Let's talk Self Driving Cars again!

[Koolau]

I want a Geezer mode, which is should be more aggressive than Granny.

How my Geezer mode compares to Polite, I am not sure.

I'm trying to apply "Aloha" in my ICE, but sometimes slip back into "Aggressive" mode - especially in our traffic! YMMV

 

[Chuckanut]

There is an interesting discussion on the 11/20 edition of The Tech Guy podcast in which they discuss California's decision to let several companies test fully self driving cars on the public roads with no human driver in the car to take over. Interesting.

https://twit.tv/shows/the-tech-guy

Find show #1946 on 11/20.

Most of the discussion takes place in the first 40 minutes.

 

[NW-Bound]

While some SDC developing companies still sound gunho and promise a Level 4 or 5 SDC any day now, Apple is not so sanguine.

For years, Apple has been working on this technology but not making any public announcement. Much of what we know is via some leakage, like the following Bloomberg article.

When both Google and Apple, companies with huge amount of cash and lacking no engineering talents, struggle with this technology, it makes you wonder how other companies will fare.

Apple Inc. has scaled back ambitious self-driving plans for its future electric vehicle and postponed the car’s target launch date by about a year to 2026, according to people with knowledge of the matter.

The car project, dubbed Titan inside the company, has been in limbo for the past several months as Apple executives grappled with the reality that its vision for a fully autonomous vehicle — without a steering wheel or pedals — isn’t feasible with current technology.

 

[JoeWras]

Pretty sure a few of us engineers were squawking pretty loud about this on the original closed thread. Just sayin'. [emoji6]

 

[Midpack]

Though I thought it would take much longer than Musk ever claimed, I will admit I was once more optimistic re: Level 4/5 than I am these days. The problem is there are almost unlimited variables (situations and conditions), roads are far from standardized, snow/ice/low visibility hasn’t really been addressed, and human drivers/pedestrians will always act in new irrational ways. AI has a long way to go before it will overcome that.

I also wonder if the first goal is to continue to advance driver assistance to a point where it’s harder and harder for human drivers to screw up. Of course that would require the driver assist features are all turned on, I know a lot of drivers disable them…

 

[ERD50]

Pretty sure a few of us engineers were squawking pretty loud about this on the original closed thread. Just sayin'. [emoji6]

Yep, and a few other (maybe only one?) poster(s) actually got a bit testy with some of us, claiming we just didn't 'get it', inferring we were Luddites or some such. Even challenging a poster here who was deep into designing real Auto-pilot systems for real airplanes in real life!

So maybe they will finally all come around to my original, consistently held concept - that all these great technologies should be used to keep the driver attentive and involved and alert, and assist an active driver, and in no way try to 'take over' for them (except in emergencies).

Similar to having someone in the passenger seat who is also watching the road for you - you do your best to drive safely, but that passenger may see something you don't and can alert you to it. That makes for a safer drive (it would be interesting to see statistics on that, with a safety-engaged passenger, not one who is distracting the driver).

And in some cases, (like emergency braking), the car could take over, or even pull over and call for assistance if it senses you are not paying attention (drunk, sleepy, medical emergency, etc). Part of this concept, as I mentioned way back, would be to monitor the driver's head motions, and maybe eyes. Are they looking around, monitoring their mirrors, looking left, right - did they notice that truck ahead partially pulled over to the side of the road, but partially blocking the lane? A gentle reminder a few times, and then threats to pull the car over and stop.

That tech is far, far more do-able (and is already being done in some ways), and could enter the mainstream (average selling priced cars) long before any true SDC could be released. The old "Perfect is the enemy of good/better".

And all of this can be done in stages (as has been happening) and developed and improved over time. It's evolutionary, we don't need the "all or nothing" gate (no steering wheel, etc).

Time to get real.

-ERD50

 

[Alan]

I was driving in my car a few days ago slowly alongside a primary school that had just let out when a couple of little kids suddenly sprinted away from their dad and the car immediately braked, sounded an alarm and flashed up a warning sign showing pedestrians. They didn’t run into the road and the braking wasn’t full on, but I bet it would have been if they had left the sidewalk.

 

[NW-Bound]

I was driving in my car a few days ago slowly alongside a primary school that had just let out when a couple of little kids suddenly sprinted away from their dad and the car immediately braked, sounded an alarm and flashed up a warning sign showing pedestrians. They didn’t run into the road and the braking wasn’t full on, but I bet it would have been if they had left the sidewalk.

We need more driving assistance functions like the above. They are safe and affordable. The driver remains fully responsible, but the machine can aid in reducing traffic accidents.

