Autonomous Cars

[subcritical71]

https://youtu.be/anLpxYuchB8

The really relevant question is, why was the car in a slide in the first place? It's a good thing there was no one on the lane next to it. Who knows, maybe the car was constantly overdriving relative to the conditions? That would change the "story" quite dramatically.

I agree with you there. I look at it this way, if I wouldn’t have cruise control on I sure as hell wouldn’t have autopilot on. At the first indication of worsening road conditions my cruise control comes off.

[Nickel]

I've got a new car and in a proper snow storm you're not getting up a decent hill with traction control on, so I'm struggling to see how auto pilot will sort it out.

Also that slide in the tesla video is mind boggling to me, as is how you would use that as an argument in favor of AP. that wasn't even ice, just slush aquaplanning. to have that big a moment in a strait line is unacceptable. Decent save though, I'll give it that. You're average driver would've jammed the brakes and lost the back end. Still shouldn't have happened and on the roads I drive, you'd be in the forest.

[Greg Locock]

"Anyone care to posit how autonomous vehicles will be made to work in a snowstorm? road grit, snow and ice will be a significant impediment to cameras and wheel speed sensors are useless at best, a hindrance at worst. "

Yup. Before AVs become ubiquitous we will have to redesign our roads. They'll effectively be slot car tracks. There will be wireless sensors embedded along the road way and the cars will drive between them.

[AJI]

"Anyone care to posit how autonomous vehicles will be made to work in a snowstorm? road grit, snow and ice will be a significant impediment to cameras and wheel speed sensors are useless at best, a hindrance at worst. "

Yup. Before AVs become ubiquitous we will have to redesign our roads. They'll effectively be slot car tracks. There will be wireless sensors embedded along the road way and the cars will drive between them.

I read something years ago about the concept of adding serial numbers to road aggregate. You lay the road, log the serial numbers and GPS position(s) of the aggregate, upload the data to the global road network, cars read and report their position on the road, every car knows where every other cars is. It seemed plausible to me..?
Just add compulsory human tracking for added pedestrian safety.

[Andres125sx]

Anyone care to posit how autonomous vehicles will be made to work in a snowstorm? road grit, snow and ice will be a significant impediment to cameras and wheel speed sensors are useless at best, a hindrance at worst.

A friend and I were discussing this recently and found it difficult to believe autonomous vehicles to be "right around the corner" in snowy climes.

Think of the camera lens as the windshield. Put the same impediments in front of a human driver and how will it work out? Since all cars on the road today need to have driver interaction (ie. not AV), the camera systems are not designed for all conditions. But for AV the cameras can have systems put in place just like there are systems for windshields which will allow a driver a clear view.

https://electrek.co/2016/12/20/tesla-au ... ters-snow/

Wheel speed sensors are hardly affected by snow anymore. I post this next video knowing the comment will be that the car was in AP mode when it lost control but anyone can loose control of a car in icing conditions, its how you react to correct that is the difference here.

https://youtu.be/anLpxYuchB8

Just before the lost of control, there´s a red flash and several frames are missed... I did notice watching at 0.25 speed trying to find some ice or too much water/snow in the road causing aquaplanning. Looking at the yellow/black signals at the left it´s obvious some frames are missed just before the spin

Anycase, all this debate is interesting, but people is trying to find limitations to something wich do not exist yet. Tesla AP is far from a full L5 AV, it is an L3 as much. Even so that save is awesome to me. And btw, that save I´m assuming was done thanks to ESC braking individual wheels to recover control, something a human simply cannot do, even if he´s Sebastian Loeb, humans don´t have control over each wheel brake individually so that kind of recovery is simply out of human capabilities. A trained human would have needed a lot more space to recover forward heading, probably crashing with the right barrier. And that would be a trained human, an average human would have inevitably crashed with the barrier


How cameras will look through snow? Well, as we humans do trying to see throught it, except cameras can be thermal cameras too wich look through the snow much better than our limited eyesight

[hollus]

Three Sensor Types Drive Autonomous Vehicles

There is (or there will be) a lot more than visual cues. Beat that, humans!

[Tommy Cookers]

...I read something years ago about the concept of adding serial numbers to road aggregate. You lay the road, log the serial numbers and GPS position(s) of the aggregate, upload the data to the global road network, cars read and report their position on the road, every car knows where every other cars is. It seemed plausible to me..?
Just add compulsory human tracking for added pedestrian safety.

will the pedestrians have a duty to comply with the laws of road use - or be exempt as they are currently ?

exactly 2 weeks ago I was cycling into my village
this involving turning off the legally major road onto the legally minor road
so I had 100% legal priority
and the car driver who stopped but then emerged from the minor road on a collision course with me had 0% legal priority

this thread seems clear that had he been in an AV his vehicle could not have made that move
(had our positions in the real-life case been reversed) could I have cycled 'illegally' from the minor road onto the major road -
and the potential collision with an AV on the major road would be prevented by AV action ?

or is it just pedestrians that will enjoy this benefit ?
if so, will that include or exclude 4 legged pedestrians ?

