<story><title>Google didn’t lead the self-driving vehicle revolution, John Deere did</title><url>http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2015/06/22/google-didnt-lead-the-self-driving-vehicle-revolution-john-deere-did/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>da_chicken</author><text>While I certainly agree that self-driving farm equipment is revolutionary, I&amp;#x27;d argue that Google&amp;#x27;s technological advances are in the field of being able to understand how to drive on a road which marked for humans to drive on, and which is simultaneously in use by human drivers as well.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m sure that there are problems and issues which arise from navigating a field and manipulating whatever equipment you&amp;#x27;ve got for whatever task you&amp;#x27;re working on that I&amp;#x27;m just not fully appreciating.  However, I really question if that task is anywhere near as complex as safely navigating traffic while obeying all the laws of the road when you can&amp;#x27;t even be sure of the state of the road you&amp;#x27;ll be travelling on.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s just a totally different problem being solved.  This is apples and oranges.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>kbenson</author><text>I agree.  A farm is a type of factory, and thus has fairly controlled conditions compared to a public thoroughfare.  Any number of solutions could work for a farm that would be untenable for self driving cars, such as marking the expected area with sensors to define the working area, outlining the area on a GPS map, running the equipment over the area one or more times to teach it, etc.  None of these work as a general purpose solution to a self driving car, and they might not even be progenitors to the self driving technology we end up with.&lt;p&gt;A solution to a highly constrained version of a problem may not be applicable to the general purpose problem in any way.&lt;p&gt;Edit: mean to say &amp;quot;may &lt;i&gt;not&lt;/i&gt; be applicable&amp;quot; in last sentence.</text></comment>
<story><title>Google didn’t lead the self-driving vehicle revolution, John Deere did</title><url>http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2015/06/22/google-didnt-lead-the-self-driving-vehicle-revolution-john-deere-did/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>da_chicken</author><text>While I certainly agree that self-driving farm equipment is revolutionary, I&amp;#x27;d argue that Google&amp;#x27;s technological advances are in the field of being able to understand how to drive on a road which marked for humans to drive on, and which is simultaneously in use by human drivers as well.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m sure that there are problems and issues which arise from navigating a field and manipulating whatever equipment you&amp;#x27;ve got for whatever task you&amp;#x27;re working on that I&amp;#x27;m just not fully appreciating.  However, I really question if that task is anywhere near as complex as safely navigating traffic while obeying all the laws of the road when you can&amp;#x27;t even be sure of the state of the road you&amp;#x27;ll be travelling on.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s just a totally different problem being solved.  This is apples and oranges.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>markbnj</author><text>Yeah, agreed. The overlap technologies of position fixing and mechanical control have actually been solved for a long time now. The current interest in self-driving vehicles is based on advances in sensors and processing to detect environmental conditions and hazards on roadways and in places where people commonly drive cars.</text></comment>