
Self-Driving Cars Can Handle Neither Rain nor Sleet nor Snow - bookmtn
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-09-17/self-driving-cars-still-can-t-handle-bad-weather?srnd=premium
======
Animats
The article is kind of vague. What they seem to be doing is operating a ground
penetrating radar under the vehicle so that underground details can be used as
positional references. This is useful only if you have a map which includes
that data. At best, this tells you where you are. It tells you nothing about
what's ahead.

LIDAR units that return "first and last" returns are helpful in dealing with
rain and fog. The first return (nearest thing seen) will be noisy in rain, but
last (most distant thing in that direction) should be stable if it's from a
solid object. "First and last" is used with aerial LIDAR surveying; "first"
gives you the treetops, "last" gives you the ground.

Range gated imagers for seeing through fog and dust have been available for
over a decade. These are active devices which allow filtering out anything
that's outside a narrow image range gate. You can adjust the gate and get
images layer by layer. This technology is used by the military and seems to be
somewhat restricted.[1][2][3] In addition to fog, it can show what's behind a
camouflage net, objects concealed by brush, and such.

The submillimeter radar people are slowly making progress, too.[4] Automotive
radars are currently running at 77GHz, which is low resolution compared to
LIDAR. The resolution gets better with frequency. There are now systems in the
300GHz range.

So the sensors needed are available now, in expensive forms, and can get
cheaper.

[1]
[http://www.dvsmil.com/PDF/Imaging_Lidar_Seeing_Through_Cloud...](http://www.dvsmil.com/PDF/Imaging_Lidar_Seeing_Through_Cloud.pdf)
[2]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOTo-6jXOYo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOTo-6jXOYo)
[3] [http://www.sensorsinc.com/applications/military/laser-
range-...](http://www.sensorsinc.com/applications/military/laser-range-gating)
[4] [http://consortis.eu/](http://consortis.eu/)

~~~
apcragg
Small nitpick. The range resolution improves with increasing
pulse/chirp/waveform bandwidth, not increasing carrier frequency. It's true
that at higher carrier frequencies there is more bandwidth available and thus
better range resolution is possible but the relationship is slightly different
than "delta_r ~ frequency"

~~~
rademacher
The relationship is cT/2, where c is the speed of light, and T is the pulse
length, if the waveform is CW. Note that in this case T can limit the minimum
range you can detect. Or you can use c/(2B) where B is the bandwidth of the
signal as you stated. I believe the limit is wavelength/2 for resolution
though.

~~~
apcragg
Yup. And in order to get a pulse of T you need, at best, a sinc window.
Resolution is intrinsically linked to bandwidth.

------
Quanttek
> The cluster of sensors, bolted underneath a chassis like a skid plate, can
> scan 10 feet beneath the ground to reveal soil, water, roots, and rocks.
> Once WaveSense has scanned an entire roadway, it creates a map of the
> subsurface strata that can determine the location of a vehicle within a few
> centimeters.

 _nononono!_ Even assuming you can create sufficient map data as soon as there
is any kind of roadworks - or even only the winter cracking the asphahlt -
your data will be useless. They don't even need to change the layout of the
road. I'll never understand companies that focus so much on maps as priamry
source of data. Every day, massive - temporary (construction site) or
permanent - changes are occurring to the road network. Also, the centimeter-
precise location of the vehicle doesn't matter that much. The actual situation
on the road matters much more: You may need to drive a meter more to the left
because of a parked truck, a vehicle may obscure signs, a tree branch hangs
down into the road, some car is parked too close to intersection, etc.

~~~
chooseaname
> I'll never understand companies that focus so much on maps as priamry source
> of data.

Maybe they don't really care about the product. Maybe the execs only care
about making money, so they'll find funding for anything - whether it will pan
out or not.

Self-driving cars are hot and for now there's a lot of money available. I
think things will cool down when the hard part starts - like when they really
do have to figure out how to make them drive in less than ideal conditions.

~~~
EthanHeilman
Depending on how good that data is, this might be a data play where the data
collected in a single repository is extremely valuable. Sell it to the
military for operating when GPS is jammed. Sell it to mining companies,
insurance companies for a detailed very large map of what lies below.

~~~
rootusrootus
That's what I was thinking. Worst case, the map data isn't all that critical
for self-driving cars, but you have a huge amount of potentially very valuable
data that can be used for a lot of other things.

------
seibelj
I’ve taken downvotes from HN optimists for years about self driving cars. The
slightest bit of criticism would have comments calling me an idiot 20
different ways.

