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Self-Driving Cars Can Handle Neither Rain nor Sleet nor Snow

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Re: Self-Driving Cars Can Handle Neither Rain nor Sleet nor Snow

#41

Post by cal5k »

vaughnegut wrote: post #20

As a Canadian, it's the snow that's made me skeptical of self-driving cars. Seeing how much they depend on road markings to navigate in traffic properly is completely impossible in winter. Until that's solved, there's a lot of places that just can't use them for a lot of the year.

It seems plausible to me that LIDAR + radar could eventually outperform humans in white-out conditions.

Here's an interesting bit of research on filtering out snow noise from a LIDAR point cloud:

http://wavelab.uwaterloo.ca/?weblizar_portfolio=real-time-fi...

Re: Self-Driving Cars Can Handle Neither Rain nor Sleet nor Snow

#42

Post by rjsw »

throwawayjava wrote: post #28
scj wrote: post #24

Driving in dry / warm conditions is simple mechanics. Driving in snow and ice is an art. In snow and ice, variables that are typically constant or static become dynamic. Formally dynamic variables now become multi-variable equations. For example: travelling down a hill normally requires dynamically factoring for the extra speed due to the incline. Under blizzard conditions you have to factor ice/snow volume, as well…

The one glimmer of hope that I have is that I am literally incapable of driving in the snow without substantial software assistance, and that's true for literally every other human I know.

Is that with proper winter tyres or not ? With good tyres you can drive in pretty bad conditions.

Re: Self-Driving Cars Can Handle Neither Rain nor Sleet nor Snow

#43

Post by jerkstate »

justtopost wrote: post #21
dbcurtis wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think they are qualitatively “better drivers”. But they are more experienced at certain things. When I lived in Minnesota, I got lots of practice driving in snow and ice and rain. Now in NorCal, not so much :) Its a skill. You get better with practice. The person going slow probably just hasn’t had enough practice yet with the conditions. Going slow is probably a good choice for them. Am I a better driver ove…

I think auto racing has priven there are most certainly qualitively 'better drivers' adjusted for training and experince.

And learning to drive in the ice and snow is definitely a leg up; in racing (I have heard this in rally and F1) "If you want to win, hire a Finn"

Re: Self-Driving Cars Can Handle Neither Rain nor Sleet nor Snow

#44

Post by loeg »

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #34
throwawayjava wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The one glimmer of hope that I have is that I am literally incapable of driving in the snow without substantial software assistance, and that's true for literally every other human I know.

How did people survive before ABS and traction control? It's not that bad. You just dial back your risk taking to reflect the situation.

Frankly, many of them didn't. Highway deaths have come down a lot since the invention of ABS.

Re: Self-Driving Cars Can Handle Neither Rain nor Sleet nor Snow

#45

Post by scj »

grahamburger wrote: post #31
scj wrote: post #24

Driving in dry / warm conditions is simple mechanics. Driving in snow and ice is an art. In snow and ice, variables that are typically constant or static become dynamic. Formally dynamic variables now become multi-variable equations. For example: travelling down a hill normally requires dynamically factoring for the extra speed due to the incline. Under blizzard conditions you have to factor ice/snow volume, as well…

This sounds like exactly the kind of job for a computer. I live in an area that gets a lot of snow. The only 'safe' things for a human to do in snowy, icy, wet conditions are: slow down (a lot), leave a lot more following distance, stay home. I talk to a lot of people who seem to think that they are able to drive at full speed in the snow and complain about all of the 'out of town' drivers who slow down the roads bec…

> I'd rather share the road with a computer.

Not version 1.

Factoring in all these variables is going to be a lot of work for a non-universal feature. I have no doubt they'll be included some day, but I doubt it'll be day 1.

EDIT: To be clear, I believe that dealing with ice and snow is an order of magnitude more difficult than driving under normal conditions. This is an 80-20 feature that many people won't need. I can't imagine holding the product back for additional development when just locking the feature based on a thermometer would suffice.

Re: Self-Driving Cars Can Handle Neither Rain nor Sleet nor Snow

#46

Post by loeg »

fake-name wrote: post #40
giacaglia wrote: post #35

That's because of LIDAR, rain and snow interfere with LIDAR. A simple Google search shows that https://www.quora.com/Autonomous-driving-how-good-is-LiDAR-u...

To be fair, rain and snow interfere with millimetre wave radar too.

And visible spectrum light (human eyes).

Re: Self-Driving Cars Can Handle Neither Rain nor Sleet nor Snow

#47

Post by dsfyu404ed »

loeg wrote: post #44
dsfyu404ed wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How did people survive before ABS and traction control? It's not that bad. You just dial back your risk taking to reflect the situation.

Frankly, many of them didn't. Highway deaths have come down a lot since the invention of ABS.

People not driving drunk less and wearing seat belts more has a heck of a lot more do with it.

Re: Self-Driving Cars Can Handle Neither Rain nor Sleet nor Snow

#48

Post by pps43 »

justtopost wrote: post #21
dbcurtis wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think they are qualitatively “better drivers”. But they are more experienced at certain things. When I lived in Minnesota, I got lots of practice driving in snow and ice and rain. Now in NorCal, not so much :) Its a skill. You get better with practice. The person going slow probably just hasn’t had enough practice yet with the conditions. Going slow is probably a good choice for them. Am I a better driver ove…

I think auto racing has priven there are most certainly qualitively 'better drivers' adjusted for training and experince.

For some definition of 'better'. I know excellent race drivers who were in rather unfortunate and totally avoidable road accidents.

Re: Self-Driving Cars Can Handle Neither Rain nor Sleet nor Snow

#49

Post by hanoz »

giacaglia wrote: post #35

That's because of LIDAR, rain and snow interfere with LIDAR. A simple Google search shows that https://www.quora.com/Autonomous-driving-how-good-is-LiDAR-u...

As LIDAR's pièce de résistance to date has been its ability to "see through" forest canopies to the terrain below, I don't understand how rain or snow should present an unsurmountable obstacle to seeing the road ahead.

Re: Self-Driving Cars Can Handle Neither Rain nor Sleet nor Snow

#50

Post by gmadsen »

jefft255 wrote: post #11
munk-a wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That clearly is the case, it was my experience growing up that even seasoned New England drivers couldn't take the weather seriously and ended up in a ditch on the side of the road.

That's not really a good point. When New England/Canada drivers drive through a snowstorm, the vast majority of them get to where they were going just fine. In comparison, basically no self driving car could safely drive 100 ft during a snowstorm. Getting self driving cars to be as good as humans during harsh weather (which is not that good I'll give you that) will take 10 years in my opinion (I say this as a grad st…

I'd say betting any tech 10 years down the line is a fools game. in 2008, people were saying the same thing about object detection, or literally 100s of other things that deep learning has done that people said was impossible.

Autonomous cars are already safer on ice. being able to individually apply abs to each wheel in micro second speeds of detection of change in terrain is far more accurate than any human.

As far as snowfall, for the vast majority of places, hi def maps and semantic knowledge of signage already exists, so as long as the car can localize, it can obey snow covered signs, and google and others are already working on filtering out weather "noise".

The problem isn't as intractable as it seems

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