Self Driving Cars?

[explanade]

Quote:

Originally Posted by DEC-1982 When we discuss whether a human would have or have not hit the pedestrian with the bicycle, it is worth remembering that there is a whole lot of difference between human drivers. Some are very young (and often careless). Some are drunk. Some are tired. Some are simply over-confident and dangerous. And I also see old drivers, including 85+ year old drivers, on the road. So when we talk about a human doing better, perhaps we are talking about the alert mature sober human expecting trouble at any moment. Is that 50% of the human driver population, or more or less?

And there may be variability between different SDC platforms.

At least during this testing stage.

We don't know for a fact that SDCs from other companies would have done better in this situation but one would certainly hope so.

[explanade]

Quote:

Originally Posted by NW-Bound If the lidar is working right, you do not need the infrared. The infrared may keep you from running into people and animals. But it does not save the car from running into a wall like a lidar does. And infrared may pick up stray inanimate objects that are warmer than the environment. Braking and swerving for the wrong things can be dangerous.

I remember my driving instructor in high school telling us that if there's a small animal in the roadway, run it over, do not break hard or swerve suddenly because you might get hit from behind or hit some cars in the neighboring lanes.

[dumpster56]

I have been a driver ed teacher for 40 years I have a true issue with this. Remember driving is a privilege. It should be paramount that only when the technology is ready should this go forward. Putting these vehicles on the roads today in our fast heading third world country is folly.

[NW-Bound]

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Originally Posted by misanman I think they just need to add some code: IF (WOMAN WITH WHITE SHOES CROSSING ROAD PUSHING BIKE) THEN "STOP".

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Originally Posted by sengsational Talking about the coding logic... I was wondering...if it was just a person walking (no bike), or if it was a bike and rider, would there have been a "match" > recognition > "STOP". Maybe the case statement needs to match with bike walkers too.

Of course you both were jesting.

All they need is this: "If something that big is in the middle of the road, slow down and try to go around it. And if it also moves, slow down even more to the point of stopping".

[misanman]

Quote:

All they need is this: "If something that big is in the middle of the road, slow down and try to go around it. And if it also moves, slow down even more to the point of stopping".

Just received an email from a friend, retired now but who previously worked with one of the "name" vendors in the SDC space. He said the system the worked with (one of the leaders) has a library of image signatures, (person walking, bicycle rider, etc) and speculated that a person pushing a bike may not have closely matched a signature in the library. Not sure how serious he is about this but if that's the basis for taking action then I can see a lot of opportunity for problems.

[NW-Bound]

Quote:

Originally Posted by dumpster56 SDC not ready for prime time. Plus the human in the vehicle seems to have been negligent here. Am I wrong but a pilot flying at 38,000 feet on auto pilot still is responsible if something goes wrong? Here we have a person who was ignoring the road in front of her, not engaged. I say what will insurance rates be? 10,000 a year per vehicle? 25K??50K??Does any company have that kind of money for insuring these vehicles?

At 38,000 ft, it is easier for the crew to detect and to recover from an autopilot malfunction. Much more critical is the Autoland mode, when, if the autopilot malfunctions and drops the aircraft nose when the aircraft is 50 ft above the runway, the pilots do not have enough time to piss in their pants.

Some commercial jetliners have Autoland mode certified to land the aircraft in zero visibility weather, such that the pilots cannot even see the runway to know if the autopilot is doing the right thing to bring the aircraft to the runway. Without such an Autoland system, they might have to divert to another airport.

But even in manual mode, some jetliners have a "fly-by-wire" system, where there is no mechanical linkage between the pilot's hands and the control surfaces. Instead, force and/or displacement transducers in the control wheels or sticks are used by computers to read the level of manual input. The computers then command the actuators of the control surfaces accordingly.

Needless to say, if the "fly-by-wire" system malfunctions, pilots of a military aircraft will eject. Pilots and passengers of a commercial jetliner can say a prayer together.

