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The infrastructure driverless vehicles rely on is their own internal maps, which have lanes and signage marked out. Being able to visually detect these things i

The infrastructure driverless vehicles rely on is their own internal maps, which have lanes and signage marked out. Being able to visually detect these things is important, but it is a measure for added redundancy. Great strides have been made in using machine learning to filter out obscurants such as snow. Perception for autonomous vehicles is effectively a solved problem. The biggest technical challenges are related to planning. So say you're approaching an intersection. There is a pedestrian about to cross, a cyclist in front of you and another vehicle waiting to turn left across your path. As a human, you understand that if you behave one way, it will cause the pedestrian, the cyclist and the other car to respond a certain way, but if you respond to the situation another way, it will cause all three to respond differently. Our ability to game out scenarios like this is intuitive, but for AI to predict how it's behavior as an agent will influence the behaviour of other agents on the road is a daunting undertaking, particularly when taking into account the full scope of scenarios that need to be mastered before an autonomous can reliably safely navigate anywhere.

linuxftw 8y ago
> Great strides have been made in using machine learning to filter out obscurants such as snow. Perception for autonomous vehicles is effectively a solved problem. Great strides is not 'perfected' and I don't think perception for autonomous vehicles is a solved problem whatsoever. What is a driverless car to do if it slides out of position on the road and is now facing the wrong direction? Does it have the ability to know whether it needs to call for help, can safely maneuver, it's occupants are in immediate danger and should exit the vehicle (or not exit the vehicle)?
- Fricken 8y ago
  The two key aspects of an autonomous OS are perception and planning. Being able to "see" well enough during a flurry is a perception problem. Knowing whether to maneuver out of it or call for help after spinning out is a planning problem. There are many planning problems left to address and master before autonomous vehicles are ready for widespread adoption. Some planning problems are unique to specific intersections, and dedicated software has to be written just for that intersection, like the intersection of Market and Castro, in SF, for instance.
  - linuxftw 8y ago
    Can they perceive where on the road they should be located when the road is totally covered in snow and you can't see the pavement, let alone the line markets, possibly only tire tracks, if that?
    - Fricken 8y ago
      Yes. An autonomous vehicle with lidar and maps can locate itself using any landmark, or series of landmarks it can see, it isn't limited to lane markings.
      - linuxftw 8y ago
        And if there are no landmarks, such as you're on a highway or rural area, not in a city?
        Fricken 8y ago
        Not a ditch, or a barbwire fence, or a telephone pole or a tree? I guess that may be tricky.
        linuxftw 8y ago
        You can't reliably know the distance from pavement to any of those things unless you plan on indexing every physical object along every roadway. I think the most likely scenario is self driving cars won't drive in those conditions, hopefully those conditions don't develop while you're on the roadways or you'll be parked somewhere cold.
        Fricken 8y ago
        They do index everything, the maps they rely on are lidar generated 3D point cloud fields that make a model of everything around the road, and are frequently updated.
      - 8y ago
- markdown 8y ago
  > Great strides is not 'perfected' The goal isn't perfection. The goal is to be as good as humans. Eg: An autonomous vehicle driving through snow backed by millions of miles of experience driving in snow is better than someone from the tropics driving through snow for the first time.
  - logifail 8y ago
    >> The goal is to be as good as humans. Which particular humans? >> An autonomous vehicle driving through snow [..] is better than someone from the tropics driving through snow for the first time Better than the worst human we can imagine? Better than the average human? Better than the average human who drives on that road at that time of year?
    - stretchwithme 8y ago
      The very best limo driver seems like a good human to emulate.
  - surfmike 8y ago
    Autonomous vehicles (rightly so) will be held to a higher standard than humans
taneq 8y ago
> Perception for autonomous vehicles is effectively a solved problem. The problem is that you can't separate "perception" from "cognition". A human could drive a car reasonably well via a webcam feed, so does a webcam count as "solved perception"?
- codebje 8y ago
  "Perception" in the context of autonomous agents means a mapping from sensors to a model of the world; how effectively can the agent establish a reliable model given its sensor readings? What GP means by perception being a solved problem is that existing sensors and algorithms produce high quality and reliable models in a wide range of environment conditions. A webcam is a sensor device, the human observing the webcam feed most likely cannot construct a good model of the car and its surrounds, as they can't do things like shoulder checking or looking in the rear view mirror, which a good driver does frequently to maintain a model of where other cars are. But then "reasonably well" for a human driving a car remotely via webcam feed is likely to be a far lower standard than we're holding self-driving cars to.
chongli 8y ago
As a human, you understand that if you behave one way, it will cause the pedestrian, the cyclist and the other car to respond a certain way, but if you respond to the situation another way, it will cause all three to respond differently. Why does the self driving car have to restrict itself to extremely subtle human nonverbal communication? Just put a loudspeaker on the outside of the car and have it announce its intensions clearly, yielding to pedestrians/bicycles according to the laws of the land.
- stretchwithme 8y ago
  How about a man carrying a lantern ten paces ahead of it?

