Self-driving cars learn to read the body language of people on the street
spectrum.ieee.org
spectrum.ieee.org
As much as I like the tech I still think we are years away from self driving cars.
Edit: as other pointed out it looks like this recent accident was with a 4 year old autopilot version (software, 8 year old hardware). So it is not completely fair to use it as example. But the reason I used it is because detecting stationary objects should be the basics of any self driving vehicle.
The long tail of edge cases in self-driving is vast, and each one needs to be individually addressed.
But when a single car encounters an issue, all cars get updated at once.
Just keep solving those captchas people, they really need to know what a crosswalk looks like.
It appears that reasonably rapid use of inurl: makes it think you're a bot.
Anyway, your point seems to have the purpose mixed up. Pointing out images of crosswalks trains the same system that some cars use or will use.
I mean, that is their primary purpose, and there's a message that says so.
Unless you are saying "they aren't to identify humans, they're to exclude bots" in which case I'm not sure what that means.
It is presented as "select the right answers, we know the right answers just like your teacher did in school, if you don't select the right answers you are a robot"
but in reality is is "select the right answers, so that we learn the right answers, the right answers are an average of what other people selected as well as completely new information that we aren't sure about"
In this case: yes, the stated purpose of a captcha is to identify humans - ie, legitimate users. The unstated purpose of ReCaptcha (at least) is to train AI. But it does both simultaneously.
The funniest thing to me is that we’re all in on it. :)
This is the issue with blackboxes while you might be able to figure out which model exactly in your system caused a weird behavior figuring out what exactly in it that caused it and then what training data was responsible is currently near impossible afaik.
Tech (writ large) thrives on shipping incomplete solutions and iterating on them - for better or worse. And that’s not something that’s acceptable for self-driving cars.
Better to put our efforts towards other things, in my opinion. Personal autos aren’t sustainable even if they drive themselves.
Feels like this is the sunk-cost fallacy (or as I prefer, “throwing good money after bad”) but played out across the intersection of two industries.
These things have pretty pragmatic solutions and arent really much different to other areas.
Elon Musk said in the past if it's a AP failure, then Tesla is accountable.
There are many cases where nobody is at fault, or multiple people are collectively at fault.
I would much prefer we think in terms of overall safety. If human drivers have 30000 deaths a year, and switching to autonomous driving results in 1000 deaths per year, we've made progress as a society. We don't need to hunt down and throw people (or cars) in jail for those 1000 deaths.
We should instead demand that engineers investigate those 1000 deaths and try to find ways to get them as close to 0 as possible. Throwing people in jail is a waste of resources that could be diverted towards achieving better safety. The engineers should be investigating and making improvements, not sitting in a jail cell.
(Of course, if there is intentional negligence that resulted in 1000 deaths when there would normally be 500, that's another story.)
At least in my state, there is no fault coverage everyone has to buy, that covers medical bills up to a certain amount. It does not cover fixing your car. If there is nobody responsible for a collision, maybe the repairs would fall under comprehensive coverage.
From what I read, if you hit a deer, it's covered under comprehensive. But if you try to avoid hitting a deer and run into a tree, it's covered under collision. So it seems somewhat arbitrary.
You'll benefit from the additional safety.
On the other hand, if there is an accident involving you and the other car is a self-driving car, the assumption will be (and the manufacturer's lawyers will argue) that you, the human, are at fault. It might even be the case, but I suspect it'll be more of a guilty-until-proven-innocent situation regardless.
This fear makes no more sense to me as the sentiment that nobody will be able to afford to insure a non-self-driving car in the future.
Do they know to try to switch the car into lower gear and engine brake, move towards the right lane, coast and then use the parking brake to try to stop the vehicle?
How many human drivers might try to shove the vehicle into park, neutral, or downright panic in that situation?
I think very few humans actually understand these concepts. Autonomous vehicles don't panic, and they can be programmed with rules to maximize the probability of survival.
Autonomous vehicles can also be equipped with backup brakes, separate front/rear brakes with independent controls (humans can't handle that complexity but algorithms can), or other modifications and programmed to simply NOT start driving if there are any failures in the redundant system.
Humans often continue to drive cars that show signs of trouble, because it's the only car they have. With an autonomous car, it could, at the first sign of trouble, automatically summon help, and also summon a replacement rental vehicle to show up at your location so you can ditch the problem vehicle for the towers to deal with and continue about your life. How cool would that be?
In fairness, they all should know. Believe me when I say I'm for much stricter standards for human drivers.
