And we're not going to get to a system that's so much safer as to render human attention irrelevant without a much more solid and theoretically sound approach to safety engineering.
Switching on the AutoPilot also makes me suddenly care a lot less about optimizing for that 1/10th of a second here and there. When the car’s driving, I get there when I get there. I can just relax and the traffic matters that much less.
My favorite expansion of the overloaded motorists' workload is when "firemen" holding "boots" get in traffic lanes during the morning commute in order to gather donations. Is that in the model?
in any case, i'd guess current algorithms can detect that fairly reliably in the noted conditions, since self-driving cars also trained on urban streets.
But sometimes it would be nice to have a 0 below the 1-7 following distance setting. (sort of like going to 11)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_777#Accidents_and_incid...
Perhaps in the short-term, but if you listen to Elon Musk compare it to like having elevator operators, it makes sense that computers will eventually do a much better job and humans will only introduce problems.
https://www.zdnet.com/article/elon-musk-on-teslas-autopilot-...
If you listen to Elon Musk we have fully autonomous cars every 2 years since 2015 and we'll have Mars cities in 2050.
He's very good at PR moves, but sending a rocket to space and getting it back in one piece, which is very impressive, is nothing compared to actually going to mars, which itself is nothing compared to building a city on a planet where everything is opposed to human life.
Tesla and Space X have a very high "hype factor", and sure they're probably the best at what they're doing, but he is insanely overselling it. Look at that timeline: https://www.inverse.com/article/51291-spacex-here-s-the-time...
Landing a few people and picking up a few rocks and taking a few selfies cost, inflation-adjusted for 2019, a whopping $288.1 billion [1].
This money was spent to "stick it to the communists" because they were winning at the space race (first man in space, etc...). We just happened to get a bunch of benefits along the way.
The several more hundred billion that would have followed if we decided to build entire colonies - with a multitude of massive problems still not figured out today - would have been a hard sell over the decades it would have taken to construct.
I mean just look at operating cost of MIR and ISS and that's in LEO...
[1] http://www.planetary.org/blogs/casey-dreier/2019/reconstruct...
Because there are many different numbers:
http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1579/1
https://www.quora.com/How-much-did-the-Moon-Mission-cost
The point is that it’s a matter of cost, and not a technical problem. The Apollo program was a “rush job” done in 10 years. Much of the technology had to be invented.
There an interesting BBC podcast called 13 Minutes to the Moon for anyone interested in finding out more about the Apollo program:
When I was reading that, I was expecting a much higher number than the one I ended up reading.
That's < the cash Apple has on hand, approximately as much revenue as they make a year.
That's 1/2 of the annual U.S. military budget.
It's 1/3 of a small portion of the 2008 bailout.
===
If you annualize that by the 10 years it was spent in, the only discretionary funding significantly less than that is Food and Agriculture.
But the difficulty is in
a) allocating this money b) convincing the public that removing this money from, say education, is a good strategy
A good chunk of people seriously require heat warnings on their hot coffee to realize that their coffee is hot. I don't hold high hopes in making a voting majority of people understand long-term global benefits.
Most likely computers will become far better than humans at some point. But it may be far enough in the future that it doesn’t really contradict the point made above. Contrary to popular belief, “640K should be enough” isn’t the kind of statement meant to cover all eternity.
No. Stating something as a fact without analyzing it in the slightest is bad.
Example:
(1) Only a computer is "paying attention" performing the "assisted emergency breaking" role. The computer has an effective reaction time of 1/100 of a second. Within 2/100 of a second of a qualifying event, the vehicle will be in full antilock brake mode.
(2) A human and a computer are "paying attention" performing the "assisted emergency breaking" role (this is a little silly in that the human is already the primary brake operator...). The computer still has 1/100 s reaction time, but the human's reaction time is 25/100 s. What exactly is the human bringing to the table? It is true that the human may detect an actual threat the computer doesn't...however that slow reaction time means it likely won't make a difference in the outcome. On the other hand, the human may "detect" a false alarm, and emergency brake by mistake. That activity often leads to wrecks!
I submit that the computer-only emergency brake assist is safer than the combination of human and computer. Further, all of these "human in the loop" systems suffer from a fatal flaw - the inability of people to pay attention unless it's absolutely crucial.
The way people use Tesla Autopilot shows that full autonomy is necessary, and will in fact be safer than any "assisted" system.
You're choosing to ignore the fact that computers still make mistakes.
My friend's car (an Acura) recently slammed on the brakes @ 70mph because it mistakenly thought a car in an adjacent lane was in his lane. Had there been someone following close behind him, it probably would've caused an accident.
This is not an uncommon occurrence, especially with Honda/Acura's system. You can find tons of complaints online about AEB systems reacting to false positives.
No, but I'll unequivocally assert that the human false alarm rate is much higher than that of computers.
