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I used to think my daughter may never drive, because autonomous vehicles were rumored to always be just around the corner. Now I think she may never ride in an
by BIair 7y ago
I used to think my daughter may never drive, because autonomous vehicles were rumored to always be just around the corner.
Now I think she may never ride in an autonomous vehicle. Do autonomous vehicles drive in the rain? We live in a northern state where snow remains on the ground for months at a time in ever shifting depths and banks along roads. Lidar is unable to see through the snow. Road surfaces are sometimes wet, sometimes snow covered, sometimes ice. Visibility can drop to zero.
I wonder if tech companies will spend the time and expense to solve these difficult problems for a rather small percentage of the population.
- smileysteve 7y ago> sometimes ice. I'm curious what the expectation is here, as what cars do on ice can't be described as driving, with the exception of spiked (not just studded) tires.
- fenwick67 7y agoSometimes ice is an impassible skating rink, but usually it's either in patches or only partial ice.
- nexuist 7y agoBaby steps. Once the majority of human drivers get off the road we will almost certainly see an evolution in traffic control systems which will allow self driving vehicles to conquer poor weather conditions. As of now, each vehicle can only rely on its own sensor package to understand the world. Tesla already has a system in place that lets one car learn from thousands of others; ie if everyone disconnects autopilot at a certain turn each car will learn to slow down even if they have never encountered that turn before. The future will have more of this. Self driving has mostly been a solved problem, it just only works in ports, warehouses, docks, and factory floors. You might say those are tightly regulated spaces, but so are roads! All it takes is political will to scale up the same systems that guide robots today and install them onto every highway and main road.
- KineticLensman 7y ago> All it takes is political will to scale up the same systems that guide robots today and install them onto every highway and main road Well, that and a massive amount of infrastructure spend.
- mopsi 7y agoMany places in the world already have reflectors installed into all major and many minor roads. Seems like a reliable and very cheap way of detecting lane geometry. https://www.worldhighways.com/_resources/assets/inline/custom/73/40218.jpg https://www.worldhighways.com/_resources/assets/inline/custo... Snow isn't a problem either, because reflectors can be (and often are) mounted onto plastic poles. https://c7.alamy.com/comp/EC79CD/reflector-signal-white-post-roadside-in-lonely-road-of-spain-europe-EC79CD.jpg https://c7.alamy.com/comp/EC79CD/reflector-signal-white-post...
- steelframe 7y ago>> All it takes is political will to scale up the same systems that guide robots today and install them onto every highway and main road > Well, that and a massive amount of infrastructure spend. And before we put anything close to that kind of money toward autonomous cars, I demand the spending go toward urban micromobility infrastructure first.
- rayiner 7y ago> Baby steps. Once the majority of human drivers get off the road we will almost certainly see an evolution in traffic control systems which will allow self driving vehicles to conquer poor weather conditions That puts the cart before the horse. The cars need to be able to handle weather before “the majority of human drivers get off the road.” In most of the US, not being able to drive in bad weather will make self driving cars a complete non-starter.
- ambicapter 7y ago> In most of the US, not being able to drive in bad weather will make self driving cars a complete non-starter. This strikes me as complete hyperbole. "Most of the US" population wise is in cities, which have weather management (snow plows, bright lights), and plenty of people will buy a car that "self-drives" 80% of the time-most people's driving miles are boring highway commutes, not off-roading.
- gdy 7y agoSounds like almost any place in Russia. Yandex is working on its own self-driving car.
- jfoster 7y agoYep. Here's a video of Yandex driving after a snowfall. https://youtu.be/Bx08yRsR9ow https://youtu.be/Bx08yRsR9ow
- icebraining 7y agoAfter snowfall, but also after a cleanup by snowplows. What about when there's a thin layer of white snow everywhere?
- jfoster 7y agoWhat's your actual point, though? Is it that they won't try to solve the case where there's some snow on the road, or is it that this case is somehow not possible?
- icebraining 7y agoMy actual point is that Yandex hasn't yet shown an attempt to solve that case (unless there are other videos), and therefore we can't gauge if they are even ready to attempt it.
- jfoster 7y agoSuppose they haven't started working on it yet. What's to prevent them from starting next year and having a solution ready in a few years?
- icebraining 7y agoThe same that might prevent any team. If I knew what it was, I'd be more wealthy than I am.
- ta999999171 7y agoSnow density with radar is being worked on.
- xeromal 7y agoHonestly, tech companies should spend their time building cars for the city. That's where most of the people are and that's where the congestion reduction will benefit the most number of people. Rural areas should be the last to update
- jacquesm 7y agoNo, tech companies should do their best to get rid of cars in the city. Cities should be built for people, not vehicles.