[NW-Bound]

Quote:

Originally Posted by misanman Just received an email from a friend, retired now but who previously worked with one of the "name" vendors in the SDC space. He said the system the worked with (one of the leaders) has a library of image signatures, (person walking, bicycle rider, etc) and speculated that a person pushing a bike may not have closely matched a signature in the library. Not sure how serious he is about this but if that's the basis for taking action then I can see a lot of opportunity for problems.

I can see that's how it is needed with a vision camera, which presents a flat 2-D image.

No need for that with a lidar. The lidar tells you how big that object is, where it is, and how it is moving. It could be a UFO, but you do not care. Do not run into it. There's no ambiguity.

[ERD50]

Quote:

Originally Posted by misanman Just received an email from a friend, retired now but who previously worked with one of the "name" vendors in the SDC space. He said the system the worked with (one of the leaders) has a library of image signatures, (person walking, bicycle rider, etc) and speculated that a person pushing a bike may not have closely matched a signature in the library. Not sure how serious he is about this but if that's the basis for taking action then I can see a lot of opportunity for problems.

Quote:

Originally Posted by NW-Bound I can see that's how it is needed with a vision camera. No need for that with a lidar. The lidar tells you how big that object is, and how it is moving. There's no ambiguity.

I know next to nothing about AI programming, but assigning 'signatures' makes some sense in trying to ID an object. I think that's how face recognition works, distance between eyes, corners of mouth, mouth to chin, nose, etc, all create a signature, and when enough of those measurement are close enough, you get a match.

But it does seem that all it had to do here was realize there was something bigger than a bread box moving into the cars path. Pedestrian, dog, bike, runaway shopping cart - shouldn't make any difference. Brake, maybe veer away, if that's an option.


-ERD50

[NW-Bound]

Street driving presents much more difficulties than freeway driving. You have to watch out for a pedestrian standing on the curb as you approach. He may step out onto the street, and you have to be prepared to stop. That's where the object identification comes in.

In a presentation, the CEO of Waymo showed off their new inhouse lidar that had enough 3-D resolution to distinguish features on a human head (eyes, chin, nose, ears). The lidar scan he showed clearly demonstrated that.

He said that it would be useful to know if the pedestrian was facing into the street or not (the pedestrian is not going to walk backwards off the curb). I do not know if they have been able to program the computer to recognize nose and ears off the lidar scan like any human easily can, but they seem to understand the difficulty of the problem, and know what they have to do.

[Midpack]

Quote:

Originally Posted by ERD50 Imagine this scenario:[/B] A driver starts losing focus on his driving, is distracted by a bad day at work or whatever. He's just staring ahead, not really 'engaged' and scanning his mirrors, not looking left/right, or maybe he's starting to fall asleep. An active DAWS will beep at him, and get him focused back at the important task of driving. This will be happening at all times, keeping him focused on driving. A DAS system will wait until there is a problem. And then you've got a system beeping at someone who is not engaged, and it takes a second for them to get their bearings. That's a problem. Let's say he didn't see the car ahead of him stop. What's better - relying on a DAS system, that if it fails, results in a crash - or keeping the driver alert, so he is far less likely to not notice the car. An active DAS would provide an added level of safety, w/o having to rely on it. Again, an active DAWS will help train a driver to practice good driving technique. We should all be scanning our mirrors every few seconds, but do we always do that? Probably less than we think. DAWS would provide feedback.

Unfortunately this only shows how little you know about the driver assistance systems already on millions of late model cars, like LKA, PCBS, ACC and RAB for example. That would explain your fascination with driver awareness systems though they’re of unknown benefit commercially so far.

These systems all have the side benefit of increasing “awareness” while reducing accidents - without requiring the driver to react suddenly.

