Self-Driving Cars Could Someday Take Requests
TL;DR
This article is part of our exclusive IEEE Journal Watch series in partnership with IEEE Xplore. The idea of letting a machine do the driving for you may put a lot of people off autonomous vehicles. But research could make it possible to backseat-drive an autonomous vehicle just as you might with a human driver. Self-driving cars carefully balance a host of parameters to ensure a smooth ride, including things like speed, acceleration, and the smoothness of turns.
Nauti's Take
The approach hits a real acceptance problem, since loss of control is the main reason many people reject autonomous driving. A motion planner that softens or speeds up on request is a tangible advance over parameters frozen at the factory.
The open question is where the line sits when passenger preference collides with the safety margin. Interesting for robotaxi operators, still far from a production car.
Sources