The robots are going to steal my job!

Sorry, too many big words in the post content?

 

Nah! Just poking the techies who usually jump in to tell us how we'll all be out of work, soon. That there are successful autonomous operations currently operating doesn't mean they're quite ready for prime time. The jammed parking lot in the video is a perfect example of why intervehicle communication is a necessary part of truly wide-scale implementation of autonomous vehicles. There's just too many variables involved in strictly visual analysis of traffic conditions, it's a task that humans are very good at, and computers struggle with.

Not talking about normal traffic within the lanes, that's easy. It's the near-ESP that the best drivers possess, seeing problems developing that even those soon to be involved in the problem often don't see coming. And simple stuff like the jammed parking lot in the vid that humans would rapidly analyze and solve that the bots struggle to see.

NHTSA actually had a proposed rule about vehicle to vehicle communication of vehicle status (speed, heading, brake status, etc) that they withdrew as the communication tech is so rapidly evolving. That will come back at some point, and once that's in place, autonomous operation becomes much simpler and safer and it will explode in volume. That's when our jobs will start going away en masse, but not before then.