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Why emergency braking systems sometimes hit parked cars and lane dividers

arstechnica.com

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Re: Why emergency braking systems sometimes hit parked cars and lane dividers

#171

Post by rsynnott »

atomical wrote: post #86
mattnewport wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That very much depends on where you live. It's generally a lot better in Europe for a variety of reasons: historical, political and geographical. I use public transit quite a bit here in Vancouver but my limited experience of it in SF gives me some appreciation why people might not want to use it there.

People smell better in Europe? When people trot out their arguments against public transportation they always refer to the inefficiencies and completely ignore the human element. No one wants to be crammed in a small space with a bunch of strangers every day.

Possibly not showering is just more socially acceptable in the US or something? I dunno, I see this a lot on these discussions, but it’d be fairly rare that I encounter a notably smelly person on public transport here.

Being on a bus/tram/train with strangers never really bothered me, to be honest. When I walk down the street or onto a shop, I’m also surrounded by strangers; what’s the issue?

Re: Why emergency braking systems sometimes hit parked cars and lane dividers

#172

Post by focal-point »

lovemenot wrote: post #90
dchichkov wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It might be even worse than that. They likely think that they are on the path, because they are running a massive data-collection campaign on the sensor suite installed on the fleet. But the reality might be different. Running a data collection campaign is easy. Engineering products with machine learning is hard. Most of the teams don't even know what they need to know, to do it right. And so they engage into classic…

>> Running a data collection campaign is easy. Not sure why you think so. If this is correct, there should be many other equivalent or better campaigns currently running at the same scale, right? On the contrary, I imagine that data is a very significant limiting factor in this field. Both data and computation are hard problems. AFAIK Tesla should still be leading in the former category by virtue of the number of its…

why don't they'd partner with Waymo? They can build the cars and collect the data, while Waymo can provide the ML expertise. I'm sure Tesla+Waymo would be a hit among a certain type of crowd.

Re: Why emergency braking systems sometimes hit parked cars and lane dividers

#173

Post by rsynnott »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #152
beefield wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No one wants to be crammed in a small space with a bunch of strangers every day. I take 15 minutes crammed in a small space with a bunch of strangers over one hour of solitude in a small metal box with windows any day. Nobody has managed to explain me how self driving cars reduces congestion. It is space that is the limiting factor, and I do not understand how autonomous cars reduce the need for that. Vice versa, r…

> I take 15 minutes crammed in a small space with a bunch of strangers over one hour of solitude in a small metal box with windows any day. Why those durations? I would expect a typical car trip to be faster than transit, since it takes a direct route with no stops. If transit is even as fast as driving, I'll take it 90% of the time. But that's quite an undertaking.

In a dense city with a lot of traffic, public transport will often be faster than cars because it has segregated (for trains, metros etc) or semi-segragated (most trams, many bus systems) routes.

Re: Why emergency braking systems sometimes hit parked cars and lane dividers

#174

Post by ghaff »

drblast wrote: post #57

I don't follow this that closely and I've tended to think of self-driving cars as an inevitable thing that results from march toward a "perfect" system. But I think one of our blind spots as a culture is the assumption that nothing bad will happen if you drive a car correctly and follow all of the rules, and I think that assumption might prove to be wrong and that collisions are an inherent aspect of driving a car in…

>But I think one of our blind spots as a culture is the assumption that nothing bad will happen if you drive a car correctly and follow all of the rules, and I think that assumption might prove to be wrong and that collisions are an inherent aspect of driving a car in an unpredictable world.

That assumption is clearly wrong. There are other drivers but even leaving that aside for the distant day when most vehicles are autonomous.

- Debris of various kinds

- Mechanical failures of vehicles

- Environmental factors, e.g. ice causing skids

- Road damage

- Animals

etc.

Re: Why emergency braking systems sometimes hit parked cars and lane dividers

#175

Post by YeGoblynQueenne »

binarybits wrote: post #101
YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Timothy B. Lee, the author of the article, was caught up in the early hype about "self-driving" cars, obviously before he (or many others) had a good understanding of the technology. He's covered the field extensively. Now that the limitations of the technology are becoming more clear, it seems to me he's trying to negotiate the very narrow border between keeping his original enthusiasm up, and not spreading…

Timothy B. Lee here. You are correct, except that I think it's a mistake to treat ADAS systems as "self-driving cars." I'm bullish on true self-driving car projects like Waymo and Cruise. I think ADAS systems have a lot of problems that have become more clear to me as I've covered them in more depth.

