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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

#231

Post by TheEzEzz »

ignostic wrote: post #209

Everyone seems really concerned with the edge cases right now. What about insurance and liability? What about when X happens and it's raining? These are (usually pretty minor) technical challenges, and I haven't heard one yet that we won't be able to overcome with today's technology. Under given circumstances the car will be safer than a human or it isn't. The moment it crosses that threshold (for most conditions) th…

There must be at least 50 million residential garages in the US alone. If we automate all cars and switch to a Cars-as-a-Service model that is 50 million large rooms suddenly available. That's a lot of reclaimed real estate.

Edit: If the average garage is 250 sq ft (pretty small), average cost of real estate is $100/sq ft (pretty low), then this is a $1.25 trillion windfall. Not bad for a small side-effect of autonomous cars.

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

#232

Post by stanleydrew »

mzs wrote: post #168
thefreeman wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a feeling that the general populace of hacker news will disagree with us, but I am with you 100%. I live in a small-ish town on the outskirts of Philadelphia that happens to be in the middle of some sort of really popular biking route. Unfortunately, we have a ton of really small streets with cars parked on both sides. I understand and appreciate that cyclists have no other place to ride then in the street, an…

Why I pull in front of the line of cars stopped at the red light on my bike is because otherwise a car will clobber me. It's not a matter of if but when and the consequences will be severe for my family and me. On my commute I am minimally wearing a bright neon green penny over my clothing. When I have stopped in the line of cars at the light I have had cars almost rear end me. Also when I get to the intersection dri…

This is absurd. Your solution to the mere possibility of being rear-ended while waiting in the line of cars at an intersection is to "book it" across an intersection before the light is fully turned. And you somehow think this is safer?

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

#233

Post by gfodor »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #167
gfodor wrote: post #161

Question for self-driving car aficionados. When I'm driving and encounter a strange or dangerous situation these days I often try to think if a robocar will be able to handle it properly. One situation came up the other day that made me nervous. I was driving on a relatively empty highway at high speed (70mph) and there was a piece of debris in one of the lanes. I spotted the debris far ahead and safely changed lanes…

My thought: LIDARs and other kind of sensors are much better than human eyes. I'd expect the current self-driving cars to have already better sensory resolution than human drivers.

I'm skeptical at far enough distances LIDAR is accurate, due to noise and the falloff of light's subtended solid angle with distance. I am not a sensor expert but if there is a mattress on the highway far ahead (think 0.1-0.2mi or so) I would not be surprised if am going to see it due to the color contrast and my brain's pattern recognition well before LIDAR will detect it by bouncing light off of it.

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

#234

Post by theg2 »

scoofy wrote: post #200
theg2 wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who was nearly run down by a cyclist running a red while I walked a cross walk this weekend, I agree wholeheartedly. Boston is in a constant battle between cyclists and motorists and neither side is playing by the rules.

Yet, you would think that the side of your "battle" with the tendency to kill should be expected to behave better?

I ride a bike and drive a car. And while doing both, I do my best to obey the laws and not injure other people. In Boston, and more specifically in my area of Cambridge we have major issues with drivers turning without looking at the bike lane and bikers running through red lights or riding on sidewalks.

In MA, we have very specific laws regarding how bikes are to be treated under the law and whenever riding I abide by them because they exist to keep myself (most important) and others safe. As the biker nearly hit me (I fortunately jumped out of the way with less than a foot of clearance), he yelled at me calling me an asshole and continued through the intersection with himself having a red light.

I watched a college kid die last year while walking to work as he slammed into the side of a truck. It ignited a debate about who was at fault and if trucks should be allowed to turn at that intersection. Nothing but finger pointing was done, a young man was killed, and just last week another pedestrian was hit at that same intersection crossing the street to catch the T.

Our transportation is changing in this country and instead of adjusting, in most areas we're just pointing the finger, much like you did in this post.

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

#235

Post by ripter »

Loughla wrote: post #208
thrownaway2424 wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Humans have a tendency to focus on the bizarre while dismissing the average. Perhaps a self-driving car will not see this debris, although I would be surprised if that was true. The robot car has far superior sensors, compared to yours, and it never looks at anything else. Probably the consequences of hitting the debris would have been minor anyway. On the other hand, meat-drivers are constantly murdering hundreds of…

Your basic argument is that, although robots will make mistakes, we'll let them kill just a few of us to save many more. That seems like it's not going to go over well with most people. And I would say that mowing down little kids at the local farmer's market would be one of those 'bizarre' incidents, unless there has been a rash of farmer's market mow-downs that I'm not aware of. I've never hit anyone, and I'd rathe…

I think you misread. He's saying that it's better for everyone if a robot hits debris every now and then vs a human driver that causes 100ish deaths a day.

