4 ms·

Except there is no graceful failure mode here.

stale2002 10y ago
Of course there is. 99.9% the safe behavior to do is to slam on the breaks and pull off to the side/avoid obstacles. And humans can't even do this simple behavior. "oh, stale2000, but what about highways!", and I'd respond by pointing out that highway driving is the easiest thing for a self driving car to do. Also, it is STILL probably safest to slam the breaks if you are about to hit a car pileup.
- mannykannot 10y ago
  Pulling off to the side and avoiding obstacles is continued engagement. What we need here is more information, specifically about how many of the disengagements would have presented a risk (and the severity of the risk) without a driver to handle them. The second paragraph is a straw man argument.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - lern_too_spel 10y ago
    Disengagements requiring immediate manual control are also in the disengagement report. https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/wcm/connect/946b3502-c959-4e3b-b119-91319c27788f/GoogleAutoWaymo_disengage_report_2016.pdf?MOD=AJPERES https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/wcm/connect/946b3502-c959-4e3b... One every 14000 miles in 2016, an improvement from one every 1500 miles in 2015. Waymo has already indicated that it wants to run a mobility service by the end of the year. This regulation is right on time.
    - mannykannot 10y ago
      That is a valid point, but the report also says this: "Safety is our highest priority and Waymo test drivers are trained to take manual control in a multitude of situations, not only when safe operation "requires " that they do so. Our drivers err on the side of caution and take manual control if they have any doubt about the safety of continuing in autonomous mode (for example, due to the behavior of the SOC or any other vehicle, pedestrian, or cyclist nearby), or in situations where other concerns may warrant manual control, such as improving ride comfort or smoothing traffic flow." This appears to throw doubt on the relevance of the statistics to driverless vehicles because drivers have been instructed to preemptively disengage where problems may be anticipated.
      - lern_too_spel 10y ago
        All of those disengagements, which have erred on the side of caution, have been reported, so why does it throw doubt on the statistics? The rate of disengagements has gone down so much that Waymo has announced a mobility service by the end of the year, which seems aggressive to me, but within two years seems perfectly reasonable. After all, they can limit service to the environments that they know they'll have no problems with.
        mannykannot 10y ago
        The statistics are not in doubt, but their applicability to the safety of driverless vehicles is, given that the drivers preemptively disengage in precisely those cases we are most interested in. The 1 in 14000 miles figure you quote effectively takes the position that they did not happen. Waymo simulates those situations to estimate how they would have played out, for the purpose of improving its algorithms. As a first analysis, there are three possible outcomes: the car would have handled the situation safely, it would have disengaged, or it would have done something that led to at least the risk of an accident. The report does not appear to allow us to distinguish between them, probably because they are somewhat speculative. This brings us back to where I joined the thread: the idea that 'slam on the brakes' is a fallback position for not having a driver present does not work when the system fails to recognize a developing problem.
- kalleboo 10y ago
  To me, a disengagement means a situation like "the car thought there was nothing in front of it so it kept going 80 km/h straight at a construction worker with a red flag". I don't see how a self-driving car would even identify that it's doing something wrong in order to slam on the breaks. Are there any breakdowns of which disengagements are due to things like that, and how many are due to "the car failed to see that a red light turned green and refused to move" or "the car refused to enter a road that looked too narrow so it got stuck"?
  - IanCal 10y ago
    Here's the disengagement report list. https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/detail/vr/autonomous/disengagement_report_2016 https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/detail/vr/autonomous/disen... For Google, about a third of the disengagements are the car identifying a problem and handing over control. It'd be good to see a more detailed breakdown of each disengagement though.
  - jdiez17 10y ago
    >I don't see how a self-driving car would even identify that it's doing something wrong in order to slam on the breaks. The navigation algorithm may be telling the car to proceed at full speed, for example if the vision system fails to identify an obstacle, but SDV cars also have radar sensors that act as a failsafe [unless the object is invisible to radar, of course...].