"My friend's car (an Acura) recently slammed on the brakes @ 70mph because it mistakenly thought a car in an adjacent lane was in his lane. Had there been someone following close behind him, it probably would've caused an accident."
Does it have a readout indicating what it "thought"?
It seems possible that the car in the other lane drifted, and the computer thought it was changing lanes into the Acura. Braking was appropriate in that circumstance.
"This is not an uncommon occurrence, especially with Honda/Acura's system. You can find tons of complaints online about AEB systems reacting to false positives."
That may be, and I suspect a fix will be forthcoming which will address every Honda/Acura on the road (or new models, worst case).
Meanwhile, humans will continue to look down at a text, hamburger, or whatever, and then panic when a few seconds later they look up and think they're in trouble. Not to mention driving tired, drunk, high, angry, or stupid.
"Had there been someone following close behind him, it probably would've caused an accident."
And of course the person running into the braking vehicle would have been at fault. In most cases, only assisted emergency braking would help, since most people follow way too close on the freeway - human reaction time isn't fast enough.
The two can, and should, be complementary.
The two can, and should, be complementary."
What you're saying is true, but doesn't fall under the purview of "assisted emergency braking".
You know, not driving tired, drunk, high, angry, or stupid...
> No. Stating something as a fact without analyzing it in the slightest is bad.
> Example:
> (1) Only a computer is "paying attention" performing the "assisted emergency breaking" role. The computer has an effective reaction time of 1/100 of a second. Within 2/100 of a second of a qualifying event, the vehicle will be in full antilock brake mode.
> (2) A human and a computer are "paying attention" performing the "assisted emergency breaking" role (this is a little silly in that the human is already the primary brake operator...). The computer still has 1/100 s reaction time, but the human's reaction time is 25/100 s. What exactly is the human bringing to the table? It is true that the human may detect an actual threat the computer doesn't...however that slow reaction time means it likely won't make a difference in the outcome. On the other hand, the human may "detect" a false alarm, and emergency brake by mistake. That activity often leads to wrecks!
> I submit that the computer-only emergency brake assist is safer than the combination of human and computer. Further, all of these "human in the loop" systems suffer from a fatal flaw - the inability of people to pay attention unless it's absolutely crucial.
> The way people use Tesla Autopilot shows that full autonomy is necessary, and will in fact be safer than any "assisted" system.
I think your example is uncharitable because you allow for a human to react to a false alarm in the second but don't account for a computer to react similarly in the first. Personally speaking, I have seen very few occasions of people exercising extreme braking wrongly. I feel computers would be less apt at discerning from a false positive than a human operator with even a little experience behind the wheel.
Given that autonomous cars can be misled by painting roadways certain ways [0], it's clear to me that the number of unknown unknowns that must be handled by a car are large in number, and I have less faith in the skillful handling of those events by a computer than a human.
He can see the big truck 200 yards in front of him, and recognize that it is indeed a truck, and not an overhead traffic sign. Apparently, Teslas don't bring that to the table.
Alternatively, the human could recognize that the truck is on fire and smoking, and that it would be a good idea to stay away from it.
.. to objects that it can identify as a hazard. We've already seen incidents where it fails to spot hazards such as cyclists and crash barriers, due to limitations such as having to filter out stationary objects from radar returns.
Really? I've seen no such reports with regard to assisted emergency braking systems. Please cite a reference.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19802284
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17257239 "These vehicles will run into stationary obstacles at full speed with no warning or emergency braking at all."
Anyway, the point was a general one - the computer hazard identification is very far from perfect at the moment, and benefits from a human spotting hazards that the automated system does not.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_brake_assist
I see no mention of problems on the Wikipedia page. Do you know of any?
Anyways, my VW has assisted emergency braking. I've had opposite issues - water splashes across sensor and the car brakes for no good reason. Generally going through a large shallow puddle and moderate speed. Happened 2 or 3 times and now I disable when driving near the beach after rain.
So, the Tesla issues involved not identifying objects in the field of regard correctly, and thus not steering appropriately. Brake systems weren't involved in either crash, IIRC.
Assisted emergency braking is much more narrowly focused than full autonomous driving. It doesn't care what the object is, if it's solid, in front of the vehicle, and in it's path, the system will brake. These days it potentially has vision, sonar, lidar and radar to provide sensory input. That's a whole lot more information than a human can access.
Your "issue" is essentially the system being extra safe - similar to slowing down when a bunch of water hits your windshield. Seems highly appropriate to me.
You've done nothing to support that assertion. "MUCH better at assessing the situation and acting appropriately" doesn't compensate for 10x slower reaction time. Nor does it account for the high percentage of time that humans are paying attention to something besides driving. Machine systems don't get distracted, at least.
We'll agree to disagree, but anticipate fully autonomous cars sooner rather than later. ;-)