8 ms·

Why Level-3 Autonomy is a major milestone in self-driving cars

37 points by ripe 5y ago

whoisthemachine 5y ago
My model 3 essentially does these things, although it does require you to keep your hands on the wheel (so not level 3 by definition), and I can say it makes extended highway driving a lot less painful on nice weather days.
- ripe 5y ago
  Right. What Mercedes has done here is to recognize and target that value. They took the automated driving capabilities, added more sensors, and did the engineering and regulatory legwork around it to make it robust when entering, operating inside, and leaving its design domain. Result: drivers can rely on it and regulators can enforce the rules.
- bwanab 5y ago
  Agreed. I’ve been driven by my M3 many times in one of the specific situations the author refers to (bumper to bumper on Boston’s SE Expressway) - with hands on the wheel to be sure.
  - whoisthemachine 5y ago
    Completely agree, it is great for stop and go traffic.
- rootusrootus 5y ago
  It really varies by person, IMO. I was never able to feel more comfortable in my Model 3 on the highway with AP engaged than without it. It just doesn't drive defensively enough for me to relax, it loves to get into situations I would never allow. But this is really going to vary depending on the expectations of the driver. Of course, it also started phantom braking at a couple overpasses I regularly traveled under while road tripping, especially when the sun was out, so I stopped using it altogether (my wife really, really didn't like AP after that).
ripe 5y ago
A news item about Mercedes-Benz's Drive Pilot feature was shared on HN recently: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29517459 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29517459] I'm trying to explain to non-technical people why this feature is a major milestone for self-driving cars. On my website, I try to avoid jargon and assume my readers know nothing about the topic.
- SkyPuncher 5y ago
  Thanks for sharing. I find it very odd how people are so fixated on construction zones in that thread. Construction zones _are_ confusing and don't follow the typical rules of the road. That's why they always come with slower speed restrictions. People acting like their car is trying to kill them clearly aren't assessing if they should even be using self-driving in these circumstances. In fact, they likely don't realize that many legally-licensed drivers also struggle in these conditions. Many people, especially those with poorer reactions or eyesight, have a challenging time navigating certain construction zones. I have an L2 and it works amazingly well when there are exactly two clearly marked lines. It's not that hard to understand when I can and can't rely on the car to drive itself. * Less than 2 lines visibly marked, drive it yourself. * If there are more than 2 things that look like lines, drive it yourself. Most highway driving is not in construction zones.
  - simion314 5y ago
    >I have an L2 and it works amazingly well when there are exactly two clearly marked lines. It's not that hard to understand when I can and can't rely on the car to drive itself. If you mean Tesla you should always pay attention, you are responsible even if the road is perfect, there is a non zero chance the car can swing and kill some innocent person because you are alpha testing.
    - _ea1k 5y ago
      I wouldn't call it alpha testing. The autosteer in Tesla cars of today works at least as well as the stable releases that I've seen from other manufacturers. You are right to say that one should always pay attention, though. The Tesla system is capable of handling relatively sharp curves, which has the side effect of making it capable of turning quickly in the face of weird road anomolies (eg, suddenly and recently repaired/damaged patches of asphalt). My other car has the opposite problem... it won't jerk in a situation like that, but it will gladly fly off the road with barely a warning on a shallow curve. We are in a really weird intermediate state right now.
ItsBob 5y ago
I don't doubt that this is a major milestone: gawd knows, I couldn't program a car to do that. But something that I would like to know is what happens when it fails? Or at least, seems to have failed? At the moment, if I buy a car and the brakes fail and I crash into someone/something then it's likely there was a defect and the manufacturer was at fault. That seems reasonable when you're making a 2 ton machine capable of hitting over 100 mph, there should be a shit load of safety measures in place. However, it seems that self-driving software is in its infancy and I've lost faith in tech companies to release a product when it's complete and ready, instead releasing it sooner with a bunch of bugs for the users to test. In addition, if my brakes fail, a sound mechanic would be able to verify that was the case and I'd be off the hook: you would be able to examine the faulty part. If my self-driving thingy failed on one of these level-3 roads, and I crashed into a bunch of nuns crossing the road would I be on the hook for it? How would I be able to prove in court that it failed and wasn't a result of me being a muppet. Coz you can bet I won't be able to examine the source code after the accident, unlike being able to see the faulty brakes in the earlier example.
- plasticchris 5y ago
  We are already there - remember the unintended acceleration problems? Source code was opened to outside review (for the purposes of the trial).
  - tashoecraft 5y ago
    Except that was a scapegoat trial, anyone of the drivers could have pressed the breaks and stopped the car. They were confused and didn’t which resulted in loss of life. So instead of saying what actually happened they fined Toyota a billion
    - r00fus 5y ago
      My mom got into an accident with her 2007 Toyota Prius. Now, it could be that she, as an older person, simply didn't push the right pedal. However she claims insistently that she did brake but it accelerated instead. She didn't kill anyone but did get injured minorly and she got a very nice price for her totaled Prius (above market rates).
spankalee 5y ago
The problem with Level 3 is that is requires much of the same abilities and sensors as Level 5 in order to determine if the conditions are safe, react to unexpected events, and deal with the driver not taking over.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
jhoelzel 5y ago
