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Another Tesla on autopilot steers towards a barrier

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Re: Another Tesla on autopilot steers towards a barrier

#461

Post by [deleted] »

duiker101 wrote: post #351
l8again wrote: post #340

An honest question. Are any of these autonomous driving systems open source or peer reviewed in any way? If not, isn't it really weird that we are talking about regulations even though the underlying technology is not even peer reviewed? How do we know (mathematical proofs, etc.) that a self-driving car manufacturer has done a good enough job if all of that is proprietary?

In one of the earlier discussions about this(like, last year) I remember an engeneer's comment about how one of the major manufacturer's (Toyota maybe?) code base for the monitoring system of the car was something to behold. On the lines of hundreds of global variables and basically unexisting standards. Now, I don't say that their or Tesla's autopilot are the same, but it wouldn't really surprise me either.

[deleted]

Re: Another Tesla on autopilot steers towards a barrier

#462

Post by HeyLaughingBoy »

readhn wrote: post #406
HeyLaughingBoy wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dubbed this property "cognizant failure" I like that term. When I was involved in the medical instrumentation field, we had a similar concern: it was possible for an instrument to produce a measurement, e.g., the concentration of HIV in blood serum, that was completely incorrect, but plausible since it's within the expected clinical range. This is the worst-case scenario: a result that is wrong, but looks OK. This…

"here's the HIV level, but the incubation temperature went slightly out of range when I was processing it, so use caution interpreting it." there is no "slightly out of range". Its either in the range or outside. Valid or invalid, when it comes to critical tests like these. if temperature deviation is outside of acceptable deviation range then thats a system fault and result should have been considered invalid. Back…

It's so nice to see people critique products they know nothing about with absolutely no useful context!

You do realize that I gave a much simplified view of the situation as this is a web forum discussing a related subject, not an actual design review of the instrument, right?

To any process I can set multiple "acceptable ranges" depending on what I want to accomplish. There can be a "reject" range, "ok, but warning" range, "perfect, no problem" range, or a "machine must be broken" range

Everything is context dependent; nothing is absolute.

Re: Another Tesla on autopilot steers towards a barrier

#463

Post by readhn »

lisper wrote: post #450
readhn wrote: post #447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

so due to this significantly cheaper availability of computing power one would think that today we would be making enormous progress every day. my phone is more powerful today than most powerful desktop back in 1995. And what do i use my phone for? check email and read HN.

> one would think that today we would be making enormous progress every day Actually, we are. Back in the day, I would have given long odds against seeing autonomous cars on the road in my lifetime. Notwithstanding the odd mishap, today's autonomous vehicles actually work much better than I would have thought possible. > And what do i use my phone for? check email and read HN. What's wrong with that? Add wikipedia to…

> Actually, we are. Back in the day, I would have given long odds against seeing autonomous cars on the road in my lifetime. Notwithstanding the odd mishap, today's autonomous vehicles actually work much better than I would have thought possible.

you are probably correct. in comparison with the past we are moving fast, it just feels that we could do so much more with what we have.

> It's true that society doesn't seem to be making very effective use of this new super power. But that doesn't make it any less of a super power.

this is the sad part. but on the flip side this means there are so many opportunities for those who have the desire and drive to make things better.

Re: Another Tesla on autopilot steers towards a barrier

#464

Post by w_t_payne »

Piskvorrr wrote: post #433
w_t_payne wrote: post #333

I would argue that these incidents indicate a need for aerospace levels of quality assurance. With the right tooling this does not need to be expensive. I hope that incidents like this encourage people to develop open source tooling to support safer software and higher levels of quality. We can see how lives might depend on it.

Aerospace QA is expensive by definition, because reliability nines generally are, whatever the industry: an additional nine costs 10x. You can go cheaper, but with a corresponding decrease in reliability.

A lot (but not all) of the costs are due to additional process steps that can be automated.

I think we can dramatically increase safety and quality by selectively adopting some of the concepts from aerospace and aggressively automating them.

Traceability; NLP for requirements etc..

