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Hidden obstacles for self driving cars

technologyreview.com

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Re: Hidden obstacles for self driving cars

#51

Post by robotresearcher »

jbarham wrote: post #40

There was recently a car crash here in Victoria, Australia, that resulted in the deaths of two teenagers and injuries to five others. It was apparently caused by the relatively inexperienced driver swerving to avoid a rabbit. In hindsight it would have been better if the driver hadn't swerved and the rabbit had been run over, but in some sense this is a moral choice of the type that robots can't make. In theory self…

> this is a moral choice of the type that robots can't make.

The driver in Victoria did not make a moral choice. Did they really weigh the life of the rabbit against death and injury of seven people? Extremely unlikely.

A robot, like an experienced driver, could easily use the heuristic that hitting the small thing is safer than hitting the big thing.

Re: Hidden obstacles for self driving cars

#52

Post by bagels »

kamaal wrote: post #45
bagels wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One that Google has not solved, for instance, is navigating a gas station. When they fill up gas at Shoreline & Middlefield in Mountain View, I see humans doing the driving.

Approaching this problem as 'navigating around X' is a wrong way to go about it. Once you solve the problem of navigating a gas station, the next you will face is to drive around a school, or a lane where kids are playing. The list would never end. The idea must be to come up with a generic algorithm that solves these problems as a whole. Not one specific case at a time.

Well, I mostly agree with this.

The gas station is a special case though, because the objective isn't just travel from here to there. Finding a parking space is somewhat similar kind of special case, where there is a specific objective.

Re: Hidden obstacles for self driving cars

#53

Post by yen223 »

letstryagain wrote: post #17
thewarrior wrote: post #15

I am making a bold prediction that it will be decades before a self driving car can drive itself safely on Indian streets. Road Signs ? None. Rules ? They're more like suggestions. Roads ? What Road ?

They just have to be significantly safer than humans, and that's not hard.

The self-driving car has trouble telling whether a white object on the road is a piece of paper or a rock. Most humans don't have that problem.

I don't why we like to think that all people are stupid. At the moment, the human brain is still significantly more intelligent than computers.

Re: Hidden obstacles for self driving cars

#54

Post by robotresearcher »

balloot wrote: post #34
Swizec wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People have trouble with snow as well. If there are no tracks in front of you, you just guess where you're supposed to go and go for it. It's pretty fun on roads you know well, rather miserable on roads you don't. Also, most 3-lane roads magically turn into 2-lane roads, and many 2-lane roads turn into 3-lane roads etc.

You just described the problem nicely. The "magic" that turns 3 lane roads into 2 lanes etc, is a situational awareness that is really, really difficult to impart on a learning system. The big problem is that probabilistic models don't have a notion of "common sense" solution to an odd situation. They need to have seen the situation, or something very similar to it, enough to make a reasonable calculation of what to…

Isn't that last sentence describing common sense?

Re: Hidden obstacles for self driving cars

#55

Post by jbarham »

afterburner wrote: post #44
jbarham wrote: post #40

There was recently a car crash here in Victoria, Australia, that resulted in the deaths of two teenagers and injuries to five others. It was apparently caused by the relatively inexperienced driver swerving to avoid a rabbit. In hindsight it would have been better if the driver hadn't swerved and the rabbit had been run over, but in some sense this is a moral choice of the type that robots can't make. In theory self…

I think this is a poor example. You could just as easily program the robot not to try so hard to avoid hitting a small animal (or at all). It's not a moral choice, it's a decision based on size and shape. Also, a robot might be less likely to swerve into other cars or dangerous locations. There are problems for robot cars, sure, but this doesn't sound like one of them.

> It's not a moral choice, it's a decision based on size and shape.

A baby crawling on the road is the same size and shape (roughly) as, say, a dog. In that situation the choice is a moral one, whether the robot knows it or not.

This is not a hypothetical scenario: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1279639/Bus-driver-c...

Re: Hidden obstacles for self driving cars

#56

Post by balloot »

nicholas73 wrote: post #46
balloot wrote: post #31

I've been saying this for years, as I took Thrun's class when he was at Stanford. Google's dirty little secret is that self driving cars are still mostly smoke and mirrors. Given relatively controlled conditions and a trained driver who can play backup when needed, they work. But if you put them in complicated situations - snow, a busy city environment, abnormal signage - watch out. The problem is that the driving mo…

I decided to test a Google self driving car as it crossed the intersection by accelerating into its broadside - no reaction at all. Well, got a reaction from the humans inside. I recently narrowly avoided getting killed by a broadside collision by braking just in time. If I were further I would have sped up out of the way. Would a probabilistic approach handle this? Maybe they need to compile a list of special edge c…

You can't compile a list of edge cases for this kind of thing, because it is impossible to know the comprehensive list of all the situations the car won't handle correctly.