[AJI]

...
if so, will that include or exclude 4 legged pedestrians ?

Here's a reasonably common problem in my area. My friends recently (just over a week ago) wrote-off their brand new Toyota Prado. A cow got out of a paddock and onto the road, at night. No human was injured, but the cow didn’t make it...
Cattle are electronically tagged in Australia for ID, but not for GPS tracking. If the car had known there was a black cow wandering on the road ahead the accident never would have happened. My friend, who I must say is an extremely safe driver, didn’t have a chance. He crested a hill with his wife and two small children on-board and was confronted with a 700kg cow on the road 50 metres ahead. Humans 1, cattle 0. If they were driving a sedan it could easily have been humans -4...

[Big Tea]

...I read something years ago about the concept of adding serial numbers to road aggregate. You lay the road, log the serial numbers and GPS position(s) of the aggregate, upload the data to the global road network, cars read and report their position on the road, every car knows where every other cars is. It seemed plausible to me..?
Just add compulsory human tracking for added pedestrian safety.

will the pedestrians have a duty to comply with the laws of road use - or be exempt as they are currently ?

exactly 2 weeks ago I was cycling into my village
this involving turning off the legally major road onto the legally minor road
so I had 100% legal priority
and the car driver who stopped but then emerged from the minor road on a collision course with me had 0% legal priority

this thread seems clear that had he been in an AV his vehicle could not have made that move
(had our positions in the real-life case been reversed) could I have cycled 'illegally' from the minor road onto the major road -
and the potential collision with an AV on the major road would be prevented by AV action ?

or is it just pedestrians that will enjoy this benefit ?
if so, will that include or exclude 4 legged pedestrians ?

We get that sooo often with motorcycles. They look at you, estimate they can not get out, decide they do not want to wait, then think 'Ah, its only a bike' and go anyway.

So many seem to think we can disappear of use another part of the road or maybe sneak through the pavement side or something

[henry]

Anyone care to posit how autonomous vehicles will be made to work in a snowstorm? road grit, snow and ice will be a significant impediment to cameras and wheel speed sensors are useless at best, a hindrance at worst.

A friend and I were discussing this recently and found it difficult to believe autonomous vehicles to be "right around the corner" in snowy climes.

Think of the camera lens as the windshield. Put the same impediments in front of a human driver and how will it work out? Since all cars on the road today need to have driver interaction (ie. not AV), the camera systems are not designed for all conditions. But for AV the cameras can have systems put in place just like there are systems for windshields which will allow a driver a clear view.

https://electrek.co/2016/12/20/tesla-au ... ters-snow/

Wheel speed sensors are hardly affected by snow anymore. I post this next video knowing the comment will be that the car was in AP mode when it lost control but anyone can loose control of a car in icing conditions, its how you react to correct that is the difference here.

https://youtu.be/anLpxYuchB8

From my point of view the main difference between this example and other ESC systems is that after regaining control it found a lane to follow. I’m not sure that the car control element is different from other implementations that have been fitted to cars for the last 20 years.

[henry]

I’m sure we can all come up with edge cases. And the AV implementors will have a hat full of them.

Even considering them I think there are two very general things things they will take into account.

Firstly, how frequently does this case occur? In judging that they will need to take into account their target environment. If they’re targeting “go anywhere” they might have to accommodate large animals straying onto the road. If they’re targeting urban road networks they can potentially ignore that case. I think the regulators should be looking at geofencing AV systems and only allow them to work in environments for which they are designed. Navigate on autopilot might be fine on some trunk roads but probably not on all.

Secondly, how well would the target human driver cohort do in this situation. Would an above average human driver avoid, take ameliorating action or be helpless in this situation?

Defining the target human behaviour is again another area that legislators might take an interest in.

Allowing the AV creators to mark their own homework is likely to eventually have negative repercussions both at an individual level but also for the sector as a whole.

[subcritical71]

...
if so, will that include or exclude 4 legged pedestrians ?

Here's a reasonably common problem in my area. My friends recently (just over a week ago) wrote-off their brand new Toyota Prado. A cow got out of a paddock and onto the road, at night. No human was injured, but the cow didn’t make it...
Cattle are electronically tagged in Australia for ID, but not for GPS tracking. If the car had known there was a black cow wandering on the road ahead the accident never would have happened. My friend, who I must say is an extremely safe driver, didn’t have a chance. He crested a hill with his wife and two small children on-board and was confronted with a 700kg cow on the road 50 metres ahead. Humans 1, cattle 0. If they were driving a sedan it could easily have been humans -4...