Ohi Timothy! Great to see you here :)

I think that full autonomy (level 4 and 5) is an AI-complete problem and a true solution is many, many years away. On the other hand, I'm not an expert (I'm doing an AI PhD but on a different subject) so I may be overestimating the difficulties involved.

One problem with reporting on autonomous driving is that a lot of the technology is proprietary and the research takes place behind closed doors, so it's very hard to understand exactly where the state of the art is. We're left with the announcements from the companies who actually sell it, that will inevitably tend to be overinflated.

As the technology becomes more common, I guess we'll all end up adjusting our expectations, one way or another. I'm looking forward to your future articles :)

Re: Why emergency braking systems sometimes hit parked cars and lane dividers

#177

Post by YeGoblynQueenne »

ScottBurson wrote: post #71
YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> It sounds like “Autopilot” has no world model (or an extremely basic one) It should be noted that no AI system has anything like that. A model of the entire world is beyond current technological capabilities.

I believe the meaning in this context is just a model saying what objects are nearby, where they are, how large they are, and what their velocity vectors are, and maybe guesses as to what kind of object (car, truck, pedestrian, lamppost, etc.) they are.

Mnyeah, I see what you mean, but I wouldn't call that a world model. Nouveau AI is great for classification, so it can certainly recognise what the individual objects around it are.

However, a "world model" should include the relations between identified objects, in some representation that can then be used for inference.

For example, a classifier can label an object in the path of a vehicle as, e.g. "tree", but a world-model would have to go further than that and provide some context about trees, why they don't normally grow in the middle of roads and why they should be steered around or otherwise avoided.

This kind of world model, that places entities in the world into a complex relational context, is, indeed, beyond our current capabilities (at least for the real world, as opposed to controlled artificial worlds).

I really don't think that's controversial. However, I got a few downvotes on my previous comment so I must have misunderstood the comment I was replying to.

Re: Why emergency braking systems sometimes hit parked cars and lane dividers

#178

Post by YeGoblynQueenne »

trashcan wrote: post #105
YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #59

>> So the people designing the next generation of autonomous driving systems are going to need a fundamental philosophical shift. Instead of treating cruise control, lane-keeping, and emergency braking as distinct systems, advanced driver assistance systems need to become integrated systems with a sophisticated understanding of the car's surroundings. My understanding was that self-driving systems are trained end-to-…

"braking"!

Acknowledged :0

Re: Why emergency braking systems sometimes hit parked cars and lane dividers

#179

Post by amelius »

stephengillie wrote: post #138
smogcutter wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, I'm also pessimistic about self driving cars, but I think it's reasonable to assume that Tesla engineers are aware that machine learning is hard.

Yandex Taxi has Youtube videos of their self-driving car. This video of a car navigating a snowy Moscow street is especially impressive [0]. They don't seem to come up in self-driving car discussions on HN. [0] https://youtu.be/Bx08yRsR9ow

A system which uses a LiDAR can be conceptually a lot simpler than one without. It tells you where all the obstacles are (stationary or not), so it naturally circumvents the main problem of Autopilot.

Re: Why emergency braking systems sometimes hit parked cars and lane dividers

#180

Post by Filligree »

focal-point wrote: post #172
lovemenot wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Running a data collection campaign is easy. Not sure why you think so. If this is correct, there should be many other equivalent or better campaigns currently running at the same scale, right? On the contrary, I imagine that data is a very significant limiting factor in this field. Both data and computation are hard problems. AFAIK Tesla should still be leading in the former category by virtue of the number of its…

why don't they'd partner with Waymo? They can build the cars and collect the data, while Waymo can provide the ML expertise. I'm sure Tesla+Waymo would be a hit among a certain type of crowd.

Waymo seems to be doing just fine on their own. I'm not sure they feel they need any partnership.

They just ordered some 30,000-ish cars, so it would seem they're entering the mass-production phase.

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