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Tesla’s Push to Build a Self-Driving Car Sparks Dissent Among Its Engineers

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Re: Tesla’s Push to Build a Self-Driving Car Sparks Dissent Among Its Engineers

#351

Post by Dylan16807 »

crocal wrote: post #348
Dylan16807 wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> just facts > You are willing to take the risk, but society as a whole will not. What are you talking about? People very objectively ride planes that are not completely safe. Airlines that are nowhere near completely safe still get tons of customers.

Planes are not driverless. This is what I am talking about.

Oh, I thought you were accepting the characterization of planes as the gold standard. Because planes have the same scary part, of giving up control.

But more importantly a couple paranoid regulators don't really represent "society as a whole", so you're not drawing on particularly relevant experience here when you talk about something as locked-down as rail or planes. With the constant looming death toll of human car crashes and state by state regulation there's a lot of room for getting these systems on the road.

Re: Tesla’s Push to Build a Self-Driving Car Sparks Dissent Among Its Engineers

#352

Post by asteli »

Animats wrote: post #334
asteli wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen you plug flash LIDAR (especially ASC's unit) several times here, but is anyone actually using it on SDVs? I've seen things that could have been flash LIDAR on test cars, but never as the primary sensor. I worked on a team that evaluated the ASC unit a few years ago, but they found it unusable due to bloom issues. Has that changed?

I don't know how Continental is doing about staring into the sun. Here's a recent overview of flash LIDAR detector options.[1] That's more about the detectors used for looking down from aircraft, where ranges may be thousands of meters. Automobiles don't need that kind of range. Flash LIDAR has a tradeoff between range and field of view. You can concentrate your energy or fan it out. There's been some interest in sys…

Why are flash LIDAR the way forward? Is it just packaging, and the ability to blend the sensor with the lines of the car? Cost? It certainly isn't image quality AFAIK.

(as an aside: I don't buy the moving parts argument -- a modern car has thousands, many of which have much tougher jobs than "spin at 900 RPM while on".)

Re: Tesla’s Push to Build a Self-Driving Car Sparks Dissent Among Its Engineers

#353

Post by robmcm »

sxates wrote: post #262
dantillberg wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a cruise control ish system I heard about on a car (a Mercedes, iirc) in Germany when I was a kid: instead of a target speed, you set a maximum speed, such that pressing normally down on the gas allowed the car to accelerate up to that speed. It trims down the excess gas to avoid exceeding the maximum speed. If you released the gas, the car would coast; and if you pushed the pedal down close to the floor (i…

This feature exists in my Jaguar XF. Similar to the cruise control, you can set a 'max speed' and the car will simply not accelerate past that speed. I don't think I've tried flooring it to see if it would let me exceed it in that case though.

It will, there is normally a, "kick down" point where it will accelerate at max, for emergency situations. This also normally disengages the max limit.

Another feature is speed warnings, which "beep" at you when you exceed them. Currently they only seem to be singular, but it should be possible to integrate them with satnav and speed sign recognition. I expect these would be safer, especially if it linked up with a, "black box" to report excessive violations with a parent, insurance company, police etc.

Re: Tesla’s Push to Build a Self-Driving Car Sparks Dissent Among Its Engineers

#354

Post by kevmo314 »

jacquesm wrote: post #310
kevmo314 wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could argue that in the "oh shit" scenarios for a car, the proper action is to always stop. Most human drivers will instinctively stomp on the brakes if they see anything they're not expecting, and this is pretty much what today's autonomous software does. Recovering from the "oh shit" scenario is the difficult part, but human pilots often can't recover, after all it makes little sense to try and fix an engine on…

> after all it makes little sense to try and fix an engine on fire while flying No, but you can ditch an engine that is on fire. > instead opting to land. That is supposed to be the outcome of any successful flight. Autoland is possible with an engine out, even at low altitude (on final approach): http://www.askcaptainlim.com/flying-on-the-boeing-777-flying... So as far as the software goes that's business as usual a…

Right, so why does the negative opinion towards self-driving cars seem to be that a computer isn't allowed to slow down to give it more time to react, which it would just treat as business as usual?

Re: Tesla’s Push to Build a Self-Driving Car Sparks Dissent Among Its Engineers

#355

Post by herpdorplarp »

toss1 wrote: post #164
flavor8 wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I see 2-3 accidents daily caused by your "alert" drivers rear ending cars. Remind me not to drive in your neighborhood. (This appears to be hyperbole.)

Just take any job that requires a significant highway commute, you'll see more than that. Whenever you get full speed traffic occasionally interrupted by traffic jams (from whatever cause, other accident, tolls, weather, low angle sunlight, construction, etc.), you'll get a higher incidence of rear-enders. Especially when the tail of the slow/stopped traffic is at a point just past a hill or curve. I got rear-ended m…

I don't think car-to-car matters. You can't rely on it being accurate or present. The car will simply have to drive in such a way that it can always stop within the stretch of visible clear road.

