81–90 of 223 posts
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Pretty sure the right answer mainly involves the car knowing about the weather and other emergency events.
It doesn't take much of a rainstorm to see localized flooding. Some debris over the storm drain is enough to flood a street. Hard to anticipate that happening.
That's a tough problem - distinguishing wet pavement from deep water. Humans make that mistake frequently. Autonomous vehicles should probably be equipped with a water sensor. (We did that in our DARPA Grand Challenge vehicle back in 2005). Then they can enter water very cautiously and see if it's too deep. This may make them too cautious about shallow puddles on roads, though.
It’s a particularly hard problem in Texas. We get torrential rains and the landscape is relatively flat. Couple that with shallow soil over lots of limestone and it means flooding is really common. We also have roads that have a “low water crossing,” where a road crosses a creekbed that is normally dry but which will flood. There are often water depth signs there (basically a vertical ruler with feet marks so you can…
I've seen several places in England (and at least one in the western United States) where they have fords.
For those not familiar, water runs over the road full-time, and people are expected to just drive through it like it's no big deal. Except for right after a storm, when it is a big deal. It's essentially the intersection of a road and a stream where a bridge should be, but nobody ever built one.
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But are they not continuously updating the road database with their fleet?
For common routes, yes. For getting to John's house, where the path there sometimes floods, no.
One car with an issue of first coincides with rain on a less used road?
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Waymo has LIDAR and cameras, so it is better equipped for every situation.
Unless the power is out https://abc7news.com/post/san-francisco-leaders-press-waymo-...
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LIDAR isn't helpful for water. Standing water behaves like a mirror on LIDAR.
This is one of the reasons why I'm suspicious of camera-only systems, here in Finland. Half the year there's a lot of snow and ice around. Which I imagine means most of the view is "white" and "shiny". Coupled with the dark winters it's gotta be a nightmare to deal with.
"recall" = applies software update
We really need a better term for when an urgent software update for a vehicle is issued. The extreme majority of the population completely misunderstands it when a "recall" is done when it's actually just an OTA software update.
This is ok though because humans drive into flood waters too. Look, you can't make progress without getting your feet wet and then diving straight into the deep end.
Maybe you drive into flood waters, but I don't. That's not a difficult skill to pull off. We're still in the early days of self driving cars, and as much simulation and miles as they have, they're still constantly getting exposed to real world conditions that are new to them. The world is dynamic, so this will always remain true. It remains to be seen where we'll converge on capability, incident rate, and acceptance.
In that context I think comparing it to the average human driver makes a lot of sense, because even if you personally are an even better driver, or even if human drivers are better at some specific things, we have more than enough data to show that Waymo reduces accident rates overall in their current rollout.
That's a tough problem - distinguishing wet pavement from deep water. Humans make that mistake frequently. Autonomous vehicles should probably be equipped with a water sensor. (We did that in our DARPA Grand Challenge vehicle back in 2005). Then they can enter water very cautiously and see if it's too deep. This may make them too cautious about shallow puddles on roads, though.
And that is the difference. In a Waymo you are a prisoner, in your own car you can turn around.
That's a tough problem - distinguishing wet pavement from deep water. Humans make that mistake frequently. Autonomous vehicles should probably be equipped with a water sensor. (We did that in our DARPA Grand Challenge vehicle back in 2005). Then they can enter water very cautiously and see if it's too deep. This may make them too cautious about shallow puddles on roads, though.
They have been known to make that mistake. To use the word "frequently" demonstrates a misunderstanding between number of incidents and total miles driven. It also ignores that humans often drink and most of these types of accidents happen after 2am and most often in the state of Florida.
> equipped with a water sensor
Car washes will be fun.
> DARPA Grand Challenge
The problems the grand challenge ignores are more important than the ones it solved.
That's a tough problem - distinguishing wet pavement from deep water. Humans make that mistake frequently. Autonomous vehicles should probably be equipped with a water sensor. (We did that in our DARPA Grand Challenge vehicle back in 2005). Then they can enter water very cautiously and see if it's too deep. This may make them too cautious about shallow puddles on roads, though.
> Humans make that mistake frequently. They have been known to make that mistake. To use the word "frequently" demonstrates a misunderstanding between number of incidents and total miles driven. It also ignores that humans often drink and most of these types of accidents happen after 2am and most often in the state of Florida. > equipped with a water sensor Car washes will be fun. > DARPA Grand Challenge The problems…