Self-Driving Cars: The Role of Mental Wayfinding

Dr. Lance Eliot, AI Insider

[Ed. Note: For reader’s interested in Dr. Eliot’s ongoing business analyses about the advent of self-driving cars, see his online Forbes column: https://forbes.com/sites/lanceeliot/]

Do you know where you are?

I don’t mean that you perhaps know that you are at a particular street address or sitting in your favorite chair at home, but instead, I am referring to the aspect that you spatially know where you are. Via your senses and your mind, you might realize that you are ten feet away from a nearby TV and that you are five feet away from the nearest window. As you sit inside a room, your mind has an abstract model that keeps track of where you are and where other nearby objects reside.

On top of that realization, your mind also knows that the room is within a building, the building is within a neighborhood of buildings, and the neighborhood is within a city, which is within a county, and within a state, and within a country, etc.

Imagine using something like a mental version of Google Earth and having your mind be able to zoom in and zoom outward, quickly imagining your position from a faraway location and at the same time being able to get close-in and know exactly where your feet are placed and your immediate and within reach…