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Laying a trap for self-driving cars
- tyingq 10y agoI suspect you'll see some real world versions of this sort of thing from truckers when self driving semis get some traction. Truckers are very well organized, both officially via unions and informally via radio shows, newsletters, online forums, and the like. Not that it will accomplish much, but it will be a lively transiton.
- RamenJunkie_ 10y agoInstead of putting truckers back on trucks, they will just put security on them, until it stops.
- kbos87 10y agoI wonder if we'll eventually see a world where the former Uber drivers who are slowly being lulled into dependence fight back when their jobs are automated away. Autonomous vehicles could be an easy target in a lot of ways, especially when unoccupied. Slap some electrical tape on their sensors, chock their tires, or confuse them with clever tactics like this.
- LeifCarrotson 10y agoThat would be as criminal as taxi drivers slashing Uber tires, or artisanal craftsmen burning down factories.
- kbos87 10y agoTrue. I'm not condoning, just questioning.
- parenthephobia 10y agoOne time that sort of thing happened at scale was in the 19th century, when skilled textile workers destroyed the mechanized looms that were putting them out of work. Those people were the original Luddites. The British government responded by making destroying mechanized looms a capital offense, and deploying the army against them.
- eeZah7Ux 10y ago> Autonomous vehicles could be an easy target An orwellian, neworked device with hundreds of sensors, cameras, laser scanners? Not so easy.
- zkms 10y agoIf you actually want to damage sensors of unattended autonomous vehicles you could do a lot worse than just like...shooting at it with a firearm. Delicate precision sensors don't take to bullets too well, also using firearms lets you be well outside the range of the target vehicle's sensors.
- tyingq 10y agoIt can't be bargained with. It can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear.
- jfoutz 10y agowhen red light cameras came to my town, a person dressed as Santa Claus carried large wrapped boxes with holes in the bottom. The person put the packages over the cameras. AFAIK, no one was ever charged. Maybe in the future it'll be impossible to get away with things like that in the future.
- parenthephobia 10y ago> Of course, it’s just a regular car he drives into it for demonstration purposes. Because a self-driving car wouldn't have any reason to drive into the circle, so it wouldn't get "caught". The actual reason a regular car is used is because this is an "art installation" and not a serious critique of self-driving algorithms. A more effective trap would be a "no entry" sign on a one-way street (or one side of a dual carriageway), positioned so the car can't see it before entering the street.
- tyingq 10y agoOr just 2 to 3 people at a red light with the bags of salt.
- wglass 10y agoWhile I agree this simplistic example probably wouldn't work, it's conceptual. Yes, if a road designer wanted to build a road that would trap cars, they could do so. Automated or not automated. See the XKCD "Highway Engineer Pranks" for examples!
- gruez 10y ago>A more effective trap would be a "no entry" sign on a one-way street (or one side of a dual carriageway), positioned so the car can't see it before entering the street. reminds me of rollercoaster tycoon where you could trap guests indefinitely by using that technique.
- dnautics 10y agoyou could make a "do not enter" sign with undertext saying "except non-self-driving cars".
- sand500 10y agocould just surround a car with 4 people. What is it going to do, run someone over?
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- coldcode 10y agoI still want to see a self-driving car in Minnesota in winter. Road markings, what road markings? For that matter where is the road?
- fdej 10y agoThe road markings will be clearly visible, of course, since there will be self-driving snowplows around 24/7.
- aqme28 10y agoHow are the road markings visible to the first snowplow?
- ucaetano 10y agohttp://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/snow-canyon-japan http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/snow-canyon-japan "Sometime in early March, a bulldozer specially equipped with both a GPS and a mobile satellite phone is sent up the mountain and over the Snow Canyon. The GPS and sat phone work in tandem to provide the driver a detailed video screen image of the dozer’s location in relation to the center of the snow-buried highway. This driver’s job is not to clear snow, but simply to lay out an accurate track of the road itself."
- kiallmacinnes 10y agoThere is no first "first snow plough", only a continuous stream of snow ploughs - at least until the AI goes on strike ;)
- benjamincburns 10y agoLots of other people talk about fancy GPS systems in this thread, but it's been done for far longer with much simpler, arguably more reliable technology: long poles/sticks either painted with bright high vis paint, or more recently, retroreflectors. It reminds me a bit of the story about NASA and the gazillion dollar space pen, vs the soviet space agency and their pencils.
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- joshu 10y agoI'm running an autonomous driving event in a few weeks. I guess we could try this out?
- russdill 10y agoPeople do this to regular cars already with acts such as stealing stop signs. In some ways self driving cars will be easier to fool, but in other ways more difficult (eg, intersections with stop signs may also be contained in a database).
- dsfyu404ed 10y agoThe best ones I've seen don't steal the sign, they take a big wrench and twist the post 90deg
- bluejekyll 10y agoActually, this raises some rather large questions about intent of someone fooling a self-driving car. Laying a trap for the occupants, so that they can be easily robbed. Like the mischief being mentioned against trucks and Uber's by drivers (we can almost guarantee this will happen), what about just strait up traps for robbery? There were some cases of this with the Pokémon game right?
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- synaesthesisx 10y agoWhat if someone drew (false) lane markers leading off the edge of a cliff?
- JulianMorrison 10y agoYou could probably trap a self driving car just by walking out in front of it and refusing to move aside.
- mirimir 10y agoIn recent memory, someone posted a great collection of illusions for self-driving vehicles. Can't find it, though :(
- revelation 10y agoLet's make art of our ignorance!
- Eridrus 10y agoThis definitely seems like an idea created and propagated by people with no idea about how these systems work. The Cruise Automation/GM videos show the cars crossing lane markings when a truck is blocking traffic in their lane, so these systems are being built to realise that while traffic laws may say one thing, practice requires something different. Certainly entertaining though.
- ChuckMcM 10y agoI agree, it was entertaining. You can imagine the next James Bond car has a gadget with two paint dispensers that shoots out on a rail to one side of the car, starts firing paint and then moves out to the right drawing a double yellow line that forces the bad guys in their self driving car off on to the shoulder :-). And no, I don't think any self driving car worth it's salt would fall for this. Fun to simulate though. I enjoyed that 'smart car' joke that went "I was standing in the garage because I had forgotten where I had parked my self driving car, then it hit me."
- gniv 10y ago"They are more like guidelines, anyway"
- stefco_ 10y agoI'm not totally sure that it's correct to group the artist with people who think lazily about AI. If the artist was trying to literally suggest that this trap would work, then, yeah, that would be silly and misinformed. But I think he was just being cheeky and using this as an example of a rule outside of its context being rendered meaningless (which is explicitly declared to be the point of the work). That in itself is a worthwhile point in a deeper way (because your model always fails when you hit outliers you haven't trained for), and I kind of liked that the visual form was of a car-summoning ritual. Or maybe the artist is just a lazy anti-AI person and I am giving him too much credit. But I wouldn't say it's a foregone conclusion.