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I still am yet to understand how a self driving car deals with a cop directing traffic. Or even a construction worker holding traffic back from a backing up bac

I still am yet to understand how a self driving car deals with a cop directing traffic. Or even a construction worker holding traffic back from a backing up backhoe. But maybe I am not aware of the genius of the technology yet.

TeMPOraL 11y ago
It's called image processing.
njharman 11y ago
They will have devices that communicate directly with the car's systems.
agumonkey 11y ago
From my limited and slightly hopeful understanding they don't try to understand much more than 'something is moving toward our planned path and that is no good'. As long as the car avoid going over the cop or the worker it's ok. Every decision above that is optional.
zardo 11y ago
They will (eventually have to) recognize hand signals from construction workers and police officers. Current generation, they won't run over the person, but you should probably take over and follow their instructions.
- gambiting 11y ago
  Our best of the best image recognition tech cannot see a difference between a zebra, and a sofa in a zebra print. I think "reading hand signals of a policeman/workman on the road" is far far far beyond what we can currently do. Or rather - I'm sure we can make a solution which will work right now, in perfect conditions. I'm sure it will fail in the dark/rain/snow or if the worker is making small gestures near his hip rather than moving hands high up in the air. There's just so much uncertainty in driving that I think for cars to be absolutely 100% automated, where you can genuinely go to sleep when the car drives, the roads would need to be 100% automated as well, with beacons everywhere. That will probably happen, but it's definitely not "3 years away".
  - TeMPOraL 11y ago
    Zebra vs. zebra-patterned sofa is a kind of problem designed to be hard for image processing algorithms. From the practical point of view however, you just have to require that policemen / construction workers wear specific patterns on the uniforms or even have special IR-reflective buttons/threads. That would solve like 95% of cases, and by the time self-driving cars become the norm, we'll have figured out at least some specific algorithms for that very purpose that would work in general case.

TeMPOraL 11y ago

It's called image processing.

njharman 11y ago

They will have devices that communicate directly with the car's systems.

agumonkey 11y ago

From my limited and slightly hopeful understanding they don't try to understand much more than 'something is moving toward our planned path and that is no good'. As long as the car avoid going over the cop or the worker it's ok. Every decision above that is optional.

zardo 11y ago

They will (eventually have to) recognize hand signals from construction workers and police officers. Current generation, they won't run over the person, but you should probably take over and follow their instructions.

gambiting 11y ago
Our best of the best image recognition tech cannot see a difference between a zebra, and a sofa in a zebra print. I think "reading hand signals of a policeman/workman on the road" is far far far beyond what we can currently do. Or rather - I'm sure we can make a solution which will work right now, in perfect conditions. I'm sure it will fail in the dark/rain/snow or if the worker is making small gestures near his hip rather than moving hands high up in the air. There's just so much uncertainty in driving that I think for cars to be absolutely 100% automated, where you can genuinely go to sleep when the car drives, the roads would need to be 100% automated as well, with beacons everywhere. That will probably happen, but it's definitely not "3 years away".
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  Zebra vs. zebra-patterned sofa is a kind of problem designed to be hard for image processing algorithms. From the practical point of view however, you just have to require that policemen / construction workers wear specific patterns on the uniforms or even have special IR-reflective buttons/threads. That would solve like 95% of cases, and by the time self-driving cars become the norm, we'll have figured out at least some specific algorithms for that very purpose that would work in general case.