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My opinion: How to solve travel for cars: build roads How to solve self-driving for cars: build digitaly aware roads You can’t make self-driving work with a

My opinion: How to solve travel for cars: build roads How to solve self-driving for cars: build digitaly aware roads You can’t make self-driving work with a pure black box model. Neural nets need to be able to explain why they work. Currently they can’t do that well enough.

intended 5y ago
It’s funny how unpopular this argument was. There is no way level 5 self driving works, unless you are aware of anomalies beyond what the models are prepared for.
sumedh 5y ago
> How to solve self-driving for cars: build digitaly aware roads Who is going to pay for it? Are you going to rebuild all the roads, if not then what is the point since your system needs to work on all kinds of roads.
- mettamage 5y ago
  All good questions. IMO the government, cost benefit analysis needs to be conducted. My perspective is inherently Dutch. I think the roads here get replaced quite often anyway.
  - b112 5y ago
    While not sure of the value, I agree, a change at replacement time is essentially cost free. Paving while laying RFID tag strips would cost nothing per mile, compared to the labour of pulling up and resurfacing.
- intended 5y ago
  You dont need to rebuild the roads. This is a dead simple idea. You need sensors every x distances, and then use WiFi/mobile data to update cars of the model it should follow or rules of the road. At this point though, you’ve started creating mass transit.
beefjerkins 5y ago
> How to solve self-driving for cars: build digitaly aware roads Putting aside the physical aspects of replacing existing roads, how would a digitally-aware road work? A bunch of bluetooth devices? And in what schema would the road 'speak' to the car? Ideally it would be an open format, but who would decide upon that?
- mettamage 5y ago
  That's something I haven't thought about. I hand waived it with pretending that people be just as motivated to do this as they are with self-driving cars. It is an interesting question though! I think of a few things that could be done quite easily: Communication can happen via low latency with relatively little data. I wouldn't know what's best for that. * Roads can broadcast. Roads can listen through sensors and determine the position of every car. * Cars can broadcast. Cars can listen. * Things can go wrong. There'd be huge demand for any distributed system engineer :P A use-case sketch: A road can determine if it almost goes out of bounds. A road can determine if two cars are about to collide, but so could two cars. So this would work well in places where there are only roads and cars (e.g. highways and "road only" type of roads -- i.e. no bicycle lanes). Cyclists can communicate as well. They need to chip their bike. Pedestrians can communicate as well. They need to chip their coat. Though I'm not happy with that solution (what if the coat gets lost?). Anyways that's my rough sketch. I'd need to research the technologies needed for this. This would make for a fun systems design interview. Whomever wants to brainstorm with me on it, feel free to email me. I don't think I'm particular talented in this area but I can be a rubber ducky.
  - nradov 5y ago
    We have wild deer crossing the roads here. Will you ask them to chip their antlers?
    - b112 5y ago
      How else will they get groceries?
  - 5y ago
robbywashere_ 5y ago
> How to solve self-driving for cars: build digitaly aware roads This is going to happen. It will be proprietary. Think roads with DRM.
sofixa 5y ago
> How to solve self-driving for cars: build digitaly aware roads I can just imagine the scenes when someone hacks the digitally aware road to tell cars X and chaos (and potentially death) ensues. IMHO, self-driving cars are solving a wrong problem, and if they work fully someday, might exacerbate a few others (congestion, pollution, parking). Public transit, with diverse "last mile" options ( buses, bikes, scooters, heck, automated shuttles/pods on dedicated lanes, etc.) is just a better way of achieving the same goal.
- kjaftaedi 5y ago
  You don't have to tell the car what to do, you just need signals that designate the road as being "compliant and safe" for self driving.
  - sofixa 5y ago
    Yeah, and when someone changes the signals to change the speed limit and remove the stop, no priority and curvy road ahead signs, and the car assumes all is fine and safe, it will be a fun time.
- intended 5y ago
  You’ll love the art experiments which stall Tesla by pouring a circle of sand around them. If someone decides to prank a desolate stretch of road with tens of stop stings every 5 meters, you are going to have some very broken self driving cars. Plus all driving models are cultural driving models. A Tesla will break down on Indian roads. Self driving cars will need data from sources other than their models. At which point you are creating mass transit with extra steps.
  - martindbp 5y ago
    > If someone decides to prank a desolate stretch of road with tens of stop stings every 5 meters, you are going to have some very broken self driving cars. Then some pranksters would end up with big fines or go to jail? Just like if they drop water balloons onto cars on the freeway from a bridge?
nradov 5y ago
How will those roads be digitally "aware" of stalled vehicles, pedestrians, animals, fallen tree branches, traffic cones, etc? Lane keeping is one of the easier problems. It's detecting and classifying all the other obstacles where AI really struggles.
- b112 5y ago
  No one ever talks about snow. Human drivers here, have no problems navigating snow covered roads, even when the road, side of road, and everything is uniform white. When there are no visible lines on road, when there is no road tarmac to see, when ditches on side of road are filled with snow. Human drivers can tell where to stop at stop lights, without lines or other metrics. Subtle clues abound, but I cannot believe current tech can navigate here. At least dirt roads are generally brown and mostly vegetation free, although I wonder how even this would be handled in desert like areas, where it is flat, and road and surrounding land are dirt.
  - ryathal 5y ago
    Lets not pretend that humans are great at snow. Lanes become imaginary in snow and best case the two track is roughly similar to the actual lane. The power of humans in snow is understanding that rules are more like guidelines and bending or breaking some are necessary at times.
    - alphabettsy 5y ago
      They’re incredible compared to current vehicle driving assists which won’t operate at all when the road is snow covered. They’re also pretty great considering the millions of miles travels on such roads each year.
jseban 5y ago
My opinion: replace all cars with self driving only, then you completely avoid the hard problem of interpreting other human drivers. And you can also let the cars communicate with each other, be centrally controlled and/or have assistance in the roads. Why would anyone want to have a non-self driving car. Maybe hard/unrealistic, but it would be super cool to see this as an experiment in a smaller city center to see what happens. It would bring so much opportunity for optimisations also around traffic flow, parking spaces etc.
- termy 5y ago
  And put cyclist and pedestrian lives at risk.
  - webgoat 5y ago
    Replace them with robots too, problem solved.
- enriquto 5y ago
  > parking spaces If all cars are self-driving you don't really need any parking spaces at all, do you?
  - jseban 5y ago
    Yeah that's my point! You could calculate the amount of needed cars and have them in circulation, and they could park themselves in some underground garage somewhere when usage is low. It could be just one big fleet of self driving taxis, self-driving Ubers.
  - ryathal 5y ago
    I'd still want my car, and I wouldn't want it just driving in circles for hours. Less spots could be necessary in downtown areas, since a car can drop you off and park a few miles away. car ownership isn't going to disappear with self driving, it may reduce, but plenty of people have use cases that a taxi model isn't great for.
- 5y ago

