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Self-driving cars turned out to be harder than expected

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Re: Self-driving cars turned out to be harder than expected

#121

Post by seanmcdirmid »

derefr wrote: post #65
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> some kind of pod rail network, i.e. self-driving four-seater trolleys If you go that far, the problem is already trivial right? Just making roads specifically for self-driving vehicles would make the problem trivial. What the companies are trying to accomplish is self driving cars in current conditions.

My point was an economic one: • cities can afford to "change the problem" to fit the solution (as they already have huge transit-system and other public-works budgets, and extensions to cities are mostly centrally-planned.) Some cities in Europe have already entirely banned cars. • everywhere other than cities —e.g. small rural towns only connected via roads—doesn't have the resources to "change the problem." (But al…

Cities have the problem (congestion, limited parking) in the first place while rural areas generally don’t. Many cities are limited on resources so can’t change the problem as much as they want to, so generalized self driving cars would be a huge economic boon in that case. It is the cheap solution to an expensive urban problem, but getting there requires software that is smarter than what we have right now.

Rural areas simply don’t need self driving cars, so the hybrid solution is a non-starter, economically speaking.

Re: Self-driving cars turned out to be harder than expected

#122

Post by wffurr »

slavik81 wrote: post #56
heynk wrote: post #3

When I was starting my engineering career, it was right around when the first DARPA challenges had started. The hype was beginning, and my optimism towards technology was strong. I thought the predictions and timelines would be correct, and I still feel strongly that self-driving will be safer than humans in the long term. Recently, I bought a newer Subaru, with EyeSight. It has adaptive cruise and lane keep assist.…

I tried out a relative's Subaru on a 6h drive over the holidays. I really liked the adaptive cruise control for following behind folks who were not keeping a consistent speed. I just set it to a reasonable value at the maximum following distance and stopped worrying about my speedometer. However, at one point the guy in front of me turned off onto a small side road. It was at night, and I don't think the car realized…

Same thing, first time I used the Subaru EyeSight system. Now I know to pay attention for that particular failure mode, and override with the gas pedal and a little steering.

Definitely surprised the heck out of me though the first time the car slowed way down on the interstate because the car ahead of me pulled onto the off-ramp.

Re: Self-driving cars turned out to be harder than expected

#123

Post by deepspace »

glenra wrote: post #117
erobbins wrote: post #47

I've been beating this drum for years (but I'm a nobody, so it's like pissing in the wind): 1. Anything less than 100% FULL automation is MORE dangerous than manual driving, because the "driver" will almost certainly lack any situational awareness. When the need for manual intervention happen, it will be at the moments where you need maximum awareness and split second reflexes. 2. There are SO many edge cases and nev…

> Anything less than 100% FULL automation is MORE dangerous than manual driving, because the "driver" will almost certainly lack any situational awareness. With enough reliable bandwidth a decent workaround is to have the system fall back to human control by someone other than the local driver. I'm imagining a Car Traffic Control Center where your onboard robot driver sees a situation it doesn't understand and throws…

> throws control to a remote driver

Throwing a remote driver into a dangerous situation with no context sounds like a terrible solution to me. See also: Cpt Dubois from AF447. Doing that deliberately and repeatedly just multiplies the chances of catastrophic error.

And the VR driver job would be so stressful that there may not be many takers. Who would take responsibility if they made a bad call and caused a crash?

Re: Self-driving cars turned out to be harder than expected

#124

Post by eckza »

bsder wrote: post #44
cletus wrote: post #33

Alternate headline: Some people overstated how simple this problem was because they didn't know what they were talking about, could promote themselves as experts, could get funding for a self-driving startup or some combination of the above. I guess that isn't as pithy but it's closer to the truth. When it became clear that Uber's strategy (under Kalanick anyway) was premised on replacing drivers with AIs before the…

> How do you program around humans changing their behaviour to take advantage of there being no driver in your car? The AI car will have sufficient cameras to record your actions and report them directly to your insurance company if not the police. This will be MORE effective at deterring stupid driving, not less.

That sounds... Orwellian.

