It's clear to me that as long as AP has to co-exist with other human drivers and other road users, inferring other road users' intentions, communicating one's own intentions and negotiating a mutually satisfactory outcome will be the hardest task for any autopilot system. I hope that this thread can bring these issues together.
Closely allied to the need to communicate the autopilot's intentions is the need to make it clear to others that they are dealing with a robot. Awkwardly, Teslas look more or less like other cars and so it is not obvious whether the driver or the autopilot is in control. That has a bearing on whether others should communicate with the driver (by gestures, mostly) or with AutoPilot (which might be described as "talk to the hand"...).
It's an open question how another driver could possibly know how to communicate reliably with AutoPilot (maybe though headlamp flashes detected by the camera) but for the foreseeable future it will be sensible for anyone doing the latter to assume that they are dealing with a particularly dumb individual and make allowances accordingly. Thus it could be argued that cars currently under the control of AutoPilot need to be able to advertise that fact to other road users.
I presume that the most practicable way is to use the same method that Tesla uses to indicate that Smart Summon is in operation -- i.e.frantic flashing lights. I don't expect this suggestion to be very welcome to most people -- it isn't really to me either -- but I wonder what alternative suggestions people can make?
Closely allied to the need to communicate the autopilot's intentions is the need to make it clear to others that they are dealing with a robot. Awkwardly, Teslas look more or less like other cars and so it is not obvious whether the driver or the autopilot is in control. That has a bearing on whether others should communicate with the driver (by gestures, mostly) or with AutoPilot (which might be described as "talk to the hand"...).
It's an open question how another driver could possibly know how to communicate reliably with AutoPilot (maybe though headlamp flashes detected by the camera) but for the foreseeable future it will be sensible for anyone doing the latter to assume that they are dealing with a particularly dumb individual and make allowances accordingly. Thus it could be argued that cars currently under the control of AutoPilot need to be able to advertise that fact to other road users.
I presume that the most practicable way is to use the same method that Tesla uses to indicate that Smart Summon is in operation -- i.e.frantic flashing lights. I don't expect this suggestion to be very welcome to most people -- it isn't really to me either -- but I wonder what alternative suggestions people can make?