In the end, you need a learning technology that can properly adapt to any possible situation and give a decent response. Maybe it can be done, but we certainly aren't there yet and I'm skeptical as to the the tractability of the last bit of the problem.

Re: Hidden obstacles for self driving cars

#57

Post by kelnos »

pseudonym wrote: post #27
smeyer wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you think this? Self-driving cars seem reasonably close whereas there doesn't seem to be anything resembling what you're proposing. Also, aren't autopilot systems successful in commercial air vehicles because they operate high up away from most everything other than a few birds and other commercial air vehicles and they maintain massive separation between vehicles (compared to roads)? This wouldn't seem to sca…

It depends on how "reasonably close" they end up coming. If it ends up being a xeno's paradox of issues where it can handle 90% of situations, then 99%, then 99.9%, then 99.99%, etc, but each of those incremental improvements prove harder and harder to achieve, how many lawmakers are going to say "Sure, only .001% of robot cars on the road get into catastrophic accidents in unhandled situations, that's fine, let's ma…

how many lawmakers are going to say "Sure, only .001% of robot cars on the road get into catastrophic accidents in unhandled situations, that's fine, let's make these things legal"?

If they're actually thinking properly (doubtful), they'll look at the rate of catastrophic accidents with human drivers, and make a call based on whether or not self-driving cars are an improvement.

Re: Hidden obstacles for self driving cars

#58

Post by kamaal »

robotresearcher wrote: post #51
jbarham wrote: post #40

There was recently a car crash here in Victoria, Australia, that resulted in the deaths of two teenagers and injuries to five others. It was apparently caused by the relatively inexperienced driver swerving to avoid a rabbit. In hindsight it would have been better if the driver hadn't swerved and the rabbit had been run over, but in some sense this is a moral choice of the type that robots can't make. In theory self…

> this is a moral choice of the type that robots can't make. The driver in Victoria did not make a moral choice. Did they really weigh the life of the rabbit against death and injury of seven people? Extremely unlikely. A robot, like an experienced driver, could easily use the heuristic that hitting the small thing is safer than hitting the big thing.

>>Did they really weigh the life of the rabbit against death and injury of seven people?

I would say yes. Firstly I would see what the driver actually did. Did the driver have the seven people in plain sight when he/she made that decision? But for sure the driver did make a moral decision to save the Rabbit's life. It would have even been the case where the person thought he could save the rabbit's life without harming the humans. So you have to make decisions which are purely not mathematical here.

>>could easily use the heuristic that hitting the small thing is safer than hitting the big thing.

How would this hold against hitting some one below average height versus hitting some one tall. Or running over a baby Vs an aged person.

Right there are all kinds of moral dilemma.

Re: Hidden obstacles for self driving cars

#59

Post by balloot »

robotresearcher wrote: post #54
balloot wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You just described the problem nicely. The "magic" that turns 3 lane roads into 2 lanes etc, is a situational awareness that is really, really difficult to impart on a learning system. The big problem is that probabilistic models don't have a notion of "common sense" solution to an odd situation. They need to have seen the situation, or something very similar to it, enough to make a reasonable calculation of what to…

Isn't that last sentence describing common sense?

Not quite. I would define common sense as "a reasonable fallback solution given that the current situation is unfamiliar." This is something AI systems have a LOT of difficulty with, the self-driving car being no exception.

Re: Hidden obstacles for self driving cars

#60

Post by jbarham »

robotresearcher wrote: post #51
jbarham wrote: post #40

There was recently a car crash here in Victoria, Australia, that resulted in the deaths of two teenagers and injuries to five others. It was apparently caused by the relatively inexperienced driver swerving to avoid a rabbit. In hindsight it would have been better if the driver hadn't swerved and the rabbit had been run over, but in some sense this is a moral choice of the type that robots can't make. In theory self…

> this is a moral choice of the type that robots can't make. The driver in Victoria did not make a moral choice. Did they really weigh the life of the rabbit against death and injury of seven people? Extremely unlikely. A robot, like an experienced driver, could easily use the heuristic that hitting the small thing is safer than hitting the big thing.

I'm not blaming the driver for making an immoral decision but I am saying that many more experienced drivers would not have swerved. For example, when driving in Africa where stray dogs are common, my father had a pre-determined policy not to swerve to avoid them given that it increased the probability of an accident involving human injury.

As I say in a separate comment that "small thing" may be human baby or toddler on the road.

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