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The latest chapter for the self-driving car: mastering city street driving

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Re: The latest chapter for the self-driving car: mastering city street driving

#111

Post by Zikes »

bertil wrote: post #44
nabla9 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Somebody correct me if I'm wrong, but Google cars still can't drive in the rain or in the snow. Not even on a wet street. They have driven all those thousand miles in Mountain View, Calif. in good weather. Generally lidar's don't work well with rain or reflective surfaces.

Indeed — I remember a projet in high-school, explaining how lidar were being used to measuring rain drops direction… The thing is: there apparently now is a technology (at Mercedes or BMW) that uses beamers instead of front lights; a secondary camera detects droplets’ movement, predicts their fall and the beamer doesn’t shine light precisely on them. It helps light in front of you at night without shining mainly the…

Black ice is only black in our limited visual spectrum. On an infrared camera it would likely stand out like a sore thumb.

Re: The latest chapter for the self-driving car: mastering city street driving

#112

Post by danielweber »

cbhl wrote: post #31
nabla9 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Somebody correct me if I'm wrong, but Google cars still can't drive in the rain or in the snow. Not even on a wet street. They have driven all those thousand miles in Mountain View, Calif. in good weather. Generally lidar's don't work well with rain or reflective surfaces.

My understanding is that it uses vision processing algorithms on a camera nowadays, and works just fine in rain. Snow is an issue because the car can't see the lane markings through the snow -- a human drives through snow by remembering where they were or making a guess.

A computer can do dead-reckoning off of fixed objects (buildings, bridges) and remember a millimeter-level resolution map of where lanes are better than any human.

They still have trouble in snow. I think that's fine for a first version.

I fully expect the first consumer versions of automatic cars will have a "No, I won't drive for you today, Dave" mode. Driving in everything but snow would still be a huge win.

Re: The latest chapter for the self-driving car: mastering city street driving

#113

Post by rwmj »

DougWebb wrote: post #98
alextgordon wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People won't see it like that. If a human driver makes a mistake, it's "human error". If a robot driver makes a mistake it's criminal negligence -- because robots are capable of not making mistakes. In other words, robots are held to a higher standard than humans.

I don't think it's quite that... If a human driver makes a mistake, the driver is liable. If the car makes a mistake, the car manufacturer is liable. This is true today; if you're driving along and you swerve into someone/something, that's your fault. But if your wheel falls off because of a manufacturing defect the car company is going to get sued. The car company faces a much higher liability risk, because they're…

There's two points about insurance: If you own the car, and assuming cars are still stolen / dented etc, then you'll want insurance the same way you insure your house and other possessions.

However the bigger point is I doubt you'll own a car. More likely there will be lots of driverless taxi companies, and it'll just be very convenient to use your phone to call a taxi to take you where you want. In this case, the insurance cost is folded into the cost of hire.

Re: The latest chapter for the self-driving car: mastering city street driving

#114

Post by furyg3 »

maxerickson wrote: post #86
furyg3 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The intermediary step (computer driving with human failsafe) is also incredibly challenging, because you are unsure of the computer's knowledge and intent (this is also what makes backseat drivers so annoying). This computer drives much more conservatively than a human driver, so much so that I'm not sure a human failsafe driver would grok what is going on. Waiting for a railway crossing to be completely clear before…

I think the fail safe human laws are only useful to license research. For day to day driving, the cars should either be fully autonomous or have the automated systems limited to intervening in dangerous situations (like current brake priming systems and the like). If the driver is able to take (primary) control, they should be required to be in control.

Tricky. There may be situations where the car stops and says "I can't do this" at which point primary control is handed over to the driver. Think about the system being damaged or obstructed, or a protest rally staring in the street up ahead. The driver should be able to take over, maybe after a stop.

Given this "stop, your turn" option, IMHO it would be horrible to also deny the driver from taking over during normal driving conditions, seeing as though computers will certainly make mistakes. Allowing that option to exist, however, should not equate to the human 'driver' being liable for not taking control when the computer failed.

Basically, you should give passengers an emergency stop option and not make them liable for not using it.

