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Mobileye says its software would have seen pedestrian in Uber fatality

reuters.com

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Re: Mobileye says its software would have seen pedestrian in Uber fatality

#11

Post by CupOfJava »

reificator wrote: post #3

Look. It's generating bad press right now for your industry. I get that. I also think that in the long run your industry will be far safer than human drivers. But now is not the time to post speculative bullshit like this. Would your car also have run into a school shooting unarmed? You weren't in that situation, you don't know all the edge cases, the best you can say is that you had a similar situation under control…

Why is it a 'similar situation'? They fed the same footage that the Uber system had access to.

Re: Mobileye says its software would have seen pedestrian in Uber fatality

#12

Post by gok »

We really won’t know what happened until the NTSB report comes out, but I’m not convinced this was an object detection failure. It seems really possible to me that the sensors detected the bike-walking person as a bicyclist, and a bicyclist in a different lane is not a reason to slam on the brakes. They might have just forgotten to add a rule that a bicyclist in a parallel lane is a reason to brake if it’s perpendicular to you.

Re: Mobileye says its software would have seen pedestrian in Uber fatality

#13

Post by techtofixpeople »

Good for these people. Uber has lidar+radar that should have seen this and did not make an effort to publicly respond to the police video that was released. Everyone who works on these problems knows camera exposure is very tricky... And in this case deceptive.

Re: Mobileye says its software would have seen pedestrian in Uber fatality

#14

Post by wjnc »

reificator wrote: post #7
icebraining wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One fear is that Uber's mistakes will endanger the whole self-driving industry, by making people afraid. I'd say these companies are trying to separate themselves to avoid that.

That doesn't make it the right time to publicly announce "we wouldn't have killed someone here, look how great we are".

Near my hometown a Tesla crashed and the crash killed the driver recently. Guess who gave a statement within days blaming the driver for speeding? For a European that was quite the novelty (and probably illegal, although AFAIK deceased lack privacy protection since not a natural person).

Re: Mobileye says its software would have seen pedestrian in Uber fatality

#15

Post by reificator »

wjnc wrote: post #10
reificator wrote: post #3

Look. It's generating bad press right now for your industry. I get that. I also think that in the long run your industry will be far safer than human drivers. But now is not the time to post speculative bullshit like this. Would your car also have run into a school shooting unarmed? You weren't in that situation, you don't know all the edge cases, the best you can say is that you had a similar situation under control…

I agree. But suppose the difference mentioned (1 sec) is true. That's such a large difference that what they call for (formal outside verification) sounds pretty reasonable. This debate will always be hard since it will involve deaths, with AI and video involved.

You're right. Developing video games has taught me that a second is a long time. But we still don't even know that Uber didn't detect them that early. The CV system or other sensors could have picked out the pedestrian but something else went wrong instead.

I tend to think that if Uber did detect the pedestrian, they would have said something by now. But perhaps they prefer the optics of not having seen her to the optics of seeing her but not braking at all. We simply don't know.

Imagine that press conference.

> Uber: "After examining the black box on the car we have determined that the car detected the pedestrian but failed to brake."

> Reporter: "Was this because the pedestrian was a woman?"

> Reporter: "Did the car do this to protect the life of the Uber employee inside?"

> Reporter: "Was her credit score too low?"

Re: Mobileye says its software would have seen pedestrian in Uber fatality

#16

Post by reificator »

CupOfJava wrote: post #11
reificator wrote: post #3

Look. It's generating bad press right now for your industry. I get that. I also think that in the long run your industry will be far safer than human drivers. But now is not the time to post speculative bullshit like this. Would your car also have run into a school shooting unarmed? You weren't in that situation, you don't know all the edge cases, the best you can say is that you had a similar situation under control…

Why is it a 'similar situation'? They fed the same footage that the Uber system had access to.

In the lab, yes. Presumably in real time. Presumably without configuring things differently than normal, except that they used a pre-recorded feed. Presumably without multiple attempts. Presumably without...

Re: Mobileye says its software would have seen pedestrian in Uber fatality

#17

Post by [deleted] »

bsaul wrote: post #9

i get the feeling of some people here calling for bad taste, but mobileye ceo has been a long time proponent of playing it safe, underpromise, warning against the theoretical limits of modern technics, and has claimed for a very long time that fully autonomous driving wasn't doable in a near future ( proof of that in the numerous videos you can find on youtube). i guess it's only fair for him to speak up one more tim…

[deleted]

Re: Mobileye says its software would have seen pedestrian in Uber fatality

#18

Post by gvb »

bsaul wrote: post #9

i get the feeling of some people here calling for bad taste, but mobileye ceo has been a long time proponent of playing it safe, underpromise, warning against the theoretical limits of modern technics, and has claimed for a very long time that fully autonomous driving wasn't doable in a near future ( proof of that in the numerous videos you can find on youtube). i guess it's only fair for him to speak up one more tim…

Speaking up is understandable: Mobileye supplies its technology to Aptiv who supplies the system to Volvo for the XC90. The reports are that their system was disabled by Uber at the time of the accident. It is understandable that Mobileye does not want to share the blame in this case.

Ref: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-26/uber-disa...

“We don’t want people to be confused or think it was a failure of the technology that we supply for Volvo, because that’s not the case,” Zach Peterson, a spokesman for Aptiv Plc, said by phone. The Volvo XC90’s standard advanced driver-assistance system “has nothing to do” with the Uber test vehicle’s autonomous driving system, he said.

[...]

Intel Corp.’s Mobileye, which makes chips and sensors used in collision-avoidance systems and is a supplier to Aptiv.

Re: Mobileye says its software would have seen pedestrian in Uber fatality

#20

Post by thrownaway954 »

icebraining wrote: post #5
reificator wrote: post #3

Look. It's generating bad press right now for your industry. I get that. I also think that in the long run your industry will be far safer than human drivers. But now is not the time to post speculative bullshit like this. Would your car also have run into a school shooting unarmed? You weren't in that situation, you don't know all the edge cases, the best you can say is that you had a similar situation under control…

One fear is that Uber's mistakes will endanger the whole self-driving industry, by making people afraid. I'd say these companies are trying to separate themselves to avoid that.

i know it will sound insensitive, but one person dying is not that big of a deal... heck 1000 people dying is only 10% of the amount of people that die each year for drunk driving[1] and you don't see liquor being pulled off the shelves.

however i do see how people (including me) are sheep and can be manipulated into believing anything. taxis and trucker unions can use this an opportunity to condemn self driving vehicles.

[1] https://www.nhtsa.gov/risky-driving/drunk-driving

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