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Driverless Hype Collides with Merciless Reality

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Re: Driverless Hype Collides with Merciless Reality

#381

Post by logifail »

Consultant32452 wrote: post #353
logifail wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a human drives sufficiently poorly they will eventually lose their right to drive on public roads for a time. Could this/should this also apply for autonomous vehicles? If so, how?

Sure. I'm open to suggestions, but I'll offer financial liability for damages as an opening bid.

I suspect that the corporate entities involved have such deep pockets and/or so many lawyers and lobbyists that won't work.

Instead, how about:

All new autonomous vehicle configurations (let's call that the algos + sensors + vehicle) have to take some kind of actual driving test, just like us humans do.

Maybe the public could even help design a good test? "Not driving at speed into a stationary fire truck which is parked on the highway right in front of you" would be one element I'd want to see tested.

If an autonomous vehicle is involved in an accident, and the algo/sensors/vehicle are found to be (partially) at fault the configuration earns penalty points.

If that configuration earns enough penalty points over a period of time, the entire configuration loses its certification, plus a fine, plus a mandatory re-test.

This method appears to work reasonably well in dealing with us not-always-perfect human drivers, and ought to concentrate the minds of the designers/developers/managers behind autonomous vehicles.

Re: Driverless Hype Collides with Merciless Reality

#383

Post by 100ideas »

xnx wrote: post #326
briandear wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aircraft are the perfect driverless technology candidate.

Also trains

Yeah and sailboats it’s and horses too!

anyone have any idea of how frequently horse-drawn carriages crashed in dense urban inner city environments 120 years ago normalized against the incidence of crashes for contemporary cars on the same streets at the same speeds?

Maybe this could form the basis for a kind Turing test for level 1-4 autonomous Vehicles.

Re: Driverless Hype Collides with Merciless Reality

#385

Post by glaberficken »

100ideas wrote: post #379
techiferous wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Other edge cases include: Amish buggies, rotaries in Boston, Syracuse's upside down traffic light (green is on top), etc. The possibilities are endless; how can you test them all? Humans are really good about adapting to novel situations on the fly, not so much computers.

One approach would be to record 100-to-1000 trials of how human drivers navigate each particular edge case in vehicles instrumented for autonomous driving. Sadly, no one seems to have figured out a way to economically motivate human drivers to do this.

The problem are not the expected edge cases, but the unexpected ones. No amount of hard coded reactions are going to do for those.

Re: Driverless Hype Collides with Merciless Reality

#386

Post by slavik81 »

stale2002 wrote: post #67
djsumdog wrote: post #15

I think a lot of people in this field did see this coming. I knew a few people in this space about a year ago and I pretty much hear: "realistically, 15 years out at the earliest." I really really hate the concept of a driverless car. It's an incredibly difficult problem space; and for the same cost, America could build up municipal rail and bus infrastructure to where they were in the 1940s/1950s. We need more citie…

Driverless cars might be a bad idea. City driving is a hard problem space, and all we'd achieve is cooler taxis. The real game changer is instead driverless trucks. Shipping is both a trillion dollar industry, and the problem space of "highway driving when it is sunny out" is much much easier than the consumer usecase, while still being extremely valuable.

> all we'd achieve is cooler taxis

I think you underestimate the impact of ubiquitous, free valet parking on urban design. We surround everything with parking to minimize walking distance to/from our vehicles, but you could organise things very differently if everyone was picked up and dropped off.

You could also park cars bumper-to-bumper, because you don't need trusted human drivers to move the cars boxing you in. Removing isles from the parking lot would nearly double the number of cars that could fit in a given space.

It's counter-intuative, but I think driverless cars may eventually make cities more walkable.

Re: Driverless Hype Collides with Merciless Reality

#387

Post by pauljurczak »

ehsankia wrote: post #354
wpietri wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think his note clarifies it pretty well: "This is what Uber, Lyft, and conventional taxi services can do today." What I've seen about Waymo (and maybe I've missed something) is very hazy. And it's not out yet. I'll be very surprised if they go from "operating in secret" to "completely competitive with Lyft" in one jump. My guess is that there will be significant limitations for whatever their first release is.

Waymo is available right now, and has been for almost a year, to normal non-employee citizens, in Phoenix, albeit behind a private invite system. And as mentioned above, it'll become an open beta by 2019. Also, most of the limitation at this point has to do with regulation, they'd be in many more places if not for that. That is much much closer than 2035.

The question is, does it qualify as 100% driverless? I don't think so. Waymo service is partially teleoperated.

Re: Driverless Hype Collides with Merciless Reality

#388

Post by fouc »

lotu wrote: post #338
fouc wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do humans handle edge cases anyways? I think it comes down to being able to model the world around us, having a model for human behavior, animal behavior, etc. If we see a baby deer, we look for the mother deer. It feels like we're also really good at creating multiple open-ended stimulations in the back of our mind about how things might play out, where they can easily be paused or fleshed out depending on which…

> How do humans handle edge cases anyways? 30,000 deaths per year suggest that humans fail at these edge cases all the time. Maybe ate their best a human outperforms a machine but as any person who drives if other drivers are at their best.

Divide by millions. Statistically quite low failure.

Re: Driverless Hype Collides with Merciless Reality

#389

Post by alistairSH »

ahyattdev wrote: post #360
alistairSH wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not as good as Germany or DC. Did you just claim DC public transit is good? Wow. Coherent bus lines are few and far between. Light rail is non-existent. And the Metro is falling apart at the seems... Prone to excessive delays. Entire lines are brought down for extended periods to perform decades of deferred maintenance. There's no ring routes - to get from Dulles to Rockville, you have to go all the way downtown and…

A ring route from Bethesda to Largo is under construction and it's called the Purple Line. Metrorail could be better and has it's own shortcomings but it is one of the best in the US and far from nonexistent.

I said light rail (trams, streetcars) is non-existent. There is a test line in South DC, but nothing that’s actually useful for commuting or getting across the city.

My wife tried to use Metro for her Reston->downtown commute. It was a disaster - rail delays made it completely untenable. Then she tried the bus. It was more consistent, but overcrowded. She ended up driving 4/5 days because it was faster, cheaper, and more consistent.

Re: Driverless Hype Collides with Merciless Reality

#390

Post by TomMarius »

foobiekr wrote: post #323
TomMarius wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cars could communicate together though

I do not understand how anyone thinks this will work in any scenario that includes a malicious actor.

I do not understand how anyone thinks it would be the only thing the car would use
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