
The Head of CMU's Robotics Lab Says Self-Driving Cars Are ‘Not Even Close’ - saosebastiao
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/robotics-lab-uber-gutted-says-driving-cars-are-not-even-close-carnegie-mellon-nrec
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jayjay71
While technically correct, calling NREC a CMU robotics lab is really a
stretch. They are surprisingly independent entities - I know this as a former
student of Carnegie Mellon and employee of NREC. Most people at CMU, including
some of the robotics students, had never heard of NREC (although I imagine
that's no longer true after Uber).

Anyway, onto the subject at hand. Yep, Herman is right. Everybody thinks it's
just around the corner because they see things move so fast in Silicon Valley.
But most of the companies that grow exponentially are based on a sound
business and relatively (compared to robotics, nuclear fusion, new silicon
chip manufacturing) simple technologies. I love robots and I think they will
have a profound impact on the world moving forward, but holy fuck it is hard
to make a good robot. Self-driving cars are a long way from happening. I think
the gains are so great, and the technology so difficult, that they will
augment the problem by changing public infrastructure. Making smart traffic
lights that can talk to cars wirelessly, and cars that can communicate with
each other, and simple road markers specifically for autonomous vehicles, will
drastically reduce the complexity of the problem and allow for self-driving
cars to happen far sooner (and safer).

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stryk
The man's name is really Herman Herman?! I can't even begin to quantify how
mindbogglingly bad-ass that is! (as if being as close to a robotics expert as
one could ever likely be, and having a sweet gig at a prestigious uni, wasn't
bad-ass enough)

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jayjay71
Yep. Supposedly he came from a tiny town where people only hard first names,
and when he moved to the US he just became Herman Herman. When I was
interviewing there, the recruiter referred to him as Herman squared.

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objectivistbrit
This doesn't surprise me based on my own reading. Perception is a very hard
problem to crack. Also, even a seemingly simple task like driving involves
situations requiring "human-level" decision making and judgement.

Also interesting was this link from the article:
[http://motherboard.vice.com/read/robots-are-caring-for-
elder...](http://motherboard.vice.com/read/robots-are-caring-for-elderly-
people-in-europe) The obvious answer to the robots-taking-the-jobs argument is
that the world population is aging and there's already a shortage of medical
care and nursing home staff.

