5 ms·

360 vision doesn’t change physics, and even the best vision system doesn’t help you when a child darts ten feet in front of your car. If you don’t anticipate t

by irq11 9y ago

360 vision doesn’t change physics, and even the best vision system doesn’t help you when a child darts ten feet in front of your car. If you don’t anticipate the possible movement, you will be too slow. I have very little faith that we are anywhere near systems that can handle this kind of situational awareness, because it requires classification systems and object models of the world that modern AI has yet to reproduce. The average level of human intelligence is a lot higher than most casual observers realize.

trhway 9y ago
> it requires classification systems and object models of the world that modern AI has yet to reproduce. i'm pretty sure that during millions of miles of say Waymo's video captured, there has been a lot of people (incl. children) stepping off the sidewalk to cross the road - you don't need that to happen right in front of your car - so their system analyzing the images does recognize the pedestrians and thus their potential for movement.
- sampl 9y ago
  This was my assumption as well, curious why it’s being downvoted.
maxerickson 9y ago
Waymo models "dynamic objects" and predicts what they are going to do. There's some diagrams of it in this report (page 9): https://waymo.com/safetyreport/ https://waymo.com/safetyreport/ I would guess that they already identify and track pedestrians better than the average human driver (mostly because I expect they do it at greater distance). Whether they model kids standing by the curb better is hard to say.
- irq11 9y ago
  A marketing document does not convince me. But even if I take this at face value, they’re talking about estimating future movements based on current trajectory, which is fine and good, but not the scenario raised by the OP. If I see a child standing near the side of the road, I use more than the velocity and trajectory of the child to estimate future behavior: I look at the direction the child is facing, the overall situation (e.g. is the child playing a game?), what the child is paying attention to, and so on. A child waiting at a bus stop is a dramatically different scenario than a child looking across the street at a puppy. A short adult standing on the side of the road is dramatically different than a child. This is a hard problem involving multiple levels of recognition and inference. I have little faith that it is solved. My suspicion is that the “engineering solution” is used (i.e. slow down when a human-probable object is near the road). That might work, but will lead to a car thar drives like a paranoid senior citizen with bad eyesight. I have a suspicion that we’re going to look back in a decade and realize that most of these problems are fundamentally intractable, and that the best any system can do is react via human-encoded heuristics. If so, the path to full autonomy will be an asymptotic one; it will not happen quickly, but through decades of gradual refinement, with lots of fatalities along the way.
  - maxerickson 9y ago
    "human-encoded heuristics" contradicts intractable. I think that the always-sensible speed choices of the automated system will result in a much larger reduction in pedestrian fatalities than any increase from the lack of subtle inference you are concerned with.
    - irq11 9y ago
      If you think heuristic contradicts “intractable” You don’t understand the meaning of the word. Intractable problems can be solved sometimes, just not reliably or in bounded time. If we get to the point where self-driving cars depend on human-encoded rules for reaction, we’ll simply be trading one set of messy heuristic behaviors (people) for another (robots with bad sensors and limited domain awareness). Will the automated systems be “better” with enough time and investment? Perhaps. But dreams of a fatality-free automobile future will remain science fiction.
      - user5994461 9y ago
        The heuristic is quite simple. Drive slower when there are children around, to leave enough time to brake if something unpredictable happen.
  - wellboy 9y ago
    An A.I. system with several million cars will have this exact situation several times a day, so after a few months, they sure have a lot more scenarios that a humans has ever seen or would anticipate.
    - irq11 9y ago
      The correct response to “we don’t have methods to do that” isn’t “throw more data at it”.
      - wellboy 9y ago
        Of course they do, Tesla, Google are exactly doing that.
stale2002 9y ago
If the car is unable to slow down in time, then it was driving too fast in the first place. The solution for self driving cars is easy. Don't ever put yourself in a position where physics prevents you from breaking in time. They can do this by driving conservatively and not doing dumb things like driving around a corner quickly.
- dsfyu404ed 9y ago
  Then everybody will hate them because our expectations of the speed at which a car gets from A to B tolerate an amount of risk larger than the what BigCorp is willing to tolerate. Nobody wants a self driving car that's always driving like a student driver.
  - TeMPOraL 9y ago
    I would live a car like this, because it'll make throughput on the roads go up, and ultimately make trips more predictable and much less risky.
  - stubish 9y ago
    It is an assumption that going to A to B with little risk will be slower. With the sensors available and lower reaction times the opposite could well happen. A computer can look every way at once at a stop sign, doesn't have to waste time making a judgement call because it already knows the answer, and doesn't have to wait for its foot to hit the break or accelerator.
  - stale2002 9y ago
    Personally I don't really care if it takes 5% longer to get where I needed to go or not. Especially if I get the huge benefit of not having to drive. Driving risky really doesnt speed up your commute very much.
    - dsfyu404ed 9y ago
      >Personally I don't really care if it takes 5% longer to get where I needed to go or not. >Especially if I get the huge benefit of not having to drive. >Driving risky really doesnt speed up your commute very much. A car behaving will be like a student driver (or delivery truck) at every intersection at which it needs to pull into traffic could easily double or triple your commute time depending on your commute. Pulling out into traffic should be something that a driver-less car can be much better at. If it isn't at least as good as the average perspective customer people won't buy it. I would say this is particularly critical metric for taxi fleets since they do a lot of driving on city side streets. People will take taxi with the human if it's faster.