> I think very few humans actually understand these concepts. Autonomous vehicles don't panic, and they can be programmed with rules to maximize the probability of survival.
The survival of who, though? The occupants? The occupants of other vehicles or pedestrians? If the breaks fail on a narrow mountain road, does the car decide to throw itself off the cliff or collide with the car in front of it, potentially pushing it off the cliff instead? (Eventually, I think the cars would be able to talk to each other and the front car could intentionally use itself to slow and stop the rear car.)
This is a can of worms, too.
> How cool would that be?
It's all really cool, but until the courts and Congress have figured out a lot of these issues, I'm not sure these cars are going to be my cup of tea.
Drivers/operators/owners for damages they might cause, and will probably still be mandatory
"people" so that they can afford medical bills, if they survive the accident (and there are lawsuits going on).
Companies that build the cars/AI because they have deep pockets and will get sued anyway.If I were an insurance company and told you your premiums would be slashed by a factor of 5 in return for driving in autonomous mode, wouldn't you take it?
If the driver has the option to take control, is he going to be liable for doing so or not doing so in case of an accident?
But that’s not what we do. We don’t pick a scapegoat and throw them in jail for every accident. We investigate the role the individuals had in the accident, and only if an individual was clearly at fault, they are fined. Often such trials end up with a shared responsibility where the parties at fault also have to jointly pay for the damages caused.
So the question remains: if a car on autopilot crashes, who needs to be investigated? The “driver” who had little to no control over the vehicle at that time? The legal cop-out of “you must be in control at all times” won’t fly with proper self driving.
This shouldn't be about "who". This should be about a team of several hundred engineers who investigate the hell out of that data at work and figure out if it could be prevented the next time, and if so, deploy an update.
Courts getting involved for every accident with that engineering effort and taking time out of their dayjobs for a legal investigation would only delay the solution and cause more loss of life.
There should be accountability in terms of ensuring that a fair engineering investigation happens, and how to modify the code to make it even better than it already is. It's about which lines of code need to be changed, not about "who" needs to be investigated.
It's precisely this "who" thinking that I think we need to get over, especially when machines already do far better than humans at certain tasks.
Elevators are pretty much all autonomous these days. When elevator accidents happen do we go tracking down which engineer in the elevator design company is at fault? No, as long as it isn't a case of intentional negligence, we first figure out whether the injured person did something wrong, and if not, the team of engineers at the elevator company work together to try to re-engineer the elevators to be more safe the next time around without pointing fingers within their company. And the result? Elevators are pretty much 99.99999% (or whatever) safe these days.
You may prefer that, but the 1,000 people who wouldn't have died otherwise, well they aren't thinking much, anymore. People aren't numbers whose lives and deaths can be shifted around by the vagaries of the status of AP glitch fixes.
There is a small number of people who die in plane crashes today. Historically, before planes existed there were a much larger fraction of people who died crossing oceans by ship. The handful of people who die in plane crashes "wouldn't have died otherwise", but I think the majority of people agree that planes are the preferred (in terms of safety) way to get across oceans, and they are more or less the only choice for civilians unless they want to take a luxury cruise.
Same thing about cars/trains vs. walking thousands of miles across deserts. Overall more lives are saved, but yes, a small handful of people are going to get hit crossing the road/tracks that wouldn't have gotten hit if cars/trains weren't invented.
> The handful of people who die in plane crashes "wouldn't have died otherwise", but I think the majority of people agree that planes are the preferred (in terms of safety) way to get across oceans, and they are more or less the only choice for civilians unless they want to take a luxury cruise.
When a person is hit by a falling plane, there will likely be liablity assigned. Similarly, when someone is run over by an AP navigated car, there will be liability assigned, even if it makes the jobs of engineers more difficult.
> Same thing about cars/trains vs. walking thousands of miles across deserts. Overall more lives are saved, but yes, a small handful of people are going to get hit crossing the road/tracks that wouldn't have gotten hit if cars/trains weren't invented.
Exactly. That is why people and companies are assigned liablity, not just for intentional torts, but for negligence. When people "do things" they are responsible for not creating havoc or destruction, regardless of how helpful their actions otherwise are.
If the walls fall off your house, are you going to thank the building contracter for making the safest house around? Because, the way you are talking, you would be happy to pay for a replacement house without holding that "safest builder" responsible - even if people were crushed by the falling roof.
I have about 20k mile on autopilot and it has gotten much better.
That was a first-generation Tesla Model S, which means it is using the first version of autopilot, developed by Mobileye, from 2012.
So you're only correct if you choose to ignore eight years of progress.