I was recently driving a VW ID4 and I loved it. It only has lane assist and distronic but its very well implemented and especially in heavy traffic its a godsent. Basically it simply follows the car in front of you but even that is super relaxing, especially in morning taffic. In any major city rush hour traffic is always fun, but this makes it at least somewhat enjoyable. We have come a long way with assisted driving and as a german I very much enjoy that because it means that I can still "become one with my machine" ;) This is a clear step up and I believe that the future will lay in smart roads, even if its just a lane maker that your car can rely on.
- GhettoComputers 5y ago
  I agree with the roads. Why adapt computers to a legacy program when you can just add simple markers or computer read information to it instead?
  - AlotOfReading 5y ago
    Because smart roads are a massive coordination problem. Counties and states already can't afford to do maintenance on the existing dumb roads. Many of those roads will see no maintenance or upgrades for the next decade. Even if we had the standards, widespread government support, and commoditized tech to do this today, it'd still be decades away at the earliest. Everyone is targeting rollouts in major cities a lot sooner than that.
    - GhettoComputers 5y ago
      A few reflectors aren’t going to go over budget more than the crap they do. You can pork barrel it since it won’t be that much more. Roads are often updated if there’s any sort of traffic on it by design since construction is a racket.
      - AlotOfReading 5y ago
        A few retroreflectors is not even scratching the surface of the issue. Most local governments don't even have accurate maps of their own road infrastructure, let alone correct infrastructure. They already can't afford to maintain what's already built, much less take on significant additional maintenance. Humans are able to cope with these issues most of the time, but for machines you'd end up needing to build nearly the same autonomous capabilities you'd require without smart roads.
yholio 5y ago
There is no such thing as Level-3 Autonomy, the car can either drive itself safely or not. A slow moving lane of cars is a dangerous environment where things can turn catastrophic in an instant, with zero time to react for a human driver reading their news. Bikes and motorcycles come out of nowhere and pass you between the lanes. Pedestrians and children will attempt to cross the road, encouraged by the apparent slow speed. You will not see them since your view is blocked by close large vehicles. The same for essential signs and signaling. Slow moving can turn to fast moving intermittently and frustrated drivers will unexpectedly go full throttle to cut in front of you. You might find yourself suddenly stranded in the middle of an intersection with lateral trafic. Trafic is slow because your lane is blocked by construction, which requires carefully observing the human readable cues of the drivers in the other lanes, which might yield to you or not. All manner of bad things can and will happen with a scary probability. If an automated car can handle all that safely without reverting to human assistance, what exactly can't it handle, and why is it not full self driving? The 3 and 4 SAE levels were always a dangerous fiction, they imply you can bring to market uncomplete products that take some part of the human effort. This is simply not how the minds of human drivers works: if drivers lose focus to the road they can't regain it instantly in a fraction of a second when prompted by the failing AI algorithm. A half- self driving car is a defective product that is bound to kill someone, regulators should reject any products short of real self driving.
- babyshake 5y ago
  SAE vehicle autonomy levels are mostly a fiction in terms of not being highly contextual. The practical approach for self-driving is to take an actuarial, data-driven approach. For example, on certain streets or neighborhoods at certain times of day, you can be sure with a 99% confidence level that you will not encounter certain types of situations. A Level 3 vehicle in Phoenix is not necessarily a Level 3 vehicle in Manhattan or Nairobi.
- ghaff 5y ago
  I generally disagree with respect to L4. A car that is fully autonomous under a precisely defined set of circumstances, especially certain types of roads and possibly under certain environmental conditions could still be extremely useful--assuming you can fully hand off control. A lot of driving is fairly predictable highway driving even if it doesn't help people who want a door-to-door robo-taxi.
Invictus0 5y ago
For it to be "milestone" implies we are moving in the right direction. The AI we have today is just putting increasingly red lipstick on a pig: we need to completely overhaul the way we're doing things if we're going to hit level 5.
- ripe 5y ago
  Full self-driving (not the Tesla FSD fud, but actual Level 5) is probably not possible with all the current roads and the current approach (bigger and bigger ML models with more and more data). If that's what you mean, then I agree with you. But this Mercedes announcement is something else: it is a car maker providing an engineering automation solution for a useful, limited use case that people might be willing to pay for. It sits squarely within the SAE Level 3 definition. The vendor is standing behind it; the regulators are ready to enforce the rules. It really doesn't matter what the "I want full self-driving" purists think, since they haven't actually produced anything useful yet.
throwaway879080 5y ago
fiction
tmsh 5y ago
I'd be comfortable with a car that only attempts self-driving after having driven a road 3-5 times. And only below certain speeds such that the likelihood of a fatality/serious accident for myself, a pedestrian, cyclist, or other driver - would be very, very low (<0.00001% etc.). If that meant the car driving back roads and avoiding even busier town streets, and drove 30 miles an hour max, there are certain situations when I'd be fine with that. As long as a car can handle all scenarios at 25 mph (a kid running out into the street with a ball, and anticipation of more complex events that would require pulling over and passing back control in an easy, non-jarring manner), I would think this still makes sense. What would this do? It would force new street creation (and perhaps extra shoulder space for pulling over) for these slow-ass autonomous vehicles. But we'd all be safe and able to work or do other things during our commutes or on the way to do errands, etc.

