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To all the armchair experts: try recreating this accident scene in the real world. Sodium Vapour (monochromatic) lamps, then a large darker area with a pedestr
by manicdee 9y ago
To all the armchair experts: try recreating this accident scene in the real world.
Sodium Vapour (monochromatic) lamps, then a large darker area with a pedestrian in dark clothing with car’s headlights dipped.
You will be alarmed at how much stuff you can put on the road and not see it because the road has a lighting pattern that makes it less safe than no lights at all.
With no lights at all, and a hedge between carriageways, the car would have had high beams on and the driver may have seen the pedestrian with plenty of time to brake and either avoid collision altogether or reduce the impact to non-fatal energy.
Now go recreate the scene for yourself and see how it works for you.
- tachim 9y agoNope. That person + bike would have been completely trivial to detect with the LIDAR those cars have mounted on top.
- stale2002 9y agoThe comparison should be against humans. It is humans that autonomous vehicles are being compared against. Because the alternative to an AV is a human. So the only thing at all that matters is "is this better or worse than a human".
- tachim 9y agoThere are two explanations for the video published: 1. They DO have cameras onboard with the exposure settings necessary to see the woman in the video, and have not released the video because it makes for bad PR. 2. They DO NOT have such cameras, in which case they should have their self-driving permit revoked because this failure mode is completely predictable to anybody working in this space. And anyway their LIDAR should've detected the person.
- manicdee 9y agoIn your opinion.
- theclaw 9y agoI dunno, I see a lot better than my dashcam sees stuff in similar conditions. Whether a human would've seen her or not is besides the point, really - the car is supposed to be fitted with sensors that don't rely on visible light, and this looks like the most basic test case you'd run on an AV - big empty road with an obstacle moving at constant speed into the path of the vehicle.
- manicdee 9y agoThe bike in between the pedestrian and vehicle likely confounded the lidar: too complex a 3D surface, little return from radar. Is it a solid object or a swarm of insects? Also how well does lidar work against surfaces like textured dark clothing? This will be a learning experience for everyone, and Waymo is really out of place condemning Uber for this.