Computer History Museum
5 HN mentions · mentioned in 5 months, 2018–2023
2:47 · 38K views · Feb 19, 2016
A three-minute Computer History Museum clip showing Ernst Dickmanns' VaMoRs Mercedes van and later VaMP sedan, early self-driving vehicles tested from 1986 to 2003.
HN cites it as footage proving that autonomous driving was demonstrated in Europe decades before the current wave.
5 comments from Hacker News
this video was a self-driving van in 1986 which could detect obstacles by 1999 and drive in a convoy using that. This is a bit like seeing Steve Mann's wearable computers over the years ( [LINK] ) and then today anyone with a smartphone and smart watch has more computing power and more features than most of his gear ever had, apart from the head mounted screen. More processing power, more memory, more storage, more face recognition, more motion sensing, more GPS, longer runtime on battery, more bandwidth and connectivity to e.g. mapping, more assistants like Google Now and Siri. And we still aren't at a level where you can be doing a physical task like replacing a laptop screen and have your device record what you're doing, with voice prompts for when you complete different stages, have it add markers to the recording, track objects in the scene like and solve for questions like 'where did that longer screw go?' or 'where did this part come from?' and have it jump to the video where you took that part out. Nor reflow the video backwards as an aide memoire to reassembling it. Or do that outside for something like garage or car work, or have it control and direct lighting on some kind of robot arm to help you see, or have it listen to the sound of your bike gears rattle as you tune them and tell you or show you on a graph when it identifies the least rattle. Anything a human assistant could easily do, we're still at the level of 'set a reminder' or 'add to calendar' rather than 'h
> While AGI isn't going to be created any time soon, machines have learned how to master complex tasks like: > translating text into practically every language Note: they said they have mastered these tasks. Yeah... I'm not sure a lot of native speakers would agree. Here's a great example of using Google Translate to automatically translate a video game. [LINK] > Driving cars I'm not so sure about that one either. I think we're in the valley that AI can do a lot of things, but are hitting limits in accuracy where humans are still better at some of these things sometimes. That is, the AI isn't always better than humans, even at a specific, non-general task. Now don't get me wrong, we've made a lot of progress, but I wonder if we can get these things to a place better than humans before the next economic recession. I think the biggest risk to AI is having the money dry up. Right now the hype is strong and the money is (nearly) free. If one of those changes, we could put this back on the shelf for another decade. If we go into a recession, labor will be cheap, so why bother automating with AI? For example, we had self driving freeway cars back in the 90's.[0][1] Here's one of the lessons learned: > In 1987, some UK Universities expressed concern that the industrial focus on the project neglected import traffic safety issues such as pedestrian protection. And who doesn't remember the brilliant Dr. Sbaitso, my childhood therapist. [2] [0] [LINK] [1] this video [2] [LINK]
The EU had self-driving cars in the 1980s (Ernst Dickmanns & Mercedes, demo: this video ). The most expensive robot car project was in Europe ( [LINK] ). I do agree that the EU has less of an entrepreneurial spirit. Some cultural elements, but also practical: It is difficult to scale an app, since there are such large language and culture barriers between EU member states. There is a decades long brain-drain of highly technical (AI) people. Finally, it is very hard to compete with US companies, as they skirt the rules, winning all network effects with huge VC infusions. I always suspected some of that was accomplished with military and intelligence support: The American economy and intelligence apparatus stands to benefit a lot with the entire world using Google and Facebook. The other side of this coin is that the pro-privacy anti-surveillance movement may also be supported by foreign intelligence agencies in an attempt to hurt US economic and military interests. [LINK] was close to establishing an AI-type Silicon Valley in Belgium in the early 2000's, but was unsuccessful.
>Mercedes FSD prototype, 10 years ago: Mercedes FSD prototype 1986 to 1994: this video It's funny that German, and Italian researchers and car makers had the early lead on self driving tech and then lost it by shelving the tech. Oof. “It’s possible that [Germany] threw away its clear vanguard role because research wasn’t consistently continued at the time,” Schmidhuber said. He added that carmakers might have shied away from self-driving technology because it seemed to be in opposition to their marketing, which promoted the idea of a driver in charge of steering a car."
The linked video states they could recognize obstacles years later, so I think there was no reading of signs etc. involved. It must have been only lane mark recognition that was used to steer. The van from the vid came years after the two mercedes s cars. I think there was no breaking for obstacles, exiting the highway, or even using interchanges. It was simply holding a lane (maybe change it when told to) and holding a set speed. Correct me if I am wrong, as I did not read into the experiment. this video