And me without my mod points... This is vastly underrated. :)

You should learn the difference between a single sensor return and a full perception result. Also, look up sensor noise, integration time, classifier inputs and training. Please tell me how you're planning on dealing with rain and snow.

Yes, if it was as simple as a magic sensor that could tell you instantly at max range 1) that the thing is a car (even though you won't see all of it immediately) 2) what its velocity vector is and 3) what its going to do, then yes, things are as simple as you wish they were.

But they are really, really not.

Sure, if you assume no processing time is required to characterize what the sensor sees, and want to slam on the brakes at a minimum of 0.66g's of deceleration the moment anything enters the edge of your perception. That doesn't seem like a viable human-carrying vehicle to me.

Unless they just want the small/low speed vehicle market, their requirements are grossly lacking. For a road-going autonomous vehicle, "dozens of meters" is useless at any real speed. Try ~100 meters as a start and go from there. Otherwise you'll always be outrunning your perception and unable to see anything in time to stop.

Not only that, but in the article he completely dismisses/ignores/pretends-it-doesn't-exist the Toyota unintended acceleration analysis that happened after the NASA folks got their chance. Turns out the NASA folks didn't get everything there was to analyze, and low and behold once all of the info was available: Toyota's engineers did a crap job of safety in their software.

Full details can be read here.

I can't speak to him being a shill, but he's definitely either misinformed or disingenuous.

I'm sure he's genuinely sorry to hear such criticisms....

Don't you wish you could...

This is only the case where corprorations try to cheat academia. Marvell had the option ~10 years ago to license the tech from CMU. They said no and used it anyway.

You should really just read the whole FAQ.

Basically Marvell desperately need the invention after trying and failing to come up with something that could do the same thing. CMU offered to license it to them. They declined, and then used it anyway. It completely turned around their drive business. So, only 25% of the profits for willful infringement of critical technology that they could have licensed for much less if they'd played fair back in the day doesn't really seem too bad to me.

Briefly from CMU's FAQ:

In fact, it was funded by industry.

From CMU's FAQ on the case:

You are correct that the specific breakdown of that 50% is entirely dependent on the percentages agreed upon when the internal invention disclosure was made, and that the assignation of those percentages between the various inventors is not dictated in any particular way by the IP Policy. What is clear, however is that 50% (minus 1/2 of the legal fees) will be distributed amongst to the two inventors.

That said, at CMU, any faculty member who tries to cut his or her grad students out of their invention disclosures will likely soon find him or herself running short on grad students, not to mention liable to be hauled into court for fraud. So there is strong self-interested impetus to make those percentages as correct as possible.

In fact, they will. CMU's IP Policy is quite clear on this matter. The inventors will get 50% of the proceeds.

Since these proceeds will qualify as royalties, under CMU's Intelectual Property Policy the school will "only" get 750 million. The other half will go to the two inventors on the patents.

And I'm sure they'll find something to do with it.