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> "Although it hasn’t been tested in a kangaroo-specific environment, there was an instance where black swans were interfering" I think I know how to interpret that sentence...
Black Swan Farming (Paul Graham) http://www.paulgraham.com/swan.html
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>> You need actual distances to objects, not just fuzzy error-prone inferences. Humans do pretty good with fuzzy notions of where the animal is. Exact distances aren't needed so much as reasonable estimates. If it is probably in the "need to brake zone" then the car brakes. Plus or minus a few meters isn't a big deal so long as you've got margins to work with. As animals are unpredictable, Volvo certainly has wide ma…
Plus if there is anything the human vision system is optimized for it would be seeing and assessing an unknown large mammal.
The things seem to be able to effortlessly execute 90 degree turns between hops, at speed.
Safety lesson: if you see kangaroos travelling alongside the road you're driving on, slow way down so you can execute an emergency stop, if needed; they're always only one hop from suddenly being right in front of you.
Safety lesson 2: there is always another kangaroo. If you see a kangaroo bound across the road ahead of you, slow way down; there's likely to be another kangaroo a very short distance behind it. (And safety lesson 2 recurses and also applies to that second kangaroo; there is likely a third kangaroo just far enough behind it that you'll think there's no third kangaroo. And so on.)
Shouldn't the car stop for any obstacle, even ones it doesn't recognise? They surely can't expect to train it on every possible type of debris.
Lots of human drivers are confused by kangaroos and kangaroos are confused by cars especially at night. You see an awful lot dead kangaroos on the side of the road in rural Australia. As an aside, kangaroos in motion are one of the most efficient and elegant mammals. I love watching them bounding away at speed effortlessly dodging scrub and trees - more like flight than running.
What's the general feeling about taking the meat after a collision? Where I grew up, people would butcher the animal if it's not terribly destroyed. Around here there's a wild hog problem, which are edible but not very tasty, so the local wildlife agency picks them up and they're used in soup kitchens to feed the homeless.
Of course, that is assuming you are still OK after hitting one - Kangaroos are BIG critters and can do considerable damage to the vehicle (and occupants) in a collision.
Lots of human drivers are confused by kangaroos and kangaroos are confused by cars especially at night. You see an awful lot dead kangaroos on the side of the road in rural Australia. As an aside, kangaroos in motion are one of the most efficient and elegant mammals. I love watching them bounding away at speed effortlessly dodging scrub and trees - more like flight than running.
The hopping movement makes it incredibly difficult to judge their speed and direction. They actually cover horizontal space at a far greater clip than they seem to, and also means they can make snap changes in their direction of travel VERY quickly, making any avoidance manoeuvre a bit of a wild guess.
Lots of human drivers are confused by kangaroos and kangaroos are confused by cars especially at night. You see an awful lot dead kangaroos on the side of the road in rural Australia. As an aside, kangaroos in motion are one of the most efficient and elegant mammals. I love watching them bounding away at speed effortlessly dodging scrub and trees - more like flight than running.
What's the general feeling about taking the meat after a collision? Where I grew up, people would butcher the animal if it's not terribly destroyed. Around here there's a wild hog problem, which are edible but not very tasty, so the local wildlife agency picks them up and they're used in soup kitchens to feed the homeless.
I grew up in Alaska and when you ran into a moose you weren't allowed to keep it. Instead there was a volunteer crew that was called to clean it up, compensated with the corpse (which is how I grew up on moose).
Doesn't this just suggest that computer vision is practically impossible to perfect, and that cameras + LIDAR would be far better for safely driving a car? You need actual distances to objects, not just fuzzy error-prone inferences.
>> You need actual distances to objects, not just fuzzy error-prone inferences. Humans do pretty good with fuzzy notions of where the animal is. Exact distances aren't needed so much as reasonable estimates. If it is probably in the "need to brake zone" then the car brakes. Plus or minus a few meters isn't a big deal so long as you've got margins to work with. As animals are unpredictable, Volvo certainly has wide ma…
I'm kind of worried by the fact that the system judges depth based on visual cues (like a human with one eye closed does) instead of actual depth sensing hardware, to the point that the system needs to recognise kangaroos specifically. Shouldn't the car stop for any obstacle, even ones it doesn't recognise? They surely can't expect to train it on every possible type of debris.
I wonder how it it handles low-flying birds.
Doesn't this just suggest that computer vision is practically impossible to perfect, and that cameras + LIDAR would be far better for safely driving a car? You need actual distances to objects, not just fuzzy error-prone inferences.