Re: Another Tesla on autopilot steers towards a barrier

#465

Post by slededit »

andosa wrote: post #439
lisper wrote: post #122

Here is my armchair diagnosis: right before the car veers towards the barrier it drives through a stretch of road where the only visible lane marker is on the left. Then the right lane marker comes into view at about the point where the lane starts to widen out for the lane split. The lines that will become the right and left lane markers of the split left and right lanes respectively are right next to the van in fro…

> It's not possible to engineer an autonomous system that never fails, but it is possible to engineer one in such a way that it never fails to detect that it has failed. That sounds highly dubious. Here's a hypothetical scenario: there's a very drunk person on the sidewalk. As a human driver, you know he might act unexpectedly so you slow down and steer to the left. This will help you avoid a deadly collision as the…

You don't even need to go to the level of a drunk person. Imagine driving down a suburban street and a small child darts out onto the road chasing after a ball.

Re: Another Tesla on autopilot steers towards a barrier

#466

Post by pooya13 »

lisper wrote: post #122

Here is my armchair diagnosis: right before the car veers towards the barrier it drives through a stretch of road where the only visible lane marker is on the left. Then the right lane marker comes into view at about the point where the lane starts to widen out for the lane split. The lines that will become the right and left lane markers of the split left and right lanes respectively are right next to the van in fro…

I don't mean to call the OP lier but anyone knows if there is any evidence whatsoever that this video was taken on an autopilot engaged Tesla? Just want to be sure about it before I form judgment against Tesla.

Re: Another Tesla on autopilot steers towards a barrier

#467

Post by leetbulb »

lisper wrote: post #411
leetbulb wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's not possible to engineer an autonomous system that never fails, but it is possible to engineer one in such a way that it never fails to detect that it has failed. Wouldn't the system doing the checking be considered an autonomous system...that could also fail?

No, because the monitoring system doesn't interact with an environment, so its job is much simpler. This is actually the reason that cognizant failure works.

Thank you for the concise answer. I was just about to ask if you have a blog, but found your website in your HN profile. I know what I am doing for the rest of the night :P PS: Funny that we've both written a double ratchet implementation in JS :)

Re: Another Tesla on autopilot steers towards a barrier

#468

Post by dingo_bat »

Someone1234 wrote: post #240
lisper wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if a simple explanation exists, I'd love to hear it Basically it's a matter of having multiple redundant sensors and sounding the alarm if they don't all agree on what is going on, and also checking if what they think is going on is in the realm of reasonable possibility based on some a priori model (e.g. if suddenly all of your sensors tell you that you are 100 miles from where you were one second ago, that's prob…

That's exactly how a lot of commercial aircraft systems work, they have three, if two agree and one disagree then that one is ignored. But it is more complicated than that when you're talking about algorithms and complex systems. If you had three of the same exact system, they'd likely all make the same mistake and thus you'd gain no safety improvement (except actual malfunctions, not logical limitations). I would li…

As far as I know things like the space shuttle had 3 different guidance computers developed by 3 independent teams. They were given the same requirements and came up with the hardware and software independently.

Re: Another Tesla on autopilot steers towards a barrier

#469

Post by dingo_bat »

ucaetano wrote: post #300
hw wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think more people need to embrace and understand the fact that we are a long way from having fully autonomous vehicles that you can just give the steering reins to from start to finish. The term 'Autopilot' gives off the wrong idea that the driver can sit back and relax while the car brings you from point A to point B safely. The same is happening with chatbots - more and more businesses think they can put a chatbo…

> I think more people need to embrace and understand the fact that we are a long way from having fully autonomous vehicles that you can just give the steering reins to from start to finish Apparently, we're not, as Waymo has shown. > The term 'Autopilot' gives off the wrong idea that the driver can sit back and relax while the car brings you from point A to point B safely. Agreed, the "but that's not how autopilots w…

> Apparently, we're not, as Waymo has shown.

Can you point me to a website or store where I can buy my fully autonomous waymo car? I doubt waymo is even at par with tesla, considering tesla is actually selling cars. Waymo is just vaporware at this point.

Re: Another Tesla on autopilot steers towards a barrier

#470

Post by dingo_bat »

GoToRO wrote: post #8
ProblemFactory wrote: post #4

If Tesla autopilot relies on good quality road markings, then it's not yet usable in 80% of the world.

It's not usable anywhere. What if I draw a fake line on the road? will it follow it? what if you have wet paint and another vehicle smudges it diagonally to the lane?

I don't think fake lines is a genuine concern. What if somebody plants anti personnel mines under the road? What if your tesla just assumes it's a normal road and drives over it?
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