Re: Self-driving cars turned out to be harder than expected

#125

Post by andrei_says_ »

ghaff wrote: post #14
Mattasher wrote: post #4

You have to wonder, when you see these stories, whether the engineers in charge of these programs spent much time driving around, trying to see the road like an AI might. In my experience, driving in the city, it's rare that I can go more than a few miles before some exception comes up that requires human judgment. Here's a few of the things I saw just last week: * Car double parked. Do I cross the center line to go…

At a talk a few years back MIT prof John Leonard showed video he took on his commute back and forth to Brookline to highlight all the points where it was going to be really hard to get self-driving to handle. (He was very skeptical about getting to full autonomy before it was fashionable to be so.) It's not just cities but spend a few hours walking around Boston or Manhattan and just make a note of all the crazy thin…

This one? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GarvfAPSWwo

...How do you write the code for "Always stop at a red light unless you see a police officer waving you through?"

Re: Self-driving cars turned out to be harder than expected

#126

Post by ghaff »

jjn2009 wrote: post #115
close04 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Today saying cars have "self driving capabilities" is like saying you're fluent in 3 words of a language. They have advanced driver assists but the insistence on the "self driving" terminology tricks enthusiasts and less tech savvy people alike into a false sense of confidence in the tech. Sometimes all the way to their deaths.

the majority of the miles I drive are highway so for me "3 words" covers a large percentage of my usage. This is likely true of most people as well.

Except nothing existing today is fully autonomous (i.e. I can kick back and read a book) even on just highways.

Re: Self-driving cars turned out to be harder than expected

#127

Post by jes5199 »

Naac wrote: post #74

What I think is interesting is that none of these articles talk about one specific implication of self-driving cars. What happens to car-insurance companies? Seems like with self driving cars the form of car insurance we have now wouldn't be really necessary. I expect car-insurance profits to decline. Isn't there an incentive ( read: lobbying ) for car insurance companies to discourage self-driving cars?

Tesla offers car insurance for Teslas, probably trying to get ahead of this

Re: Self-driving cars turned out to be harder than expected

#128

Post by ghaff »

andrei_says_ wrote: post #125
ghaff wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At a talk a few years back MIT prof John Leonard showed video he took on his commute back and forth to Brookline to highlight all the points where it was going to be really hard to get self-driving to handle. (He was very skeptical about getting to full autonomy before it was fashionable to be so.) It's not just cities but spend a few hours walking around Boston or Manhattan and just make a note of all the crazy thin…

This one? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GarvfAPSWwo ...How do you write the code for "Always stop at a red light unless you see a police officer waving you through?"

I think the one I saw was a talk he gave at CMU maybe 3 or 4 years ago. Don't see it immediately. But I'm sure it's the same basic idea.

As I recall, he took a sabbatical to work on self-driving at Toyota. I'll check out that video from last year.

Re: Self-driving cars turned out to be harder than expected

#129

Post by technofiend »

jacquesm wrote: post #101
technofiend wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Alternate headline: Some people overstated how simple this problem was because they didn't know what they were talking about, could promote themselves as experts, could get funding for a self-driving startup or some combination of the above. I jokingly call it management myopia: anything I don't understand can't be that hard.

> anything I don't understand can't be that hard. Brilliant line, that probably goes a long way towards explaining why software in general simply sucks from a users perspective.

That sounds more like any use cases I don't understand can't be that important. i.e. people who use software different than the way I designed are wrong.

Re: Self-driving cars turned out to be harder than expected

#130

Post by mark-r »

pasttense01 wrote: post #102
mark-r wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have this argument constantly. Humans make mistakes too, so we will eventually have tech that makes fewer mistakes than humans. The problem is that humans have a unique ability to make sense of situations they've never specifically encountered before. No amount of training data will be able to make up for that, because there will always be situations so rare that they never made it into the data.

But what really matters is the overall statistics: The self-driving doesn't know how to handle this one in a 10,000 situation. But in the other 9,999 of 10,000 situations the self-driving vehicle is equal or better. Thus the self-driving vehicle averages out to be a lot safer.

Everybody says this, but they simply take it as a matter of faith. I don't see any statistics to back it up. The article itself points out that there simply aren't enough self-driving miles at this point to make a valid comparison.
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