• Lane Keep Assist actively steers the car to stay in a lane unless the turn signal is on. And it will get your attention BTW, especially if asked to intervene 2-3 times.
• Pre Collision Braking Systems will slow the car if you’re closing too fast and bring the car to a full stop if the object ahead isn’t moving at all. That’ll get your attention.
• Adaptive Cruise Control maintains a safe distance (ours has 3 gap settings, all pretty generous). It’s usually subtle enough that it may not get your attention, but when on it does ensure gaps adequate for PCBS to be even more effective.
• Reverse Automatic Braking will fully stop the car if there’s cross traffic you can’t see, or an object directly behind you. That will also get the drivers attention.
• There are many other helpful driver assistance features that flash and beep to get your attention as well, but they don’t also proactively steer and brake.

Driver assistance systems can be designed to react as early as possible, they don’t have to wait until the last minute, they can leave plenty of time circumstances permitting and ultimately the driver doesn’t have to react if he she isn’t able. Sure it won’t work if your tailgating at 90mph or a pedestrian steps in front of you with no warning, but driver awareness won’t then either.

Though I asked for a link, I didn’t get one. I’m still not sure how constantly monitoring a drivers head and eyes is an added benefit. In traffic it would be worthwhile, though mostly redundant. If I’m driving for hours on interstate (mostly straight) between metro areas, I probably won’t move my head and eyes much but I certainly don’t need or want my car to be beeping at me for hours, or all sorts of circumstances where it’s unnecessary. You can bet there will be a switch to disable head and eye monitoring on cars, and if it’s a nuisance, people will disable it. In fairness, our dealer told us some new owners (most often older) come back after a few weeks and ask ‘how do I turn off all these (driver assistance) safety features?...

So far I haven’t heard much about Lexus driver monitoring, and I saw the post about Cadillac adding that feature to their driver assistance package. Time will tell if customers and automakers think it adds value. In the meantime driver assistance is already in millions of late model cars.

[Independent]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Clone I have seen a couple posts that say there would be more visibility to a human eye than what is captured on a video, and a person would have seen the victim before you could pick it out on the video.

Yes.

The NHTSA says ordinary low beams pick up objects about 160 feed away. At 40 mph, that's about 2.5 seconds.

This video doesn't catch the walker until, maybe 1.0 second, or 60 feet. Hence the video makes it look like there was no chance of stopping.

Back to the NHTSA, they say the human hits the brakes in 1.5 seconds. That's not soon enough to completely prevent the crash, but it might have slowed enough to change a death to an injury, or given the human driver the chance to swerve.

https://www.nhtsa.gov/DOT/NHTSA/Traf...les/deadly.pdf

Of course, that's for a human who is actually looking at the road.

[Midpack]

Quote:

Originally Posted by misanman Just received an email from a friend, retired now but who previously worked with one of the "name" vendors in the SDC space. He said the system the worked with (one of the leaders) has a library of image signatures, (person walking, bicycle rider, etc) and speculated that a person pushing a bike may not have closely matched a signature in the library. Not sure how serious he is about this but if that's the basis for taking action then I can see a lot of opportunity for problems.

At least one of the majors has each SDC continually adding to its library with each new object or vehicle it “sees.” But more important, each vehicle can then share its new library addition with all the other SDC’s - daily if not sooner. Like your iPad updates automatically as needed.

That’s one of the most promising features of SDC’s to me. Where today if a driver or automaker learns something valuable that enhances safe driving, it may be weeks, months or years if ever for other drivers to learn that new info. With SDC’s, it’s not just their image library, but any software update can be shared with every SDC - daily or more often. We’ll all benefit right away!

[meierlde]

I had a loaner Tahoe while my car was at the dealer. In that vehicle you could not ignore the warnings as the seat had a built in buzzer that you felt in the rear when it went off.
So instead of just a tug to the steering wheel you had a buzzing sensation in the rear when you departed the lane a bit. That will keep you alert.

[ERD50]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Midpack And this shows how little you know about the driver assistance systems already on millions of late model cars, like LKA, PCBS, ACC and RAB for example. That would explain your fascination with driver awareness systems .....

Well, I've explained the difference at least a dozen times now. If you don't get it, there's some block there that I don't understand.