intended 5y ago

It’s funny how unpopular this argument was. There is no way level 5 self driving works, unless you are aware of anomalies beyond what the models are prepared for.

sumedh 5y ago

> How to solve self-driving for cars: build digitaly aware roads Who is going to pay for it? Are you going to rebuild all the roads, if not then what is the point since your system needs to work on all kinds of roads.

mettamage 5y ago
All good questions. IMO the government, cost benefit analysis needs to be conducted. My perspective is inherently Dutch. I think the roads here get replaced quite often anyway.
- b112 5y ago
  While not sure of the value, I agree, a change at replacement time is essentially cost free. Paving while laying RFID tag strips would cost nothing per mile, compared to the labour of pulling up and resurfacing.
intended 5y ago
You dont need to rebuild the roads. This is a dead simple idea. You need sensors every x distances, and then use WiFi/mobile data to update cars of the model it should follow or rules of the road. At this point though, you’ve started creating mass transit.

beefjerkins 5y ago

> How to solve self-driving for cars: build digitaly aware roads Putting aside the physical aspects of replacing existing roads, how would a digitally-aware road work? A bunch of bluetooth devices? And in what schema would the road 'speak' to the car? Ideally it would be an open format, but who would decide upon that?

mettamage 5y ago
That's something I haven't thought about. I hand waived it with pretending that people be just as motivated to do this as they are with self-driving cars. It is an interesting question though! I think of a few things that could be done quite easily: Communication can happen via low latency with relatively little data. I wouldn't know what's best for that. * Roads can broadcast. Roads can listen through sensors and determine the position of every car. * Cars can broadcast. Cars can listen. * Things can go wrong. There'd be huge demand for any distributed system engineer :P A use-case sketch: A road can determine if it almost goes out of bounds. A road can determine if two cars are about to collide, but so could two cars. So this would work well in places where there are only roads and cars (e.g. highways and "road only" type of roads -- i.e. no bicycle lanes). Cyclists can communicate as well. They need to chip their bike. Pedestrians can communicate as well. They need to chip their coat. Though I'm not happy with that solution (what if the coat gets lost?). Anyways that's my rough sketch. I'd need to research the technologies needed for this. This would make for a fun systems design interview. Whomever wants to brainstorm with me on it, feel free to email me. I don't think I'm particular talented in this area but I can be a rubber ducky.
- nradov 5y ago
  We have wild deer crossing the roads here. Will you ask them to chip their antlers?
  - b112 5y ago
    How else will they get groceries?
- 5y ago

robbywashere_ 5y ago

> How to solve self-driving for cars: build digitaly aware roads This is going to happen. It will be proprietary. Think roads with DRM.