My Opel rental car displayed the speed limit on the odometer while I drove through 2,700 miles of mostly European back roads. It did this with a rear-mirror mounted camera reading the speed limit signs by the side of the road. I found out that this Opel Grandland had this feature since 2018.

The above feature was very useful, because the speed limit on rural European roads may change every thousand feet or less. It was common to see the speed limit changed from 30 km/hr to 90 km/hr for only a very short segment, then back to 30 km/hr. It was easy for me to forget what the current speed limit is. I guess people there drive with their foot alternating between full throttle and braking hard.

 

[NW-Bound]

Back on the state-of-the-art SDC systems and the problems that SDC developers have finally realized as being so tough, I found an article by Bloomberg most in depth and thoughtful. It may be behind a paywall, but I managed to read it somehow.

See: Even After 100 Billion Self-Driving Cars Are Going Nowhere

“It’s a scam,” says George Hotz, whose company Comma.ai Inc. makes a driver-assistance system similar to Tesla Inc.’s Autopilot. “These companies have squandered tens of billions of dollars.”
...
One of the industry’s favorite maxims is that humans are terrible drivers. This may seem intuitive to anyone who’s taken the Cross Bronx Expressway home during rush hour, but it’s not even close to true. Throw a top-of-the-line robot at any difficult driving task, and you’ll be lucky if the robot lasts a few seconds before crapping out.

“Humans are really, really good drivers—absurdly good,” Hotz says. Traffic deaths are rare, amounting to one person for every 100 million miles or so driven in the US, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Even that number makes people seem less capable than they actually are. Fatal accidents are largely caused by reckless behavior—speeding, drunks, texters, and people who fall asleep at the wheel. As a group, school bus drivers are involved in one fatal crash roughly every 500 million miles.

Waymo, the market leader, said last year that it had driven more than 20 million miles over about a decade. That means its cars would have to drive an additional 25 times their total before we’d be able to say, with even a vague sense of certainty, that they cause fewer deaths than bus drivers. The comparison is likely skewed further because the company has done much of its testing in sunny California and Arizona.

What one of the pioneers of SDC technology, Levandowski, is now doing is to build robotic dump trucks for rock quarries (he participated in the DARPA self-driving vehicle Grand Challenge in 2004-2005).

Our driverless future is starting to look so distant that even some of its most fervent believers have turned apostate. Chief among them is Anthony Levandowski, the engineer who more or less created the model for self-driving research and was, for more than a decade, the field’s biggest star. Now he’s running a startup that’s developing autonomous trucks for industrial sites, and he says that for the foreseeable future, that’s about as much complexity as any driverless vehicle will be able to handle. “You’d be hard-pressed to find another industry that’s invested so many dollars in R&D and that has delivered so little,” Levandowski says in an interview. “Forget about profits—what’s the combined revenue of all the robo-taxi, robo-truck, robo-whatever companies? Is it a million dollars? Maybe. I think it’s more like zero.”

Why is SDC so tough? It's because the AI (Artificial Intelligence) technology behind it is so unpredictable, despite all the fancy "deep-learning" jargon.

To Levandowski, who rigged up his first self-driving vehicle in 2004, the most advanced driverless-car companies are all still running what amount to very sophisticated demos. And demos, as he well knows, are misleading by design. “It’s an illusion,” he says: For every successful demo, there might be dozens of failed ones. And whereas you only need to see a person behind the wheel for a few minutes to judge if they can drive or not, computers don’t work that way. If a self-driving car successfully navigates a route, there’s no guarantee it can do so the 20th time, or even the second.

 

[Alan]

We need more driving assistance functions like the above. They are safe and affordable. The driver remains fully responsible, but the machine can aid in reducing traffic accidents.

My Opel rental car displayed the speed limit on the odometer while I drove through 2,700 miles of mostly European back roads. It did this with a rear-mirror mounted camera reading the speed limit signs by the side of the road. I found out that this Opel Grandland had this feature since 2018.

The above feature was very useful, because the speed limit on rural European roads may change every thousand feet or less. It was common to see the speed limit changed from 30 km/hr to 90 km/hr for only a very short segment, then back to 30 km/hr. It was easy for me to forget what the current speed limit is. I guess people there drive with their foot alternating between full throttle and braking hard.

That speed limit display feature is common among cars these days. The Prius we bought in 2017 has it and our son's much smaller, cheaper, Yaris. If you exceed the limit by 5 to 10% it either changes color, or slowly blinks to alert you. With this new car of ours, if it sees a school speed limit it displays it side by side the usual limit since it can't read the times or recognize the flashing orange lights when the lower school limit is in effect.

