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Old April 14th 18, 07:51 PM posted to uk.rec.cycling
Bret Cahill
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Default White Paper On Government Oversight of Driverless

Musk conceded that Tesla might've been too many robots involved in its car production process and that the company would benefit from having more humans on the line. And when King opined out loud that in some cases, said robots probably slowed down production, Musk responded with a terse "yes, they did."

The problem isn't automation. The problem is engineers wandering away from Rule #1, KISS (keep it simple stupid) and out onto a limb. An engineer at BMW was talking about this before taking a higher paying job at Daimler. (It's 100% certain KISS is the real driver behind all those "helping third world countries with low tech solutions." It's not so much altruism but the search for fresh ideas.)

When an engineering job becomes so complicated that the chief engineer cannot anticipate everything that could go wrong, he needs to reboot, work on another project for awhile then come back with fresh ideas. Musk works work on a variety projects for this very reason and will admit it.

The most spectacular example of trying to ignore KISS today is autonomous vehicles working _only_ off conventional road markings. This is the dumbest application of peta flop computers ever. It's not that they are purists so much as they want the patents. It would be infinitely easier faster cheaper and safer to drop the greedy looneytarian mentality and work with the bureaucrats at CalTrans to install RFID or other dirt cheap serialized markers with precisely known locations.

Every vehicle would have a map of these markers and if anyone or anything disturbed these markers then the car decelerates until some hands are on the wheel.

How is this any different than gummint installing street lights and painting lines on the pavement?

GPS, HD cameras and other sensors would still be used, of course.

After the Tesla crash they were openly wondering if CalTrans was responsible because it didn't repair the road fast enough.

Does anyone other than a lawyer want to go there?

Just before the Tesla crash Gov. Brown was told that the UK government was working with auto makers and that if California didn't provide some leadership . . .

Apparently Gov. Brown needs a white paper before taking any action.


Bret Cahill
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