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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

#231

Post by Quanttek »

> The cluster of sensors, bolted underneath a chassis like a skid plate, can scan 10 feet beneath the ground to reveal soil, water, roots, and rocks. Once WaveSense has scanned an entire roadway, it creates a map of the subsurface strata that can determine the location of a vehicle within a few centimeters.

nononono! Even assuming you can create sufficient map data as soon as there is any kind of roadworks - or even only the winter cracking the asphahlt - your data will be useless. They don't even need to change the layout of the road. I'll never understand companies that focus so much on maps as priamry source of data. Every day, massive - temporary (construction site) or permanent - changes are occurring to the road network. Also, the centimeter-precise location of the vehicle doesn't matter that much. The actual situation on the road matters much more: You may need to drive a meter more to the left because of a parked truck, a vehicle may obscure signs, a tree branch hangs down into the road, some car is parked too close to intersection, etc.

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

#232

Post by justtopost »

darawk wrote: post #164
realandreskytt wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d recommend visiting Finland. In these parts, there’s basically 3 months of optimal visibility. The rest is fog, rain, snow, sleet and road conditions that would shut down most of US. Yet people drive and do so safely. “What people can do” is a bit different from “what an average us driver can be expected to do”

It may be that regions with better climates receive these vehicles first. It's relatively straightforward to detect the prevalent conditions and refuse to drive if the weather is outside the scope for which the vehicle is rated. As the technology matures, that scope should broaden.

So road trips are unaccounted for? Not a comforting idea that taking your car to another area will render it functionally unsafe on the (differently designed) roadways.

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

#233

Post by trashtester »

tiagoafpereira wrote: post #225
trashtester wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Well, about 20 years seems about right, for the full potential. But it is possible that part of the potential can be achieved much sooner, my guess is that the transformation will start in full around 2025.

On monopolies: Look at the big companies coming out of the internet revolution. Google, Facebook, Amazon, eBay, Uber and the rest are all near-monopolies in their core segments. As are older giants, such as Microsoft and Apple.

I'm not saying it is good, I'm just saying that the lesson from the previous wave, is that the winner takes it all. And as investors have learned this, they don't want to be late for the next party, hence the hype.

Of course, the risk that the bubble will burst at least once before the actual party, is pretty high.

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

#234

Post by village-idiot »

treerock wrote: post #160
village-idiot wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn’t findland have a higher vehicle fatality rate than other nations?

Seems to be less than half the US rate. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-r...

Ah, I was thinking of the UK. Finland has 50% more fatalities per mile than the UK.

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

#235

Post by josefresco »

grahamburger wrote: post #31
scj wrote: post #24

Driving in dry / warm conditions is simple mechanics. Driving in snow and ice is an art. In snow and ice, variables that are typically constant or static become dynamic. Formally dynamic variables now become multi-variable equations. For example: travelling down a hill normally requires dynamically factoring for the extra speed due to the incline. Under blizzard conditions you have to factor ice/snow volume, as well…

This sounds like exactly the kind of job for a computer. I live in an area that gets a lot of snow. The only 'safe' things for a human to do in snowy, icy, wet conditions are: slow down (a lot), leave a lot more following distance, stay home. I talk to a lot of people who seem to think that they are able to drive at full speed in the snow and complain about all of the 'out of town' drivers who slow down the roads bec…

"people who seem to think that they are able to drive at full speed in the snow and complain about all of the 'out of town' drivers who slow down the roads because they 'don't know how to drive in the snow.'"

The most raged filled responses I've even gotten to a comment on the Internet (20+ years) was when I called out aggressive snow drivers on Reddit. Despite being from, and living in the Northeast, the rage from fellow Northeasters whom I was accusing of driving like assholes was intense.

I recently drove several thousand miles this summer across many states (towing a trailer). It was only when I returned to the Northeast that I encountered aggressive, asshole drivers. It never occurred to me that maybe ... we're the baddies?

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

#236

Post by justtopost »

jakeogh wrote: post #170
mortehu wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet electronic stability control[1] works far better than human control on snow, wet roads, or ice. If you don't believe it, try an obstacle course on an ice track with and without it sometime (a required part of driver's ed in Norway). Example: https://youtu.be/hd5JMQr4qe0?t=56s https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_stability_control

Unscientific test. Give the human individual brake control (I can think of simple analog systems to do it). I learned to drive on ice covered dirt roads, many times I would have liked to have the ability to asymmetrically brake. A simple 2nd order gimble would be awesome. Having a single symmetric pedal dumbs it down way too much to make a pre-programmed car vs human comparison. Same thing goes for torque distributio…

I have A/B'd my xar in the snow with and without ABS.

Its a trade off.

If I mudulate my brake lightly while threshold braking, I can usually stop 15% faster than similar application of ABS. However, when I mindlessly slam on the brakes, ABS wins by a margin of 20%.

This is not the full picture however, and better driving skills alone do not negate some abs advantage. The main one being control in Turns while braking on poor surface. Without a knack for sliding sideways around corners, ABS was clearly superior when braking during a change of heading.

That all said, I run without ABS, as it suits my personal driving abilities. This would be a mistake for most people. Fortunate for me, most performance cars afford me the option, while some others consider it a critical system, and will not even activate the power steering unless detected as working. As if steering somehow became less critical without abs.

Modern car engineering is still trying to turn a tool into an appliance, and it feels like a severe mismatch of values to me.

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

#237

Post by justtopost »

kasey_junk wrote: post #224
semi-extrinsic wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Vasoline works fine. Affordable and available to even the poorest families. Lets not poke at cultural differences when its not relevant.

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

#238

Post by bkirkby »

seibelj wrote: post #116
jryle70 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure if you have read the article, but it's actually about a company called WaveSense who claims to have developed ground-penetrating radar that can greatly improve all weather autonomous driving. So yes, it's a daunting task but lot of people are working on it and progress is being made. I'd be interested to hear your counterargument.

I’m not an expert in self driving car engineering. I have some experience with ML but not in a significant professional way. What I have is a decade of professional experience building all kinds of software and a skeptical eye. You have a problem that is unconstrained, with infinite variables, where even a simple mistake can have catastrophic outcomes. Society itself may object to self driving cars for a ton of reaso…

But it doesn't have to be perfect, just has better than human drivers. That doesn't seem too difficult.

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

#239

Post by josefresco »

Niten wrote: post #108
mdhen wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those conditions sound like you wouldn't be driving. So, solved. Pull over and stop

It sounds like you've never lived in the southeast US? These conditions can occur on a daily basis in the summer, especially in Florida. "Pull over and stop" isn't realistic advice here. Humans can and do drive safely in these conditions, however, and it's a valid concern to point out that Waymo's West Coast-centric models might not yet be trained to handle these cases. (To be clear, I don't doubt that machines will…

"These conditions can occur on a daily basis in the summer, especially in Florida"

Can confirm, just spent 30 summer days in Florida. People don't pull over and stop, they just put on their "hazards" and slow down, sometimes to 25-30 MPH depending on the intensity of rain. This happens every single day.

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

#240

Post by xbryanx »

I wonder how self-driving cars will handle highway lanes in active snow. Here in Minnesota four-lane highways regularly turn to three and two lane highways when the snow covers the roadway markers and people just start making their own general paths. Will the software just follow the crowd, or will the software car be the one weird vehicle ignoring the conditions and following the lane that no one can see.
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