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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

#141

Post by simion314 »

AtlasBarfed wrote: post #76
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…

As usual the article conflates the (very difficult problem) of self-driving everywhere with various other sub-problems. The self-driving problem on highways is much more solvable, and can further be improved by convergent infrastructure evolution (forewarning of traffic jams from central control, embedded rfid to aid pathfinding in bad weather, weather reports, wildlife nets/barriers, highly standardized signage, int…

>When they can full automate a 400-800 mile interstate trip so that I can sleep in my car while it drives overnight, it will massively disrupt the airline industry in so many positive ways.

This could be implemented today with train tracks and automated trains.

Someone will comment that there is not enough profit but are the roads making profit?

If you have the money you can travel A class, much more comfortable then sleeping in a car or an airplane.

I am not against cars so don't reply with some examples of why you need a cat, I understand that... my point is that for long distances transport where you could sleep,rest or do something else trains could be done today where AI driven cars would take at least 20 years.

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

#142

Post by salawat »

jeremysalwen wrote: post #58
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…

So you're saying we need to program our driverless cars to occasionally go on road-rage rampages if they're cut off too many times?

Nah. You need to have an ALRU and vehicle to vehicle comm net whereby all the self-driving AI's distribute amongst themselves information on jerk behavior so the entire macropopulation of AI cars can wolfpack these drivers.

Now please laugh, put down the phone and don't even think about implementing this. It's a terrible idea.

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

#144

Post by Piskvorrr »

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.

That's a great analogy! For English (and autonomy levels), this works for orders of magnitude: Two and two and two and two and two, no good; ten times ten, good in easy things; with a thousand words, you can get things done and sound normal; a vocabulary of ten thousand words provides an adequate command of the language to discuss complex concepts; 10^5 or any higher exponent comprises capability exceeding that of a majority of users.

I do agree that we're still at level 2: it's relatively amazing (i.e. see what can be done with the limited toolset available), but not really that great: outside of predictable, menial tasks, the rough edges become acutely limiting.

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

#145

Post by bdamm »

yread wrote: post #134
bdamm wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah this is interesting. My Tesla M3 does similar behavior, and so I often am ready to punch the accelerator. In the Tesla, this is how you solve that problem. The driver's push on the accelerator contraindicates the AI's decision to slow down, and so the car follows the driver's direction. Where it gets dicey is the scenario where the "imminent collision" (hazards on, seatbelts tightened) detection is triggered, an…

I'm amazed by people like you. You're a programmer, you know how your code looks like. Worse still, you have seen other people's code, how they fail to account for corner cases, you've seen so many articles on HN's front page about security bugs found by fuzzing. Yet, you trust your LIFE to "heuristics"? Do you really trust that when the proverbial black swan flies in front of your car the software won't swerve you i…

The "collision imminent" scenario would occur whether or not the car is in self-driving. If the car manages to avoid a collision that is the amazing part to me. And there's plenty of evidence that the Teslas do, in fact, avoid quite a lot of collisions. It would be foolish, however, to drive like it's going to resolve all your collisions for you.

I view these as assistance to driving. It's a comfort that the steering and brakes are not overridable. And honestly, if the system messes up so badly as to go flying into a barrier, well, that's not so different from a tire popping, another car careening across into yours, or other catastrophic and unlikely events that do happen. We have seatbelts, crumple zones, airbags, pre-tensioners, cargo hold-downs, and emergency services to help us survive what even 40 years ago would be unsurvivable accidents.

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

#146

Post by hindsightbias »

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…

Troll driving. Imagine testing/probing AI cars with the intent of getting them into an accident with you so you can sue for uber-millions and AI hysteria social media points.

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

#147

Post by Piskvorrr »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #121
derefr wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ar…

Or rather, SDVs are a solution looking for a suitable problem space - which may turn out to be imaginary (or, more charitably, significantly more constrained, e.g. "long-distance freeway travel")

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

#148

Post by close04 »

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.

Indeed. The only way to call today's cars "self driving" is to narrow down the conditions of driving to the point where it's just as ridiculous as my "3 words" example, and then realize they're still not narrow enough.

> the majority of the miles

The "miles" metric that's not very relevant, not all miles are created equal. Driving in a straight line with almost zero challenges is nothing like driving as a whole. Would a power supply that's only able to take idle loads (majority of the time) be considered any good? How about a phone that can only make calls only most of the day?

Even a "dumb" car can be considered self driving by this definition. All you need is cruise control or if you want to get fancy, ACC and LKA. This would allow you to drive for hours on end or hundreds of Km on a highway with little (fractions of a second at a time, maybe a total of 1Km with hands on wheel) or no human intervention.

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

#149

Post by Piskvorrr »

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?"

There's a standardized way for an officer to do this...alas, it will likely vary between states, and half of the officers will use some ad-hoc method anyway.

A civilian trying to direct traffic around their broken down car...now that would be harder.

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

#150

Post by AnimalMuppet »

psychometry wrote: post #40

Any software dev worth their salt knew this was going to be a 90-90 problem.

Oh, far worse. 90% of the effort will get you 90% of the way there. Another 90% of the effort might get you another 9% of the way there. But that last 1% of "getting there" is going to take many more 90%s of effort.
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