sofixa 5y ago

> How to solve self-driving for cars: build digitaly aware roads I can just imagine the scenes when someone hacks the digitally aware road to tell cars X and chaos (and potentially death) ensues. IMHO, self-driving cars are solving a wrong problem, and if they work fully someday, might exacerbate a few others (congestion, pollution, parking). Public transit, with diverse "last mile" options ( buses, bikes, scooters, heck, automated shuttles/pods on dedicated lanes, etc.) is just a better way of achieving the same goal.

kjaftaedi 5y ago
You don't have to tell the car what to do, you just need signals that designate the road as being "compliant and safe" for self driving.
- sofixa 5y ago
  Yeah, and when someone changes the signals to change the speed limit and remove the stop, no priority and curvy road ahead signs, and the car assumes all is fine and safe, it will be a fun time.
intended 5y ago
You’ll love the art experiments which stall Tesla by pouring a circle of sand around them. If someone decides to prank a desolate stretch of road with tens of stop stings every 5 meters, you are going to have some very broken self driving cars. Plus all driving models are cultural driving models. A Tesla will break down on Indian roads. Self driving cars will need data from sources other than their models. At which point you are creating mass transit with extra steps.
- martindbp 5y ago
  > If someone decides to prank a desolate stretch of road with tens of stop stings every 5 meters, you are going to have some very broken self driving cars. Then some pranksters would end up with big fines or go to jail? Just like if they drop water balloons onto cars on the freeway from a bridge?

nradov 5y ago

How will those roads be digitally "aware" of stalled vehicles, pedestrians, animals, fallen tree branches, traffic cones, etc? Lane keeping is one of the easier problems. It's detecting and classifying all the other obstacles where AI really struggles.

b112 5y ago
No one ever talks about snow. Human drivers here, have no problems navigating snow covered roads, even when the road, side of road, and everything is uniform white. When there are no visible lines on road, when there is no road tarmac to see, when ditches on side of road are filled with snow. Human drivers can tell where to stop at stop lights, without lines or other metrics. Subtle clues abound, but I cannot believe current tech can navigate here. At least dirt roads are generally brown and mostly vegetation free, although I wonder how even this would be handled in desert like areas, where it is flat, and road and surrounding land are dirt.
- ryathal 5y ago
  Lets not pretend that humans are great at snow. Lanes become imaginary in snow and best case the two track is roughly similar to the actual lane. The power of humans in snow is understanding that rules are more like guidelines and bending or breaking some are necessary at times.
  - alphabettsy 5y ago
    They’re incredible compared to current vehicle driving assists which won’t operate at all when the road is snow covered. They’re also pretty great considering the millions of miles travels on such roads each year.

jseban 5y ago

My opinion: replace all cars with self driving only, then you completely avoid the hard problem of interpreting other human drivers. And you can also let the cars communicate with each other, be centrally controlled and/or have assistance in the roads. Why would anyone want to have a non-self driving car. Maybe hard/unrealistic, but it would be super cool to see this as an experiment in a smaller city center to see what happens. It would bring so much opportunity for optimisations also around traffic flow, parking spaces etc.

termy 5y ago
And put cyclist and pedestrian lives at risk.
- webgoat 5y ago
  Replace them with robots too, problem solved.
enriquto 5y ago
> parking spaces If all cars are self-driving you don't really need any parking spaces at all, do you?
- jseban 5y ago
  Yeah that's my point! You could calculate the amount of needed cars and have them in circulation, and they could park themselves in some underground garage somewhere when usage is low. It could be just one big fleet of self driving taxis, self-driving Ubers.
- ryathal 5y ago
  I'd still want my car, and I wouldn't want it just driving in circles for hours. Less spots could be necessary in downtown areas, since a car can drop you off and park a few miles away. car ownership isn't going to disappear with self driving, it may reduce, but plenty of people have use cases that a taxi model isn't great for.
5y ago