37 points by ripe 5y ago

My model 3 essentially does these things, although it does require you to keep your hands on the wheel (so not level 3 by definition), and I can say it makes extended highway driving a lot less painful on nice weather days.

ripe 5y ago
Right. What Mercedes has done here is to recognize and target that value. They took the automated driving capabilities, added more sensors, and did the engineering and regulatory legwork around it to make it robust when entering, operating inside, and leaving its design domain. Result: drivers can rely on it and regulators can enforce the rules.
bwanab 5y ago
Agreed. I’ve been driven by my M3 many times in one of the specific situations the author refers to (bumper to bumper on Boston’s SE Expressway) - with hands on the wheel to be sure.
- whoisthemachine 5y ago
  Completely agree, it is great for stop and go traffic.
rootusrootus 5y ago
It really varies by person, IMO. I was never able to feel more comfortable in my Model 3 on the highway with AP engaged than without it. It just doesn't drive defensively enough for me to relax, it loves to get into situations I would never allow. But this is really going to vary depending on the expectations of the driver. Of course, it also started phantom braking at a couple overpasses I regularly traveled under while road tripping, especially when the sun was out, so I stopped using it altogether (my wife really, really didn't like AP after that).

ripe 5y ago

A news item about Mercedes-Benz's Drive Pilot feature was shared on HN recently: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29517459 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29517459] I'm trying to explain to non-technical people why this feature is a major milestone for self-driving cars. On my website, I try to avoid jargon and assume my readers know nothing about the topic.