stale2002 10y ago

Of course there is. 99.9% the safe behavior to do is to slam on the breaks and pull off to the side/avoid obstacles. And humans can't even do this simple behavior. "oh, stale2000, but what about highways!", and I'd respond by pointing out that highway driving is the easiest thing for a self driving car to do. Also, it is STILL probably safest to slam the breaks if you are about to hit a car pileup.

mannykannot 10y ago
Pulling off to the side and avoiding obstacles is continued engagement. What we need here is more information, specifically about how many of the disengagements would have presented a risk (and the severity of the risk) without a driver to handle them. The second paragraph is a straw man argument.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- lern_too_spel 10y ago
  Disengagements requiring immediate manual control are also in the disengagement report. https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/wcm/connect/946b3502-c959-4e3b-b119-91319c27788f/GoogleAutoWaymo_disengage_report_2016.pdf?MOD=AJPERES https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/wcm/connect/946b3502-c959-4e3b... One every 14000 miles in 2016, an improvement from one every 1500 miles in 2015. Waymo has already indicated that it wants to run a mobility service by the end of the year. This regulation is right on time.
  - mannykannot 10y ago
    That is a valid point, but the report also says this: "Safety is our highest priority and Waymo test drivers are trained to take manual control in a multitude of situations, not only when safe operation "requires " that they do so. Our drivers err on the side of caution and take manual control if they have any doubt about the safety of continuing in autonomous mode (for example, due to the behavior of the SOC or any other vehicle, pedestrian, or cyclist nearby), or in situations where other concerns may warrant manual control, such as improving ride comfort or smoothing traffic flow." This appears to throw doubt on the relevance of the statistics to driverless vehicles because drivers have been instructed to preemptively disengage where problems may be anticipated.
    - lern_too_spel 10y ago
      All of those disengagements, which have erred on the side of caution, have been reported, so why does it throw doubt on the statistics? The rate of disengagements has gone down so much that Waymo has announced a mobility service by the end of the year, which seems aggressive to me, but within two years seems perfectly reasonable. After all, they can limit service to the environments that they know they'll have no problems with.
      - mannykannot 10y ago
        The statistics are not in doubt, but their applicability to the safety of driverless vehicles is, given that the drivers preemptively disengage in precisely those cases we are most interested in. The 1 in 14000 miles figure you quote effectively takes the position that they did not happen. Waymo simulates those situations to estimate how they would have played out, for the purpose of improving its algorithms. As a first analysis, there are three possible outcomes: the car would have handled the situation safely, it would have disengaged, or it would have done something that led to at least the risk of an accident. The report does not appear to allow us to distinguish between them, probably because they are somewhat speculative. This brings us back to where I joined the thread: the idea that 'slam on the brakes' is a fallback position for not having a driver present does not work when the system fails to recognize a developing problem.
kalleboo 10y ago
To me, a disengagement means a situation like "the car thought there was nothing in front of it so it kept going 80 km/h straight at a construction worker with a red flag". I don't see how a self-driving car would even identify that it's doing something wrong in order to slam on the breaks. Are there any breakdowns of which disengagements are due to things like that, and how many are due to "the car failed to see that a red light turned green and refused to move" or "the car refused to enter a road that looked too narrow so it got stuck"?
- IanCal 10y ago
  Here's the disengagement report list. https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/detail/vr/autonomous/disengagement_report_2016 https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/detail/vr/autonomous/disen... For Google, about a third of the disengagements are the car identifying a problem and handing over control. It'd be good to see a more detailed breakdown of each disengagement though.
- jdiez17 10y ago
  >I don't see how a self-driving car would even identify that it's doing something wrong in order to slam on the breaks. The navigation algorithm may be telling the car to proceed at full speed, for example if the vision system fails to identify an obstacle, but SDV cars also have radar sensors that act as a failsafe [unless the object is invisible to radar, of course...].