6 ms·

> having a second system running that can't coordinate with the self-driving system It seems like "not running into stuff" is about the only level of coordinat

> having a second system running that can't coordinate with the self-driving system It seems like "not running into stuff" is about the only level of coordination necessary here.

Piskvorrr 9y ago
That's a goal which is easy to formulate, but hard to put into code.
- iainmerrick 9y ago
  The code exists! The collision detection and emergency braking feature which many new cars already have, and which (I assume and hope) has been heavily road-tested.
  - Piskvorrr 9y ago
    That's what has been said of Uber's code as well. Hope-based safety doesn't seem to be working.
    - iainmerrick 9y ago
      But my point is, Uber’s self-driving car has lots of goals -- drive safely, drive legally, drive quickly, drive comfortably, go in the right direction. A low-level safety system has a much simpler requirement: if it looks like the car is about to hit something, hit the brakes. And this second category of code is something that already exists, deployed in production today by multiple car manufacturers. That’s the bit Uber turned off. “It’s a hard problem!” doesn’t seem like a good explanation.
- JorgeGT 9y ago
  The human driver can't coordinate with the self-driving system either, he just makes overriding inputs. Treat the built-in safety system as another overriding actor.
- couchand 9y ago
  Clearly, since they failed so miserably here. But -- here's the crux of the thing -- it's not a new goal, it's the same goal they (should) already have.
matthewdgreen 9y ago
I have an XC90. The collision avoidance system has been helpful in a couple of instances (for sudden car stops, not pedestrians). However it also “misfires” a few times per month. Typically this occurs when I’m driving on a curving stretch of road with cars parked along the side: due to the curve, the system will sometimes interpret the vehicles on the side of the road as being obstacles in my path. When it does, I get an alarm and sudden unexpected braking. The first time(s) this happened I was genuinely terrified. I have no idea how this input would be interpreted by an autonomous driving system. However if I was designing such a system I would be pretty concerned about the potential safety impact. At very least I would want to add code to recognize these special braking events and then I would need to test this code... which of course would be impossible to do in simulation because Volvo’s system is probably closed source and likely exists as a hardware black box. At the end of the day I would probably be more comfortable designing my own collision avoidance system than relying on one that I couldn’t test easily, and that might spit unexpected inputs into my already-complex system. So no, I don’t see this is a simple question of “adding redundancy”. I think what Uber did here probably makes good sense. The fact that their own collision-avoidance systems didn’t fire is, however, a problem.
- icc97 9y ago
  As has been said elsewhere false positives of stopping suddenly are bad, but are better than false negatives of not stopping when there is something there. Also the collision-detection systems should be getting tested so that they improve too. You want your fall back systems to be more reliable than the regular system. So if you turn off the collision-detection systems never fix the false positives and false negatives then you'll always have these problems.
- jacquesm 9y ago
  You should file a bug on that. Someone coming up behind you might end up getting hurt due to the chain reaction of your car braking unexpectedly (and without a good reason to do so). There's a typical domino effect from one car braking where the reaction times compound and cars further back end up having to brake harder and harder to avoid a collision until one ends up being out of room and out of time.
- 9y ago

> having a second system running that can't coordinate with the self-driving system It seems like "not running into stuff" is about the only level of coordination necessary here.

Piskvorrr 9y ago

That's a goal which is easy to formulate, but hard to put into code.

iainmerrick 9y ago
The code exists! The collision detection and emergency braking feature which many new cars already have, and which (I assume and hope) has been heavily road-tested.
- Piskvorrr 9y ago
  That's what has been said of Uber's code as well. Hope-based safety doesn't seem to be working.
  - iainmerrick 9y ago
    But my point is, Uber’s self-driving car has lots of goals -- drive safely, drive legally, drive quickly, drive comfortably, go in the right direction. A low-level safety system has a much simpler requirement: if it looks like the car is about to hit something, hit the brakes. And this second category of code is something that already exists, deployed in production today by multiple car manufacturers. That’s the bit Uber turned off. “It’s a hard problem!” doesn’t seem like a good explanation.
JorgeGT 9y ago
The human driver can't coordinate with the self-driving system either, he just makes overriding inputs. Treat the built-in safety system as another overriding actor.
couchand 9y ago
Clearly, since they failed so miserably here. But -- here's the crux of the thing -- it's not a new goal, it's the same goal they (should) already have.

matthewdgreen 9y ago

I have an XC90. The collision avoidance system has been helpful in a couple of instances (for sudden car stops, not pedestrians). However it also “misfires” a few times per month. Typically this occurs when I’m driving on a curving stretch of road with cars parked along the side: due to the curve, the system will sometimes interpret the vehicles on the side of the road as being obstacles in my path. When it does, I get an alarm and sudden unexpected braking. The first time(s) this happened I was genuinely terrified. I have no idea how this input would be interpreted by an autonomous driving system. However if I was designing such a system I would be pretty concerned about the potential safety impact. At very least I would want to add code to recognize these special braking events and then I would need to test this code... which of course would be impossible to do in simulation because Volvo’s system is probably closed source and likely exists as a hardware black box. At the end of the day I would probably be more comfortable designing my own collision avoidance system than relying on one that I couldn’t test easily, and that might spit unexpected inputs into my already-complex system. So no, I don’t see this is a simple question of “adding redundancy”. I think what Uber did here probably makes good sense. The fact that their own collision-avoidance systems didn’t fire is, however, a problem.

icc97 9y ago
As has been said elsewhere false positives of stopping suddenly are bad, but are better than false negatives of not stopping when there is something there. Also the collision-detection systems should be getting tested so that they improve too. You want your fall back systems to be more reliable than the regular system. So if you turn off the collision-detection systems never fix the false positives and false negatives then you'll always have these problems.
jacquesm 9y ago
You should file a bug on that. Someone coming up behind you might end up getting hurt due to the chain reaction of your car braking unexpectedly (and without a good reason to do so). There's a typical domino effect from one car braking where the reaction times compound and cars further back end up having to brake harder and harder to avoid a collision until one ends up being out of room and out of time.
9y ago