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Autonomous DeLorean drives sideways to move forward

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Re: Autonomous DeLorean drives sideways to move forward

#131

Post by xeromal »

chkaloon wrote: post #125

Back in the late 70s, my high school driving instructor said "don't tell your parents, but the best way to learn how to control a car is to go out to the school parking lot on a snowy night and spin donuts." Funny that they are finding that artificial intelligence can use the same method.

He's not wrong. When there's a solid snow, I love to find an empty parking lot and just do some stupid maneuvers. It really let's you get a feel for what works and what does. Like, if I turn my steering all the way and slam on the brakes. How far do I slide. Where do I end up? It's really good for getting comfortable with all kinds of scenarios

Re: Autonomous DeLorean drives sideways to move forward

#132

Post by bborud »

jacquesm wrote: post #126
bborud wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you hit black ice you are screwed anyway. The most useful thing your car could do is to detect black ice before you hit it. I’ve seen some technologies for doing just that. Black ice isn’t very easy to distinguish from other surface conditions cheaply, but the technology exists. (It just has to reach volume production).

The very best way to deal with black ice is to avoid it entirely, simply do not drive if the conditions susceptible to generating it are present.

I live in a coastal city in Norway. You might as well tell me to hibernate :-)

But on a more serious note: it isn’t that hard to cope with if you are prepared. In general by choosing proper tyres and learning to drive in those conditions. In particular by learning to read the conditions so you can anticipate where there’s localized black ice.

Re: Autonomous DeLorean drives sideways to move forward

#133

Post by xeromal »

bborud wrote: post #86
Neil44 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Steer and brake by wire is a safety thing, all manufacturers so far have kept a mechanical link in place despite electric assistance because of the potential for lawsuits. Infinity has gone the closest to full steer by wire so far that I’m aware of.

Well, a very key factor of steering is that it connects your fingers to the interface between tyres and road surface and imparts critical information about what’s going on there. If you decouple the steering completely from the mechanical bits you have to recreate that channel of information. Which isn’t necessarily easy to get right. Even servo assisted steering systems can easily become a bit numb. If you have ever…

I drove an old redneck work truck once that someone installed assisted or power steering into. It also had a giant steering wheel from before that stuff was installed so it was comically easy to drive.

Re: Autonomous DeLorean drives sideways to move forward

#135

Post by sap9433 »

If self-driving tech has become so advanced, I wonder why Waymo is not delivering anything? I wonder why is Tesla taking forever to deliver self-driving, why Uber discontinued its self-driving program, Why Apple ain't serious about Apple car yet?

Does this demo hide something that we should know?

Re: Autonomous DeLorean drives sideways to move forward

#136

Post by natch »

ForHackernews wrote: post #95
grecy wrote: post #55

I genuinely hope Tesla get a 2020 Roadster to lap the Nurburgring on autopiliot with nobody inside. If it lives up to promises, it will easily set the all time lap record as the fastest vehicle ever. It will be an interesting time when a $200k production car can whip the pants of a multi-million dollar F1 racecar.

Tesla cars historically are pretty terrible on the track. They're too heavy, and they wind up overheating. The torque from the electric motors means they do really well in a straight line drag race, but they're fairly pathetic at any race that involves manoeuvring over a longer course.

Better than the Porsche Taycan though, to take it somewhat more apples to apples. So there’s that. While having near double the range, a lower price, air suspension, frequent free updates including for performance and handling, seating more people when off track, having a non-vaporware fast charging network... it’s almost an unfair comparison against a one trick pony toy car (I’m sure you can cherry pick some special racing-only case where the Taycan steps up).

Re: Autonomous DeLorean drives sideways to move forward

#137

Post by papreclip »

sap9433 wrote: post #135

If self-driving tech has become so advanced, I wonder why Waymo is not delivering anything? I wonder why is Tesla taking forever to deliver self-driving, why Uber discontinued its self-driving program, Why Apple ain't serious about Apple car yet? Does this demo hide something that we should know?

