Hidden obstacles for self driving cars
technologyreview.com
Hidden obstacles for self driving cars
1–10 of 85 posts
Re: Hidden obstacles for self driving cars
#2I'm always glad to see reasonable overviews of emerging technologies. While very focused on what's wrong, it is a good counterpoint to the typical breathless coverage.
Re: Hidden obstacles for self driving cars
#3I'd love to see an article on this topic that was actually written for techies/engineers.
IMO, this could be right out of Wired the way it is written -- it conflates regulatory issues, problems that are clearly (relatively) easy but just not tackled, and problems that are legitimately still pending solutions before this goes mainstream. An article focusing on what the actual real difficult unsolved technical issues are would be fascinating, but this ain't it.
"The car’s sensors can’t tell if a road obstacle is a rock or a crumpled piece of paper, so the car will try to drive around either."
As a human I sometimes can't tell the nature of something on the road at speed. They gave an easy example (rock vs paper) but IRL it is usually things that aren't so easy to identify like trash bags that might be empty... or maybe not. So avoiding any unexpected item in the road when safe to do so is probably always the right solution anyway.
"Urmson also says the car can’t detect potholes or spot an uncovered manhole if it isn’t coned off."
People aren't that great at this either, especially in traffic where the hole is obscured until the last second, at least an automated car that reports home could, via various sensors, detect hitting "something that felt like a pothole" and send that information out to other cars in the region.
Re: Hidden obstacles for self driving cars
#4I'd love to see an article on this topic that was actually written for techies/engineers. IMO, this could be right out of Wired the way it is written -- it conflates regulatory issues, problems that are clearly (relatively) easy but just not tackled, and problems that are legitimately still pending solutions before this goes mainstream. An article focusing on what the actual real difficult unsolved technical issues a…
>that aren't so easy to identify like trash bags that might be empty... or maybe not.
A good example, but even if the trash bag is empty it can cause problems. I ran over an empty trash bag once, and it got stuck to my muffler and melted onto it. Made a huge mess and could have potentially caught fire.
Re: Hidden obstacles for self driving cars
#5Living in Russia, I always tried to conceive how Google cars would behave here, especially in winter.
As a driver here you have to take daring decisions sometimes, something that robots probably should never do due to 'do no harm' rule. That's a real engineering challenge.
Re: Hidden obstacles for self driving cars
#6So what if the car can't drive itself in anything other than familiar roads during clear weather? I would guess that the majority of my current driving is done under those conditions. If the car could take care of itself most of the time but fell back to my control during rain, snow, obscure roads, or construction zones, I think it would still be a net benefit to me.
Re: Hidden obstacles for self driving cars
#7I made this comment about google self driving cars two years ago and I think it's still relevant now:
200k miles is nothing. Over 8 billion vehicle miles are spent per DAY in the US. One person is killed for every 75 million miles driven. 200k miles isn't enough to test every terrain, under every weather condition, in every lighting, etc. There's too many variables in the equation. The Google car won't be truly safe until it has logged 1000x miles.
Re: Hidden obstacles for self driving cars
#8I remember a few of these difficulties being mentioned in Sebastian Thrun's Self-Driving Cars course on Udacity. It's been awhile, but I seem to remember the snow discussion in particular. The problem wasn't just slippery conditions, but the question of how the vehicle can localize itself when the various visual cues that it uses are covered in snow (e.g. road lines).
Pretty interesting stuff.
Re: Hidden obstacles for self driving cars
#9So what if the car can't drive itself in anything other than familiar roads during clear weather? I would guess that the majority of my current driving is done under those conditions. If the car could take care of itself most of the time but fell back to my control during rain, snow, obscure roads, or construction zones, I think it would still be a net benefit to me.
The problem there is driving is a skill, and one which you can lose if you do not exercise it. A self driving car which only works 99% of the time seems like a non-starter, since by that point the humans inside of them are no longer qualified to take over. Particularly if that 1% is in conditions that are particularly difficult.
Re: Hidden obstacles for self driving cars
#10Personally I think the path forward for autonomous cars goes hand-in-hand with services like Uber. First you need there to be a population of people who can get by without owning cars and have them rely exclusively on driving service. Then you slowly augment the driving service with autonomous vehicles when these folks are going to be traveling along routes that are supported by the cars. These routes will likely be an order of magnitude cheaper to travel, since there is no human driver. The market dynamics combined with the steady march forward of the capabilities of the autonomous cars will do the rest.
In other words, I think it's pretty unlikely you will just wake up one day and swap out your car for a self driving one to drive you around. Eventually, maybe, but fundamentally it will be less about which car you own and more about if you own a car at all. In the long run if autonomous vehicles are successful it makes little sense to own a car anyway, so it's only logical that the early adopters naturally be non-owners.