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Audio recognition may be apples and oranges to self-driving vehicles. But as it relates to autonomous driving, audio recognition (and I don't mean speech but ge

by speby 9y ago

Audio recognition may be apples and oranges to self-driving vehicles. But as it relates to autonomous driving, audio recognition (and I don't mean speech but general sounds) is something nobody has been talking about (at least publicly) as a sensor input for self-driving cars. Think about how much you rely on your hearing to drive safely and well. Sure, we use sight/depth and so forth substantially but we also rely on our ears listening for different kinds of sounds that can occur from any direction to warn us of changing conditions, unsafe circumstances, and so forth. We can't even get speech recognition right and meanwhile audio (sounds in general) aren't even being seriously considered for self-driving purposes, AFAICT.

DoubleCribble 9y ago
Curious, isn't it? Humans rely on auditory information to enhance situational awareness so you'd think that would factor into the design of a machine that needs as much situational awareness as possible. For example, emergency response vehicles announce their arrival and direction often long before any visual contact is made. How will deaf autonomous cars recognize incoming emergency responders if the view is obstructed? Will they pull into the intersection just as a Fire Engine is running the red light? Auditory input was deemed important enough that California even made it illegal to "wear a headset covering, earplugs in, or earphones covering, resting on, or inserted in, both ears" while driving just last year. [0] I suspect other jurisdictions have/will follow(ed) suit. [0]http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?lawCode=VEH&sectionNum=27400 http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection....
- xapata 9y ago
  Microphones cost much h less than LIDAR.
- pg314 9y ago
  Are deaf people allowed to drive? How do you think they handle these situations?
  - vertex-four 9y ago
    According to a quick google, noticing that other cars are pulling in/slowing down usually works if they can't see the emergency vehicle. Still, it's not "perfect", but then Hearing drivers are far from perfect either, and there's plenty of failsafes before an accident happens.
    - stevenwoo 9y ago
      Fire trucks and ambulances I've seen when driving against traffic lights/flow of traffic always slow and stop to make sure that there will not be an accident even if they have the right of way - they don't drive like police in pursuit on TV. I'm sure there are exceptions but the general case is the emergency vehicles are planning for other traffic to not yield until it is clear the other traffic is yielding.
      - mindcrime 9y ago
        I'm sure there are exceptions but the general case is the emergency vehicles are planning for other traffic to not yield until it is clear the other traffic is yielding. Yes, if the driver is well trained. When I was firefighting and instructing drivers, we always emphasized that while the red light and siren gave you the right of way: a. they don't absolve you of liability for a crash (at least under NC law) and b. if you get in a crash on the way to the scene, you're not doing anybody any good, PLUS you've now created another incident requiring another emergency response, PLUS another company (probably coming from further away) has to respond to the original call. I can't speak for police, but firefighters are actually, in my experience, taught to be pretty conservative when it comes to running red lights, proceeding against traffic on one way streets, and other similar scenarios. We also always used to emphasize "it does no good to get halfway there, real fast".
  - DoubleCribble 9y ago
    There seems to be some limited automotive technology available that would convert sirens to visual signals, akin to doorbell or telephone strobes. But the more interesting adaptive technology seems to be a re-wiring of the brain. [0] Deprived of auditory input and with a heightened reliance on visual cues, the autonomous driving version might be something like Lidar + other driver facial recognition. [0] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/superpowers-for-the-blind-and-deaf/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/superpowers-for-t...
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- jdietrich 9y ago
  Telling which direction a siren is coming from is really, really easy. You can do it with three electret microphones and a $1 ARM chip. A simple TDOA multilateration algorithm will do a far better job of it than a human, even in complex reverberant environments. Reliably understanding speech is effectively strong AI. Humans don't speak very clearly, but we're spectacularly good at inferring meaning from context. Accurate transcripts of colloquial speech are often completely incomprehensible, because a vast amount of information is conveyed through context. When we're listening to someone speak, we're decoding the phonemes into symbols, but we're also constructing a model of the speaker's mind and predicting what they mean to say.
kajecounterhack 9y ago
"Nobody talking about it" doesn't mean nobody is working on it ;)

by speby 9y ago

DoubleCribble 9y ago

Curious, isn't it? Humans rely on auditory information to enhance situational awareness so you'd think that would factor into the design of a machine that needs as much situational awareness as possible. For example, emergency response vehicles announce their arrival and direction often long before any visual contact is made. How will deaf autonomous cars recognize incoming emergency responders if the view is obstructed? Will they pull into the intersection just as a Fire Engine is running the red light? Auditory input was deemed important enough that California even made it illegal to "wear a headset covering, earplugs in, or earphones covering, resting on, or inserted in, both ears" while driving just last year. [0] I suspect other jurisdictions have/will follow(ed) suit. [0]http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?lawCode=VEH&sectionNum=27400 http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection....

xapata 9y ago
Microphones cost much h less than LIDAR.
pg314 9y ago
Are deaf people allowed to drive? How do you think they handle these situations?
- vertex-four 9y ago
  According to a quick google, noticing that other cars are pulling in/slowing down usually works if they can't see the emergency vehicle. Still, it's not "perfect", but then Hearing drivers are far from perfect either, and there's plenty of failsafes before an accident happens.
  - stevenwoo 9y ago
    Fire trucks and ambulances I've seen when driving against traffic lights/flow of traffic always slow and stop to make sure that there will not be an accident even if they have the right of way - they don't drive like police in pursuit on TV. I'm sure there are exceptions but the general case is the emergency vehicles are planning for other traffic to not yield until it is clear the other traffic is yielding.
    - mindcrime 9y ago
      I'm sure there are exceptions but the general case is the emergency vehicles are planning for other traffic to not yield until it is clear the other traffic is yielding. Yes, if the driver is well trained. When I was firefighting and instructing drivers, we always emphasized that while the red light and siren gave you the right of way: a. they don't absolve you of liability for a crash (at least under NC law) and b. if you get in a crash on the way to the scene, you're not doing anybody any good, PLUS you've now created another incident requiring another emergency response, PLUS another company (probably coming from further away) has to respond to the original call. I can't speak for police, but firefighters are actually, in my experience, taught to be pretty conservative when it comes to running red lights, proceeding against traffic on one way streets, and other similar scenarios. We also always used to emphasize "it does no good to get halfway there, real fast".
- DoubleCribble 9y ago
  There seems to be some limited automotive technology available that would convert sirens to visual signals, akin to doorbell or telephone strobes. But the more interesting adaptive technology seems to be a re-wiring of the brain. [0] Deprived of auditory input and with a heightened reliance on visual cues, the autonomous driving version might be something like Lidar + other driver facial recognition. [0] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/superpowers-for-the-blind-and-deaf/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/superpowers-for-t...
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
jdietrich 9y ago
Telling which direction a siren is coming from is really, really easy. You can do it with three electret microphones and a $1 ARM chip. A simple TDOA multilateration algorithm will do a far better job of it than a human, even in complex reverberant environments. Reliably understanding speech is effectively strong AI. Humans don't speak very clearly, but we're spectacularly good at inferring meaning from context. Accurate transcripts of colloquial speech are often completely incomprehensible, because a vast amount of information is conveyed through context. When we're listening to someone speak, we're decoding the phonemes into symbols, but we're also constructing a model of the speaker's mind and predicting what they mean to say.

kajecounterhack 9y ago

"Nobody talking about it" doesn't mean nobody is working on it ;)