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One of the biggest challenges with self-driving cars in snow is the snow in the environment -- for example, how do you see the lane markers so that you stay in

by cbhl 9y ago

One of the biggest challenges with self-driving cars in snow is the snow in the environment -- for example, how do you see the lane markers so that you stay in your lane?

eco 9y ago
I imagine they'll just have to do what humans do. Follow existing tire tracks if available. If not, just intuit where the road using your best judgement. It's not terribly unlike driving on dirt roads (though harder, surely) which autonomous cars already did surprisingly well in the first two Grand Challenges (no lane markers there either).
- mannykannot 9y ago
  The first two grand challenges also lacked oncoming traffic. In general, however, I agree that doing what a prudent driver would do in the situation is probably not an insurmountable problem.
freeone3000 9y ago
This is also a human challenge. You follow the tire tracks. If there are no tire tracks, guess. You can have a margin of error of half a lane and be within human parameters.
- tjoff 9y ago
  How do you guess? Oh, you need another set of hundred million miles of testdata for this case? The thing is that it is vastly different from any other scenario a self-driving car will ever experience or train for. Humans on the other hand grow up with snow and know how it behaves, how it covers the environment and what features are prevalent despite of it (and consequently, people not used to snow that suddenly finds themselves in a snow-covered landscape often fail miserably). Falling snow can significantly cover both video and disrupt LIDAR immensely. Just as our vision, thing is we already know how to cope with it, it is a greatly different problem than driving in good/ok conditions.
bm1362 9y ago
Like others have said, the vehicle will localize using GPS, LIDAR, other image features and then attempt to continue in it’s route. If the confidence is low the system will most likely just take no action. I did the self driving car class on Udacity and it was super effective as a primer for how these systems work in general and framework for solving these problems.
randomdata 9y ago
> for example, how do you see the lane markers so that you stay in your lane? As a human in a snowy region, who has been in some pretty dicey conditions, I measure the slope of the road. Roads are typically shaped like a triangle, so if your car changes it’s rotation on the axis that is your direction of travel, you know you are outside of your lane. Even my smartphone has sensors for that kind of measurement.
DamnInteresting 9y ago
I wonder if it would be workable to have a half-automated mode for these conditions...the human steers, and the car does all of the rest (accelerating, decelerating, etc). Or the human could have a binary go now/stop now control, with the software handling the details.

by cbhl 9y ago

One of the biggest challenges with self-driving cars in snow is the snow in the environment -- for example, how do you see the lane markers so that you stay in your lane?

eco 9y ago

I imagine they'll just have to do what humans do. Follow existing tire tracks if available. If not, just intuit where the road using your best judgement. It's not terribly unlike driving on dirt roads (though harder, surely) which autonomous cars already did surprisingly well in the first two Grand Challenges (no lane markers there either).

mannykannot 9y ago
The first two grand challenges also lacked oncoming traffic. In general, however, I agree that doing what a prudent driver would do in the situation is probably not an insurmountable problem.

freeone3000 9y ago

This is also a human challenge. You follow the tire tracks. If there are no tire tracks, guess. You can have a margin of error of half a lane and be within human parameters.

tjoff 9y ago
How do you guess? Oh, you need another set of hundred million miles of testdata for this case? The thing is that it is vastly different from any other scenario a self-driving car will ever experience or train for. Humans on the other hand grow up with snow and know how it behaves, how it covers the environment and what features are prevalent despite of it (and consequently, people not used to snow that suddenly finds themselves in a snow-covered landscape often fail miserably). Falling snow can significantly cover both video and disrupt LIDAR immensely. Just as our vision, thing is we already know how to cope with it, it is a greatly different problem than driving in good/ok conditions.

bm1362 9y ago

Like others have said, the vehicle will localize using GPS, LIDAR, other image features and then attempt to continue in it’s route. If the confidence is low the system will most likely just take no action. I did the self driving car class on Udacity and it was super effective as a primer for how these systems work in general and framework for solving these problems.

randomdata 9y ago

> for example, how do you see the lane markers so that you stay in your lane? As a human in a snowy region, who has been in some pretty dicey conditions, I measure the slope of the road. Roads are typically shaped like a triangle, so if your car changes it’s rotation on the axis that is your direction of travel, you know you are outside of your lane. Even my smartphone has sensors for that kind of measurement.

DamnInteresting 9y ago

I wonder if it would be workable to have a half-automated mode for these conditions...the human steers, and the car does all of the rest (accelerating, decelerating, etc). Or the human could have a binary go now/stop now control, with the software handling the details.