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Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

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Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#751

Post by malandrew »

jackpirate wrote: post #78
atonse wrote: post #25

How did LIDAR and IR not catch that? That seems like a pretty serious problem. It's clear from the video that a human driver actually would've had more trouble since the pedestrian showed up in the field of view right before the collision, yet that's in the visible spectrum. When I argue for automated driving (as a casual observer), I tell people about exactly this sort of stuff (a computer can look in 20 places at t…

It's clear from the video that a human driver actually would've had more trouble since the pedestrian showed up in the field of view right before the collision, yet that's in the visible spectrum. That's not at all clear to me. I don't know too much about cameras, but it looks to me like the camera is making the scene appear much darker than it actually is. In the video, you can see many street lights projecting down…

FWIW it was a new moon in Tempe, Arizona on Sunday night, so it was probably darker than normal.

Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#752

Post by Steeeve »

mdorazio wrote: post #603
osrec wrote: post #592

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The lady can be seen fairly clearly (even in this poor quality video) at 0.03 and impact occurs at 0.04. That's 1s, which means a distance of approx 17m. If the guy was watching (sort of the point of him being there really) he could have slowed the car significantly and probably even stopped it. These are test vehicles being treated like prod vehicles. They should probably not be on streets with pedestrians quite so…

You're massively underestimating human response time to visual cues and also the distance needed to stop a vehicle traveling at 35-40mph. It takes a full quarter of a second to respond to a visual stimulus on average, and more than that to also move your foot and depress a brake pedal. By that time the car was less than 50 feet from the pedestrian. At 40mph braking distance is about 80 feet in good conditions. There…

Human would have had significantly longer than this video. It's not that dark there at night. (Not as dark as the camera would lead you to believe). Swerving distance to avoid death is well within possibility. Aside from that, the possibility of death was further exacerbated by the vehicle not reacting to impact.

Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#753

Post by cmurf »

gugagore wrote: post #698
cmurf wrote: post #467

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's possible to look at the video file and find markers for modification. Certainly this is the case for JPEG, TIFF, PSD, vs Raw files. It's not impossible but very impractical to render a Raw file, edit it, and then unrender it back into a Raw file. It's also pretty malicious and I think it would show a corrupt intent to modify a Raw image in this manner. There are Raw equivalents for video, but consumer ca…

Is there any modern digital video that is "raw"? Without any lossy compression?

Redcode Raw is an example, I'm sure there are others. This doesn't mean there's zero in-camera processing, it just means it's not rendered, ergo it's scene-referred or camera-referred. There can be lens and sensor artifacts removed, like dead pixels.

OpenEXR is another such format that's camera agnostic, not totally dissimilar to Adobe DNG vs the (proprietary) Raw format used by a particular make/model of camera.

Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#754

Post by [deleted] »

atonse wrote: post #25

How did LIDAR and IR not catch that? That seems like a pretty serious problem. It's clear from the video that a human driver actually would've had more trouble since the pedestrian showed up in the field of view right before the collision, yet that's in the visible spectrum. When I argue for automated driving (as a casual observer), I tell people about exactly this sort of stuff (a computer can look in 20 places at t…

[deleted]

Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#755

Post by Animats »

schreiaj wrote: post #651
Animats wrote: post #496

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How did LIDAR and IR (?) not catch that? That seems like a pretty serious problem. Something is badly wrong there. That should have been detected by LIDAR, radar, and vision. Yes, they need a wide dynamic range camera for night driving, but such things exist.[1][2] They're available as low-end dashcams; it's not expensive military night vision technology. Radar should pick up a bicycle at that range. The old Eaton VO…

LIDAR also has limitations on angular resolution just as a function of how the sensor works. It's entirely possible that the size of the person/bike on LIDAR was just too small until it was too late to stop. Why it didn't even appear to try to stop? You got me, refresh rate on the LIDAR? LIDAR flat out being mounted to high and relying on optical sensors instead for collision avoidance of small targets (like a human…

Velodyne's current product has more than enough horizontal resolution for that.[1] Look at the pictures.

[1] http://velodynelidar.com/blog/128-lasers-car-go-round-round-...

Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#756

Post by TeMPOraL »

sundvor wrote: post #529
eric_h wrote: post #478

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole reason many people on here have been advocating for self driving cars is that they can see obstructions more or less perfectly in the dark with LIDAR. I am much more interested in what that sensor said. I'm reluctant to infer exactly what a human eye would have seen in that situation. I have absolutely driven down streets in suburbia where the gap between street lights was large enough to make them quite da…

Sad side note that most people appear unaware of the benefits even the simplest and cheapest of reflectors do provide. The seemingly random design decision of many runner manufacturers to embed tiny reflector strips in their shoes have no doubt saved countless lives. And their owners would probably be none the wiser.

Yup. There's a place for education here. I know I wasn't really aware of the benefits until adult age, when I started to find myself more often in a car, at night, in rural areas. I still remember the first experience, in which I've noticed a cyclist on another lane ~0.5 seconds before we passed him. Dark clothes, dark bike, zero reflective elements.

Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#758

Post by adrianmonk »

maxerickson wrote: post #105
chrsstrm wrote: post #16

The description given before the video was released painted a picture in my mind that the woman was on the median and "suddenly" entered the roadway in front of the vehicle. I pictured someone darting across the road directly in front of the car, with no way to stop in time. This video shows a completely different scenario. The woman started on the median, but the vehicle was in the #2 lane. She wasn't visible to the…

I think this seems like exactly the scenario that autonomous driving vehicles are intended to prevent. may be optimistic. Lots of people are hoping they will prevent such scenarios, the motivation for fielding them is more related to making lots of money.

Maybe a better word than "intended" would be "expected". As in, most normal, rational, reasonable people basically familiar with the technology involved expect this to be preventable.

Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#760

Post by Tempest1981 »

I wonder how the Uber engineering team is feeling. I've had bugs in my code, but they've never killed anyone.

I guess the feeling may depend on how rushed vs. well-tested they feel their software is. But no amount of "I told you it wasn't ready" is going to repair the psychological damage.

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