So, in Back to the future : Tokyo drift, did MARTY met Sally when Flash tried to bring back Doc (Hudson)...
Autonomous DeLorean drives sideways to move forward
61–70 of 197 posts
Re: Autonomous DeLorean drives sideways to move forward
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
Drifting is objectively less effective and safe than normal manuevering and braking. Drifting as a sport exists to look cool and stylish. It's like figure skating with cars. (There is one exception- off road racing on loose surfaces requires drifting. But driving that way off road is only useful for speed at the expense of safety and reliability.)
Another exception of a sort, and I believe the one this research is meant to address, is when the drift is initiated unintentionally. Say you hit a patch of black ice mid-corner, for example. This kind of work can expand the envelop of the control system to encompass these scenarios.
I don't think this is true. If you hit black ice and the tire skids, the problem is you just have no friction. Modern traction control systems already account for this as best they can - I don't see how this model would help any more except for trying to go faster through patches of black ice. And even then, drifting inherently requires traction in order to modulate the throttle and control the vehicle.
If you can't get the wheels to connect with the road, the first thing you'd want to fix are your tires - not your traction control system. Most people don't recognize how much better modern winter tires are compared to all season tires for driving on snow and ice.
Re: Autonomous DeLorean drives sideways to move forward
#63They did most of that back in 2015.[1] This is version 2. It's interesting what's happening as the control theory people get into machine learning. The controls people don't typically run a neural net as a controller. They use the trained net as a tool for building a controller with known continuity properties. The trouble with pure neural net controllers is that they sometimes do something totally bogus for some dat…
>The trouble with pure neural net controllers is that they sometimes do something totally bogus for some data point within the normal input space. That's not OK in control systems. Is that actually true? Everything we do at work with neural nets seems to indicate continuity. We do stuff with mathematical simulations and imagelike processing. Latent space for auto encoders tend to be smoothly varying throughout the ra…
the Uber incident investigation showed how a continuous input generated wildly varying output in practice. in theory the existence of adversarial images and adversarial training has been studied for a while, but the state of the art can still produce singularities around continuous inputs.
start here: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1312.6199.pdf
Re: Autonomous DeLorean drives sideways to move forward
#64Somewhat reminds the progress airplanes did in the 1970s with fly-by-wire technology. Specifically they way it was utilised in the F-16. Moving from directly piloted controlled surfaces (rudder, elevator, flaps, ailerons etc) to using a computer to convert the pilot command input to servo actuators. Flight surfaces had much more authority, much better performance could be achieved, but the flight computer was in char…
Steer and brake by wire is a safety thing, all manufacturers so far have kept a mechanical link in place despite electric assistance because of the potential for lawsuits. Infinity has gone the closest to full steer by wire so far that I’m aware of.
Re: Autonomous DeLorean drives sideways to move forward
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
Drifting is objectively less effective and safe than normal manuevering and braking. Drifting as a sport exists to look cool and stylish. It's like figure skating with cars. (There is one exception- off road racing on loose surfaces requires drifting. But driving that way off road is only useful for speed at the expense of safety and reliability.)
Another exception of a sort, and I believe the one this research is meant to address, is when the drift is initiated unintentionally. Say you hit a patch of black ice mid-corner, for example. This kind of work can expand the envelop of the control system to encompass these scenarios.
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Re: Autonomous DeLorean drives sideways to move forward
#66Seems like a DeLorean isn't necessarily that expensive, prices range from $20,000 to $45,000.
Looks like they had fun with it given the car didn't matter as they replaced the brakes, engine and suspension.
Re: Autonomous DeLorean drives sideways to move forward
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
Another exception of a sort, and I believe the one this research is meant to address, is when the drift is initiated unintentionally. Say you hit a patch of black ice mid-corner, for example. This kind of work can expand the envelop of the control system to encompass these scenarios.
I don't think this is true. If you hit black ice and the tire skids, the problem is you just have no friction. Modern traction control systems already account for this as best they can - I don't see how this model would help any more except for trying to go faster through patches of black ice. And even then, drifting inherently requires traction in order to modulate the throttle and control the vehicle. If you can't…
yeah but even then the autopilot need to adapt to the different conditions, it can't just throw the hands up when the conditions are hard and let the driver to crash on its own (at least the ideal full autonomous)
so you need to have a "friction" (lateral and longitudinal) input to the model, so that the model forecasted car position matches the actual car future, to allow the autopilot to plan the correct avoidance maneuver
Re: Autonomous DeLorean drives sideways to move forward
#68I guess if you can afford a DeLorean you can afford to keep replacing the tires you burn up by drifting on pavement. I'd rather have my car programmed for long tire life and high mpg please.
In the US, a new DeLorean isn't all that expensive compared to typical "jelly-bean" vehicles that are the most common. Back in 2005, I narrowed down a vehicle purchase decision to a new DeLorean, an used Lotus Elise or a new G coupe. I went with a bone-stock manual G that I kept for a few years before I got into Cold War-era West German and French vehicles. I'm not a rich person, far from it.
the worst part of the 2009 crisis is that the the European used car market is shot
I got a 3 year old gt in 2007 and with that money today I could barely get a panda.
Re: Autonomous DeLorean drives sideways to move forward
#69I genuinely hope Tesla get a 2020 Roadster to lap the Nurburgring on autopiliot with nobody inside. If it lives up to promises, it will easily set the all time lap record as the fastest vehicle ever. It will be an interesting time when a $200k production car can whip the pants of a multi-million dollar F1 racecar.
Elon Musk claimed in a tweet that the roadster can beat a time of 6:44 min on the Nürburgring Nordschleife, which is (currently) 20.832 km long.
The current lap record for street legal cars is 6:40 set by a Porsche GT2RS MR.
The overall record is 5:19.55 set by a Porsche 919 Evo.
F1 last raced the Nordschleife in the 70s. The lap record is 7:06.4, but the track was 22.835 km long back then.
The Roadster might have a chance at beating the lap record for street-legal cars, but physic will make sure that it will not come even close to an overall lap record.
Re: Autonomous DeLorean drives sideways to move forward
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think this is true. If you hit black ice and the tire skids, the problem is you just have no friction. Modern traction control systems already account for this as best they can - I don't see how this model would help any more except for trying to go faster through patches of black ice. And even then, drifting inherently requires traction in order to modulate the throttle and control the vehicle. If you can't…
yeah but even then the autopilot need to adapt to the different conditions, it can't just throw the hands up when the conditions are hard and let the driver to crash on its own (at least the ideal full autonomous) so you need to have a "friction" (lateral and longitudinal) input to the model, so that the model forecasted car position matches the actual car future, to allow the autopilot to plan the correct avoidance…
You're assuming Autopilot can't currently account for losing traction (this is probably true). But unexpectedly hitting a patch of black ice won't favor one model over the other - in either case you'll use the same methods to slow down. The only difference would be if you also had to avoid an object some distance ahead, and the drift model helped you maneuver around it by applying the throttle.
It's extremely difficult for me to contrive a scenario where this would help avoid an accident over a standard traction control model found in any modern automobile. But technically I guess it's possible it could help.