Here are the challenges for self-driving cars to become a reality

It is the extreme cases that are difficult for self-driving cars.

-It applies to these events that happen very rarely, what we call edge cases, for example when a football comes rushing across a road. As people we are good at understanding and putting into context, understanding how we should act based on it, says Mikael Thor, who is the technical group manager at the "taxi" company Lyft's development department in Palo Alto for self-driving technology.

Things that happen infrequently are harder to get the algorithms to understand because there are no "driving hours" that describe the events.

- Then it's about how to know that this functionality is good enough, safe enough to be able to put into use.

So when will we see cars without drivers on the streets?

-Now you talk about 2021/2023 in terms of fully self-driving cars. First on highways, where there are less complex traffic situations. We probably have to wait four to five years before it is a reality even in urban environments, ”says Mikael Thor.