Also sometimes you need to move your car to affect the environment, for example if your car is stopped at a parking lot type intersection, and there is a large crowd of people passing, they would keep crossing unless you start to move your car a little indicating, that’s it for you let some cars through
You mean like those drivers who aggressively creep into the intersection to scare pedestrians into letting them through, even when the pedestrian has the right of way? I can't wait for Waymo cars to get them off the road.
OP might be referring situations like a festival, where there's a trickle of cars and a lot of people. And usually cars have to slowly inch forward, some people will stop and let them through, some people won't. The driver of course has to stop, but also not just wait forever to have a clear lane.
Or, another example, a big parking lot with a few buses, people unloading their stuff from the buses (let's at the end of a long trip), relatives/parents/friends pick them up at the parking lot. Relatively dense, many people moving, but still cars come and go. Plus a lot of packs/luggage here and there. Usually in these cases more cars want to enter the parking lot to pick up others, but of course people want to continue unloading, so some kind of balance forms.
This also applies to "living streets": pedestrians are the primary users, but cars are allowed through at lower speeds (20 kph?). "Wait until everyone clears the path" means "forever", a typical livelock; the car needs to signal intent "I wish to move forward" while still yielding to pedestrians.
Years ago I was trying to get through a huge crowd leaving a concert once, because I worked nights in a building on the same block, and while I was edging around the corner, a cop on foot thought I was being too aggressive and started banging on my window hard. I rolled it down and explained to him where I was going and why, but later my power window mechanism failed and it might have been related. I wonder how that should be handled with a hypothetical self-driving car?
The AI takes instructions (orders? requests?) from the user. So if the cop asks the user to go back, the user should tell the car to go back, try a different route, etc.
What happens if the user is drunk? Well, naturally, the cop tells the car that it's a cop and just pick a different route.
And we shall see how well it will work.
Probably it'll take a (few?) decade(s) before a self-driving car should think it can safely wade through a crowd instead of going back and finding a good place to wait for user input :)
