... and that's what I actually took away from this article.
It's not that front brake lights are necessarily a great idea, but that safety is improved with the communication of states and state changes are entirely automated.
Imagine a future car that knows that you're about to change lanes because you just checked your mirror, glanced over your shoulder, and repositioned your hands on the wheel -- so it turns on the turn signal the moment you begin to move the vehicle toward the other lane. Maybe it even has multiple states - what we have today for "I'm definitely turning/merging", and a dimmer or less saturated pulsing light for "the car thinks the driver is probably about to turn".
That could get too complex to be practical quickly. AI/FSD systems have a lot more "input bandwidth", though, so maybe make those partial/inferred indicators IR so humans don't see them but it communicates to FSD systems.
Actually, scratch that. In addition to signals that don't require manual activation, add a 360ยบ IR emitter on top of the vehicle that constantly streams real-time telemetry. FSD could then integrate the actual, specific state of the vehicles around them into its sensor suite.
If it's bidirectional, you could even have a situation where two FSD systems meeting on a narrow road could silently and nearly instantly negotiate a plan to pass one another with minimal disruption.
Ancapistani|8 months ago
It's not that front brake lights are necessarily a great idea, but that safety is improved with the communication of states and state changes are entirely automated.
Imagine a future car that knows that you're about to change lanes because you just checked your mirror, glanced over your shoulder, and repositioned your hands on the wheel -- so it turns on the turn signal the moment you begin to move the vehicle toward the other lane. Maybe it even has multiple states - what we have today for "I'm definitely turning/merging", and a dimmer or less saturated pulsing light for "the car thinks the driver is probably about to turn".
That could get too complex to be practical quickly. AI/FSD systems have a lot more "input bandwidth", though, so maybe make those partial/inferred indicators IR so humans don't see them but it communicates to FSD systems.
Actually, scratch that. In addition to signals that don't require manual activation, add a 360ยบ IR emitter on top of the vehicle that constantly streams real-time telemetry. FSD could then integrate the actual, specific state of the vehicles around them into its sensor suite.
If it's bidirectional, you could even have a situation where two FSD systems meeting on a narrow road could silently and nearly instantly negotiate a plan to pass one another with minimal disruption.