5 ms·

Can LIDAR reliably detect stop signs? I think it would have to be based on the shape, and LIDAR loses resolution pretty quickly over distance.

airstrike 6y ago
You could always map the stop signs in advance
- kurthr 6y ago
  until they move, get removed, or are run over...
- dreamcompiler 6y ago
  Which would fail in the case of construction workers holding up stop signs or school buses deploying stop signs, to cite just two examples.
  - nexuist 6y ago
    It's actually comical in a way that we possess the technology to build robots that can operate heavy machinery and practically interpret the world the same way we do, but we still have to worry about people holding up plastic signs. It makes me think that the first real wide scale self driving vehicle deployment will have to come from a nation state rather than a corporation; the easiest way to solve all of these problems is by putting heavy investments into smart road infrastructure such that the car depends on sensors embedded in the signs or the asphalt rather than any camera feed. A school bus could just have a transmitter to indicate whether its lights are on or not; construction workers could be given road signs that transmit similar signals or better yet use a portal to construct a virtual geofence around wherever the construction is happening before it begins. These are all easily solvable problems in today's world; what is missing is the political capital to invest in these solutions despite the insane ROI.
    - dreamcompiler 6y ago
      Ideally yes, but the first time a kid gets killed because the school bus's transmitter fails there will be hell to pay. Will that be the fault of the passengers in the car? Or the car's manufacturer? The school bus's manufacturer? This infrastructure will need distributed two-phase commit. For safety-critical issues like school buses, eventual consensus won't be good enough. And then you'll need an infrastructure that detects when an older or simply defective car is present but not participating in the protocol. These problems are all solvable, but they're by no means trivial.
    - noodlesoups 6y ago
      robots that can operate heavy machinery do not interpret the world the same way we do, and do not have anything resembling actual intelligence. That is exactly why they can't interact with real world cases of fully valid plastic signs coming out of nowhere.

airstrike 6y ago

You could always map the stop signs in advance

kurthr 6y ago
until they move, get removed, or are run over...
dreamcompiler 6y ago
Which would fail in the case of construction workers holding up stop signs or school buses deploying stop signs, to cite just two examples.
- nexuist 6y ago
  It's actually comical in a way that we possess the technology to build robots that can operate heavy machinery and practically interpret the world the same way we do, but we still have to worry about people holding up plastic signs. It makes me think that the first real wide scale self driving vehicle deployment will have to come from a nation state rather than a corporation; the easiest way to solve all of these problems is by putting heavy investments into smart road infrastructure such that the car depends on sensors embedded in the signs or the asphalt rather than any camera feed. A school bus could just have a transmitter to indicate whether its lights are on or not; construction workers could be given road signs that transmit similar signals or better yet use a portal to construct a virtual geofence around wherever the construction is happening before it begins. These are all easily solvable problems in today's world; what is missing is the political capital to invest in these solutions despite the insane ROI.
  - dreamcompiler 6y ago
    Ideally yes, but the first time a kid gets killed because the school bus's transmitter fails there will be hell to pay. Will that be the fault of the passengers in the car? Or the car's manufacturer? The school bus's manufacturer? This infrastructure will need distributed two-phase commit. For safety-critical issues like school buses, eventual consensus won't be good enough. And then you'll need an infrastructure that detects when an older or simply defective car is present but not participating in the protocol. These problems are all solvable, but they're by no means trivial.
  - noodlesoups 6y ago
    robots that can operate heavy machinery do not interpret the world the same way we do, and do not have anything resembling actual intelligence. That is exactly why they can't interact with real world cases of fully valid plastic signs coming out of nowhere.