ALVINN, an autonomous land vehicle in a neural network (1989) [pdf]
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ALVINN, an autonomous land vehicle in a neural network (1989) [pdf]
1–10 of 18 posts
Re: ALVINN, an autonomous land vehicle in a neural network (1989) [pdf]
#2I've been in that autonomous vehicle, although it wasn't moving at the time. Their road-follower worked only in very good circumstances.
The amazing thing is how much progress there's been in CPU power. That thing took three racks of computers, and a crew of 5, to drive 5 MPH. They had a 3D LIDAR, though, with a line scanner and a tilting mirror. That was better than most of the LIDAR units until recently.
Re: ALVINN, an autonomous land vehicle in a neural network (1989) [pdf]
#3This ALVINN promotional video is a good demonstration of the (1989) technology: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ilP4aPDTBPE
Re: ALVINN, an autonomous land vehicle in a neural network (1989) [pdf]
#4Basically the same core design as Tesla autopilot and other autonomous software today... but the hardware to make a useful finished product just weren't available yet. Way ahead of it's time.
Re: ALVINN, an autonomous land vehicle in a neural network (1989) [pdf]
#5Basically the same core design as Tesla autopilot and other autonomous software today... but the hardware to make a useful finished product just weren't available yet. Way ahead of it's time.
It's not just a matter of hardware. People didn't really know how to train neural networks more than 1-2 layers deep at the time. This is also before convolutional neural networks were invented by LeCun.
This network is literally 30x32 pixels => two NN layers => steering decisions. No convolution, no semantic segmentation. It's a very cool technical demonstration, but we've come a long way since, on every front.
Re: ALVINN, an autonomous land vehicle in a neural network (1989) [pdf]
#6Basically the same core design as Tesla autopilot and other autonomous software today... but the hardware to make a useful finished product just weren't available yet. Way ahead of it's time.
It's not just a matter of hardware. People didn't really know how to train neural networks more than 1-2 layers deep at the time. This is also before convolutional neural networks were invented by LeCun. This network is literally 30x32 pixels => two NN layers => steering decisions. No convolution, no semantic segmentation. It's a very cool technical demonstration, but we've come a long way since, on every front.
Yes, agreed. Software had also not advanced sufficiently.
Re: ALVINN, an autonomous land vehicle in a neural network (1989) [pdf]
#7Basically the same core design as Tesla autopilot and other autonomous software today... but the hardware to make a useful finished product just weren't available yet. Way ahead of it's time.
It's not just a matter of hardware. People didn't really know how to train neural networks more than 1-2 layers deep at the time. This is also before convolutional neural networks were invented by LeCun. This network is literally 30x32 pixels => two NN layers => steering decisions. No convolution, no semantic segmentation. It's a very cool technical demonstration, but we've come a long way since, on every front.
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Re: ALVINN, an autonomous land vehicle in a neural network (1989) [pdf]
#8I've been in that autonomous vehicle, although it wasn't moving at the time. Their road-follower worked only in very good circumstances. The amazing thing is how much progress there's been in CPU power. That thing took three racks of computers, and a crew of 5, to drive 5 MPH. They had a 3D LIDAR, though, with a line scanner and a tilting mirror. That was better than most of the LIDAR units until recently.
Animats, you've been at this longer than anybody on HN from what I can see, question for you: What in your estimate is going to be the failure rate of these self-driving set-ups and what kind of failsafe measures to gracefully shut-down are still on the table once a major sensor fails?
I'm wondering about this because I miss this element in most of the discussions around the theme, a human having a heart attack or a stroke behind the wheel is almost certainly going to cause an accident (one sided at best, multiple vehicles at worst). But I don't quite see how that translates into sensor failure (or even CPU failure) in a self driving car.
Re: ALVINN, an autonomous land vehicle in a neural network (1989) [pdf]
#9Basically the same core design as Tesla autopilot and other autonomous software today... but the hardware to make a useful finished product just weren't available yet. Way ahead of it's time.
Another project, with comparable design and objectives was EUREKA PROMETHEUS Project (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eureka_Prometheus_Project), which lead to "VaMP": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VaMP
From the article: In 1994, the VaMP and its twin VITA-2 were stars of the final international presentation of the PROMETHEUS project in October 1994 on Autoroute 1 near the Charles-de-Gaulle airport in Paris. With a safety driver and guests on board, the twins drove more than 1000 km in normal traffic on the three-lane highway at speeds up to 130 km/h. They demonstrated lane changes left and right, autonomously passing other cars after maneuver approval by the safety driver.
One year later, the autonomous Mercedes-Benz drove more than 1,000 miles (2,000 km) from Munich to Copenhagen and back in traffic at up to 180 km/h, again planning and executing maneuvers to pass other cars with safety driver approval. However, only in a few critical situations (such as unmodeled construction areas) a safety driver took over completely. Again, active computer vision was used to deal with rapidly changing street scenes. The car achieved speeds exceeding 175 km/h on the German Autobahn, with a mean distance between human interventions of 9 km. Despite being a research system without emphasis on long distance reliability, it drove up to 158 km without any human intervention.
Not too shabby for the 90s I'd say.
Re: ALVINN, an autonomous land vehicle in a neural network (1989) [pdf]
#10I've been in that autonomous vehicle, although it wasn't moving at the time. Their road-follower worked only in very good circumstances. The amazing thing is how much progress there's been in CPU power. That thing took three racks of computers, and a crew of 5, to drive 5 MPH. They had a 3D LIDAR, though, with a line scanner and a tilting mirror. That was better than most of the LIDAR units until recently.
Animats, you've been at this longer than anybody on HN from what I can see, question for you: What in your estimate is going to be the failure rate of these self-driving set-ups and what kind of failsafe measures to gracefully shut-down are still on the table once a major sensor fails? I'm wondering about this because I miss this element in most of the discussions around the theme, a human having a heart attack or a…
You will always have a redudancy of sensors in case they fail. The front looking camera usually does have a complimentary lidar and most cars are even equipped with both camera and radar in case a sensor goes AWOL. This will be the case is selfdriving cars as well. I think they will have even more redudancy then we see with ADAS cars today.