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Self-Driving Cars Can Handle Neither Rain nor Sleet nor Snow

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Re: Self-Driving Cars Can Handle Neither Rain nor Sleet nor Snow

#221

Post by ghaff »

Scarblac wrote: post #178
edejong wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason Amazon plans like that is because it is faster. Left turns with traffic lights have a higher average waiting time. Also, the route can have left turns, they just have a much higher penalty.

That sounds like an assumption that holds in the US much more than elsewhere, because in the US you don't have to wait for the traffic light if you turn right, but elsewhere you do.

The problem is usually more with unprotected left turns at stop signs [or pulling out of driveways]--not traffic lights. (Though traffic lights can be an even bigger issue if there's no left turn arrow--leading to people making turns when the light has either just turned red or it's just turned green and the oncoming traffic technically has priority.)

Re: Self-Driving Cars Can Handle Neither Rain nor Sleet nor Snow

#224

Post by kasey_junk »

semi-extrinsic wrote: post #166
kasey_junk wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In most places that have snow removal equipment “snow days” are actually called more frequently for cold. Leaving kids out in the cold is the issue. Driving in sbasic snow is a solved problem for humans in much of the world.

> Leaving kids out in the cold is the issue. I live in Norway and beg to differ. We see temperatures down to -40 C in winter, and the kids love it. We don't have "snow days", it's literally not a thing here. All you need is proper clothing, some seal fat for rubbing on your face, and cold weather experience among the adults (checking the kids faces for warning signs of frostbite, etc.). 95% of Norwegian babies and to…

“All you need is proper clothing, some seal fat for rubbing on your face”

These are not things widely available to many Chicago children.

Re: Self-Driving Cars Can Handle Neither Rain nor Sleet nor Snow

#225

Post by tiagoafpereira »

trashtester wrote: post #214
tiagoafpereira wrote: post #204

I still cannot comprehend the current push for automated driving. We, collectively, not just the US, have a problem with too many cars and instead of reducing said number of cars we want to make them self crashing? Instead of investing heavily on public transit systems we keep feeding this fable that somehow, in the near future, cars driven by computers will do at least as good a job of driving as sentient, sober peo…

Self driving cars, when perfected, will dratically reduce the number of cars. Once there Uber self driving cars will then be both cheaper, safer and more reliable than your own car. And you don't need to park them. Only those with special requirements (ie professionals that need to store equipement in their car) need to have their own, the rest of us can use a taxi service. Furthermore, when human driven cars are rem…

I don't deny that the bright future you've just described will happen (well, might happen) but putting it in a time frame of less than 20 years seems to me just wishful thinking.

If only I could see the same enthusiasm for say, improving public transit range, infrastructure and operational costs... nope, auto-cars will save us.

Take a look at Germany, they've just launched the world's first hydrogen-powered train.

As a side note:

The total economic potential is huge. Anyone able to attain near monopoly for one of the technologies [...]

Economic potential and monopolies don't mix very well, unless you're one of the shareholders of said monopoly.

Re: Self-Driving Cars Can Handle Neither Rain nor Sleet nor Snow

#226

Post by mannykannot »

ghaff wrote: post #190
jakobegger wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Humans are good at improvising. Not using all the lanes when the lane markings are covered by snow, and the road is slippery, sounds like a reasonable strategy. And nobody ever told us that's what we should do. With autonomous vehicles, you need to plan every situation in advance. Our current AI technologies can't improvise. It seems to me that current AI is basically just a decision tree with some neural networks sp…

More like decision tree/rules engine with pattern recognizing neural networks underneath. You detect features and then take largely pre-programmed actions based on those features.

The larger the "largely pre-programmed", the less it is like improvisation, until, at some point, it isn't. As I suggested above, effective improvisation probably requires causal reasoning.

Re: Self-Driving Cars Can Handle Neither Rain nor Sleet nor Snow

#227

Post by tiagoafpereira »

krapp wrote: post #216
tiagoafpereira wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how long will it take them to realize that it won't happen before someone cracks the artificial general intelligence problem... I don't know what ticks me off the most, people believing that these companies can easily solve the automated driving problem or these companies stubbornly pushing for it.

I'm sure plenty of engineers actually working on the problem are aware of how difficult it is... but they're not the ones doing the pushing or making the grandiose claims.

Fine by me, research is research.

I'm just utterly surprised by how so many people think this is a fixable problem in the near future, it's not.

How long until people realize that?

The next AI winter won't come soon enough.

Re: Self-Driving Cars Can Handle Neither Rain nor Sleet nor Snow

#228

Post by rademacher »

apcragg wrote: post #220
Animats wrote: post #156

The article is kind of vague. What they seem to be doing is operating a ground penetrating radar under the vehicle so that underground details can be used as positional references. This is useful only if you have a map which includes that data. At best, this tells you where you are. It tells you nothing about what's ahead. LIDAR units that return "first and last" returns are helpful in dealing with rain and fog. The…

Small nitpick. The range resolution improves with increasing pulse/chirp/waveform bandwidth, not increasing carrier frequency. It's true that at higher carrier frequencies there is more bandwidth available and thus better range resolution is possible but the relationship is slightly different than "delta_r ~ frequency"

The relationship is cT/2, where c is the speed of light, and T is the pulse length, if the waveform is CW. Note that in this case T can limit the minimum range you can detect. Or you can use c/(2B) where B is the bandwidth of the signal as you stated. I believe the limit is wavelength/2 for resolution though.

Re: Self-Driving Cars Can Handle Neither Rain nor Sleet nor Snow

#229

Post by trashtester »

Piskvorrr wrote: post #205
taeric wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My naive view is that a simple RFID standardization would solve that. Together with some regulations, of course. Though, this already has to be regulated. Not just anyone can put up a "only park during certain times" sign. (Right?)

Sure, put up a sign "do not park if moon full, no red cars at any time", on your own property. This only differs from the regulated road parking by attributes that are not visible on the ground (ownership). But worse: RFID makes for duplicate signage. What if the visible and data signage differ?

For the last part: If the cars, for the most part, actually are able to read signs (which they should), the RFID would serve as additional security.

And in this case, any discrepancy would be reported back by any car passing by, so the error could be corrected quickly.

Re: Self-Driving Cars Can Handle Neither Rain nor Sleet nor Snow

#230

Post by ghaff »

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #91
njarboe wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the current legal environment, self driving taxi cabs everywhere at all times will never exist. Waymo seems to think they can work in Arizona desert though. How many deaths per year would be acceptable? Like you mention, in the US, it seems that zero deaths per year, similar to commercial aviation, would be required. It is a bit of a shame that a tech that could save a million lives a year globally won't be deploy…

>> On the other hand, I'm sure people in India or China will be happy to build and deploy them with much higher failure rates. You might have seen this internet classic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjrEQaG5jPM [India Driving] Driving in India is notoriously chaotic and if self-driving cars are ever deployed there in our lifetime, they will come with a safety guarantee about equal to a car driven by a blind dog wi…

You don't need to go to India:

(Paris) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lay8aZlsbB0

(Manhattan) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8WiJgI3N4A

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