Re: The latest chapter for the self-driving car: mastering city street driving

#115

Post by dalke »

skrause wrote: post #94
dalke wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What fun it will be when someone figures out how to fake the signals and, for example, force other cars to slow down or stop.

You can do that now already, e.g. pretend to quickly step on a road while a car is approaching and watch the human drives hit their brakes. Yet I don't see that happening because the majority of people aren't jerks.

Doing so physically, that is, driving erratically or aggressively, or giving false signals, is both visible to other drivers and illegal. It can also be recorded on camera. Electronic signals are not visible, and fewer people have the ability to record and analyze the signal traffic.

While the majority of people aren't jerks, consider existing cases of people/jerks who use traffic signal preemption devices for personal gain - see http://boingboing.net/2006/04/18/man-fined-50-for-usi.html for an example and some discussion. See also http://www.statter911.com/2012/04/05/preempting-the-preempte... .

I believe this shows that is a non-trivial population of people/jerks that will be interested in traffic shaping for personal gain.

Note how the defenses against those signal devices include state and federal laws and the addition of auditing techniques. The latter is possible because the transmitters and receivers are effectively controlled by the state. This is harder with cars.

Re: The latest chapter for the self-driving car: mastering city street driving

#116

Post by alextgordon »

danielweber wrote: post #109
alextgordon wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People won't see it like that. If a human driver makes a mistake, it's "human error". If a robot driver makes a mistake it's criminal negligence -- because robots are capable of not making mistakes. In other words, robots are held to a higher standard than humans.

Is it "making a mistake" to take tens of milliseconds to realize that a human has fallen down in front of you?

You're right, I should have said "accident" instead of "mistake".

Re: The latest chapter for the self-driving car: mastering city street driving

#117

Post by Morgawr »

skrause wrote: post #94
dalke wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What fun it will be when someone figures out how to fake the signals and, for example, force other cars to slow down or stop.

You can do that now already, e.g. pretend to quickly step on a road while a car is approaching and watch the human drives hit their brakes. Yet I don't see that happening because the majority of people aren't jerks.

There is a huge difference between a kid playing a prank to a few cars on the road and a malicious hacker willing to take control of a portion of the street indefinitely.

Imagine for example some hacker programming all the cars in the proximity of a bank to grind to a halt and cause congestion so his team can go rob said bank and have the police delayed because of the inconvenience. Yes, it sounds like the plot for a Batman movie, but still the potential is there.

Re: The latest chapter for the self-driving car: mastering city street driving

#118

Post by danielweber »

arikrak wrote: post #10

It won't be able to drive around New York if it follows the rules so strictly. It will never be able to turn. They'll have to add a setting for aggression...

Google cars sometimes got stuck at four-way stop sign intersections if they literally obeyed the rules on the book. They had to be a little aggressive to get their turn.

Re: The latest chapter for the self-driving car: mastering city street driving

#119

Post by [deleted] »

cbhl wrote: post #31
nabla9 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Somebody correct me if I'm wrong, but Google cars still can't drive in the rain or in the snow. Not even on a wet street. They have driven all those thousand miles in Mountain View, Calif. in good weather. Generally lidar's don't work well with rain or reflective surfaces.

My understanding is that it uses vision processing algorithms on a camera nowadays, and works just fine in rain. Snow is an issue because the car can't see the lane markings through the snow -- a human drives through snow by remembering where they were or making a guess.

[deleted]

Re: The latest chapter for the self-driving car: mastering city street driving

#120

Post by gbog »

In this discussion I very rarely see mentioned how heavy are cars. Since when do we need multi tons machine to move a being that is usually below 100kg from a to b? Here in northern China, many people have very small egg-cars, which are nothing more than an electric bike with a thin shell for the cold, and this is much less likely to kill someone by accident.

I think we have been under a very strong brain washing so that we all believe a nice car is big and has this and that. Maybe these car ads will be seen in 20 years the same way we see cigarette ads right now: dangerous brain washing by a lobby gone crazy.

(Edited slightly to avoid unfortunate pun)

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