4 ms·

If I understand it right, this is the biggest blind spot of all the automated driving systems. The software just ignores stationary objects because the sensors

If I understand it right, this is the biggest blind spot of all the automated driving systems. The software just ignores stationary objects because the sensors don't have the resolution to determine whether they are in front of the car or on the side of the road. And if it didn't ignore stationary objects the car would come to a halt at every garbage can, mailbox, and bush along the road. Until they can work lidar into the system this will not be preventable. And, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the vast majority of accidents that were the fault of the self-driving car happened because it hit something stationary in the road (or off to the side of the road, in one case I recall). Since I've learned about this blind spot in these system I no longer trust them. I think everyone with a self-driving car should understand this. But maybe it's not in the interest of the manufacturer to explain it, or people would demand they fix the problem, which they cannot do just yet.

Symmetry 8y ago
That wasn't the case at all for this collision. As the article says, the sensors had detected the woman but the information had been disregarded. And the moving object thing is exclusive to radar, vision systems don't suffer from it though vision systems have their own problems.
- wilburTheDog 8y ago
  The article linked mentioned "B was the problem", meaning it ignored the sensor input. Another article(1) about it mentions that Uber had reduced the number of LIDAR sensors from five to just one rooftop sensor. The president of the company that builds the sensors even said you would need side sensors to see pedestrians, especially at night. But LIDAR is expensive. So it seems that, like Tesla, they were trying to rely on radar for that kind of thing. But that does leave the blind spot(2) I mentioned. Given that I don't see how this case is so different. Though I still don't understand how, specifically, that blind spot problem works. They say when the car in front of you changes lanes and a stopped truck is now in your lane you'll hit it. What if no car changed lanes in front of you? Would you still hit a stopped truck in your lane? The guy whose Tesla hit the bridge column seems to tell me yes, but I'm not sure. 1. https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/03/28/uber_selfdriving_death_may_have_been_due_to_lidar_blind_spot/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/03/28/uber_selfdriving_de... 2. https://www.wired.com/story/tesla-autopilot-why-crash-radar/ https://www.wired.com/story/tesla-autopilot-why-crash-radar/
  - stevenwoo 8y ago
    I thought people were saying in previous comment threads that Teslas ignore stationary objects because too many false positives from roadside objects that are not in the road. The combination of software and sensors on Teslas is not enough to be able to distinguish stationary objects in the path versus stationary objects not in the path. Based on the slim evidence of the Chinese accident video and the LA post accident photo, it looks like that's correct - http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x4tes8u http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x4tes8u https://cdn.teslarati.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/tesla-crash-fire-truck-405-los-angeles.jpg https://cdn.teslarati.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/tesla-c...
    - wilburTheDog 8y ago
      Wow. That Chinese accident video confirms my worst possible understanding of this. There are no special conditions. If a truck is parked in your lane you're going to hit it. More people should know about this. Maybe people don't want to believe it. I don't know. But I do know that I'm not going to trust any system that doesn't have multiple LIDAR sensors. Though it may take a while for the price on those to drop enough to make it affordable.
  - Symmetry 8y ago
    I haven't worked with automotive radars but the way it works in aeronautical radar is that you apply frequency binning in the electronics and ignore returns that have the wrong Doppler shift at the waveform level, long before step A in the article. If you didn't do it this way your computer would be overwhelmed considering every tree and house you can see but only moving objects like airplanes. It's the same principle as the way your eyes only report things that move over your retina as your eye moves, letting you filter out imperfections in the lens of your eye and your blind spot. Similarly, I assume that the computers in a car would be overwhelmed by the task of taking the returns from every single post on a guardrail and sorting them into distinct objects before deciding to ignore them due to relative velocity so I'm fairly sure that a similar mechanism is at work within the hardware of the radar unit the Uber car. So given that the woman showed up on Uber's sensors she would have been detected by the camera system or the lidar. And apparently she was detected.
imtringued 8y ago
Tesla doesn't build self driving cars. They have a very fancy adaptive cruise control and lane assist. Tesla's don't have LIDAR. They cannot see stationary objects on the road. They are also prone to killing the driver but usually nobody else. There is also no potential for improvement without hardware upgrades. Sure. Uber's cars have been involved in a deadly collision but they don't suffer from the same problems as Tesla. The primary problem with Uber is that the company is acting recklessly to gain a competitive advantage. If they had multiple fail safe mechanisms then accidents like this could be prevented.

