3 ms·

> Self driving cars don’t put that much emphasis on street signs, They have to. Even the most accurate maps of speed limits have flaws and cannot adapt to dyna

> Self driving cars don’t put that much emphasis on street signs, They have to. Even the most accurate maps of speed limits have flaws and cannot adapt to dynamic limits. I'm pretty sure that if car makers could avoid the trouble of parsing signs, the would do so. > their not for example going to drive into a brick wall because of an arrow. Teslas first driver death was due to the car not recognizing a white truck. It would be easy to add a fake increase in speed limit, just before a white enough wall, so that the car would not be able to brake in time once the LIDAR picks the obstacle up. To the casual observer it would look like the car just decided to accelerate into a wall.

lazide 5y ago
Tesla cars don’t have LiDAR right? That’s why they are so susceptible to this problem. Visual sensors only.
- asdff 5y ago
  It feels borderline irresponsible that Tesla is visual only. Why not collect another datapoint in the form of lidar? It's human lives at stake, don't tell me lidar is too costly: M robot vacuum uses Lidar and the thing cost 1/10th the price of putting leather seats on most cars today. It's excellent, the vacuum has no issues with my white walls and it paints beautiful maps of my apartment. I'd strap myself to it and go around town right now if it could only support the weight.
  - XorNot 5y ago
    LIDAR surely wouldn't work very well in rain though? Same problem with the RADAR - can't see RADAR transparent objects. I kind of understand where they're coming from: a sensor where under some conditions you have to totally disregard all its input is a really bad sensor to have because your model will get disproportionately good using the "good" input, and then you're still left with "and in a medium drizzle we need to also work off optics only".
    - lazide 5y ago
      Not really though right? Sensor fusion is used, and it’s a generally solved problem. We do the same thing - we have sound, touch (which can also pick up changes in air pressure, humidity, temperature, wind), visual, and internal model/balance. We’ve evolved to do that because it’s necessary for survival - sometimes we get dust in our eyes, or there is glare, or it’s too dark to see and we don’t have a light, or we’re picking up on a impending problem with something around a corner (a loud fight, or whistling wind), etc. If visual sensors and LiDAR suck in the rain, radar is great. If radar sucks in crowded road or RF noisy environments, that’s when LiDAR or visual sensors are awesome. Even on the road this is true - rumble strips, mechanical noise, shaking, etc.
      - XorNot 5y ago
        How though? If LIDAR is your only depth ranging input, then rain means it's gone - there's nothing to fuse. RADAR isn't an adequate replacement as severally crashes have demonstrated - it can't see non metallic objects. That's the problem I think you're glossing over: under a whole bunch of circumstances your model is operating with out an entire sense.
        lazide 5y ago
        I take it you have no idea how sensor fusion works? Sensor fusion weighs inputs from multiple sensors, determining (roughly) which ones are ‘more wrong’ and ignoring them, to various degrees. LiDAR also doesn’t just ‘not work’ at all in rain, it degrades as it gets heavier until it doesn’t work. Like vision, etc. Radar also can pick up non metallic objects, and does all the time - including geese, humans, clouds, etc, depending on frequency, and there are variable frequency radars out there that can do all sorts of cool stuff, including frequency sweeping, so it’s not just going to ‘miss’ something. There are of course issues like multipathing. But that is why sensor fusion, and similar techniques. All of this adds up to something much more accurate and less prone to failure than basic vision, which is what Tesla is running now. It also costs more.

lazide 5y ago

Tesla cars don’t have LiDAR right? That’s why they are so susceptible to this problem. Visual sensors only.

asdff 5y ago
It feels borderline irresponsible that Tesla is visual only. Why not collect another datapoint in the form of lidar? It's human lives at stake, don't tell me lidar is too costly: M robot vacuum uses Lidar and the thing cost 1/10th the price of putting leather seats on most cars today. It's excellent, the vacuum has no issues with my white walls and it paints beautiful maps of my apartment. I'd strap myself to it and go around town right now if it could only support the weight.
- XorNot 5y ago
  LIDAR surely wouldn't work very well in rain though? Same problem with the RADAR - can't see RADAR transparent objects. I kind of understand where they're coming from: a sensor where under some conditions you have to totally disregard all its input is a really bad sensor to have because your model will get disproportionately good using the "good" input, and then you're still left with "and in a medium drizzle we need to also work off optics only".
  - lazide 5y ago
    Not really though right? Sensor fusion is used, and it’s a generally solved problem. We do the same thing - we have sound, touch (which can also pick up changes in air pressure, humidity, temperature, wind), visual, and internal model/balance. We’ve evolved to do that because it’s necessary for survival - sometimes we get dust in our eyes, or there is glare, or it’s too dark to see and we don’t have a light, or we’re picking up on a impending problem with something around a corner (a loud fight, or whistling wind), etc. If visual sensors and LiDAR suck in the rain, radar is great. If radar sucks in crowded road or RF noisy environments, that’s when LiDAR or visual sensors are awesome. Even on the road this is true - rumble strips, mechanical noise, shaking, etc.
    - XorNot 5y ago
      How though? If LIDAR is your only depth ranging input, then rain means it's gone - there's nothing to fuse. RADAR isn't an adequate replacement as severally crashes have demonstrated - it can't see non metallic objects. That's the problem I think you're glossing over: under a whole bunch of circumstances your model is operating with out an entire sense.
      - lazide 5y ago
        I take it you have no idea how sensor fusion works? Sensor fusion weighs inputs from multiple sensors, determining (roughly) which ones are ‘more wrong’ and ignoring them, to various degrees. LiDAR also doesn’t just ‘not work’ at all in rain, it degrades as it gets heavier until it doesn’t work. Like vision, etc. Radar also can pick up non metallic objects, and does all the time - including geese, humans, clouds, etc, depending on frequency, and there are variable frequency radars out there that can do all sorts of cool stuff, including frequency sweeping, so it’s not just going to ‘miss’ something. There are of course issues like multipathing. But that is why sensor fusion, and similar techniques. All of this adds up to something much more accurate and less prone to failure than basic vision, which is what Tesla is running now. It also costs more.