Ernst Dickmanns’ VaMoRs Mercedes Van, 1986-2003

Computer History Museum · 37K views · 2016 · 2:47

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Self-driving & autonomous vehiclesHistory of computingdocumentary

Why Hacker News recommends it

HN cites it as footage proving that autonomous driving was demonstrated in Europe decades before the current wave.

What it is

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.

Recommended by 0 HN commenters across 0 different months, 2018 to 2023.

What Hacker News said

Cites takeitto · 2018-05 · on “GDPR for lazy people: Block all European users with Cloudflare Workers”

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

Cites usernam33 · 2018-07 · on “Ernst Dickmanns, a German scientist who developed self-driving cars in the 1980s”

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]

Cites cbanek · 2020-01 · on “Researchers: Are we on the cusp of an ‘AI winter’?”

> 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

Cites jodrellblank · 2023-02 · on “ChatGPT Passes Google Coding Interview for Level 3 Engineer with $183K Salary”

[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 de

Cites ChuckNorris89 · 2023-06 · on “Germans beat Tesla to autonomous L3 driving in the Golden State”

>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."