However, I don't think SDC technology is anywhere close to good enough yet.

 

[ERD50]

Back on the state-of-the-art SDC systems and the problems that SDC developers have finally realized as being so tough, I found an article by Bloomberg most in depth and thoughtful. It may be behind a paywall, but I managed to read it somehow.

See: Even After 100 Billion Self-Driving Cars Are Going Nowhere

... One of the industry’s favorite maxims is that humans are terrible drivers. This may seem intuitive to anyone who’s taken the Cross Bronx Expressway home during rush hour, but it’s not even close to true. Throw a top-of-the-line robot at any difficult driving task, and you’ll be lucky if the robot lasts a few seconds before crapping out.

“Humans are really, really good drivers—absurdly good,” Hotz says. Traffic deaths are rare, amounting to one person for every 100 million miles or so driven in the US, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Even that number makes people seem less capable than they actually are. Fatal accidents are largely caused by reckless behavior—speeding, drunks, texters, and people who fall asleep at the wheel. As a group, school bus drivers are involved in one fatal crash roughly every 500 million miles.

And for probably 1/millionth what has been spent on Full Self Driving, we could have the technology to stop the majority of those accidents with pretty basic tech that could be in cars today. Speeding and a warning and eventual intervention by the car is trivial in comparison, as is a camera to ensure the driver is paying attention to the road, and not nodding off or zoning out or texting.

How much have Telsa owners paid collectively for the vaporware of FSD? I see a (more?) lawsuits coming forward.

Here's an interesting review of an Israeli company working on FSD. They have programmed the AI to "anticipate" what other drivers and pedestrians will do. Looks impressive, but I still think getting something to work in snow, rain, etc is just beyond anything that can trickle down to the masses in the foreseeable future. If only the very rich can afford it, it doesn't help much overall, especially if it takes decades to even get to the rich. In the mean time (or forever), driver assistance make so much more sense (as it always has, IMO).

It also brings up the interesting point - can FSD break the law? Seems these days people routinely drive over the speed limit on expressways/tollways/freeways (or whatever they are called where you live). It can even be dangerous to not go with the flow of traffic. But if I get stopped, I could get a ticket. I guess the (non) driver would decide and accept a waiver to allow the FSD to go with the flow up to X mph over?

-ERD50

 

[ls99]

Having driven my car in self steering mode, I found it far more stressful to monitor the progress, than actually steering thee car. Had my hands hovering near the steering wheel, especially when semi trailers were passing me or I was pasing them. The subscription plan for Supercruise is ending for my car, will not renew. I do not find it valuable.
At 70 MPH there is a lot of aerodynamic push from Semis both at the end of the trailer and when coming even with the front of the tractor in passing or when they pass me. My car is a full size 2020 Caddy CT6 all wheel drive.
Unlike in an aircraft's autopilot, there are a myriad of bits of info needing to be processed by any proposed car's self driving mode. Success by self driving mode imho is very limited as shown by a good many "self driving" car's mishaps. Maybe TCAS for cars? Not likely in my lifetime.
On a recent 700 mile round trip, what I found really useful was the lane keeping assist. At times it was slightly ahead of my steering input on tight curves.
All the other assist are great, auto brake for example. Oh and the ditch light, at night when turning sharp corners.

 

[NW-Bound]

That speed limit display feature is common among cars these days. The Prius we bought in 2017 has it and our son's much smaller, cheaper, Yaris. If you exceed the limit by 5 to 10% it either changes color, or slowly blinks to alert you. With this new car of ours, if it sees a school speed limit it displays it side by side the usual limit since it can't read the times or recognize the flashing orange lights when the lower school limit is in effect.

My 2020 Chevy does not have the ability to read the speed limit sign.

It does have the lane keeping, and also the forward collision warning. Both these features are by using the rearview-mirror mounted camera. My car does not have forward radar.

I found the speed limit sign recognition in the rental Opel interesting, because it went back at least to 2018. At that time, Tesla Autopilot did not have this capability.

By the way, I believe my Chevy and many cars use technology by Mobileye, who was bought out by Intel, and recently spun back out as an individual company.

 

[Alan]

My 2020 Chevy does not have the ability to read the speed limit sign.

It does have the lane keeping, and also the forward collision warning. Both these features are by using the rearview-mirror mounted camera. My car does not have forward radar.

I found the speed limit sign recognition in the rental Opel interesting, because it went back at least to 2018. At that time, Tesla Autopilot did not have this capability.