SkyPuncher 5y ago
Thanks for sharing. I find it very odd how people are so fixated on construction zones in that thread. Construction zones _are_ confusing and don't follow the typical rules of the road. That's why they always come with slower speed restrictions. People acting like their car is trying to kill them clearly aren't assessing if they should even be using self-driving in these circumstances. In fact, they likely don't realize that many legally-licensed drivers also struggle in these conditions. Many people, especially those with poorer reactions or eyesight, have a challenging time navigating certain construction zones. I have an L2 and it works amazingly well when there are exactly two clearly marked lines. It's not that hard to understand when I can and can't rely on the car to drive itself. * Less than 2 lines visibly marked, drive it yourself. * If there are more than 2 things that look like lines, drive it yourself. Most highway driving is not in construction zones.
- simion314 5y ago
  >I have an L2 and it works amazingly well when there are exactly two clearly marked lines. It's not that hard to understand when I can and can't rely on the car to drive itself. If you mean Tesla you should always pay attention, you are responsible even if the road is perfect, there is a non zero chance the car can swing and kill some innocent person because you are alpha testing.
  - _ea1k 5y ago
    I wouldn't call it alpha testing. The autosteer in Tesla cars of today works at least as well as the stable releases that I've seen from other manufacturers. You are right to say that one should always pay attention, though. The Tesla system is capable of handling relatively sharp curves, which has the side effect of making it capable of turning quickly in the face of weird road anomolies (eg, suddenly and recently repaired/damaged patches of asphalt). My other car has the opposite problem... it won't jerk in a situation like that, but it will gladly fly off the road with barely a warning on a shallow curve. We are in a really weird intermediate state right now.

ItsBob 5y ago

I don't doubt that this is a major milestone: gawd knows, I couldn't program a car to do that. But something that I would like to know is what happens when it fails? Or at least, seems to have failed? At the moment, if I buy a car and the brakes fail and I crash into someone/something then it's likely there was a defect and the manufacturer was at fault. That seems reasonable when you're making a 2 ton machine capable of hitting over 100 mph, there should be a shit load of safety measures in place. However, it seems that self-driving software is in its infancy and I've lost faith in tech companies to release a product when it's complete and ready, instead releasing it sooner with a bunch of bugs for the users to test. In addition, if my brakes fail, a sound mechanic would be able to verify that was the case and I'd be off the hook: you would be able to examine the faulty part. If my self-driving thingy failed on one of these level-3 roads, and I crashed into a bunch of nuns crossing the road would I be on the hook for it? How would I be able to prove in court that it failed and wasn't a result of me being a muppet. Coz you can bet I won't be able to examine the source code after the accident, unlike being able to see the faulty brakes in the earlier example.

plasticchris 5y ago
We are already there - remember the unintended acceleration problems? Source code was opened to outside review (for the purposes of the trial).
- tashoecraft 5y ago
  Except that was a scapegoat trial, anyone of the drivers could have pressed the breaks and stopped the car. They were confused and didn’t which resulted in loss of life. So instead of saying what actually happened they fined Toyota a billion
  - r00fus 5y ago
    My mom got into an accident with her 2007 Toyota Prius. Now, it could be that she, as an older person, simply didn't push the right pedal. However she claims insistently that she did brake but it accelerated instead. She didn't kill anyone but did get injured minorly and she got a very nice price for her totaled Prius (above market rates).

spankalee 5y ago

The problem with Level 3 is that is requires much of the same abilities and sensors as Level 5 in order to determine if the conditions are safe, react to unexpected events, and deal with the driver not taking over.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

jhoelzel 5y ago

I was recently driving a VW ID4 and I loved it. It only has lane assist and distronic but its very well implemented and especially in heavy traffic its a godsent. Basically it simply follows the car in front of you but even that is super relaxing, especially in morning taffic. In any major city rush hour traffic is always fun, but this makes it at least somewhat enjoyable. We have come a long way with assisted driving and as a german I very much enjoy that because it means that I can still "become one with my machine" ;) This is a clear step up and I believe that the future will lay in smart roads, even if its just a lane maker that your car can rely on.