If the car stops for every radar returns that looks like something that blocks the lane, it will perform emergency brakes for ghosts all the time. The Tesla (and others) do is to ignore returns from stationary objects in certain circumstances.
[1] https://www.wired.com/story/tesla-autopilot-why-crash-radar/
In other words, driving at 50 mph and coming up on a car going 10 mph, you would get two strong signals -- one strong one for the world going -50mph, and a smaller one for a car going -40 mph.
A stationary vehicle however - it would be indistinguishable from everything else that is stopped.
As long as they're moving, even slowly, it has no problems.
But of course, if they used LIDAR on their cars, they wouldn't be able to ship hundreds of thousands of cars.
Second there is the fact that cars that are self driving will still crash at launch. I see this a bit like air travel where over time every kink in the software will be filtered out. The software will be safer than human drivers at launch so I’m not extremely concerned.
Finally, I guess, will people believe in the statistics or will they go with their beliefs. I don’t know but I’m sure this will happen in the next few years for Tesla and for non highway driving it will be extremely safe. N of one incidents (of real self driving) will probably still happen but as long as what went wrong is learnable from I think it’s acceptable.
No I was not. I understand autopilot is not self driving. But since even basic collision detection is still difficult the step from autopilot to self driving will take years imho.
"Second there is the fact that cars that are self driving will still crash at launch."
Maybe. But imho that day will still be years from now.
"Finally, I guess, will people believe in the statistics or will they go with their beliefs."
When self driving is ready for the road I believe it will be much safer than people behind the wheel. Systems like adaptive cruise control, lane keeping and autopilot are already safer than people.
The problem right now is that all the 'glitches' are potential deadly.
Imagine all the cars in the world would to become self driving with the current tech. It would be a mess. The moment self driving cars would make less of a mess than humans it will be ready for the road.
How will this general principle be implemented by autonomous car pcmpanies? I sort of doubt it will be kept. Lobbying will likely erode this very important part of the responsibility of a vehicle driver.
There is an obvious theory-practice gap. Theory is rocketing into outer space while engineers are still running "please_no_crash_backup3.exe" in production.
If you build a self driving car that simply identified construction zones and alerted the driver within 5 seconds, your product would be utterly world-changing.
Yet the first test breakeven reactor ITER is 'scheduled' to operate in 2025 (if nothing goes havoc until then).
Yeah I known that software operate on different concept these day (move fast and break things) but I'm still unconvinced this could be compatible with any marketing strategy for self driving cars.
This self-driving technology is a perfect example of something that is hyped and needs to slow down and be rigorously tested before deployed IRL.
Pedestrians will run up to an intersection and keep running across without a care even if they’ve just emerged from behind a corner and the intersection isn’t controlled. Others will act like they’re going to cross the road then pivot 90 degrees at the last second. Some almost cross the road and then start walking at an angle to the road rather than completing the cross. You’ll stop for some and wait and they’ll just stand their staring at their phones, only to step in front of you when you guess they’re just catching an Uber.
Some people wave to mean you should go. Some wave you away like they’re shooing a fly, meaning they’re going no matter what you do.
Some approach the crosswalk and then step out into the street ten feet in front of it.
I’ve seen construction workers who think it’s cute to dance out their instructions. I had one who leapt across the road and then waved me through... a gap of about half my car’s width. I’ve seen both ends of constructions workers wave cars into single lane pass throughs; both human drivers realized and waited for them to figure it out.
None of this is the really crazy stuff I see fairly regularly. It’s just the every day stuff. And it’s all combined with crazy non-standard signage, careless construction equipment drivers, and bicyclists who are a whole other ball of wax.
Always obey the traffic laws and regulations about who has right of way and who has to yield. While still staying alert and prepared to react of course.
So imagine a two lane road where one driver waves a biker ahead to cross while in the 2nd line a self-driving android is coming.
She then tried to blame the car that hit her saying the driver was speeding. I got involved as a witness and I know she ended up having to pay that driver’s damages. I’m not sure if she tried to go after the waving driver but that would have been the smarter move.
self-driving tech is still not there, but even now active braking and driving systems shows better safety figures than humans
Just had to remark on that specific point. But I understand where you're coming from. Still doesn't change my trust level for technology taking over in traffic.
I was involved in the development of a self driving vehicle and agree that we are still not there, that's why there are no commercially sold self driving vehicles.
OTOH we can clearly see that it is a possible goal, or at least a possible goal to try and achieve, for the coming years and not a very far future.
Remember that what we want to achieve is not necessarily zero accidents but a lower number than human driver achieve.
Japanese road repair site.[1]