Yes. In the end, it's all about the software. The safety requirements of the software should dictate the hardware design, not the other way around.

Of course, if all your sensors fail, you have a problem. But even then, the software should be smart enough to do react intelligently. One reason that they don't use many sensors in consumer products is that the software gets too complex and becomes unreliable. There should be as many sensors as possible. Pressure sensitive sensors on the pedal should tell the software that the driver is no longer pressing the pedal. Also, if the driver is pushing the brake pedal while the gas pedal sensor is reporting pressure, it should be a signal that something is wrong and to decelerate and even disable the car if the condition persists.

The gas pedal program should be intelligent enough to notice a malfunction like a sticky pedal and react accordingly. Mechanical failure is a given because of wear and tear and other factors. Software should never fail.

Software is bad because, unlike hardware, deterministic timing is not an inherent part of it. Computer programs are based on the Turing Computing Model. The TCM has nothing to say about timing other than the inherent sequentiality of operations. Read Why Software Is Bad and What We Can Do to Fix it and How to Solve the Parallel Programming Crisis if you're interested in solving this crisis once and for all.

Our basic algorithmic computing model has not changed since Charles Babbage. It's time for the industry and academia to wake up. What is needed is a non-algorithmic, synchronous and reactive model. I hope the auto industry (and everybody else who writes software and build computers) takes this to heart because these problems are going to happen again and again. And the cost is going to skyrocket.

Keep your ears and eyes open. It won't be much longer.

The breakthrough is closer than you think. Rocket propulsion is stupidly primitive and will soon be history.

Is this the same Baez who once wrote:

I would prefer to say that there are infinitely many "nows", but no one "now" that is any better than the rest. In special or general relativity, we can define a "now" to be a spacelike hypersurface - or more technically, a Cauchy surface. In one "now", I am typing this article while sitting at my desk on a hot summer morning in Riverside. In another, I am asleep on an airplane flying to Portugal. In most of them, I don't exist.

(Source)

Baez is like a pot arguing against kettles. LOL.

Space exploration is really cool but there are good reasons to believe that spending money on more rocket propulsion systems will be money wasted. It’s not just because rockets are an extremely expensive, limited and dangerous form of space transportation but because almost every form of transportation and energy production on planet Earth will be obsolete in the not too distant future. Let's face it. We will not colonize the solar system let alone the star systems beyond with a bunch of primitive rockets.

We are on the verge of a revolution in physics. A new analysis of the causality of motion leads to the conclusion that we are immersed in energy, lots and lots of it. Normal matter moves in an immense lattice of energetic particles without which motion itself would be impossible. Soon we’ll have vehicles that can move at enormous speeds and negotiate right angle turns without slowing down and without incurring damage due to inertial effects. Floating sky cities impervious to earthquakes, tsunamis and bad weather, New York to Beijing in minutes, Earth to Mars in hours; that’s the future of energy and travel. Read Physics: The Problem with Motion if you're interested in a novel and truly revolutionary understanding of motion.

Interesting article. It's funny but, all along, I always assumed that curiosity was a part of the definition of intelligence. If it exists in humans and animals, then that's all the evidence that we need in order to know that it can be programmed into a machine. The truth is that an intelligent program must learn and learning is impossible without curiosity. Here's why. If you look at knowledge as a big tree with many branches and leaves, learning consists of adding new branches (big and small) and leaves to the tree. The sub-program that goes around the tree adding new leaves and branches while pruning others as needed is none other than the curiosity module or algorithm. Just a thought.

There are excellent reasons to believe that having a correct foundational model of movement will unleash an age of free energy and extremely fast transportation. It will be an age where vehicles have no need of wheels, move silently at enormous speeds with no visible means of propulsion and negotiate right-angle turns without slowing down. An analysis of the causality of motion leads to the conclusion that we are immersed in an immense lattice of energetic particles. Soon, we will develop technologies to tap into this energy for propulsion and energy production. Placing satellites in orbit will be a thing of the past because we'll build legions of self-propelling vehicles that can maintain a fixed (or changing) position relative to the surface of the earth without having to be in orbit. Floating sky cities, New York to Beijing in minutes, Earth to Mars in hours. That's the future of energy and travel.

Physics: The Problem with Motion

You're saying that it took 2,500 of the best climate scientists of the world (IPCC) close to four years to realize that a mistake of this magnitude is in one of its prime reports and you find this normal? This crap was being talked about in the blogosphere for some time and it's only because of the ugliness of climategate that these so-called "concerned scientists" are no coming out. It's called preemptive damage control. The very climate scientist whose work is at the origin is a friend and employee (at TERI) of Rajendra Pachauri, the IPCC chairman. The entire thing stinks something foul and no amount of perfume is going to cover it up. You should be ashamed of yourself.

Climate Science is tainted for a long time, thanks to the greed of a few. Too bad. We don't believe in anything climate scientists have to say anymore because their livelihood is directly tied to how much alarm and hysteria they can whip up. Their noses are too close the grinder, so to speak.

Both organizations should be investigated for soliciting international funds under false pretexts. IPCC's Chairman, Pachauri the crook, is known to have received funding from the European Union for his Delhi-based climate organization on the basis of the melting glacier lie/scare.

The IPCC should be immediately disbanded and its leadership and members investigated and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Whoever oversees UN ethics and conduct should immediately call for an independent probe of this whole stinking mess?

Bummer.

This is a falsifiable hypothesis. Does anybody know where Einstein's grave is? I would like to conduct a skeleton rotation experiment.

Forget it. I can do excellent AI research on a desktop computer using simulated robots in a simulated environment and still have more degrees of freedom to play with than this PR2. Give me a six-legged robot with lots of DOF (an arm with a four-fingered hand would be nice) and a battery of joint and touch sensors and I might get excited. I'm sorry to sound so cynical but it seems that Willow garage is looking for some free (or real cheap) software development. But hey, if you need a real robot for a research thesis or some special project, then go for it.