Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Apollo – An open autonomous driving platform

github.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 80 posts

Re: Apollo – An open autonomous driving platform

#61

Post by alexhornbake »

sgillen wrote: post #23
alexhornbake wrote: post #13

Maybe I'm missing something, is this is a platform strictly for developing ML techniques? Or is it intended to actual run in a vehicle... on ubuntu, in a docker container? I'm no expert, but I would think you'd want a realtime OS for this. Right?

More likely is that the car would have a Linux box running this software that connects to one or more micro controllers. The micro controllers handle any sensors/actuators with real time requirements, and may be running an RTOS or just bare metal.

Hmmm, thanks for the additional info. Still seems like a bad idea. Based on your assertion, what happens when the RTOS/microcontroller does not receive a "decision" before the scheduling deadline? Many things can hang a Linux box... the reason why RTOS exists is because nothing can stop the scheduler. I would be very curious to hear from the Apollo developers. What is the intended platform and developer audience? Is this intended to actually run in a vehicle?

Re: Apollo – An open autonomous driving platform

#62

Post by gbugniot »

pd0wm wrote: post #8
Animats wrote: post #5

Autonomous driving based purely on machine learning from vision is scary. Machine learning is, after all, a statistical method. It's going to do really great most of the time, and really badly once in a while.

The exact same can be said about human drivers. Why do we demand that autonomous driving is 100% safe? I would be completely fine with autonomous cars that sometimes crash, but are still less likely to do so than with human drivers.

Will you find acceptable a plane crash because of technical failure?

Determinism rules for aeronautical engineers (software and hardware), and thus, today, flying is the safest transportation mode.

Re: Apollo – An open autonomous driving platform

#63

Post by honestoHeminway »

F_r_k wrote: post #60
thallukrish wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To err is human. We can punish erring drivers by law. But we cannot punish a robot. Unless there is law that applies to the owner of the autonomous vehicle companies on erring automatons unleashed by them :-) and they are implementable.

Do you punish a human because of payback or so that it doesn't commit again the same error ?

Of course its revenge. A eye for a eye, a tooth for a tooth. You are not talking with a civilized species here, although the philosophical decoration sometimes can lead one astray.

Re: Apollo – An open autonomous driving platform

#64

Post by honestoHeminway »

inertial wrote: post #55
jhall1468 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They shouldn't be because even as a cautious driver you are subjected to noncautious drivers and, more importantly, no matter how cautious you are a well designed AI is almost certainly better.

Both cautious & rash drivers face the same external factors, but latter are more likely to wreck themselves, sometimes without involving others. So probability of an accident for latter are higher. AI may be good at reducing the average number of accidents, but when a tricky situation occurs, the probability of accident could be in this order "rash > AI > cautious".

To be honest, i had the same assumptions on cautions and rash drivers. But then i learned to know my new boss- he drives ralley-race cars- and to be honest, i feel much safer in such a ralley car taking to its physical limits by someone who knows the car- then in the car of a cautious driver, who is just cautious because he/she is aware of how little they know/controll the actual physical event of driving a car.

I know such a thing is nont quantifiable thus, the laws min(ability) applies, none the less, one should not judge from appearance here, but rather from actual incidence lists.

Re: Apollo – An open autonomous driving platform

#65

Post by KGIII »

honestoHeminway wrote: post #63
F_r_k wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you punish a human because of payback or so that it doesn't commit again the same error ?

Of course its revenge. A eye for a eye, a tooth for a tooth. You are not talking with a civilized species here, although the philosophical decoration sometimes can lead one astray.

We humans aren't rational beings. We're rationalizing beings. I would even suggest we've always felt ourselves to be the epitome of enlightened - even whilst committing atrocities.

Re: Apollo – An open autonomous driving platform

#66

Post by rwmj »

foxylad wrote: post #58
inertial wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The exact same can be said about human drivers Maybe not. There are cautious drivers and there are rash drivers. The probability of accident is wildly different for both of them. However the probability of an accident due to a a bug/miscalculation in autonomous driving is same for everyone.

And when that bug is fixed, assuming modern update practices, it is fixed for everyone. In effect, human drivers can only learn from their own mistakes whereas autonomous systems learn from every mistake made by their system's drivers.

But can you really fix a bug in a machine learning algorithm? Sure, you can retrain it on the data which caused the crash, but could that mean you created another bug somewhere else?

Re: Apollo – An open autonomous driving platform

#67

Post by koffiezet »

gbugniot wrote: post #62
pd0wm wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The exact same can be said about human drivers. Why do we demand that autonomous driving is 100% safe? I would be completely fine with autonomous cars that sometimes crash, but are still less likely to do so than with human drivers.

Will you find acceptable a plane crash because of technical failure? Determinism rules for aeronautical engineers (software and hardware), and thus, today, flying is the safest transportation mode.

> Will you find acceptable a plane crash because of technical failure?

Oh but they did and still do, but has improved, as every technology matures. My great-grandparents traveled a lot by airplane in the 50's, and always traveled separately so the kids didn't lose both parents in the event of a crash, but guess what happened the one time they traveled together...

> It is estimated that approximately 22 percent of aviation accidents are caused by mechanical failures.

Source: http://www.trial-law.com/aop/mechanical-failures/

Re: Apollo – An open autonomous driving platform

#68

Post by zaro »

alexhornbake wrote: post #61
sgillen wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More likely is that the car would have a Linux box running this software that connects to one or more micro controllers. The micro controllers handle any sensors/actuators with real time requirements, and may be running an RTOS or just bare metal.

Hmmm, thanks for the additional info. Still seems like a bad idea. Based on your assertion, what happens when the RTOS/microcontroller does not receive a "decision" before the scheduling deadline? Many things can hang a Linux box... the reason why RTOS exists is because nothing can stop the scheduler. I would be very curious to hear from the Apollo developers. What is the intended platform and developer audience? Is…

There are way to make Linux an RTOS, including work on pushing RT deterministic scheduler in the mainline[1].

[1] https://rt.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Main_Page

Re: Apollo – An open autonomous driving platform

#69

Post by koffiezet »

jnbiche wrote: post #49
dbcurtis wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The autonomous racing league that meets in Oakland is doing exactly that. Typically the R/C car uses wifi to connect back to an AWS instance for the heavy lifting.

> Typically the R/C car uses wifi to connect back to an AWS instance for the heavy lifting. Wow, and the latency is manageable for the task?

Well, the average human reaction time is 215ms, which would be considered unacceptable in online-gaming, where 50ms would already be on the high side of things, I normally see 30ms or so.

Let's assume 50ms or 20 updates per second, and a car driving at 40m/s or about 145kmh / 90mph, the reaction time of the of the computer is after the car moved 2 meters (about 6.5 feet). A human would only react after about 8.5 meters (about 28 feet) - quite the difference.

Re: Apollo – An open autonomous driving platform

#70

Post by ada1981 »

koffiezet wrote: post #67
gbugniot wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Will you find acceptable a plane crash because of technical failure? Determinism rules for aeronautical engineers (software and hardware), and thus, today, flying is the safest transportation mode.

> Will you find acceptable a plane crash because of technical failure? Oh but they did and still do, but has improved, as every technology matures. My great-grandparents traveled a lot by airplane in the 50's, and always traveled separately so the kids didn't lose both parents in the event of a crash, but guess what happened the one time they traveled together... > It is estimated that approximately 22 percent of avi…

Whoa, did they both really die together in a plane crash?! How tragic if true.
Post reply on HN