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Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

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Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#981

Post by MertsA »

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…

When your resolution is low enough to not see this they stop calling it LIDAR and start calling it a rangefinder. If this was actually a fundamental limitation of the sensor then that's the crappiest LIDAR unit I've ever heard of. When I first heard about the accident my initial reaction was "this is why vision only systems are inadequate". The fact that it didn't even detect the object at all before it collided with it with lidar, radar, and vision is inexcusable. This could set fully autonomous cars back enough that forget the cost of one life, this delay could kill tens of thousands because of a preventable accident.

Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#982

Post by MertsA »

jcims wrote: post #578
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…

I wonder if the driver grabbing the wheel disabled the response from the car.

The first reports indicated that the driver claimed they didn't notice the pedestrian until they heard the collision.

Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#983

Post by noobermin »

TeeWEE wrote: post #865
M4v3R wrote: post #842

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, this really paints a different picture. If Uber cars have video quality like the one in the Tweet they should not be on public roads at all. Edit: I'm not asserting that this is the only video that car "sees", but if it's not, it seems a bit disingenuous for Uber to share only this crappy low quality video with the police.

Maybe uber made the quality of the image worse? I just don't trust uber.

If that is true that would be egregious. I think that might qualify as tampering with evidence.

Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#984

Post by stuartgm »

voxadam wrote: post #699
stuartgm wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue is more with the dynamic range of the sensor than the ISO. Increasing the ISO would blow out the highlights long before providing sufficient detail of the shadows (not to mention the increased noise). Regardless of this camera's performance the LIDAR and other sensors should have picked this up.

Is there any reason it wouldn't be possible to employ multiple cameras each with varying gain/ISO/aperture/exposure/shutter-speed to combat the narrow dynamic range of the individual sensors? Basically create an HDR stream in parallel instead of in series by varying the settings from frame to frame. Disclaimer: I have a frustratingly poor understanding of this subject, something I desperately need to remedy.

This sort of method is used in the Canon DSLR custom firmware Magic Lantern for HDR video - it brackets the exposure by ISO. However you have some problems with moving subjects: https://youtu.be/5me5jEr4ldQ?t=415 (warning - flashing images)

Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#985

Post by brewdad »

niftich wrote: post #243
pdonis wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The gap between street lights (and hence the person) was in the field of view of the camera the entire time But the gap between street lights is going to be very hard to see into. > I'm confident my eyes are good enough that I would have been able to see this person at night in these lighting conditions. I think you're overconfident. Human low light vision is very good if there is low light everywhere. But it is no…

FWIW the spot where the crash happened is in fact badly lit. I know this anecdotally from having been at the location for events -- it's right next to a concert venue -- but it can also be seen on other dashcam videos. In this video [1] driving northbound, same as the vehicle in the crash, the car first goes under AZ-202, emerges under a streetlight, goes through a darker spot, then another streetlight (as you see th…

This site lies on the approach route for Sky Harbor airport. I'd imagine the street lights are intentionally designed to reduce light pollution at the expense of "on the ground" effects.

Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#986

Post by CamperBob2 »

dang wrote: post #787
CamperBob2 wrote: post #343

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…

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16644056 and marked it off-topic.

Nice. Let a hundred flowers bloom, right?

Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#987

Post by patentatt »

badthingfactory wrote: post #980
kalleboo wrote: post #907

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This doesn't even make sense, we can see in the video that the "driver" does look up and react. Why didn't they hit the brakes?

At least one study been done to see how responsive a passive "driver" of an autonomous vehicle can be. The study concluded a person that is required to intervene with an autonomous vehicle is no better than a drunk person. It makes sense. If the car is able to get you from point A to point B 99.9% of the time without an issue, are you really going to be paying attention that one time when a person walks out in front…

Maybe this suggests that an effective use of current (i.e., 99.9%) autonomous driving implementations would be a captain and co-captain type of scenario, where the car only responds to commands that are the same from both drivers, like a logical AND between driver inputs (within some tolerance, and filtered, etc.).

What if the promise of autonomous driving tech isn't to make human drivers obsolete, but to make human drivers nearly perfectly safe. What are the chances that an engaged human driver and an autonomous system would both, simultaneously give the same incorrect or dangerous driver input to a car? It's not as sexy as robot cars, but seems like a significant development over the current situation. Also, it seems like a viable way to test on public roads.

Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#988

Post by connorgutman »

Some thoughts from a Tempe / Phoenix pedestrian:

Arizona has the highest pedestrian death rate in the United States. Drivers are incredibly reckless here, and for people like myself who do not drive jaywalking is never an option. I will not excuse Uber's mistake here. There must be repercussions for their lack of oversight. However, I would like to defend Arizona's loose legislation surrounding self-driving testing on our streets. The honest answer is that the only way forward for self-driving adoption is through real-world data. It's the fastest way to reach global adoption. The faster that companies like Uber and Waymo can improve their technology, the faster we can see a reduction of human drivers on our roads. While this accident was horrible and must serve as a wakeup call, it must be acknowledged that there were 224 pedestrian deaths across Phoenix in 2017. In the past week alone there were 12 pedestrian deaths. This figure has actually increased over the years and makes Arizona a unique data point for auto companies. I am in no way suggesting that Uber should face zero repercussions. However, as a local pedestrian, if you gave me the option to magically switch every vehicle here over to Uber's technology with current specifications I'd take it in a heartbeat. I interact with these vehicles every day, and feel safer with them still.

Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#989

Post by dang »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #986
dang wrote: post #787

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16644056 and marked it off-topic.

Nice. Let a hundred flowers bloom, right?

Actually it was more flamebait than off topic, though the two are related.

Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#990

Post by user5994461 »

adamweld wrote: post #411
maxerickson wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I disagree, if you look at any of the Waymo videos you can see they have great recognition of every car, pedestrian, and obstacle within 100 meters of the car, and most of that data (point cloud lidar/radar at the very least) would work in pitch black without even headlights. Thus it's extremely reasonable to expect that autonomous vehicles will easily prevent scenarios like this. Inclement conditions, defensive driv…

If you look at any demo video from the manufacturer, the product is always perfect and amazing.
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