Symmetry 8y ago

That wasn't the case at all for this collision. As the article says, the sensors had detected the woman but the information had been disregarded. And the moving object thing is exclusive to radar, vision systems don't suffer from it though vision systems have their own problems.

wilburTheDog 8y ago
The article linked mentioned "B was the problem", meaning it ignored the sensor input. Another article(1) about it mentions that Uber had reduced the number of LIDAR sensors from five to just one rooftop sensor. The president of the company that builds the sensors even said you would need side sensors to see pedestrians, especially at night. But LIDAR is expensive. So it seems that, like Tesla, they were trying to rely on radar for that kind of thing. But that does leave the blind spot(2) I mentioned. Given that I don't see how this case is so different. Though I still don't understand how, specifically, that blind spot problem works. They say when the car in front of you changes lanes and a stopped truck is now in your lane you'll hit it. What if no car changed lanes in front of you? Would you still hit a stopped truck in your lane? The guy whose Tesla hit the bridge column seems to tell me yes, but I'm not sure. 1. https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/03/28/uber_selfdriving_death_may_have_been_due_to_lidar_blind_spot/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/03/28/uber_selfdriving_de... 2. https://www.wired.com/story/tesla-autopilot-why-crash-radar/ https://www.wired.com/story/tesla-autopilot-why-crash-radar/
- stevenwoo 8y ago
  I thought people were saying in previous comment threads that Teslas ignore stationary objects because too many false positives from roadside objects that are not in the road. The combination of software and sensors on Teslas is not enough to be able to distinguish stationary objects in the path versus stationary objects not in the path. Based on the slim evidence of the Chinese accident video and the LA post accident photo, it looks like that's correct - http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x4tes8u http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x4tes8u https://cdn.teslarati.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/tesla-crash-fire-truck-405-los-angeles.jpg https://cdn.teslarati.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/tesla-c...
  - wilburTheDog 8y ago
    Wow. That Chinese accident video confirms my worst possible understanding of this. There are no special conditions. If a truck is parked in your lane you're going to hit it. More people should know about this. Maybe people don't want to believe it. I don't know. But I do know that I'm not going to trust any system that doesn't have multiple LIDAR sensors. Though it may take a while for the price on those to drop enough to make it affordable.
- Symmetry 8y ago
  I haven't worked with automotive radars but the way it works in aeronautical radar is that you apply frequency binning in the electronics and ignore returns that have the wrong Doppler shift at the waveform level, long before step A in the article. If you didn't do it this way your computer would be overwhelmed considering every tree and house you can see but only moving objects like airplanes. It's the same principle as the way your eyes only report things that move over your retina as your eye moves, letting you filter out imperfections in the lens of your eye and your blind spot. Similarly, I assume that the computers in a car would be overwhelmed by the task of taking the returns from every single post on a guardrail and sorting them into distinct objects before deciding to ignore them due to relative velocity so I'm fairly sure that a similar mechanism is at work within the hardware of the radar unit the Uber car. So given that the woman showed up on Uber's sensors she would have been detected by the camera system or the lidar. And apparently she was detected.

imtringued 8y ago

Tesla doesn't build self driving cars. They have a very fancy adaptive cruise control and lane assist. Tesla's don't have LIDAR. They cannot see stationary objects on the road. They are also prone to killing the driver but usually nobody else. There is also no potential for improvement without hardware upgrades. Sure. Uber's cars have been involved in a deadly collision but they don't suffer from the same problems as Tesla. The primary problem with Uber is that the company is acting recklessly to gain a competitive advantage. If they had multiple fail safe mechanisms then accidents like this could be prevented.