Good thread bhzmark. I often wondered whether any actual infrastructure improvements would be required for normal use of autonomous vehicles.
Here is a story from over 20 years ago about a pilot test in California using magnets embedded in the road:
IT'S NOT HARD TO GET USED TO MAGNETS DOING THE STEERING
Given the way technology advances, you don't want to shell out an insane amount of money for something that can be easily solved some other way. A good example of this is the old style emergency phones (Call Box) along the highways. Before cell phone coverage, can you imagine the cost to string wire or connect each of these to a microwave tower in the distance?
If I had to guess I would say that going forward the solution to any problems with autonomous driving will be solved most economically with in vehicle hardware and software. While the idea of having uniform lane markings to better enable cars to drive themselves seems almost like a no brainer, you wouldn't want to have the vehicle
solely reliant on such markings. Markings can be obscured by a variety of one time events, many of which can't be anticipated (i.e. paint spills, snow, new pavement, etc.). Factor in automated machine learning about the environment, and sharing that data with other cars, and you even cover most edge cases. For example, automated car on the freeway comes upon a large dead deer in the center of the right lane. In vehicle software thats constantly "looking" for things that would normally trip it up, encounters this and informs a central database that something is amiss. The car then goes around the obstacle. The central facility can dispatch a crew to fix the problem. In the interim, cars along that stretch can be informed about the blockage prior to arriving to smooth traffic flow out. Each car would need to be able to respond as the "first arriver", but later arrivers being alerted can automatically switch to other lanes in advance, or take a different route if thats the better solution. Vehicle to vehicle, and/or vehicle to server to vehicle could all be used in some capacity.
Given the total mileage of two lane unmarked roads in the U.S., let alone the lesser developed countries, I would think that solving the problem in software is the optimum way forward. Sure, some companies are going to perfect the approach sooner and/or better than others. But looking out say 5 years, I would think that any company that is implementing self driving for vehicles will have "solved" how to have the car drive safely on two lane unmarked roads.
RT