A couple traffic cones out in the street could direct this thing onto the sidewalk, where it would drift over pedestrians or slam into a brick wall without hesitation. There's a big gap between a car that can drive on a closed course and one that can navigate the real world for millions of miles without killing anyone

Re: Autonomous DeLorean drives sideways to move forward

#139

Post by OnlineGladiator »

mjburgess wrote: post #115
jdmichal wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think most of the systems do try to model the objects around them. Of course, that is also subject to its own statistical anomalies. See report of the Uber/pedestrian collision for what happens when that goes wrong. I don't mean to dismiss your points, though. I wholely agree that if we really want to be moving towards an AI that is anything like animal intelligence, things like play are crucial. I'm a big fan of t…

I mean a very specific sort of model: a causal model. A model of that kind has to be able to generate predictions given the agents interaction with the object. Ie., how will the thermostat behave if I turn on the air conditioning. The problem is that we acquire these models during an entire lifetime of being embedded in an environment, esp. a social one. A self-driving car is never going to predict human behaviour gi…

> I think a car is going to need a Theory-of-Mind to navigate complex social driving environments

As someone with a lot of experience in self-driving cars, my opinion has changed over the course of the last decade from "we can create smart enough models of these separate problems to create a statistically safer product" to "first you need to invent general AI."

It becomes immediately obvious as you encounter more and more edge cases, but you would never even begin to think of these edge cases and you have no idea how to handle them (even when hard coding them on individual cases - and you couldn't anyway as there are too many) so you realize the car actually has to be able to think. What's worse, it has to be able to think far enough into the future to anticipate anything that could end badly.

The most interesting part of self-driving cars is definitely on the prediction teams - their job is to predict the world however many seconds into the future and incorporate that into the path planning. As you can guess, the car often predicts the future incorrectly. It's just a ridiculously hard problem. I think the current toolbox of ML is just woefully, completely, entirely inadequate to tackle this monster.

Re: Autonomous DeLorean drives sideways to move forward

#140

Post by toss1 »

zzzeek wrote: post #130
toss1 wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but. Yes #1 is that this is mostly Drifting techniques, which are mostly for show/style competition. The tyre slip angles mentioned are around 40deg, far past the optimal level of grip. Yes #2 Racing techniques are more explicitly seeking to optimize for maximum grip, often found around 3 to 6 degree slip angles (depending on tyres, tyre pressure, tread & road temps, road cleanliness, dryness, etc.). Both still…

> BUT, all that said, it is absolutely critical to have thise techniques in your bag of tricks, available to use when something exceptional happens. In those rare-ish events, being able to use the full performance envelope of the vehicle is a real life saver, both for you and the others nearby. are you referring to during a road race, or ordinary driving on ordinary streets? It would be great if you could try to prov…

Just to clarify here, I'm talking about driving on the edge of available grip, NOT the wholesale sideways drifting tech - that is mostly for show.

Of course, in road racing, these skills are critical multiple times per lap.

On the street - there are still too many examples to list from direct personal experience.

Long trips, find myself in a severe snowstorm, or an ice storm where it's too slippery to even stand, cars off the road everywhere, I'm able to drive (w/ managed sliding) to make it through to destination or shelter just fine. Similarly, coming onto a muddy or oiled patch, same thing -- very handy to be able to both minimize the consequences of lost grip, or recover from a sliding situation without hitting anything.

Also the occasions where an obstacle is in the road by surprise behind a visual obstacle -car pulls out, parked in road behind corner, whatever, available space is closing -- being able to drive with precision at the limits of available grip makes the difference between a and a incident.

Obviously, alertness is key to everything (even w/ the best skills), and of course maintaining safe distances, etc. is also key, and the basis of any sound skill set.

Edit:, additional clarification, the traction controls in many modern cars also eliminates the option for many of the high-slip-angle moves. You'd have to turn of all thise features, or unplug the fuse, which is not possible on the timescale of an emergency maneuver.

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