Then a single dead pedestrian changes all the news articles and the opinions
change.

We are a very, very long way away from self driving taxi cabs. What a total PR
scam that was - but it did help valuations.

~~~
jryle70
Not sure if you have read the article, but it's actually about a company
called WaveSense who claims to have developed ground-penetrating radar that
can greatly improve all weather autonomous driving. So yes, it's a daunting
task but lot of people are working on it and progress is being made. I'd be
interested to hear your counterargument.

~~~
seibelj
I’m not an expert in self driving car engineering. I have some experience with
ML but not in a significant professional way. What I have is a decade of
professional experience building all kinds of software and a skeptical eye.

You have a problem that is unconstrained, with infinite variables, where even
a simple mistake can have catastrophic outcomes. Society itself may object to
self driving cars for a ton of reasons, from safety to simply driving like a
grandma and slowing everything and everyone down. The cost to develop this
technology, plus the added cost of hardware to each car, will be enormous and
is not obviously a cost savings over a $15 per hour human. If the self driving
car is doing anything other than getting from A to B, you still need a human
(or a human-like robot) to handle the unloading / delivery / whatever at the
end.

Now, I’ve worked at companies with extremely talented and intelligent
engineers, and something as constrained and seemingly simple as making a login
form can take a long time to perfect - and no lives are at risk! Just imagine
the challenges and requirements for building self driving cars. New hardware,
software, real-time processing and analysis of tons of data, all to drive
split-second decisions that can kill people if done incorrectly.

Huge challenge - huge risks - huge money - uncertain payoff. This is not
something that will appear suddenly. If there aren’t convoys of self driving
trucks operating in desert highways overnight, where it’s dry and straight and
flat and no one else is there, then we aren’t going to see city taxis for a
very long time.

~~~
bkirkby
But it doesn't have to be perfect, just has better than human drivers. That
doesn't seem too difficult.

~~~
refurb
I think you’re underestimating the ability of even bad drivers to accurately
process and react to new information while driving.

~~~
JibJabLab
I think you're also overestimating the abilities and self-restraint of drivers
to not use their phones while driving, to look both ways, to not go too fast,
etc.

------
bronco21016
Waymo’s Michigan testing facility is very close to my home. I’m really curious
to see how they do on snowy pothole ridden roads in Michigan. I’ve seen very
few of them on the road this summer but if there’s supposed to be heavy
testing and validation going on perhaps we’ll see an army of them on the roads
here soon.

I’m curious how self driving focused groups are solving lane detection and
managing surrounding traffic on snow covered roads. It’s not uncommon for a
multi lane highway to be completely covered with snow and multiple tracks for
different ‘lanes’ that overlap. It’s also not uncommon to see cars just making
their own lanes. This occurs even after the snow has stopped flying.

~~~
umichguy
"I’m curious how self driving focused groups are solving lane detection and
managing surrounding traffic on snow covered roads. It’s not uncommon for a
multi lane highway to be completely covered with snow and multiple tracks for
different ‘lanes’ that overlap. It’s also not uncommon to see cars just making
their own lanes. This occurs even after the snow has stopped flying."

Yep. As a Michigander, I totally agree. You see 6 to 12 lane roads reduced to
"random" 2 lane roads when there is a good pileup of snow. And the snow drifts
make it even worse!

~~~
jakobegger
Humans are good at improvising. Not using all the lanes when the lane markings
are covered by snow, and the road is slippery, sounds like a reasonable
strategy. And nobody ever told us that's what we should do.

With autonomous vehicles, you need to plan every situation in advance. Our
current AI technologies can't improvise. It seems to me that current AI is
basically just a decision tree with some neural networks sprinkled on top.

~~~
adrianN
We don't want machines to improvise because we want to be able to test their
whole gamut of behavior as thoroughly as possible. We can build AI that can
improvise, but that's not the kind of software you want to be liable for as a
manufacturer.

~~~
mannykannot
I am not at all convinced that improvisation is an easy add-on. While AI has
demonstrated some creative ways to satisfy goals that have left options open
(sometimes inadvertently), real-world improvisation has to be appropriate for
the situation and the unusual difficulties it poses, and, in the case of
driving, it must not create additional problems or (of particular relevance
here) present significant dangers.

In general, I think, improvisation requires causal reasoning. It also often
needs a broader knowledge than that needed for the nominal task (for example,
when driving on a potholed road, one needs to have some understanding of how
it affects the car's response, and sometimes of issues such as ground
clearance.) Constraining the vehicle to avoid such issues would constrain the
option to improvise.

------
gwern
> Waymo, widely seen as leading the self-driving vanguard, says it has made
> progress teaching its software to better filter out “noise” from
> precipitation.

The last Waymo leak claims that it is more than just 'progress', but that
'rain is solved', incidentally:
[https://thelastdriverlicenseholder.com/2018/09/14/waymo-
plan...](https://thelastdriverlicenseholder.com/2018/09/14/waymo-plans-
autonomous-car-launch-leaked/)