by irq11 9y ago

trhway 9y ago

> it requires classification systems and object models of the world that modern AI has yet to reproduce. i'm pretty sure that during millions of miles of say Waymo's video captured, there has been a lot of people (incl. children) stepping off the sidewalk to cross the road - you don't need that to happen right in front of your car - so their system analyzing the images does recognize the pedestrians and thus their potential for movement.

sampl 9y ago
This was my assumption as well, curious why it’s being downvoted.

maxerickson 9y ago

Waymo models "dynamic objects" and predicts what they are going to do. There's some diagrams of it in this report (page 9): https://waymo.com/safetyreport/ https://waymo.com/safetyreport/ I would guess that they already identify and track pedestrians better than the average human driver (mostly because I expect they do it at greater distance). Whether they model kids standing by the curb better is hard to say.

irq11 9y ago
A marketing document does not convince me. But even if I take this at face value, they’re talking about estimating future movements based on current trajectory, which is fine and good, but not the scenario raised by the OP. If I see a child standing near the side of the road, I use more than the velocity and trajectory of the child to estimate future behavior: I look at the direction the child is facing, the overall situation (e.g. is the child playing a game?), what the child is paying attention to, and so on. A child waiting at a bus stop is a dramatically different scenario than a child looking across the street at a puppy. A short adult standing on the side of the road is dramatically different than a child. This is a hard problem involving multiple levels of recognition and inference. I have little faith that it is solved. My suspicion is that the “engineering solution” is used (i.e. slow down when a human-probable object is near the road). That might work, but will lead to a car thar drives like a paranoid senior citizen with bad eyesight. I have a suspicion that we’re going to look back in a decade and realize that most of these problems are fundamentally intractable, and that the best any system can do is react via human-encoded heuristics. If so, the path to full autonomy will be an asymptotic one; it will not happen quickly, but through decades of gradual refinement, with lots of fatalities along the way.
- maxerickson 9y ago
  "human-encoded heuristics" contradicts intractable. I think that the always-sensible speed choices of the automated system will result in a much larger reduction in pedestrian fatalities than any increase from the lack of subtle inference you are concerned with.
  - irq11 9y ago
    If you think heuristic contradicts “intractable” You don’t understand the meaning of the word. Intractable problems can be solved sometimes, just not reliably or in bounded time. If we get to the point where self-driving cars depend on human-encoded rules for reaction, we’ll simply be trading one set of messy heuristic behaviors (people) for another (robots with bad sensors and limited domain awareness). Will the automated systems be “better” with enough time and investment? Perhaps. But dreams of a fatality-free automobile future will remain science fiction.
    - user5994461 9y ago
      The heuristic is quite simple. Drive slower when there are children around, to leave enough time to brake if something unpredictable happen.
- wellboy 9y ago
  An A.I. system with several million cars will have this exact situation several times a day, so after a few months, they sure have a lot more scenarios that a humans has ever seen or would anticipate.
  - irq11 9y ago
    The correct response to “we don’t have methods to do that” isn’t “throw more data at it”.
    - wellboy 9y ago
      Of course they do, Tesla, Google are exactly doing that.

stale2002 9y ago

If the car is unable to slow down in time, then it was driving too fast in the first place. The solution for self driving cars is easy. Don't ever put yourself in a position where physics prevents you from breaking in time. They can do this by driving conservatively and not doing dumb things like driving around a corner quickly.

dsfyu404ed 9y ago
Then everybody will hate them because our expectations of the speed at which a car gets from A to B tolerate an amount of risk larger than the what BigCorp is willing to tolerate. Nobody wants a self driving car that's always driving like a student driver.
- TeMPOraL 9y ago
  I would live a car like this, because it'll make throughput on the roads go up, and ultimately make trips more predictable and much less risky.
- stubish 9y ago
  It is an assumption that going to A to B with little risk will be slower. With the sensors available and lower reaction times the opposite could well happen. A computer can look every way at once at a stop sign, doesn't have to waste time making a judgement call because it already knows the answer, and doesn't have to wait for its foot to hit the break or accelerator.
- stale2002 9y ago
  Personally I don't really care if it takes 5% longer to get where I needed to go or not. Especially if I get the huge benefit of not having to drive. Driving risky really doesnt speed up your commute very much.
  - dsfyu404ed 9y ago
    >Personally I don't really care if it takes 5% longer to get where I needed to go or not. >Especially if I get the huge benefit of not having to drive. >Driving risky really doesnt speed up your commute very much. A car behaving will be like a student driver (or delivery truck) at every intersection at which it needs to pull into traffic could easily double or triple your commute time depending on your commute. Pulling out into traffic should be something that a driver-less car can be much better at. If it isn't at least as good as the average perspective customer people won't buy it. I would say this is particularly critical metric for taxi fleets since they do a lot of driving on city side streets. People will take taxi with the human if it's faster.