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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

#271

Post by orky56 »

icehawk219 wrote: post #205
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…

Along the same lines another thing that I think most of us in the US this winter (or least parts of it) had to deal with are potholes. I've gotten quite good at avoiding the potholes around me by preparing for their presence well ahead of where they actually are. In one case there's one right at the top of a hill near me and right under the passenger side tires if you don't move slightly to either side. But because o…

Not a coincidence that Google bought Waze, a crowd sourced traffic and warning detection system. They are definitely cognizant that subjective data is just as important as the objective data picked up by its sensors. This is a great use case that we should expect to be handled.

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

#272

Post by encoderer »

chillingeffect wrote: post #256
TheEzEzz wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Way to only see everything with rose-colored glasses. Has it even occurred to you there might be any possible cons to your scenario? First of all, the lot the cars come from is going to require real estate, so subtract that from your windfall. Where will they be at night or other low-use times? Second, subtract the additional resources in gas/electricity it takes to get to my house from god-knows-where it came from.…

You sound like you live in the suburbs. I suspect car-as-a-service wouldn't be popular there. Honestly, if you live close enough to the store that you can drive there in under 5 minutes, to me that's a sign that you don't need to drive there.

Where I live (Berkeley), and in the Sf Bay Area in general, car as a service would be remarkably effective and popular.

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

#273

Post by _zen »

I think the coolest thing about self-driving cars is they can create a mesh network with one another. If I'm driving to work and a traffic accident occurs 2 miles ahead on my route, with multiple self-driving cars present at the accident, those cars can share traffic information with all self-driving cars in the area. My car will then plan an alternative route around the accident before I've even seen it.

Communication would be encrypted of course to prevent tampering.

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

#274

Post by orky56 »

deanclatworthy wrote: post #4

This is amazing, but if anything it's made me more wary of some of the challenges the project faces. - What if the cyclist fell off his bike in front of the car? How quickly can the computer process the real-time imagery and react compared to a human with their peripheral vision. - What if the cyclist swung from the pavement on to the road. A human driver will probably have spotted the hazard (we all train for that k…

I'd like to think that Google isn't meticulously evaluating the situations where humans have to take over. In those cases, the software needs to be much more robust. Only way to encounter these situations is to get more cars out there in the greatest variety of markets.

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

#275

Post by mzs »

stanleydrew wrote: post #232
mzs wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I agree Stanley that it is absurd that what I do is safer, but sadly more than an dozen years of experience with this intersection and what I have witnessed there makes it clearly the case based on the level of care taken by too many of the motorists I share that part of the road with, good road to you as well Mr. Drew.

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

#276

Post by agildehaus »

gfodor wrote: post #233
TeMPOraL wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

At highway speeds of 70 miles per hour, a car covers 0.1 miles in 5.14 seconds. So, with your range of 0.1-0.2 miles, a human would have 5-10 seconds to perceive the problem and stop.

Google's LIDAR can see approximately 60 meters out. At 70mph, this gives the autonomous car under 2 seconds to perceive the problem and stop.

Most humans have a perception-reaction time of approximately 2.5-3.0 seconds on a highway, so the human range drops to 2-7 seconds. Factor in the time it takes to apply a maneuver (move foot to break pedal, apply break) and it drops even further -- I'm not certain by how much -- likely another 1-2 seconds. At your lower bound of 0.1 miles, I think the autonomous car already has the advantage.

I think it's clear that a computer would react and apply a maneuver tremendously faster than a human. I also think it's obvious that to have a clear advantage over a human on a highway, these sensors need additional range. From what I understand, Google is working on their own LIDAR sensor (an upgrade from the Velodyne they use now), so perhaps they also have this in mind.

I'd love to see more data on this stuff.

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

#277

Post by chillingeffect »

unexistance wrote: post #239
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)

Yeah sure that sounds great, alert the human, but guess what?

The human is asleep, reading, writing, or drunk.... as has been promised elsewhere as one of the main advantages to a self-driving car.

"This future is better than the current one b/c you don't have to pay attention"

So if you're telling me I still have to suddenly pay attention, poof! up in smoke goes the advantage of this supposedly self-driving car. I can't take a nap, b/c I might have to wake up and grab the wheel when a ladder starts flying off the back of a truck towards me.

This is not a consistent picture. It's just a bunch of fairy tales. Each day dream breaks down when it relies on a neighboring, magical scenario.

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

#278

Post by Qworg »

agildehaus wrote: post #276
gfodor wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

At highway speeds of 70 miles per hour, a car covers 0.1 miles in 5.14 seconds. So, with your range of 0.1-0.2 miles, a human would have 5-10 seconds to perceive the problem and stop. Google's LIDAR can see approximately 60 meters out. At 70mph, this gives the autonomous car under 2 seconds to perceive the problem and stop. Most humans have a perception-reaction time of approximately 2.5-3.0 seconds on a highway, so…

You're discounting the actuation time for the machine, as well as latency in the system. Nothing is instantaneous. I've seen driving systems with 1-2 second latency from sensor data in to actuate brakes.

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

#279

Post by baddox »

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…

Humans aren't particularly good at that problem either. I wouldn't be surprised if Google has or will soon get their autonomous cars to perform better than humans on a variety of road obstacles.

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

#280

Post by davedx »

Qworg wrote: post #258
jessriedel wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since you're one of the few people here doing more than speculating, could you expand on this a bit? Is the LIDAR resolution a hard physical limit, and if so what's the origin? What makes identifying the debris with the camera so hard, just the standard object recognition problem in computer vision?

Certainly. LIDAR resolution is related to a few things: - How many beams you're putting out and at what angles - How fast you're spinning and how fast you can get the data back. - How many points of data you can get through your bus If the Google Car is using the big Velodyne ( http://velodynelidar.com/lidar/hdlproducts/hdl64e.aspx ), it puts out 1.3 Mpt/second over a 26.8 degree vertical field of view. That makes it…

Could you use some kind of LIDAR stereo configuration to tell the difference between a dry spot and a solid object?
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