~~~
amluto
From that article:

> Also snow seems to be solvable, as there will probably similar patterns that
> the sensors get in their signals.

Real snow is not just a software problem. Fancy rear facing sensors near
bumper? I hope they function through a couple inches of frozen muddy spray.
Front windshield? Sometimes needs scraping. Lidar on roof? Does it work
through the big heap of snow on it?

~~~
alkonaut
I have a hunch that as cars get more sophisticated, they also need to have
more sophisticated treatment. The reason I leave my car out to have a foot of
snow on it is because it works anyway. If the car wouldn't actually _work_
without the windscreen clear and sensors ice-free, I would either use a garage
every night or have a less sophisticated car. And I suspect that once
autonomous vehicles get good enough, people will actually want to ride in them
- so will keep them indoors more than they do with their normal cars.
Effctively then, the rugged cars have become machines we treat like fragile
fighter jets.

Still, for a wide range of weather conditions the autonomous car will just say
a big NOPE and refuse to drive anywhere. Which is why it must always have
manual controls. The autonomous car that could take me to the city through the
worse conditions I experience every winter, won't have to take me in it
because that car is probably clever enough to do my job as a software
developer too.

~~~
EADGBE
There's real irony in this statement, when the people who develop the
technology and commend home garaging are also the garage-free, commute-free
kind type of people who vehemently tear down the idea of a suburban
home/garage setup.

But I guess when it's your product; you change your mind.

*This is not an attack to alkonaut.

------
skywhopper
"robots sophisticated enough to [...] improve on lackluster human perception"

This underlying misapprehension is at the root of the self-driving car hubris.
Humans have _remarkable_ perception of physical environments. The fact that
electronic systems can beat humans handily on a few metrics has led to an
entire industry built on the misconception that those few metrics are all that
matter. But those were just the _trivial_ bits.

The more sophisticated perceptual tasks--even the basic ones involved in the
simplest self-driving task of traveling down a restricted access freeway--like
correctly interpreting the behavior of other cars; interpreting whether the
debris in the road constitutes a dangerous obstacle or something easily driven
over; or even knowing which objects speeding toward you are moving and which
are stationary--require more than just raw sensory input. There's a mountain
of implicit cultural awareness embedded into all of those perceptual tasks
that we haven't begun to form an idea how to represent in a software system.
And again, this is the easy stuff!

~~~
oihoaihsfoiahsf
> This underlying misapprehension is at the root of the self-driving car
> hubris.

I will basically guarantee you that no one working on self-driving cars thinks
human perception is lackluster or an easily matched capability. Journos
interpreting their work might impute that belief to self-driving engineers,
but nobody could work on the problem for even the shortest amount of time
without realizing that it is an incredibly hard problem.

------
scj
Driving in dry / warm conditions is simple mechanics. Driving in snow and ice
is an art.

In snow and ice, variables that are typically constant or static become
dynamic. Formally dynamic variables now become multi-variable equations. For
example: travelling down a hill normally requires dynamically factoring for
the extra speed due to the incline. Under blizzard conditions you have to
factor ice/snow volume, as well as the incline.

I don't want to share the road with self-driving cars in winter for a long
time.

~~~
njarboe
Or most people. If it is actually blizzard conditions, one should have a very
serious reason to be on the road. If not, stay at home instead of driving.
Snow days are called for schools. Maybe work in general also?

~~~
alkonaut
I think this is very regional. I have never had a snow day in my entire life
because we get snow several months per year. I think the "snow day" phenomenon
happens in cities where snow is rare enough that there is no infrastructure in
place to take care of it (having that would be more expensive than just
accepting everything stops a couple of days per year) AND not every car has
winter tyres.

After 60cm snow on one night everyone is expected to be at school and work, on
time, just like any other day. It should be noted that as a driver I also
expect the roads to be bare at 7am even after that kind of night, and
amazingly they almost always are. At least all major roads will be, but
residential streets will not. [https://static-
cdn.sr.se/sida/images/109/b924f65c-8cc4-4332-...](https://static-
cdn.sr.se/sida/images/109/b924f65c-8cc4-4332-88ff-d7be5b425650.jpg?preset=768x432)

~~~
bluGill
Where there is a lot of snow the infrastructure handles it. Snow plows run all
night long. There is 60cm of snow on the ground, but at most 3cm on the roads,
and plenty of sand/salt underneath so that there are no ice spots.

