It’s become painfully obvious over the past few years just how difficult fully autonomous cars are. This isn’t a dig at any of the companies developing autonomous cars (unless they’re the sort of company who keeps on making ludicrous promises about full autonomy, of course)— it’s just that the real world is a complex place for full autonomy, and despite the relatively well constrained nature of roads, there’s still too much unpredictability for robots to operate comfortably outside of relatively narrow restrictions.
Where autonomous vehicles have had the most success is in environments with a lot of predictability and structure, which is why I really like the idea of autonomous urban boats designed for cities with canals. MIT has been working on these for years, and they’re about to introduce them to the canals of Amsterdam as cargo shuttles and taxis.
Read the full article at: spectrum.ieee.org
Complexity Digest 