I actually have read up on it before I called it smoke and mirrors. While this is a year ago now, this is well after their cars were heavily marketed as being pretty sufficient and capable of detecting problems. ...Yet it couldn't detect the existence of a stoplight if it wasn't explicitly mapped ahead of time. And apparently, according to a Googler, the mapping required to make a road work with Google's self-driving car system is "impractical" to do at a nationwide scale.
I'm not saying it won't ever happen, I'm not saying there haven't been developments in the technology. But people seem to have a disconnect in expectations of where the technology is, and where marketing departments for these tech companies want you to believe the technology is.
http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2014/10/...
I'm not saying it won't ever happen, I'm not saying there haven't been developments in the technology. But people seem to have a disconnect in expectations of where the technology is, and where marketing departments for these tech companies want you to believe the technology is.