And we have the evidence right in that Uber video. If that car had a Driver Awareness System, similar to that Cadillac video - monitoring that "safety-driver's" head position and assuring attention was being paid to the road, it now seems likely (now that it's being said that the human eye could have picked up the pedestrian far before we see it on that low resolution, low dynamic range video) that he would have seen the pedestrian and avoided the accident.

All the other systems failed. All the systems you mentioned can (and will) fail.

Augmenting those safety features with an attentive driver is a plus.
Augmenting an attentive driver with those safety features is a plus.

They can compliment each other. Until SDC is so good that we don't ever need a driver at all. Why wait, while lives could be saved in the mean time?

Plain as day. If you're paying attention.

-ERD50

[ERD50]

Quote:

Originally Posted by meierlde I had a loaner Tahoe while my car was at the dealer. In that vehicle you could not ignore the warnings as the seat had a built in buzzer that you felt in the rear when it went off. So instead of just a tug to the steering wheel you had a buzzing sensation in the rear when you departed the lane a bit. That will keep you alert.

It's a start. But it isn't doing anything to see if you are checking mirrors and looking left and right - which we know is part of safe driving.

And you also have to drift before it responds. I'd rather have a system that detects when people are not being attentive, and alert them before they start drifting out of their lane.

-ERD50

[Midpack]

Quote:

Originally Posted by ERD50 All the other systems failed. All the systems you mentioned can (and will) fail.

Yes, and your POV hinges on, even assumes, driver assistance features failing, yet your driver awareness never will. Time will tell if there’s a place for head and eye monitoring, before it ultimately becomes irrelevant.

[mamadogmamacat]

Not meaning to veer too much off topic, but it is rather sad to me that good and extensive driver ed, which was the norm when I was in high school, seems to be virtually nonexistent today. Do we really think either a better SDC whenever/if that becomes common some day and/or all the safety tech in newer cars can overcome the lack of driver ed fast enough to avoid having a lot more accidents. The growth in auto ins premiums and population growth combined make me think otherwise. pehaps I'm just getting old and crotchety.

[ERD50]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Midpack Yes, and your POV hinges on, even assumes, driver assistance features failing, yet your driver awareness never will. Time will tell if there’s a place for head and eye now, before it ultimately becomes irrelevant.

Now you are just making things up.

When did I ever say, or infer a Driver Awareness system would never fail? I'm not sure why I'm bothering, but let's take it again, one step at a time...

A Driver Awareness system compliments the driver, and compliments any other safety features.

If the other safety features lull a driver into complacency (and it is human nature that will happen, and we see it in the UBER video), and then fail (as we see in the UBER video), then bad things happen.

A Driver Awareness system wouldn't lull a driver into complacency, it would actively keep the driver engaged. And I expect it would actually train drivers to use good habits, to avoid the nags (operant conditioning). So even if it failed, the driver has learned good habits - they might not even need it much after a point.

If Driver Awareness fails, we are where we are today, no worse.

If the Driver Assistance fails, and the driver has been lulled into complacency (as we see in the UBER video), we are in worse shape than before.

The evidence of what I'm saying is there, in the UBER video, in case you missed it.

-ERD50

[ERD50]

Quote:

Originally Posted by mamadogmamacat Not meaning to veer too much off topic, but it is rather sad to me that good and extensive driver ed, which was the norm when I was in high school, seems to be virtually nonexistent today. ....

Is that the case? I really don't know if Drivers Ed is better or worse than in the past.

I do recall my son telling me that they were taught to keep a "running commentary" in their head as they drove (like " OK, I'm pulling up to an intersection, light is yellow, slow down, white car along side me, black car behind me...."). That's a good way to keep attentive and maintain "situational awareness".

-ERD50

[Sunset]

Quote:

Originally Posted by meierlde I had a loaner Tahoe while my car was at the dealer. In that vehicle you could not ignore the warnings as the seat had a built in buzzer that you felt in the rear when it went off. So instead of just a tug to the steering wheel you had a buzzing sensation in the rear when you departed the lane a bit. That will keep you alert.

But what happens if a person likes it. ....