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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

#241

Post by jsmthrowaway »

rictic wrote: post #157
gbog wrote: post #120

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…

Are there any studies that back up your claims that small cars would reduce the death toll? I follow the intuition, but China has over twice as many deaths per car on the road as the United States: (36 per 100k vs 15) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-re... There are of course other factors going on than just the weight of the cars, e.g. traffic laws, enforcement, community norms around drivin…

I actually don't follow the intuition. The thought of putting a smart fortwo into a barrier at speed terrifies me, whereas I've done it in a Toyota Camry (pedestrian on freeway over blind crest, nowhere to go), gotten out unharmed, and driven a rental to work the next day. Also if I hit a pedestrian at 25mph I don't think it matters which I'm driving.

The ads don't help. They show the car's frame holding up a pickup truck and so forth; yeah, that's great and all, but how about crumple zones?

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

#242

Post by dalke »

shekhar101 wrote: post #136
dalke wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 person…

Errr... wouldn't it be easier to record such 'jerks' electronically? I mean isn't it difficult to catch a number plate in dark while it would be lot easier to record someone doing it if there is a communication along with an ID for each vehicle?

In the traffic signal example, the lights can be programed, with a whitelist of all IDs which are allowed to change the signals, and where the signals can be reprogrammed, to mitigate cloning.

I presume that any sort of illegal device which modifies car-to-car communications for other than safety reasons would not be tied to an id registered to a specific car. If only because those devices may need to be replaced, making a registration headache.

I also presume that there won't be a global upload/download of the message traffic for centralized analysis, so who do you think will be doing the recording and analysis?

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

#243

Post by untog »

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's the simple issue of legal liability, though. If you crash into someone, it's your fault and you can be taken to court for it. If a Google driverless car crashes into someone then it's Google's fault. That's an extremely large number of potential crashes and legal challenges.

Absent any higher concern, Google has to be very careful about this out of their own self-interest.

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

#244

Post by cseelus »

Apparently Mercedes Benz has come quite far regarding autonomous driving.

In September 2013 they let one of their S-Class models drive the historic route from Mannheim to Pforzheim in Germany with some journalist(s) on board[1].

On this route the worlds first long-distance (194km/121mi) ride in a motorized car was undertaken in 1888 by Bertha Benz, wife of Carl Benz, who developed, what is known today as the worlds first modern automobile.[2]

This route contains interurban as well as urban parts. The prototype car nicknamed "Bertha" is not easily recognizable from a standard S-Class model, which already contains most of the systems necessary to enable autonomous driving.

[1] Google translation: http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=de&sl=auto&tl=en&pr...

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertha_Benz_Memorial_Route

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

#245

Post by Qworg »

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.

LIDARs are not better sensors than our eyes. They are different, but not better.

The human eye is an amazing instrument. Contrast range of 24 stops vs. 16 in a top of the line camera. (Think 24 bit ADC vs. 16 bit). Follow that up with 24 bit color depth and the ability for our eyes to automatically adjust what portion of the spectrum we're focusing on, and you've got a spectacular sensor.

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

#246

Post by chillingeffect »

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…

I. You shift the goalposts a lot. E.g. in the same sentence you mix statements about the future and the present, e.g. "we will" and "today's technology".

> I haven't heard one yet that we won't be able to overcome with today's technology.

BTW, LIDAR doesn't work in snow and rain. Today. It's not clear that it works for multiple independent vehicles, either. We may only have self-driving car, singular.

II. Also, in your scenario, even if you do send that car over to your wife to use once you get to work, the same car will get more wear and tear than two individual cars b/c it's doing the same work plus more to go between you two.

III. You also mix up the moment when self-driving cars become as safe as humans with the moment they become safER than humans.

IV. You also overly dichotomize safer vs. not safer. What if they kill fewer auto drivers, but more pedestrians? What if they kill fewer adults and more childen? It's not that simple- our values are reflected in our choices to deploy technology.

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

#247

Post by Nicholas_C »

untog wrote: post #243
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's the simple issue of legal liability, though. If you crash into someone, it's your fault and you can be taken to court for it. If a Google driverless car crashes into someone then it's Google's fault. That's an extremely large number of potential crashes and legal challenges. Absent any higher concern, Google has to be very careful about this out of their own self-interest.

I'm thinking there could be an agreement you sign when the car is purchased that states that the self-driving abilities are not to be fully relied on and the driver must be fully aware and ready to take over at all times. Thus if the car ever crashed by fault of Google they can say the driver should have been paying attention. This would have a lot of downsides. For instance, DWI's would still be a thing.

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

#248

Post by konstruktor »

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…

You are thinking of the wrong failure mode. Going too fast to react to a piece of debris is something a well programmed robotic car will never encounter in the first place. It will not go faster than the limits posed by its perception (known) and road conditions (approximately known), and err on the side of caution. It knows no impatience. It is aware of its surroundings at all times, which means it may go faster if it knows it can change lanes, or slower if it perceives a lorry behind it.

In extreme situations where a human would outperform a robotic car, the robotic car will simply be slower. I would, however, assume that in most situations where somebody perceives the car as too slow, what is actually happening is the human overlooking some risk factor.

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

#249

Post by dsr_ »

TheEzEzz wrote: post #231
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 autonom…

If the average self-driving car-as-a-service costs $100,000, then replacing 50 million old cars with 25 million new cars is a $2.5 trillion dollar expense to get your "windfall".

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

#250

Post by 15characterlimi »

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"

Probably not a great idea to stop on the highway.
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