According to http://www.nhtsa.gov/NCSA a pedestrians is killed every two hours and injured every 7 minutes. A robot car would reduce these rates to near zero.

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

#236

Post by gfodor »

mikeash wrote: post #182
gfodor wrote: post #161

Question for self-driving car aficionados. When I'm driving and encounter a strange or dangerous situation these days I often try to think if a robocar will be able to handle it properly. One situation came up the other day that made me nervous. I was driving on a relatively empty highway at high speed (70mph) and there was a piece of debris in one of the lanes. I spotted the debris far ahead and safely changed lanes…

What do you think the odds are that a human will be able to handle it properly? 90% of the time, a human will either 1) not notice the debris at all, and plow into it 2) brake to a sudden stop, causing a massive hazard for all around or 3) swerve dangerously into another lane. Just this morning I watched a car come within inches of plowing into a gigantic orange traffic barrel. He was going 30MPH on a quiet residenti…

if there is a large object in the middle of the highway in broad daylight i am pretty sure humans navigate it pretty well since their eyes can see it far ahead due to color contrast, pattern recognition etc. the human visual system seems to excel in this situation and it seems to be a one where LIDAR may be at a disadvantage, where the stakes are high.

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

#237

Post by robotresearcher »

There are lots of subtleties in in-town driving. For example, the Google car will crawl its nose forward just a bit to indicate when it thinks its turn has come at 3 and 4-way stops. This is a strong signal to the other drivers that the car is about to make the turn, and reduces the frequency of contentions inside the intersection.

It's a nice touch to have the robot replicate behaviour that most people are not even aware they are using.

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

#238

Post by gfodor »

ForHackernews wrote: post #193
pkulak wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember hearing that debris is a very hard problem that Google hasn't figured out quite yet. They can detect it just fine, but they can't tell if it's safe to run over or the car should swerve to avoid it. I think they said that currently they monitor other cars and use what they do to determine what they should do, but that obviously won't work if every car is a robot.

As a stopgap, could the car just decelerate/stop and loudly alert the human driver, "Hey, you handle this"

Unfortunately the thing to think about here is that as these things become more mainstream, there will be less people who are even skilled enough to control a car. So in the long run, if the system works well, any part of the design that relies upon human intervention is doomed. Ultimately your stopgap would become the equivalent of giving the wheel to the child in the backseat: more dangerous than just letting the computer do its best.

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

#239

Post by unexistance »

gfodor wrote: post #161

Question for self-driving car aficionados. When I'm driving and encounter a strange or dangerous situation these days I often try to think if a robocar will be able to handle it properly. One situation came up the other day that made me nervous. I was driving on a relatively empty highway at high speed (70mph) and there was a piece of debris in one of the lanes. I spotted the debris far ahead and safely changed lanes…

working with technology teach me one thing: technology cannot solve everything :D

So what can be done with unknown situation encountered by the auto-car? alert the human: Please take control of the car, undetermined obstruction ahead (or something to that effect)

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

#240

Post by thrownaway2424 »

Loughla wrote: post #208
thrownaway2424 wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Humans have a tendency to focus on the bizarre while dismissing the average. Perhaps a self-driving car will not see this debris, although I would be surprised if that was true. The robot car has far superior sensors, compared to yours, and it never looks at anything else. Probably the consequences of hitting the debris would have been minor anyway. On the other hand, meat-drivers are constantly murdering hundreds of…

Your basic argument is that, although robots will make mistakes, we'll let them kill just a few of us to save many more. That seems like it's not going to go over well with most people. And I would say that mowing down little kids at the local farmer's market would be one of those 'bizarre' incidents, unless there has been a rash of farmer's market mow-downs that I'm not aware of. I've never hit anyone, and I'd rathe…

Your belief in the superiority of your own mattress-avoiding abilities seems odd. One likely outcome of a meat module detecting a mattress ahead at 70MPH would probably be to slam on the brakes, lose control, flip over the barrier, slam head-first into a van full of little kids on a field trip where a dozen people die in the fire and it's all over the local news. Whereas a computer-driven car is likely to 1) detect such a large obstacle well in advance, 2) apply the brakes as safe levels while it thinks about something else to do, and 3) safely maneuver around the object within the performance envelope of the vehicle.

Frankly, although I'm not pinning this on you, the widespread belief in one's own superiority is part of the problem with the legacy human driver.

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