781–790 of 1001 posts
I would suppose that sensory capabilities of a driverless vehicles are above those of normal cars. There is clearly something very wrong with uber's technology.
This was the original story: "After the Uber collision, the car continued traveling at 38 miles per hour, according to the Tempe police chief" https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-21/for-self-... In other words, the car _never_ detected the pedistrian and never slowed down on its own. This has nothing to do with _when_ it saw her. It clearly didn't, yet both camera and LIDAR should have been able to.
I feel bad for Waymo and all the guys taking the necessary safety precautions. This is going to set the industry back quite a bit. Thanks Uber, and RIP Elaine.
The only way to fix this is to have regulations which actually enforce quality control. That means code audits, it means a lot more process and a lot more oversight, all of which is going to be a drag but which is necessary when developing systems on which so many lives could depend. If you look at the regulatory requirements for aviation software or even video poker machines they will really put into perspective how little is being done now with autonomous vehicles.
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I have to agree. Just like a normal camera has issues in low-light, it is clear that this camera is diminishing exactly how light the road ahead was. While I can't say confidently that I would have been able to stop to prevent hitting them, watching the video in full screen does lead me to believe that I would have seen them and been able to apply the brakes at least enough to reduce the impact. Also, watching the vi…
I am pretty sure Uber uses an iPad app for its autonomous vehicles. The driver is looking at that iPad application periodically along with the physical windshield view.
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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…
I have to agree. Just like a normal camera has issues in low-light, it is clear that this camera is diminishing exactly how light the road ahead was. While I can't say confidently that I would have been able to stop to prevent hitting them, watching the video in full screen does lead me to believe that I would have seen them and been able to apply the brakes at least enough to reduce the impact. Also, watching the vi…
Someone else thought the same thing and went to get their own footage of the road.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
I have to agree. Just like a normal camera has issues in low-light, it is clear that this camera is diminishing exactly how light the road ahead was. While I can't say confidently that I would have been able to stop to prevent hitting them, watching the video in full screen does lead me to believe that I would have seen them and been able to apply the brakes at least enough to reduce the impact. Also, watching the vi…
Probably checking the computer installed for diagnostics of the autopilot system. If it's in self driving mode and you are the engineer in charge, you'd want to constantly check what the system is seeing vs the actual conditions on the road.
Is it me or the street lighting is beyond mediocre? It is weak and alternate between a "lighted" portion and a literally black portion. But even then, the driver was busy with his cellphone. The accident might have happened nevertheless due to bad lighting. But this could have been avoided was the driver on alert.
Coming from Europe, I've been surprised as how many places in the US that don't have streetlights at all. Driving between Maryland and Virginia, there are 4-lane highways that are completely dark for long stretches at a time. I'm assuming this is a money-saving concern, since the US has such a huge amount of area to cover. Back in many native, smaller habitat, I've only rarely encountered this kind of darkness, and i…
Something that's worth pointing out as well is what happens to low-light contrast sensitivity as we age. I believe there's something like a 50% loss in night vision between the ages of 20 and 50. Having watched the video, I seriously doubt I'd have seen the pedestrian in time to stop for her. I don't know that I would even feel that sorry for her, frankly -- there is only so much we can (and should) do to protect dru…
A straight road, in dry conditions, obstructed by an entire person and a bicycle with REFLECTORS on it, and the car doesn't see her? I think whoever wrote this code should be in prison, quite honestly, along with their entire management chain. I suspect many people will feel the same way. This is a really really bad look for automated vehicles in general. It also backs up my contention that anything less than full 10…
It certainly does look bad for self driving vehicles, and I definitely feel terrible that a life was lost from this. However, how does one develop a self driving vehicle that’s 100% automated without the ability to test in real driving conditions? Despite this accident, self-driving vehicles have a fairly safe driving record for the number of miles and time they have been active. Details on California accident rates…
You have a car with all of this running but a human driving while you drive around for hundreds of millions of vehicle miles. You then review the data for these trips and use it to assess both the ability of the hardware/software to maintain a meaningful degree of "situational awareness" as well as the reasonableness of the software to control the car if it had actually been doing so. From this you can determine how good of a job the system is doing and build a fairly good idea of how much you can actually trust the car to drive on its own. Then you can let the automation drive the car with a human behind the wheel and actually paying attention. From that you can further improve your assessment of how well the car operates under realistic driving conditions.
However, if the human isn't paying attention then you potentially significantly increase risk. Especially if you short-changed the previous step of monitoring the automation's performance while "side seat driving".
In the case of, say, Waymo, they've done a fairly good job here because they've been careful and thorough in each step. In the case of Uber, as is reflective of their corporate culture, they have rushed ahead and taken on a lot more risk than they should have, in this case putting bystanders in harm's way.
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…
IIRC IR is ITAR controlled and not available above abysmal resolution. I am curious if this limitation applies to self-driving cars, too. If so, then it's really time to do what was done for GPS and declassify it for use by the general public. It's a public safety/public good issue.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have to agree. Just like a normal camera has issues in low-light, it is clear that this camera is diminishing exactly how light the road ahead was. While I can't say confidently that I would have been able to stop to prevent hitting them, watching the video in full screen does lead me to believe that I would have seen them and been able to apply the brakes at least enough to reduce the impact. Also, watching the vi…
> Also, watching the video of the interior it is clear the driver was looking at his phone or doing something else. Probably checking the computer installed for diagnostics of the autopilot system. If it's in self driving mode and you are the engineer in charge, you'd want to constantly check what the system is seeing vs the actual conditions on the road.