Re: Tesla’s Push to Build a Self-Driving Car Sparks Dissent Among Its Engineers

#356

Post by Accacin »

aetherson wrote: post #200
delinka wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"neighborhood"? Who commutes across a neighborhood as the full extent of their commute? I suspect it's within a rounding error. Driving across a city, however, I definitely see this. Daily. And "accident" I expect to mean everything from a light tap rear-ending to a full fledged crash. People rear-end each other in my city every day. On my commute, I'll come across two a day. Wet days, a few more. The other five dire…

About six years ago, I would drive from San Mateo to Oakland at least twice a week, after work, to meet my then-girlfriend. So that's down 92, across the bridge, and up to Oakland. It's about 30 miles, all on freeway, and at that time of day all in heavy (though not all stop-and-go) traffic. I don't think I ever saw three separate rear-ends in a single drive. I can't say for certain that I ever saw two. I didn't driv…

I'm in the UK, but I used to drive an hour each way to work which was about 25 miles. In a year I saw like one accident and that was someone being rear-ended in slow moving traffic.

Re: Tesla’s Push to Build a Self-Driving Car Sparks Dissent Among Its Engineers

#357

Post by RealityVoid »

Animats wrote: post #334
asteli wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen you plug flash LIDAR (especially ASC's unit) several times here, but is anyone actually using it on SDVs? I've seen things that could have been flash LIDAR on test cars, but never as the primary sensor. I worked on a team that evaluated the ASC unit a few years ago, but they found it unusable due to bloom issues. Has that changed?

I don't know how Continental is doing about staring into the sun. Here's a recent overview of flash LIDAR detector options.[1] That's more about the detectors used for looking down from aircraft, where ranges may be thousands of meters. Automobiles don't need that kind of range. Flash LIDAR has a tradeoff between range and field of view. You can concentrate your energy or fan it out. There's been some interest in sys…

I just recently heard about a company building automotive headlights with, let's say "selective lighting", using micro-mirrors. I was then surprised to find out micro-mirror devices have been available for quite a long time. [1] I wonder how come they haven't been used for a solid state LIDAR yet, they seem to be _very_ well suited for this. Are there any limitations because of the power of the LIDAR?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_micromirror_device

Re: Tesla’s Push to Build a Self-Driving Car Sparks Dissent Among Its Engineers

#358

Post by reacweb »

jacquesm wrote: post #305
terravion wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That said, aviation accident rates have been falling asymptotically while this "troubling trend" has been going on. In the US we've had no fatalities on domestic commercial flights since like 2009, and only the two at SFO a couple of years ago on international flights to the US. This is on a couple of billion flights with hundreds of billions of passenger departures.

Airliner pilot discipline is orders of magnitude better than your average driver.

airline pilot selection plays also a role.

Re: Tesla’s Push to Build a Self-Driving Car Sparks Dissent Among Its Engineers

#359

Post by int_19h »

titanomachy wrote: post #207
int_19h wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a Subaru with lane-following and adaptive cruise. Lane follow fails miserably because it keeps losing the lane boundaries, even on clearly marked roads. But adaptive cruise control works extremely well, and particularly shines in stop-and-go traffic. One catch there is that it'll stop automatically, but it won't ever go if it came to a full stop - you need to tap the gas to reactivate cruise. If the car in fro…

I also drive a new-ish Subaru, adaptive cruise seems to work well in some situations (low speed stop-and-go, like you mentioned) but at high speeds it is terrifying... A speed that is reasonable on straight highways is pretty jarring around curves. If my foot is on the gas I'll subconsciously make the needed adjustment, but with cruise on I don't usually react in time. This could partly be a consequence of living in…

I'm in PNW as well. I find that it works great on major freeways - e.g. I commute over I-90, and it works great there. On I-405 as well. On the mountain routes, like say parts of SR-202, yeah, it's ill advised.

Re: Tesla’s Push to Build a Self-Driving Car Sparks Dissent Among Its Engineers

#360

Post by kylegordon »

dantillberg wrote: post #226
ghaff wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a well-researched area, in addition to being pretty obvious to everyone. Personally, I stopped using cruise control years ago. If I have to pay attention, I'm better off driving. This isn't just a matter for Tesla. The auto industry is rapidly heading for much better assistive driving systems. There's no way that the people heads-down in their cell phones are going to do this less once they realize they don't…

There was a cruise control ish system I heard about on a car (a Mercedes, iirc) in Germany when I was a kid: instead of a target speed, you set a maximum speed, such that pressing normally down on the gas allowed the car to accelerate up to that speed. It trims down the excess gas to avoid exceeding the maximum speed. If you released the gas, the car would coast; and if you pushed the pedal down close to the floor (i…

That's just a speed limiter. Have it on my 4yo Volvo. Can be overridden by depressing the pedal fully to the floor (not a kickdown, before someone jumps on that aspect - it's a manual car)
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