Where there is little snow they don't have plows or salt/sand. 4cm of snow and
you better stay home because the roads are covered in ice, and nobody can help
you.

~~~
alkonaut
If roads are covered with ice then you should have studded tyres or at least
M+S. If even 10% of the cars drove around with the same tyres all year, I'd
stay at home too (even if MY car had studded tyres).

------
vaughnegut
As a Canadian, it's the snow that's made me skeptical of self-driving cars.
Seeing how much they depend on road markings to navigate in traffic properly
is completely impossible in winter. Until that's solved, there's a lot of
places that just can't use them for a lot of the year.

~~~
cal5k
It seems plausible to me that LIDAR + radar could eventually outperform humans
in white-out conditions.

Here's an interesting bit of research on filtering out snow noise from a LIDAR
point cloud:

[http://wavelab.uwaterloo.ca/?weblizar_portfolio=real-time-
fi...](http://wavelab.uwaterloo.ca/?weblizar_portfolio=real-time-filtering-of-
snow-from-lidar-point-clouds)

~~~
gugagore
But if snow occludes lane markings, which is what the parent was discussing,
then no amount of sensing helps you see them, right?

(You can have a map with lane markings and localize on that map, though)

~~~
jpindar
Except that many times when the lines are invisible, new lanes form that are
in a different location. So your map will not match up with what the rest of
the traffic is doing.

~~~
gugagore
I agree. I was just anticipating the common response to that challenge, or any
other "static" perception challenge, which is "but there is a map"

~~~
cal5k
I mean... the map at least bounds the problem. You can be pretty certain in
almost every case that the lanes won't be _outside_ of the mapped roadway.

------
xbryanx
I wonder how self-driving cars will handle highway lanes in active snow. Here
in Minnesota four-lane highways regularly turn to three and two lane highways
when the snow covers the roadway markers and people just start making their
own general paths. Will the software just follow the crowd, or will the
software car be the one weird vehicle ignoring the conditions and following
the lane that no one can see.

------
clay_the_ripper
I don’t see the fact that self driving cars can’t drive in all conditions as a
reason not to still want one that can drive on the freeway in good weather. A
lot of people spend a large portion of their driving time on freeways so if we
could solve that to a standard of safety that is acceptable, that would be a
huge win in my book. As soon as it starts raining, have the system disengage
and I’ll take over.

It seems to me that a lot of people commenting here are a bit obsessed about
the edge cases, and if it has edge cases then it’s not a “true” self driving
car. I disagree. I think a car that can self drive in some situations would
still be amazing.

~~~
grecy
The first cars ever couldn't drive in 100F+ heat, and wouldn't start below 0F.
And even worse, there were virtually zero gas stations! Especially in rural
areas!

Does that mean they were useless? Absolutely not!

Lately the mindset seems to be unless a product is all things to all people at
all times then it's useless.

In reality a product just has to fit a category really well and it will sell
like hotcakes. Then it will evolve in iterations.

~~~
imtringued
This reminds me of intel's optane. Yes they overhyped it and it doesn't
perform 1000x faster than SSDs. But you have to consider that SSDs required
decades of improvements to become viable and cheap. Even when Optane was a
first generation product it was already better than SSDs in terms of latency
and IOPS but despite that people thought it was a massive failure.

------
graycat
My old summary has been that current driving on current roads with current
traffic occasionally but too often for practice requires actual, full human
intelligence, generally that of a prudent person over 16.

So, the intelligence of a mouse, crow, parrot, dog, cat, monkey, elephant,
dolphin, orca, etc. just is not enough.

So, self driving cars requires essentially _full AI_ for driving and nearly
everything else in life. So, the self driving car problem is no easier than
the full AI problem.

