autonomous driving via camera and LIDAR sesnors is ever going to be good enough to achieve level 5 autonomous operation.