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Self-driving cars can be disabled with a laser pointer and a Raspberry Pi
- scoot 11y ago"Petit began by recording pulses from a commercial Ibeo Lux Lidar unit. Discovering the pulses weren’t encoded or encrypted, he could simply use them at a later time to fool the unit into believing objects were there when they weren’t." That appears to answer my longstanding question as to what might happen when multiple vehicles using lidar are on the road at the same time. (Pulse timing notwithstanding of course, but given enough cars and enough time it could be periodically problematic.) However, regarding stopping a car with fake laser generated obstacles - that's nothing that can't be done with real "obstacles". A roll of paper or aluminium foil stretched across the road can't be discriminated from a solid object, and a a few empty cardboard boxes are as good as concrete blocks to a self driving car. Or even just standing in the road yourself if you have sufficient faith in the technology.
- analog31 11y agoI suspect that the lidar signals could be modulated in the same way that cell phone signals are, so that a population of cars can share a single laser wavelength without confusing one another.
- redthrowaway 11y agoYou don't need the Raspberry Pi to disable a human-driven one.
- mirimir 11y agoRandomly pointing lasers at vehicles is a good way to get shot. Just sayin' ;)
- chx 11y agoUSA, baby, USA! Feel threatened? Answer with deadly force, it's the only way.
- mirimir 11y agoLaser gun sights are very common in the US. So for some people, it's more than just "feeling threatened". They're arguably too paranoid. And irresponsible. But being right about that won't help if they shoot you.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- JabavuAdams 11y agoWho did the industrial design on these cars? What's the target market? I love the tech, and I love the goal, but I might refuse to ride in one of these just because they look too retarded. EDIT> This may seem frivolous, but I see it as a huge barrier to adoption. At least make them look cool, not like preschool toys.
- obastani 11y agoThe design is very much intentional. A huge barrier to adoption for self driving cars is perception of safety; Google wanted a car that looks safe not dangerous.
- JabavuAdams 11y agoIt looks like a kindergarten toy. Perhaps they should have made it look like an Escalade if they were going for the perception of safety?
- lazaroclapp 11y agoPerception of safety... to other drivers on the road. This is a research prototype, there is no target consumer yet. The main goal is having a car that people will feel comfortable seeing driving itself on the street, not buying, yet. So, "toy car" is what they should be going for, at this point ;)
- JabavuAdams 11y agoI guess I'll go with the default assumption that people at Google are smart. What worries me is that a company as smart and as experienced as DEKA could produce something as geeky as the Segway. Don't want to see Google afflicted by the same nerd-blindness.
- tacticus 11y agoan escalade is pretty shit as far as safety goes. it's an active danger to other road users and a magnet for rollovers.
- jedberg 11y agoYou can disable a human driven car the same way, and you don't even need the Raspberry Pi.
- ArcticCelt 11y agoHuman-driven cars can also be disabled with a laser pointer to the eye of the driver. http://www.livescience.com/21707-lasers-eye-damage.html http://www.livescience.com/21707-lasers-eye-damage.html
- ryanmcbride 11y agoLast Halloween on my commute home, someone on a hill had one of those super strong green laser pointers and got me right in the face. Can confirm.
- A010 11y agoLaser pointer can disable a human piloted aircraft too.
- jerf 11y agoAnd in general, I'm pretty sure I could drive in a sufficiently confusing way during my commute tomorrow to confuse human drivers enough to cause an accident that would have been theoretically avoidable if they had responded better. "Attacks" on self-driving cars that could already have been conducted on humans, and clearly aren't, because it just isn't worth anybody's time, aren't very technically interesting. One could make a case that there's a socially interesting aspect in that someone could use such an attack, in conjunction with social fears of self-driving cars, to do something like trash somebody's stock price or something, but the "social fear of self-driving cars" would be an irreducible element of such an attack. It's the attacks like the Jeep attack, where I can hit fleets at a time, because the cars are all intimately networked together or something, that are interesting.
- x5n1 11y agoYou give a billion people these cars and I guarantee there will be attacks against the cars. Just like there are uncommon incidents of people trying to murder people by sabotaging their vehicles.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- djrogers 11y ago"Google, Uber and even Apple’s potential self-driving car can all be foiled..." So two cars that haven't even been seen in public yet - one of which might not even exist - can be foiled by this technique? Might be true, might not be - no way for anyone involved in this story to know though. Is this really what passes for journalism now? In fact, according to the article, this was never even tested on an actual autonomous car's software - he just spoofed a commercial LIDAR system and extrapolated from there.
- archycockroach 11y ago"Ultimately, this latest car hacking is yet another signal that industries usually disassociated from data security now need to start taking it seriously." Garbage.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- rfrey 11y agoWho needs a laser? Self driving cars can be disabled with a three dollar box of roofing nails.
- mikeash 11y agoYeah, but at least they're immune to two-dollar boxes.
- Robdgreat 11y agoEver since I first played Need For Speed 2, I've fantasised about a real-life version of the ROADRAGE cheat code I could use to cause those doing the rest of us on the road a disservice to flip over with a mere honk of my horn. We're not there yet, but this is a clearly a step in the right direction.
- chipsy 11y agoI remember how when laser pointers started proliferating there was a media panic over their potential use in downing aircraft and blinding people. Schools swiftly moved to ban them(I recall being in a few assemblies where someone brought in a pointer and caused some mild, easily ignored disruption). Regardless, the world hasn't blown up. You can still legally own a laser pointer in most countries, subject to various power limits. The risks and responsibilities involved in their use are real, but have to be weighed against every other hazard.
- andrewchambers 11y agoThe police will crack down on you as hard or harder than if you just pointed a laser pointer at human drivers. You can get very long prison sentences already for doing this.
- veb 11y agoThey already do to people who do this to aircraft!