Sure, there can be some special cases that are easier -- trucks in a huge,
open pit copper mine, a tractor on a huge, flat farm in Missouri, some
military battlefield situations, and the public roads if heavily reengineer
them with lots of essentially electronic tracks, etc., uh, right, on roads in
perfect condition, no big objects falling off trucks, no drunks, no tire
blowouts, dry weather, daylight, perfect visibility, no alarms from an
extensive monitoring system, and no rain, sleet, or snow. Then, sure, a "self-
driving car"!!!!

------
btbuildem
Honestly, it seems like a more workable solution would be to improve the
roadways with built-in beacons to indicate where a road is, and where it
isn't. The cars would work only on the improved infrastructure, but they would
work. I suppose there is a danger of nefarious actors spoofing beacons to make
you drive off a bridge, but it seems far-fetched.

~~~
PopeDotNinja
To me that removes the "self" in self-driving car. A car that stays on the
road because there are magic beacons is like bowling with thise giant bumpers
in the gutters. It'd be more like cars with uber cruise control.

~~~
macintux
Don't we want driving to be more like bowling with bumpers in the gutters?

Safer is better, no matter how we get there.

~~~
CaptSpify
> Safer is better, no matter how we get there.

Not really true. It'd be safer to just get rid of high-speed vehicles in the
first place, but that would be disastrous.

~~~
macintux
Yeah, I knew that was a bit hyperbolic when I wrote it.

------
jfoster
Recent Waymo leak suggests rain is solved and snow looking good to be solved
next year.

[https://thelastdriverlicenseholder.com/2018/09/14/waymo-
plan...](https://thelastdriverlicenseholder.com/2018/09/14/waymo-plans-
autonomous-car-launch-leaked/)

------
trhway
>For the local breed of unflappable seagulls—which can stop autonomous cars by
simply standing on the street, unbothered by NuTonomy’s quiet electric
cars—engineers programmed the machines to creep forward slightly to startle
the birds.

seeing the fun my dog is having chasing the birds, i'd suggest that a Boston
Dynamics dog would jump out of the car, scare the birds away, jump back (and
continue to drive while watching electric sheep funny videos :)

------
viburnum
Or construction, or detours, or cops directing traffic ...

~~~
threeseed
I'm still curious about street signs.

Can any self driving car read parking signs because it's not like there is
some API for when/where you can park or drop passengers off.

~~~
svachalek
Waymo for one definitely reads signs, but I'm not sure about those. Lots are
written in ways that the average adult human can't decipher.

~~~
8ytecoder
I kid you not - “No parking Mon Tues and Thurs. Every Month” is a real sign.
I'm yet to figure out what that means. Then there are the slightly confusing
ones with conflicting messages which you learn to decipher with experience.
Placement of signs (esp one-way) are not consistent or does not take into
account and driving cars - how will a car exiting a garage or a highway know
if it's one-way or no? Definitely not without a mapping software.

As someone who had to relearn the rules of the road for a new country - there
is a lot that's unsaid.

------
petterih
Sensible 4 ([http://sensible4.fi/](http://sensible4.fi/)) uses bunch of
various sensors including LIDAR, IR and normal camera. Seems to do ok in
typical winter environment:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQWrngWvcnU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQWrngWvcnU)

~~~
dmix
That's awesome, they also have some old videos from 1990-1993:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7jxensSdhE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7jxensSdhE)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMlz5tAKmUs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMlz5tAKmUs)

They've been working on this problem for a very long time. Which explains the
progress they've made. I don't know how people can say this is an unsolvable
problem when some high end research applications have made such progress.

Plus there's Microsoft's 2016 announcement with Ford about algorithms that can
work within snow/rain by identifying raindrops and snowflakes then 'ignoring'
them:

[https://qz.com/637509/driverless-cars-have-a-new-way-to-
navi...](https://qz.com/637509/driverless-cars-have-a-new-way-to-navigate-in-
rain-or-snow/)

------
w_t_payne
This is one of the times where I am glad to be working in maritime autonomy
and not (any longer) in automotive -- we have the considerable benefit of
being able to modify the operating procedures for our autonomous vessels to
restrict operations or modify operating procedures in environmental conditions
where normal operation is no longer safe.

------
yogrish
Not to be Cynical,Somehow the article sounded like a sales pitch for
"Wavesense". They too want to have pie out in the self driving race. As
mentioned in the article, each sensor(Radar,Lidar,Camera) has a limitation on
its own. But, Self driving cars depend not just on one sensor but on Fused
output of sensor. Also, they use V2V, HD maps and GPS/DR for localisation.
Wavesense is another sensor that can solve localisation problem. They too
might have difficulty in cases where there are fallen metal objects that
reflect different signatures, causing trouble. More the sensors, more the
confidence for Self driving.