There's a video of a Tesla on autopilot swerving and braking for a rabbit that was in the middle of the road. Thing is, later that same night with the same car a rabbit bolted across the road and the Tesla did not react. Maybe it didn't see it, or maybe it deemed it not a threat since it didn't hit it anyway...

https://t.co/qBvjZyx6Sl

[hollus]

...
if so, will that include or exclude 4 legged pedestrians ?

Here's a reasonably common problem in my area. My friends recently (just over a week ago) wrote-off their brand new Toyota Prado. A cow got out of a paddock and onto the road, at night. No human was injured, but the cow didn’t make it...
Cattle are electronically tagged in Australia for ID, but not for GPS tracking. If the car had known there was a black cow wandering on the road ahead the accident never would have happened. My friend, who I must say is an extremely safe driver, didn’t have a chance. He crested a hill with his wife and two small children on-board and was confronted with a 700kg cow on the road 50 metres ahead. Humans 1, cattle 0. If they were driving a sedan it could easily have been humans -4...

I know that meeting a (black!) cow is a non-foreseeable event. But what was the (officially safe) speed of that car while cresting a hill at night?
I can imagine a well programmed AV dropping some speed when facing a blind piece of road, one for which its sensors have no info yet, to reduce the braking distance there, juts in case. Do they actually do that?!

In my eyes, dropping, say, 30% of your speed, smoothly, for a short moment, is the thing to do. In real life, it is considered dangerous, the (human) driver behind you does not expect you to do that and "things start to happen", i.e. you are likely to get overtaken in the worst spot.
My problem with traffic, and why I hate driving so much is, to some extent, the non foreseeable events. And that I suck at multitasking and spatial awareness, but that is off topic. Which, by the way, some people learn to prevent with "defensive driving" courses. I can imagine AV vehicles doing defensive driving 100% of the time.

[henry]

Consumer reports have done an evaluation of Tesla’s Navigate on Autopilot. https://www.consumerreports.org/autonom ... ervention/

Apart from the conclusions on the functionality the article contains this, to my mind very sensible, prescription for how these technologies should be introduced.

“Tesla is showing what not to do on the path toward self-driving cars: release increasingly automated driving systems that aren’t vetted properly,” he says. “Before selling these systems, automakers should be required to give the public validated evidence of that system’s safety—backed by rigorous simulations, track testing, and the use of safety drivers in real-world conditions.”

I’ve had a short exposure to VW’s lane keeping and adaptive cruise control. It did a good job of spotting cars merging from slip roads and cutting into my space. It did a poor job with cars overtaking me and cutting in taking my space. I think this is because it only had a forward facing camera. In my case I treated every trip as an opportunity to observe the behaviour of the various assistance systems. Had I instead simply turned it on and hoped it took care of things it might well have resulted in a collision with a yellow Porsche* in one such overtaking manoeuvre. Knowing in which circumstances I could rely on the car and which not was not something the instruction manual prepared me for.

*Other colours and makes of vehicle are also driven inconsiderately.

[Big Tea]

Consumer reports have done an evaluation of Tesla’s Navigate on Autopilot. https://www.consumerreports.org/autonom ... ervention/

Apart from the conclusions on the functionality the article contains this, to my mind very sensible, prescription for how these technologies should be introduced.

“Tesla is showing what not to do on the path toward self-driving cars: release increasingly automated driving systems that aren’t vetted properly,” he says. “Before selling these systems, automakers should be required to give the public validated evidence of that system’s safety—backed by rigorous simulations, track testing, and the use of safety drivers in real-world conditions.”

I’ve had a short exposure to VW’s lane keeping and adaptive cruise control. It did a good job of spotting cars merging from slip roads and cutting into my space. It did a poor job with cars overtaking me and cutting in taking my space. I think this is because it only had a forward facing camera. In my case I treated every trip as an opportunity to observe the behaviour of the various assistance systems. Had I instead simply turned it on and hoped it took care of things it might well have resulted in a collision with a yellow Porsche* in one such overtaking manoeuvre. Knowing in which circumstances I could rely on the car and which not was not something the instruction manual prepared me for.

*Other colours and makes of vehicle are also driven inconsiderately.

I have the brake assist as I thought it was a good idea. It is never on except in slow moving traffic, where it drops out at low speed anyway. Rushing things in without due development and test is not only annoying bet giving it a bad name