On 10/9/2017 11:06 AM, Jeff Liebermann wrote:
...
Incidentally, one of the proposed solutions to the pothole problem is
for a self driving vehicle to "mark" the location of any road hazards
on the map which all the other cars use. It's essentially a crowd
sourced technology that in use today with traffic monitoring software
such as Waze and Google Maps. The first vehicle that finds a pothole
sends the GPS lat-long position of the pothole to the central
computer, which then redistributes the hazard to navigation
information to the other self-driving cars. The first car to drive
into the pot hole may have a problem, but those that follow can the
avoid the pothole.

"Google Is Developing a System to Map Potholes Using a Car's GPS"
http://time.com/money/4009901/google-patent-gps-potholes-tracking-map/
My explanation of the origin, nature, and characteristics of potholes,
a little about their reproductive habits, and their connection to
gophers:
http://members.cruzio.com/~jeffl/nooze/pothole.txt



I think eventually self-driving cars will be a lot more efficient than
what we have now, but two things will need to happen.

1) there may need to be stationary "base stations" that track local
problems, that the cars will automatically connect to and query for
local road conditions (such as the locations of really bad road damage...)

2) people will have to get used to the car doing the navigation, even
when it doesn't appear to be the most-direct way to go--due to traffic
conditions or road construction or whatever.

Of course, #2 above means that cities will basically be tracking
wherever you drive, all the time. Which sounds creepy at first, but
eventually normal people won't care. Some cities are kinda doing it now,
with stationary and mobile license plate scanners. At least to some
degree your ISP tracks everything you do online, and your cell phone
company tracks everything you do (and where you go) with your cell
phone. The way these systems are constructed and managed makes doing so
necessary to an extent.

.......

Also the bicycle detection problem is not so much of a problem. All you
need is a unique optical reflector type that isn't allowed to be used
for other things.

Such as, instead of a single round silver (front) or red (rear)
reflector, have three smaller round reflectors, mounted in a pyramid.

For the side reflectors on the bicycle frame (not on the wheels) use two
round reflectors, the 'leading' one mounted 45-degrees to the trailing one.

Cars will already have IR lighting for their self-driving feature
anyway, new reflectors don't cost much and just doing this would make
the task of a computer picking out a bicycle from a camera image WAY
faster and easier.

Plus I just wanna see Lance-wannabes with 50-cent reflectors on their
$5000 carbon road bikes. :]