Edit: Grammar & some terminology

------
hooloovoo_zoo
All the extra sensors that can be added to cars in addition to the suite of
cameras make self-driving cars seem inevitable, yet no manufacturers appear to
be close to bringing one to market.

~~~
rm_-rf_slash
The problem isn’t sensing, it’s decision-making.

~~~
kxrm
The trolley problem is a tough one.

~~~
rootusrootus
I've never understood why. I can't imagine any programmer or self-driving car
company having any interest whatsoever in going down that particular rabbit
hole. The answer is simple -- we don't expect humans to do realtime analysis
of who is worth killing when an accident is happening, so we will not expect
that of computers either. It's an unsolvable problem. So we just tell the
computer that in the event that an accident appears unavoidable it should do
everything within it's power to stop the car immediately. End of story.

~~~
Piskvorrr
It's a _thought experiment_ ; do not expect a literal trolley (or even literal
corpses!) any more than Schrödinger's cat deals with actual felines.

Here's a restatement without all those corpses: In the event that an accident
appears unavoidable, the computer should do everything within it's power to
stop the car immediately. (This is already a given: safety first.)

"If there are multiple ways of doing the above, what variables should the
computer optimize for - stopping distance alone, or stopping so that it
doesn't immediately get rammed from behind?" There's your trolley problem
again, just restated so it doesn't appear so offensive: in both cases, the
occupants of the vehicle are in danger, as are the occupants of nearby
vehicles. Now is the interest in the rabbit-hole clearer? The problem doesn't
go away just because it's inconvenient to solve...

~~~
rootusrootus
Well, that's where crumple zones come into play. Trying to have a computer
calculate whether or not it is feasible to stop slower to avoid or reduce an
imminent rear collision gets very complex in a hurry. What if the guy behind
you is much smaller, or much bigger, what if his car has better crumple zones,
or none, what kind of energy is he going to impart to you when he hits and
where will that send you, who is at that location, etc. These are the kind of
questions that can't be answered with certainty even when you give a
supercomputer a few days to work it all out. So I think the only reasonable
solution is to not expect self-driving cars to make any kind of moral
decision. As a bonus it is much easier to explain in court and saves us
endless pontificating on whether or not the computer made the _right_ choice
and who is actually responsible if it did not.

We tell humans not to swerve for squirrels, because it's a great way to end up
dead, so the computer should get the same instruction. Slow down as you can,
the prime directive is to maintain control.

~~~
Piskvorrr
In that case, I present a SDV that never makes a wrong choice - by remaining
stationary at any cost ;o)

In other words, there is always a balance between safety and usefulness, and
the question of "is this the right choice" is always upon us, whether we want
it or not. You can never have certainty anyway, what the software is doing is
maximizing on some reward function. The TP also asks " _is_ there even a moral
component to this?" It seems there is, from the range of emotions this
conjures up.

(btw "do not swerve to avoid unknown objects" has directly caused at least 1
dead person - Elaine Herzberg - so that's a really unfortunate maxim for
illustrating your point: the car has also an obligation not to be a danger to
others. "We just maintain control and everything else be damned" is _easy_ to
explain in court, true: IANAL, but sometimes you need more than a simple
explanation to avoid being convicted.)

~~~
rootusrootus
To be fair, I said don't swerve for a squirrel. History is filled with
examples of people giving up their own life for a squirrel/cat/dog because
they swerved and lost control. You should have planned in advance what your
threshold is for swerving. E.g. just brakes for anything <= white-tailed deer,
and active avoidance w/braking for anything bigger, or human.

Elaine is not a great example because not only did the car choose not to
swerve, it also chose not to even try to brake. And on top of that, a human
would have seen her from a _lot_ farther away.

~~~
Piskvorrr
Because it was trying to decide if it's a shopping bag or a bike or a human or
a squirrel...for six seconds, long enough to stop multiple times. The problem,
from what we know so far, wasn't "car didn't see her," it was "car wasn't sure
what it was, therefore squirrel."

And the larger point stands: "protect occupants, ignore outsiders" is _a_
choice in the TP, always choosing the same strategy is not "TP is irrelevant."