- icebraining 7y agoYou can never get rid of wagons in the city; the goal must be to reduce their use, and for that I think you must convince people that they don't need to own one, because if they do, they're more likely to use it, since the fixed costs are large compared to the marginal (per ride). And to convince them of that, you'll have to make them trust they'll have an available, affordable and comfortable alternative for those situations were they really need one.
- dilyevsky 7y agoCruise does just that (in SF).
- baking 7y agoSeems the opposite to me. Congestion and pedestrians present the greatest challenges for driverless cars. Also, they will only increase congestion both by increasing the number of cars on the streets and by being overly cautious.
- drngdds 7y agoThat seems backwards. Dense cities are where mass transit is a viable alternative to cars. It would make more sense to focus on that in cities and focus on self-driving cars where individual cars are unfortunately a requirement, like the suburbs. (Ideally we would Upzone All The Things and the vast majority of Americans would live in places dense enough for cars to be unnecessary, but making NIMBYs stop NIMBYing is harder than just making better tech.)
- maxerickson 7y agoComputers already manage traction on most new cars, a relatively simple feedback loop is better at it than most humans.
- cryptozeus 7y agoCheck tesla auto driver mode in rain. They handle it very well so I am sure waymo will as well. These are classic problems and you can trust those curious engineers to at least think about these issues before they even started coming up with the driverless car program. Vision technology has improved 10 fold in last decade.
- esotericn 7y agoI own an MS and it has no idea what snow is. Once the road markings disappear, you're done. If there's a car track, then it'll think that the cut-out created by warm cars or a plough form the edges of the road. But if there's just snow, it has no idea. It'll easily mistake parts of the roads where snow has been crossed by tires as being dashed road markings as well. The highway by me - well, you can stick autopilot on if you want. You'd better watch closely though, because unexpected snow patterns on the road surface will have you close to a median barrier quite quickly. Generally if the road is fully snow covered AP is disabled. If the sensors are covered, which they will be if you've left your car outside in -10c or so, then basically everything is disabled. Works great as a car though!
- icebraining 7y agoMS?
- javagram 7y agoModel S (MS) presumably
- icebraining 7y agoThanks!
- esotericn 7y agoSorry, yeah, Model S as the other poster stated.
- 7y ago
- ma2rten 7y agoThey had to start somewhere. Waymo is doing testing in Florida right now for the rainy season. They have also done testing in snow.
- chrisseaton 7y ago> Lidar is unable to see through the snow. Road surfaces are sometimes wet, sometimes snow covered, sometimes ice. Visibility can drop to zero. All these problems apply equally to people drivers and their eyes. Why can't automated systems at least match us?
- rm_-rf_slash 7y agoBecause people can learn on the fly, and these systems can’t. Sure, you can aggregate the data from a fleet of cars and use that to train a better model (or set of models for vision, driving, etc.) that updates the old one, but that process takes time and isn’t as immediate as a human reaction. Not saying it can’t ever happen, but rather that it’ll take a lot of time and effort before a self driving car can handle extreme weather, rather than the calm conditions of California (which, to be fair, took an awful lot of work to get functional there, too).
- icebraining 7y agoWaymo has been testing outside of California: they're in Washington since 2016 and in Michigan since 2017 (for Winter testing): https://twitter.com/waymo/status/846438598421336064?lang=en https://twitter.com/waymo/status/846438598421336064?lang=en
- throwawayhhakdl 7y agoHumans are good at filtering out bad information because the whole system is understood. I can’t see some of the road, because it’s snowing, and I can quickly stop paying attention to the non useful parts of my vision. It’s definitely a hard problem, but I don’t think it’s insurmountable
- TaylorAlexander 7y agoI believe the plan at the start is that bad weather will cause the vehicle to pull over and require a human driver. But that’s not really a big problem in large areas of California and Arizona where they’re starting off. And all the companies are researching bad weather driving and that feature will roll out later. Self driving cars will basically migrate north as the technology allows. But they’re already testing in snow and rain and working on that too. I don’t think they’d really deploy to northerly areas until the tech works as well as all the rest. With enough testing experience and engineering time, they ought to be able to solve it.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- seanmcdirmid 7y agoCan people see very well through the snow? If visibility drops to zero (in human terms), then don’t people just stop driving anyways? Is “use the force” really a thing on the road? During a heavy snow the accident rate shoots up anyways. If waymo does a taxi service, it would make sense for them to stop service even if the car could drive just as well as a human, it just isn’t worth the risk.
- notatoad 7y ago>Lidar is unable to see through the snow humans are also unable to see through snow, but mostly still manage to drive their cars in the winter.