By the way, I believe my Chevy and many cars use technology by Mobileye, who was bought out by Intel, and recently spun back out as an individual company.

My 2017 Prius and my son’s 2017 Yaris both have this feature, and they pick up on road construction and other temporary speed signs.

 

[Koolau]

Yep, and a few other (maybe only one?) poster(s) actually got a bit testy with some of us, claiming we just didn't 'get it', inferring we were Luddites or some such. Even challenging a poster here who was deep into designing real Auto-pilot systems for real airplanes in real life!

So maybe they will finally all come around to my original, consistently held concept - that all these great technologies should be used to keep the driver attentive and involved and alert, and assist an active driver, and in no way try to 'take over' for them (except in emergencies).

Similar to having someone in the passenger seat who is also watching the road for you - you do your best to drive safely, but that passenger may see something you don't and can alert you to it. That makes for a safer drive (it would be interesting to see statistics on that, with a safety-engaged passenger, not one who is distracting the driver).

And in some cases, (like emergency braking), the car could take over, or even pull over and call for assistance if it senses you are not paying attention (drunk, sleepy, medical emergency, etc). Part of this concept, as I mentioned way back, would be to monitor the driver's head motions, and maybe eyes. Are they looking around, monitoring their mirrors, looking left, right - did they notice that truck ahead partially pulled over to the side of the road, but partially blocking the lane? A gentle reminder a few times, and then threats to pull the car over and stop.

That tech is far, far more do-able (and is already being done in some ways), and could enter the mainstream (average selling priced cars) long before any true SDC could be released. The old "Perfect is the enemy of good/better".

And all of this can be done in stages (as has been happening) and developed and improved over time. It's evolutionary, we don't need the "all or nothing" gate (no steering wheel, etc).

Time to get real.

-ERD50

I think this is about the best we can hope for - and that is a lot.

One thing more that might be possible: If the "road" and its conditions could be transmitted to the car from the road side, many accidents could be prevented.

I totaled a car 30+ years ago. There was a steep underpass, allowing a train track to pass overhead. A traffic light ahead was obscured by the overhead track bridge. I'd never been through there and was totally surprised to see a red light with a stopped vehicle ahead.

Any other time, I could have stopped, but road oil had accumulated under the bridge and it had just begun to rain gently. When I hit the brake, it was like glare ice. No ABS in those days and even my best efforts put me into the back of the truck. The investigating officer did not ticket me and said "Every time it rains, we have accidents here."

Of course, the ideal "solution" would be to reengineer this obscured intersection (all the signs in the world only go so far - and there were no signs.) BUT if a small transmitter by the road side could have told my "self driver" to slow down even though I wasn't aware of an issue, the accident might have been avoided or at least been a bumper replacement instead of a car replacement. YMMV

 

[ERD50]

.... The investigating officer did not ticket me and said "Every time it rains, we have accidents here."

Of course, the ideal "solution" would be to reengineer this obscured intersection (all the signs in the world only go so far - and there were no signs.) ...

Geez, you'd think they'd do something, if it was that common.

I used to travel a road with traffic lights around a corner. Another case where you come up on it pretty quick before you see it (45 or 55 mph speed limit, don't recall which). They had the typical traffic light ahead sign, but I really didn't think that was enough - should have had a flashing light, especially warning if it would be turning red by the time you got there.

It's stunning to me how much technology and brain power has gone into SDC, yet simple stuff like this has not been addressed!

-ERD50

 

[JoeWras]

One thing that could be done today is better road maintenance. It messes with both the robots and humans!

Example: they did some repaving around here. Good stuff! But they are super slow in repainting the lines, especially the little "hash marks" on double or triple left turn lanes. It causes chaos without them.

Then again, I've read that some areas with double turn lanes don't even have the hash marks. Oh well.

 

[PaunchyPirate]

I don't see me ever buying a fully self-driving car. My 2021 Highlander has all of Toyota's advanced driver assist stuff and I leave it all activated. I set the cruise control to the dynamic mode that adjusts your speed based on the vehicle in front of you. But when it comes to slowing down in heavier traffic, I can't fully let go of putting my own foot on the brake to stop from hitting that car in front of me. I just can't do it. My trust just isn't there with the automation. I'm generally pretty hip with new technology. But not with self-driving cars.

 

[Koolau]

Geez, you'd think they'd do something, if it was that common.

I used to travel a road with traffic lights around a corner. Another case where you come up on it pretty quick before you see it (45 or 55 mph speed limit, don't recall which). They had the typical traffic light ahead sign, but I really didn't think that was enough - should have had a flashing light, especially warning if it would be turning red by the time you got there.