------
purplezooey
Well boys, looks like it'll be another couple of decades

~~~
trashtester
Or it could start taking off 2-3 years after the bubble bursts. Amazon lost
90% of its value between 2000 and 2002, and many of the big players today
entered the market between 2002 and 2005, when confidence in the "new economy"
was at a minimum.

------
giacaglia
That's because of LIDAR, rain and snow interfere with LIDAR. A simple Google
search shows that [https://www.quora.com/Autonomous-driving-how-good-is-
LiDAR-u...](https://www.quora.com/Autonomous-driving-how-good-is-LiDAR-under-
heavy-rain-or-fog)

~~~
hanoz
As LIDAR's pièce de résistance to date has been its ability to "see through"
forest canopies to the terrain below, I don't understand how rain or snow
should present an unsurmountable obstacle to seeing the road ahead.

~~~
Itsdijital
Trees don't refract and reflect light.

~~~
jefft255
Of course they do. Airborne lidar usually works in the near infrared spectrum
which is not absorbed by wood. It is however more absorbed by leaves which
have a higher water content. My main point is: airborne lidar (which is what
OP is referring to when talking about removing forests and keeping the ground)
has multiple returns for one laser beam. Laser beams can have a radius of 1-2
meters or more when they hit the ground. By keeping only the lowest return in
the z direction you most certainly have a ground point. It's not rocket
science and interpreting ground lidar scans (velodyne and such) in bad weather
is a much much more difficult problem.

~~~
mediaman
What would prevent using the same technique of only retaining the maximum Z
direction return to tell the difference between a refracted rain drop and car
bumper?

Perhaps it is that the rain drop refracts the beam to all sorts of other
objects which can make it difficult to tell which actually has the longest
Z-distance return?

~~~
DoctorOetker
If I understand correctly the airborne LIDAR works in the timedomain and is
much more expensive, while the LIDAR on automobiles is much more affordable
but works in the frequency domain...

------
gbersac
It sounds like a post created by the public relation department of the company
creating the underground sensor.

------
orasis
An X-prize for autonomous racing on lubed up figure 8 tracks would solve this
real quick.

------
stevewilhelm
I think the real game changer will be when self-driving cars also communicate
with each other in some kind of mesh network sharing road surface, weather,
and obstacle information.

------
IBCNU
It's pretty funny how we're running into AI-winter at the same time the
autonomous vehicle VC boom is moving all their money to scooters.

------
golergka
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bx08yRsR9ow](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bx08yRsR9ow)

------
zerop
A basic question: What would we achieve if make successful self-driving cars.
And can we achieve the same without building the self-driving cars.

------
musgrove
Neither can most humans driving cars.

~~~
SheinhardtWigCo
That is clearly not the case.

~~~
munk-a
That clearly is the case, it was my experience growing up that even seasoned
New England drivers couldn't take the weather seriously and ended up in a
ditch on the side of the road.

~~~
jefft255
That's not really a good point. When New England/Canada drivers drive through
a snowstorm, the vast majority of them get to where they were going just fine.

In comparison, basically no self driving car could safely drive 100 ft during
a snowstorm.

Getting self driving cars to be as good as humans during harsh weather (which
is not that good I'll give you that) will take 10 years in my opinion (I say
this as a grad student in mobile robotics).

~~~
gmadsen
I'd say betting any tech 10 years down the line is a fools game. in 2008,
people were saying the same thing about object detection, or literally 100s of
other things that deep learning has done that people said was impossible.

Autonomous cars are already safer on ice. being able to individually apply abs
to each wheel in micro second speeds of detection of change in terrain is far
more accurate than any human.

As far as snowfall, for the vast majority of places, hi def maps and semantic
knowledge of signage already exists, so as long as the car can localize, it
can obey snow covered signs, and google and others are already working on
filtering out weather "noise".

The problem isn't as intractable as it seems

~~~
jefft255
I think you're mostly right; the only thing I'm more skeptical about is the
availability and reliability of high def maps and semantic knowledge as you
say. Maintaining such thing will be expensive and I wonder how it will scale
country-wide as opposed to a few select cities. I bet using the self driving
cars themselves to do the mapping and correct mistakes will be a big part of
that.

Rough localization in a snowstorm (as in good enough to use prior knowledge of
signs) or rain shouldn't be too hard. GPS still works in bad weather and lidar
localization (scan-to-map matching) should be hampered but still usuable.

------
fjsolwmv
The Uber car failed in Dark of Night too.

~~~
dmix
It didn't fail _because_ it was dark though.

