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Geofencing Will Enable L5

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Re: Geofencing Will Enable L5

#31

Post by xani_ »

seagullrific wrote: post #25

Battery-powered scooters are heavily geofenced in the cities I've used them in. Ride down one street perfectly fine. Cross into an adjacent park, the brakes go on, the motor is disabled or limited, and an alarm might sound. As a solution, it's maybe missing the resolution of 1m vs about 5m at the moment. This is exactly what's needed, but instead of limiting virtually harmless products like scooters, all cars should…

People don't crash because of speeding, people crash coz they drive like idiots

Re: Geofencing Will Enable L5

#33

Post by xani_ »

knorker wrote: post #14
narrator wrote: post #9

One thing that bugs me about L5 is the designers of the spec think it's awesome that L5 takes the steering wheel away. Why? It seems like a downgrade. I'd never buy an L5 car because sometimes I want to drive, and break the speed limit a little.

That takes away the societal benefits of L5, though. That's one of the main problems with self driving in general. It's a completely different system if 99% are self driving instead of 100%. L5 is about transport, where everything can be 10-100x more efficient if everone is FSD. But if even 1% decide to take the wheel then it's instant gridlock everywhere. If you want to drive, and have fun, we'll have racetracks for…

> If you want to drive, and have fun, we'll have racetracks for that.

I wonder if someone made a research about likeness of reckless driving vs closeness to race track.

Like, if it was $5 to have a lap nearby (as in "not have to reserve day to go to track and have a track day") I wonder how less of dumbass driving we'd had on the streets...

Re: Geofencing Will Enable L5

#34

Post by TurningCanadian »

JohnFen wrote: post #23
knorker wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That takes away the societal benefits of L5, though. That's one of the main problems with self driving in general. It's a completely different system if 99% are self driving instead of 100%. L5 is about transport, where everything can be 10-100x more efficient if everone is FSD. But if even 1% decide to take the wheel then it's instant gridlock everywhere. If you want to drive, and have fun, we'll have racetracks for…

> You saying you want to take the wheel every now and then is like saying sometimes you want to ride your horse on the 8 lane highway. Or maybe it's like saying you want to ride your horse on a country road every so often.

To complete the analogy, you'd have to want to ride your horse on a country road every so often in a way that breaks the law (original comment wanted to break the speed limit). Maybe you want to ride on private roads or something like that.

Re: Geofencing Will Enable L5

#35

Post by xani_ »

HideousKojima wrote: post #10
martythemaniak wrote: post #5

I think the L4/L5 debate can be greatly helped by people realizing that the majority of human drivers on the road are not L5-capable. A sizeable chunk are L3s and not many are L5s. The way it works is that people simply don't go out in conditions they don't feel comfortable in (snowsquals, etc) and will never attempt areas they think are beyond them (comfortably driving in suburbia, but never attempting to drive in N…

I see L3 as the most dangerous level, and would prefer to see it skipped entirely. Anything that enables drivers to completely stop paying attention while continuing to drive safely, but that also requires them to be able to immediately take over control in certain circumstance is a recipe for disaster.

It's more than that.

We've seen spike in accidents after covid restrictions loosened because few months of little/no driving dulled people's skills.

Imagine if most drivers don't touch wheel at all for 99% of their commute. On top of the reaction time (no doubt delayed by being distracted on the phone) you now have driver that barely remembers how to drive, let alone react correctly in emergency

Re: Geofencing Will Enable L5

#36

Post by alex_young »

msla wrote: post #30
alex_young wrote: post #29

So, to limit our problem a bit, let's create a nice little geofence around our robot cars. We'll limit the physical environment changes in this area, build in some barriers, limit pedestrian traffic, protect wildlife crossings, maybe build in some weather protection systems so our robots don't have to drive on the snow. Why stop there? Let's build a special track for these robots since tires are pretty bad in terms o…

OK, you build trains from Sidney, Montana, to Lewistown. I'm not interested in self-driving cars, but thinking trains solve all problems is a very narrow, urban view.

There is existing rail connecting both of those towns according to https://www.openrailwaymap.org/

I'd also point out that these are 2 towns with less than 6000 population each, in one of the lowest population density parts of the country, with one of the worst climates for self driving cars.

In many European countries there are vast networks of trains connecting small towns with larger cities. Is there a good reason we can't do the same here?