It's stunning to me how much technology and brain power has gone into SDC, yet simple stuff like this has not been addressed!

-ERD50

When it comes to gummint agencies properly using technology or even acting on common knowledge, we all know that is a crap shoot. Just the nature of the beast.

One of the most surprising things I learned upon moving to the Islands was that we have crosswalks on busy 5 or 6 lane thoroughfares. Of course, some are at cross-street traffic signals. Nothing new there. For the most part, these are reasonably safe if everyone pays attention to the lights. BUT because some major streets have few cross-trafic stops, the city has simply placed cross walks (you know, the white bars across the street.) Then they pass a law that basically says, "do not run over people in cross walks."

But, every once in a while, someone runs over a person in such a cross walk. Go figure! THEN we put up a set of warning lights across that entire walk-way that the pedestrians can initiate from the curb. These are reasonably effective - not as good as a traffic signal, but better than nothing. SO, I figure within about 30 more years and a dozen or so more pedestrian deaths, all of S. King St. will have such monitors at every cross walk. BUT, I'm not bitter!

 

[NW-Bound]

My 2017 Prius and my son’s 2017 Yaris both have this feature, and they pick up on road construction and other temporary speed signs.

My mother had a Yaris that was post-2017 (I don't recall the exact year). I am sure it did not have this feature, because I drove it a few times.

It appears to me cars sold in the US lack the safety-enhancement features that are standard in Europe. Why is that so?

 

[Alan]

My mother had a Yaris that was post-2017 (I don't recall the exact year). I am sure it did not have this feature, because I drove it a few times.

It appears to me cars sold in the US lack the safety-enhancement features that are standard in Europe. Why is that so?

Quite possibly she had a model with fewer features? Our son’s Yaris is a petrol hybrid with rear view camera, front facing camera with speed limit detection, pre-collision system with cyclist and pedestrian detection, intelligent adaptive cruise control, and most of that is included in the lowest model. He also has lane change detection at speeds over 37 mph that he has enabled all the time as he likes the warnings. I don’t know whether it is tighter safety regulations.

https://www.toyota.co.uk/new-cars/yaris

 

[Ronstar]

^^Before I retired, (maybe 2012) we were working on a joint venture with Nokia and other companies using remote sensing technology to gather roadway sign data. They had technology available then where their Google type car cameras could recognize signs by their shape, size, and other characteristics. i.e. a speed limit sign of a specific size with Speed Limit" printed on it at a standard font and size, etc. So they could recognize a sign if it met a standard parameter set. At that time, I don't believe they were doing anything with that ability, but it doesn't surprise me that they have developed means by which to control cars now by using the data.

 

[Alan]

A quick search brought up the following article on it. Note that speed limit signs follow the same shape and color across Europe.

https://www.carbuyer.co.uk/car-technology/304221/what-is-traffic-sign-recognition

How does traffic sign recognition work?
A forward-facing camera is installed in the car, usually above the main mirror on the windscreen, and this uses software to scan for, and recognise, road signs. The camera isn’t anything too special, but each car maker uses its own very clever computer programmes to get the system to work.

The information about the road sign is then sent to whichever part of the display is designed to show the info. Usually this is done on the digital dash behind the steering wheel, although many models are also able to show road sign info in a head-up display that reflects in the windscreen.

 

[Ronstar]

^^ Yep this is close to how I remember it. Except the camera systems used ten years ago in development were bigger, and their onboard computer systems took up the whole back of a small SUV. And they tried to do it in a hybrid vehicle but the SUV's battery wasn't strong enough to power everything. So they primarily used ICE vehicles. I wish I would have been allowed to take pictures in their lab.

We spoke with some German engineers who talked about their standardized signs and how that made the recognition process easier.

 

[NW-Bound]

Quite possibly she had a model with fewer features? Our son’s Yaris is a petrol hybrid with rear view camera, front facing camera with speed limit detection, pre-collision system with cyclist and pedestrian detection, intelligent adaptive cruise control, and most of that is included in the lowest model. He also has lane change detection at speeds over 37 mph that he has enabled all the time as he likes the warnings. I don’t know whether it is tighter safety regulations.

https://www.toyota.co.uk/new-cars/yaris

Yes, the basic Yaris in the US did not have any driver assistance.

After the trip, seeing the capability of the rental Opel Grandland, I did some research and read that the EU was contemplating elevating the speed sign reading assistance to a higher level, such as issuing an aural warning to the driver, or even cutting his speed.