------
paulmd
Nor glom of nit

------
skookumchuck
I wouldn't be surprised if these problems proved intractable enough that the
solution will be adding electronic guides to the roads themselves.

Things like burying a wire that can be followed, embedding RFID devices in the
pavement (along with an online database that gives their precise location and
any updates on road conditions), etc.

It would be conceptually similar to all the ground based systems that guide
aircraft.

Of course, these would be deployed only on high value roads like freeways
first, and you could at least let the autodrive work on the freeways, and do
the last mile yourself.

------
openloop
Oh really? Tesla tested in michigan winters. I find it hard to believe this is
not possible.

------
Frye9876
If you’ve used any sort of ADAS this is old news.

------
Spooky23
Humans can barely handle these conditions!

~~~
justtopost
The problem here, is that you are half-right. Its localized conditions. No
country, much less worldwide, system can account for local anomolies.

Where I learned to drive, most humans could 'see' black ice by predicting
where water will pool, the recent weather, and subtle clues that abound, but
are not easily expressable. Any out-of-town'er would surely be spun out or
driving 10mph, white-knuckled, aghast at the "maniacs" flying by at normal
speeds. While in my college city, I had to relearn everything, as it was
rainy, and the drivers hyper agressive, and 15mph faster. The same model would
struggle to encompass both modalities.

Until AEB stops accidentally triggering constantly on colleagues cars, I have
zero interest in trusting my life to an algo connected to a 300hp steel cage.

~~~
poulsbohemian
I've often wondered how much of this is hubris or fear vs. physics. What I
mean is - are people in say, icy and snowy climates actually better drivers,
able to adjust to the conditions, or are they fooling themselves? Likewise,
the person going exceptionally slow and cautiously - are they misjudging the
actual risk of inclement weather, relative to an actual scientific judgement?

It certainly feels like humans become improved drivers through various weather
/ road condition experiences, but I sometimes find myself wondering whether my
gut instincts would align with a scientific approach.

~~~
dbcurtis
I don’t think they are qualitatively “better drivers”. But they are more
experienced at certain things. When I lived in Minnesota, I got lots of
practice driving in snow and ice and rain. Now in NorCal, not so much :)

Its a skill. You get better with practice. The person going slow probably just
hasn’t had enough practice yet with the conditions. Going slow is probably a
good choice for them. Am I a better driver overall for knowing how to handle
ice? Probably not, but I might be the best person to do the driving under
those conditions if everyone else in the car is from warmer climes.

I remember standing in line at Minneapolis rental car counter one night when
it was snowing an inch an hour with 4 inches on the ground already. Agent to
the guys in front of me: “There are chains in the trunk if you need them.”
Customer with heavy southern accent: “Chains? What the heck are chains?” I
wonder to this day if those guys made it to their hotel.

~~~
justtopost
I think auto racing has priven there are most certainly qualitively 'better
drivers' adjusted for training and experince.

~~~
jerkstate
And learning to drive in the ice and snow is definitely a leg up; in racing (I
have heard this in rally and F1) "If you want to win, hire a Finn"

------
tiagoafpereira
I still cannot comprehend the current push for automated driving.

We, collectively, not just the US, have a problem with too many cars and
instead of reducing said number of cars we want to make them self crashing?

Instead of investing heavily on public transit systems we keep feeding this
fable that somehow, in the near future, cars driven by computers will do _at
least_ as good a job of driving as sentient, sober people.

I can't get my smartphone to understand my language and do simple things by
voice commands and yet we seem to think that there's (nearly) available
technology to make a car drive by itself...

These companies must not exist in the real world, that's the only possible
explanation.

~~~
krapp
> I still cannot comprehend the current push for automated driving.

Google and Uber believe they can make an insane amount of money with the
transition to automated driving. This is being sold to the public as the
solution to a public safety crisis with the narrative that human controlled
cars are death machines which need to be taken off the roads as soon as
possible.

~~~
tiagoafpereira
I wonder how long will it take them to realize that it won't happen before
someone cracks the artificial general intelligence problem...

I don't know what ticks me off the most, people believing that these companies
can easily solve the automated driving problem or these companies stubbornly
pushing for it.

~~~
krapp
I'm sure plenty of engineers actually working on the problem are aware of how
difficult it is... but they're not the ones doing the pushing or making the
grandiose claims.

~~~
tiagoafpereira
Fine by me, research is research.

I'm just utterly surprised by how so many people think this is a fixable
problem in the near future, it's not.

How long until people realize that?

The next AI winter won't come soon enough.

