4 ms·

Not to mention the composition or what might be below the snow. Snow and ice are by far the hardest conditions for anyone driving. I have no doubt a computer c

Not to mention the composition or what might be below the snow. Snow and ice are by far the hardest conditions for anyone driving. I have no doubt a computer can figure it out and be better eventually, until then it will be interesting.

maxerickson 11y ago
Electronic stability control is required by regulation in several jurisdictions (US, Canada, EU now or soon). From that it can be inferred that computers are better at some aspects of it already.
- dsfyu404ed 11y ago
  I don't know what you think ESP is but it's purely a "damage control" type of driver aid and is only a layer of programming on top of ABS. ESP just modulates brakes to keep you from going sideways. It's basically automated cutting brakes paired with traction control and ABS. All ESP does is utilize the car's existing technology to better do what the driver wants. It pretty much only comes into affect when the driver cranks the wheel hard enough to use up all available traction. It keeps the vehicle in an understeer condition and uses all available traction to try and steer in the desired direction (by acting like cutting brakes). The point of this is so that the "AWD means I don't actually need to know what I'm doing people" are prevented from sideways (oversteer) because understeer is a lot easier for a novice to recover from and if he/she hits a pole he/she hits it head on utilizing the part of the car that's good at crashing "softly" The traction control part of ESP is somewhat irrelevant. If the used is trying to give it throttle while the ESP code is doing it's thing and the ESP code is telling the traction control code to override the user then the user should just pull the fuse because you do better doughnuts that way...
  - maxerickson 11y ago
    I understand what it is. It works because it can accurately estimate the available traction. A lot of the problems drivers have in slippery conditions boil down to not correctly estimating available traction.
shkkmo 11y ago
> Not to mention the composition or what might be below the snow. I don't feel like this is particularly harder than any of the other problems self-driving cars face. To achieve performance on par with human drivers simple need to do a couple of things (which are what I do when driving in snowy/icey conditions): 1) Categorize current/recent road appearance into groups. 2) Do tiny periodic break checks on each relevant group to determine the traction available in that group. 3) Trigger a new set break checks when conditions change (e.g. exterior temp changes, precipitation changes, traffic density changes or road-type changes such as exit ramp or bridge) This road surface analysis combined with a bit of traffic analysis should also allow you to determine 'emergent lanes' in snowy conditions.

maxerickson 11y ago

Electronic stability control is required by regulation in several jurisdictions (US, Canada, EU now or soon). From that it can be inferred that computers are better at some aspects of it already.

dsfyu404ed 11y ago
I don't know what you think ESP is but it's purely a "damage control" type of driver aid and is only a layer of programming on top of ABS. ESP just modulates brakes to keep you from going sideways. It's basically automated cutting brakes paired with traction control and ABS. All ESP does is utilize the car's existing technology to better do what the driver wants. It pretty much only comes into affect when the driver cranks the wheel hard enough to use up all available traction. It keeps the vehicle in an understeer condition and uses all available traction to try and steer in the desired direction (by acting like cutting brakes). The point of this is so that the "AWD means I don't actually need to know what I'm doing people" are prevented from sideways (oversteer) because understeer is a lot easier for a novice to recover from and if he/she hits a pole he/she hits it head on utilizing the part of the car that's good at crashing "softly" The traction control part of ESP is somewhat irrelevant. If the used is trying to give it throttle while the ESP code is doing it's thing and the ESP code is telling the traction control code to override the user then the user should just pull the fuse because you do better doughnuts that way...
- maxerickson 11y ago
  I understand what it is. It works because it can accurately estimate the available traction. A lot of the problems drivers have in slippery conditions boil down to not correctly estimating available traction.

shkkmo 11y ago

> Not to mention the composition or what might be below the snow. I don't feel like this is particularly harder than any of the other problems self-driving cars face. To achieve performance on par with human drivers simple need to do a couple of things (which are what I do when driving in snowy/icey conditions): 1) Categorize current/recent road appearance into groups. 2) Do tiny periodic break checks on each relevant group to determine the traction available in that group. 3) Trigger a new set break checks when conditions change (e.g. exterior temp changes, precipitation changes, traffic density changes or road-type changes such as exit ramp or bridge) This road surface analysis combined with a bit of traffic analysis should also allow you to determine 'emergent lanes' in snowy conditions.