Driverless Cars

   / Driverless Cars #551  
The scenario would be hilarious up here in snow country. Four wheel sideways slide on a slippery street, oops, does not compute. A snowdrift accross the road, easily navigated by a driver, obstacle for all the sensors.
 
   / Driverless Cars #552  
Don't forget to add in dirt roads and local roads with no painted lines,
snow covered roads with no lines visible.
 
   / Driverless Cars
  • Thread Starter
#553  
The scenario would be hilarious up here in snow country. Four wheel sideways slide on a slippery street, oops, does not compute. A snowdrift accross the road, easily navigated by a driver, obstacle for all the sensors.

That's one reason most of the testing reported on is in Cali, or the SWest.

Lots of nuances to that situation...... hit a 18" dry powder drift with a loaded F350, often not a big deal. Hit an 8" pile of wet snow with only one set of wheels on a small/light vechicle...... different story.....

You don't have to drive many Winters to gain respect for hitting a snowdrift at speed..... it will be a while before the tech understands how to react to that scenario proactively.

If I'm on a deserted rural road, I'll often drive around the drift instead of hitting it. Default autonomous control code may well be..... keep rolling at programmed speed, hit it, and let Auto-Stablity deal with it.

Rgds, D.
 
   / Driverless Cars
  • Thread Starter
#554  
Don't forget to add in dirt roads and local roads with no painted lines,
snow covered roads with no lines visible.

Another article I was reading this morn touched on errors in Google mapping.

Good point........ coastal areas are often an issue. A buddy of mine has been a long term resident and GPS user in BC. He's called Garmin a few times about on-road routing that put him through the next province (very long trip) instead of what should have been a 20km route.

2028..... work all day/half the night, hop on a plane to Vancouver....... get in a driverless cab, tell computer my destination in the Fraser Valley...... wake up in stopped in Banff AB. At least Banff is a nice place to hang out.....

Gonna be innarresting......

Rgds, D.
 
   / Driverless Cars #555  
The scenario would be hilarious up here in snow country. Four wheel sideways slide on a slippery street, oops, does not compute. A snowdrift accross the road, easily navigated by a driver, obstacle for all the sensors.

If the stripes on the road were not visible, lane centering would not activate.
 
   / Driverless Cars #556  
What will be needed is for all cars to talk to each other. That way they all know what each one is doing and what it's going to do. That's going to take a push by someone to force it to happen. I remember when anti-lock brakes came out. They were going to be the best thing for a car since the gasoline engine. Turns out that there's times when you want your wheels to skid. For example in deep snow or on loose gravel you want your wheels to dig in like a plow. That was compounded by things like traction control. If the computer thinks your tire is spinning it clamps on the brake even if you are trying to drive through mud or snow.
 
   / Driverless Cars #557  
Don't forget to add in dirt roads and local roads with no painted lines,
snow covered roads with no lines visible.

Something that also shouldn't be "forgotten" is the possibility of each car "learning" its own neighborhood very very well, i.e. centimeter accuracy for the 99+ percentage of our driving that is on roads that we (or the automaton) have driven before.
I don't go barrelling down snow covered roads that I am not familiar with - or even the ones I know fairly well - and I certainly don't know any roads with centimeter accuracy.

Yes, the pathological case is venturing into the unknown in extreme conditions, but fail safe design SHOULD ensure that the vehicle either STOP and hand over control to the human or STOP.

At that point there MAY be a problem.
The vehicle may have gotten in too deep for itself, but WAYYYyyyy to deep for the human.
 
   / Driverless Cars #558  
Something that also shouldn't be "forgotten" is the possibility of each car "learning" its own neighborhood very very well, i.e. centimeter accuracy for the 99+ percentage of our driving that is on roads that we (or the automaton) have driven before.
I don't go barrelling down snow covered roads that I am not familiar with - or even the ones I know fairly well - and I certainly don't know any roads with centimeter accuracy.

Yes, the pathological case is venturing into the unknown in extreme conditions, but fail safe design SHOULD ensure that the vehicle either STOP and hand over control to the human or STOP.

At that point there MAY be a problem.
The vehicle may have gotten in too deep for itself, but WAYYYyyyy to deep for the human.

That is not going to happen and certainly not in my lifetime.
To many dead zones for cell service and even satellite radio.
GPS will drop down to just a few satellites.
 
   / Driverless Cars
  • Thread Starter
#559  
Reading these recent comments, reminded me of a conversation I had with a buddy at work years ago.

He and a friend flew to Vancouver Island, and rented a car. When they told the rental guy where they were going (Up Island), he said - "pay close attention to what I'm about to tell you".

"If you are driving along and it seems like an earthquake is warming up, drive into the ditch". Up Island, they run monster logging trucks (typical of left-coast), on narrow roads, flat-out. Most areas, they have a gradually graded wide ditch as a shoulder.... you can drive into it, but typically aren't getting back out, at least not in a rental car with street tires.

I remember my buddies account of driving along, hearing a roaring rumble coming, and driving into the ditch. Log truck goes FLYING past, screaming down the road. He and his buddy get out, and start looking at the car (undamaged, but stuck) to decide what to do.......... WAY off in the distance, they hear this faint beep starting. The guy in the logging truck backs through a pile of curves, all the way back to them..... jumps out, thanks them, grabs a chain looped on the back of the trailer and makes short work of pulling them back on the road. All good back when. Haven't been there myself..... but I wouldn't be surprised if those Up Island roads are still the same.

Drive In Ditch mode - be a while coming, today.....

Rgds, D.
 
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   / Driverless Cars #560  
I feel the current Tesla model is fatally flawed. The machine does all the driving -- except for the most challenging parts, where a human needs to be able to take over? Humans aren't built that way. The machine needs to be all or nothing.
Two years later and Tesla still does not have Full Self Driving ready but it is 8x safer than a human driven car without the Tesla self driving features.
 
 
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