linuxftw 8y ago

> Great strides have been made in using machine learning to filter out obscurants such as snow. Perception for autonomous vehicles is effectively a solved problem. Great strides is not 'perfected' and I don't think perception for autonomous vehicles is a solved problem whatsoever. What is a driverless car to do if it slides out of position on the road and is now facing the wrong direction? Does it have the ability to know whether it needs to call for help, can safely maneuver, it's occupants are in immediate danger and should exit the vehicle (or not exit the vehicle)?

Fricken 8y ago
The two key aspects of an autonomous OS are perception and planning. Being able to "see" well enough during a flurry is a perception problem. Knowing whether to maneuver out of it or call for help after spinning out is a planning problem. There are many planning problems left to address and master before autonomous vehicles are ready for widespread adoption. Some planning problems are unique to specific intersections, and dedicated software has to be written just for that intersection, like the intersection of Market and Castro, in SF, for instance.
- linuxftw 8y ago
  Can they perceive where on the road they should be located when the road is totally covered in snow and you can't see the pavement, let alone the line markets, possibly only tire tracks, if that?
  - Fricken 8y ago
    Yes. An autonomous vehicle with lidar and maps can locate itself using any landmark, or series of landmarks it can see, it isn't limited to lane markings.
    - linuxftw 8y ago
      And if there are no landmarks, such as you're on a highway or rural area, not in a city?
      - Fricken 8y ago
        Not a ditch, or a barbwire fence, or a telephone pole or a tree? I guess that may be tricky.
        linuxftw 8y ago
        You can't reliably know the distance from pavement to any of those things unless you plan on indexing every physical object along every roadway. I think the most likely scenario is self driving cars won't drive in those conditions, hopefully those conditions don't develop while you're on the roadways or you'll be parked somewhere cold.
        Fricken 8y ago
        They do index everything, the maps they rely on are lidar generated 3D point cloud fields that make a model of everything around the road, and are frequently updated.
    - 8y ago
markdown 8y ago
> Great strides is not 'perfected' The goal isn't perfection. The goal is to be as good as humans. Eg: An autonomous vehicle driving through snow backed by millions of miles of experience driving in snow is better than someone from the tropics driving through snow for the first time.
- logifail 8y ago
  >> The goal is to be as good as humans. Which particular humans? >> An autonomous vehicle driving through snow [..] is better than someone from the tropics driving through snow for the first time Better than the worst human we can imagine? Better than the average human? Better than the average human who drives on that road at that time of year?
  - stretchwithme 8y ago
    The very best limo driver seems like a good human to emulate.
- surfmike 8y ago
  Autonomous vehicles (rightly so) will be held to a higher standard than humans

taneq 8y ago

> Perception for autonomous vehicles is effectively a solved problem. The problem is that you can't separate "perception" from "cognition". A human could drive a car reasonably well via a webcam feed, so does a webcam count as "solved perception"?

codebje 8y ago
"Perception" in the context of autonomous agents means a mapping from sensors to a model of the world; how effectively can the agent establish a reliable model given its sensor readings? What GP means by perception being a solved problem is that existing sensors and algorithms produce high quality and reliable models in a wide range of environment conditions. A webcam is a sensor device, the human observing the webcam feed most likely cannot construct a good model of the car and its surrounds, as they can't do things like shoulder checking or looking in the rear view mirror, which a good driver does frequently to maintain a model of where other cars are. But then "reasonably well" for a human driving a car remotely via webcam feed is likely to be a far lower standard than we're holding self-driving cars to.

chongli 8y ago

As a human, you understand that if you behave one way, it will cause the pedestrian, the cyclist and the other car to respond a certain way, but if you respond to the situation another way, it will cause all three to respond differently. Why does the self driving car have to restrict itself to extremely subtle human nonverbal communication? Just put a loudspeaker on the outside of the car and have it announce its intensions clearly, yielding to pedestrians/bicycles according to the laws of the land.

stretchwithme 8y ago
How about a man carrying a lantern ten paces ahead of it?