GhettoComputers 5y ago
I agree with the roads. Why adapt computers to a legacy program when you can just add simple markers or computer read information to it instead?
- AlotOfReading 5y ago
  Because smart roads are a massive coordination problem. Counties and states already can't afford to do maintenance on the existing dumb roads. Many of those roads will see no maintenance or upgrades for the next decade. Even if we had the standards, widespread government support, and commoditized tech to do this today, it'd still be decades away at the earliest. Everyone is targeting rollouts in major cities a lot sooner than that.
  - GhettoComputers 5y ago
    A few reflectors aren’t going to go over budget more than the crap they do. You can pork barrel it since it won’t be that much more. Roads are often updated if there’s any sort of traffic on it by design since construction is a racket.
    - AlotOfReading 5y ago
      A few retroreflectors is not even scratching the surface of the issue. Most local governments don't even have accurate maps of their own road infrastructure, let alone correct infrastructure. They already can't afford to maintain what's already built, much less take on significant additional maintenance. Humans are able to cope with these issues most of the time, but for machines you'd end up needing to build nearly the same autonomous capabilities you'd require without smart roads.

yholio 5y ago

There is no such thing as Level-3 Autonomy, the car can either drive itself safely or not. A slow moving lane of cars is a dangerous environment where things can turn catastrophic in an instant, with zero time to react for a human driver reading their news. Bikes and motorcycles come out of nowhere and pass you between the lanes. Pedestrians and children will attempt to cross the road, encouraged by the apparent slow speed. You will not see them since your view is blocked by close large vehicles. The same for essential signs and signaling. Slow moving can turn to fast moving intermittently and frustrated drivers will unexpectedly go full throttle to cut in front of you. You might find yourself suddenly stranded in the middle of an intersection with lateral trafic. Trafic is slow because your lane is blocked by construction, which requires carefully observing the human readable cues of the drivers in the other lanes, which might yield to you or not. All manner of bad things can and will happen with a scary probability. If an automated car can handle all that safely without reverting to human assistance, what exactly can't it handle, and why is it not full self driving? The 3 and 4 SAE levels were always a dangerous fiction, they imply you can bring to market uncomplete products that take some part of the human effort. This is simply not how the minds of human drivers works: if drivers lose focus to the road they can't regain it instantly in a fraction of a second when prompted by the failing AI algorithm. A half- self driving car is a defective product that is bound to kill someone, regulators should reject any products short of real self driving.

babyshake 5y ago
SAE vehicle autonomy levels are mostly a fiction in terms of not being highly contextual. The practical approach for self-driving is to take an actuarial, data-driven approach. For example, on certain streets or neighborhoods at certain times of day, you can be sure with a 99% confidence level that you will not encounter certain types of situations. A Level 3 vehicle in Phoenix is not necessarily a Level 3 vehicle in Manhattan or Nairobi.
ghaff 5y ago
I generally disagree with respect to L4. A car that is fully autonomous under a precisely defined set of circumstances, especially certain types of roads and possibly under certain environmental conditions could still be extremely useful--assuming you can fully hand off control. A lot of driving is fairly predictable highway driving even if it doesn't help people who want a door-to-door robo-taxi.

Invictus0 5y ago

For it to be "milestone" implies we are moving in the right direction. The AI we have today is just putting increasingly red lipstick on a pig: we need to completely overhaul the way we're doing things if we're going to hit level 5.

ripe 5y ago
Full self-driving (not the Tesla FSD fud, but actual Level 5) is probably not possible with all the current roads and the current approach (bigger and bigger ML models with more and more data). If that's what you mean, then I agree with you. But this Mercedes announcement is something else: it is a car maker providing an engineering automation solution for a useful, limited use case that people might be willing to pay for. It sits squarely within the SAE Level 3 definition. The vendor is standing behind it; the regulators are ready to enforce the rules. It really doesn't matter what the "I want full self-driving" purists think, since they haven't actually produced anything useful yet.

throwaway879080 5y ago

fiction

tmsh 5y ago

I'd be comfortable with a car that only attempts self-driving after having driven a road 3-5 times. And only below certain speeds such that the likelihood of a fatality/serious accident for myself, a pedestrian, cyclist, or other driver - would be very, very low (<0.00001% etc.). If that meant the car driving back roads and avoiding even busier town streets, and drove 30 miles an hour max, there are certain situations when I'd be fine with that. As long as a car can handle all scenarios at 25 mph (a kid running out into the street with a ball, and anticipation of more complex events that would require pulling over and passing back control in an easy, non-jarring manner), I would think this still makes sense. What would this do? It would force new street creation (and perhaps extra shoulder space for pulling over) for these slow-ass autonomous vehicles. But we'd all be safe and able to work or do other things during our commutes or on the way to do errands, etc.