Re: Geofencing Will Enable L5

#37

Post by noahtallen »

msla wrote: post #30
alex_young wrote: post #29

So, to limit our problem a bit, let's create a nice little geofence around our robot cars. We'll limit the physical environment changes in this area, build in some barriers, limit pedestrian traffic, protect wildlife crossings, maybe build in some weather protection systems so our robots don't have to drive on the snow. Why stop there? Let's build a special track for these robots since tires are pretty bad in terms o…

OK, you build trains from Sidney, Montana, to Lewistown. I'm not interested in self-driving cars, but thinking trains solve all problems is a very narrow, urban view.

I’m not sure it’s a very narrow view. 80% of the US lives in an urban area. Rural areas are also already serviced by rail for cargo. I don’t think OP is suggesting trains solve all problems. But they certainly solve more problems than we currently use them for in the US.

Re: Geofencing Will Enable L5

#38

Post by NegativeLatency »

alex_young wrote: post #29

So, to limit our problem a bit, let's create a nice little geofence around our robot cars. We'll limit the physical environment changes in this area, build in some barriers, limit pedestrian traffic, protect wildlife crossings, maybe build in some weather protection systems so our robots don't have to drive on the snow. Why stop there? Let's build a special track for these robots since tires are pretty bad in terms o…

Pretty clear at this point that self driving and electric are here to save the car/road building industry not society.

Makes me so frustrated that I have to drive/own a car to be a "full" citizen in the US, I really hope other options start to become more viable/mainstream in my lifetime.

(As I'm sure someone will love to point out, yes there are things that cars are good at, rural areas etc, but there are lots of ways that cars have been misapplied in our society currently, and there are other cheaper, better, more fun options.)

Re: Geofencing Will Enable L5

#39

Post by TurningCanadian »

colechristensen wrote: post #21

L5 is impossible by this definition: >“operating the vehicle on-road anywhere that a typically skilled human driver can reasonably operate a conventional vehicle.” People who think otherwise must have spent their entire lives in metro areas with little to no weather. Moderate amounts of snow will certainly make L5 driving impossible until we have AI where reasonable people start thinking about giving civil rights to.

The car would have to solve problems like: "are those people on the side of the road behaving in a way that would suggest they might accidentally fall into the road". You or I might realize that a kid trying to treat the curb as a balance beam is entirely different than one walking in the middle of the sidewalk, but to do so takes some understanding that I'm not sure AI can learn by watching lots of driving scenarios.

Re: Geofencing Will Enable L5

#40

Post by kube-system »

martythemaniak wrote: post #24
kube-system wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> people simply don't go out in conditions they don't feel comfortable in (snowsquals, etc) and will never attempt areas they think are beyond them Regarding snow squalls, I don’t think it is a reasonable interpretation of L5 to say that the vehicle must be “smart enough” to do things it physically is incapable of doing. I think the difference between 4 and 5 is that 4 may refuse to operate in scenarios that the vehi…

The SAE levels don't really have exceptions like that: https://www.sae.org/blog/sae-j3016-update Some other quotes from wikipedia: "Level 5 ("steering wheel optional"): No human intervention is required at all. An example would be a robotic vehicle that works on all kinds of surfaces, all over the world, all year around, in all weather conditions." "Under all roadway and environmental conditions that can be managed b…

I understand the SAE levels, I am saying that extreme interpretations of that sentence is silly. J3016 is about a driver automation system on an otherwise normal automobile. It's not about the inherent physical capabilities of the vehicle. Level 5 doesn't require a vehicle to have studded tires to operate on ice, amphibious capabilities to operate in floods, or other extraordinary physical capabilities beyond the normal abilities of an otherwise typical underlying vehicle.

We have a while before we get anywhere close to having to consider this -- but at some point we're going to have to come to terms with the fact that a significant problem with human drivers is that they often choose to operate their vehicles in conditions beyond the safe capabilities of the vehicle given particular conditions. Neither road conditions nor the laws of physics disappear at any SAE level. These things are always something that will be taken into account.

There will always be some amount of risk that cannot be determined in advance. Even I do not know when the snow plow will go down my street, and that may determine whether I can fully make it home or not. I'm sure the folks at the SAE have driven in inclement conditions before, so it makes sense to interpret those definitions with a reasonable lens.

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