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> The latest Cruise incident occurred Thursday night when a Cruise robotaxi and an emergency vehicle crashed and left a passenger injured. Cruise said in a soci
by joshuahedlund 3y ago
> The latest Cruise incident occurred Thursday night when a Cruise robotaxi and an emergency vehicle crashed and left a passenger injured. Cruise said in a social media post that one of its self-driving Chevy Bolt EVs entered an intersection on a green traffic light at Polk and Turk streets when it was struck by an emergency vehicle that appeared to be en route to an emergency scene.
Noticing and responding to emergency sounds/signals in the road, distant but approaching, is yet another subtly complex aspect of human driving I hadn’t thought of but which seems obvious in retrospect. Seems solvable in theory but also involves a lot of uncertainty and contingencies. Then I suppose the cone-blocking hackers will start playing siren recordings to confuse the robotaxis…
- bsder 3y ago> Then I suppose the cone-blocking hackers will start playing siren recordings to confuse the robotaxis… Ummm, that would even confuse normal drivers, and I hope that it would wind you up in jail. Those siren sounds get played on the radio sometimes, and I really wish that it was illegal to do so.
- CaliforniaKarl 3y agoIn BobbyBroccoli's "The man who tried to fake an element", the title sequence music has a police siren play at one point. Every time I watch the video, I think there's an real-life siren outside.
- CaliforniaKarl 3y agoHonestly, looking at recent news reports in the Chronicle, I don't think cone-blocking hackers need to do anything more right now. I mean, why cause trouble for someone if they're already slipping up in this way?
- bombcar 3y agoIn fact, if they kept pushing it gives an easy excuse - it’s the coners! Even if not completely true. You have to know when to stop and let the cards fall where they may.
- bdowling 3y ago> Noticing and responding to emergency sounds/signals in the road… How do deaf drivers respond to sirens from emergency vehicles?
- seizethecheese 3y agoFlashing lights
- hattmall 3y agoThe big one too is noticing everyone else slow down so you start trying to figure out why and look around more.
- NoZebra120vClip 3y agoQuite a while ago, I learned the best way to follow the ball or puck at a sporting match. You don't try to look for the little object itself, you just observe what all the relevant players are doing, where they're looking, where they're running. You figure it out really quick with them helping! Likewise, if I am waiting for a bus or something, I am really alert and on guard if I'm alone at the stop, because that bus will blow right by. Once there are a few other passengers around, I kick back and just watch them, because unless they're all impatient and pacing, their attitude and behavior will indicate when the bus is visibly arriving. SDCs that coldly and analytically examine the traffic around them will probably never get the human nuances that we can pick up from second-and-third-order clues. For example, if I'm paranoid about whether a car's going to turn into me in an intersection, I don't watch their turn signal or lateral motion, I watch their front tire, because that's the first indicator of a turn. Is that sort of thing baked into AI? If several people are stopped at an intersection, eye contact and gestures are often essential in negotiating a solution. AI? Same with pedestrians. Make eye contact, signal, work something out. I'll often stop on a corner and wave cars through rather than insist on my right-of-way. Of course the motorist also has to decide if that's safe to do, and sometimes you can fool a motorist into making an unsafe move just by signaling your permission...
- reustle 3y ago
- CamperBob2 3y agoEmergency vehicles in many areas have a strobe light that sends out a particular pattern of flashes, allowing them to turn traffic lights red as they approach. Seems like a fairly obvious step would be to mandate that self-driving cars recognize those strobes.
- bmicraft 3y agoIf the light is already turning red that might be the more obvious indicator? Also those infrared LEDs are kinda angled upwards towards the traffic lights and might not be as visible from the road
- swid 3y agoCruise released a statement which said the car did hear the siren when it was louder than background noise. No indication how close the siren was for that to happen, but it sounds pretty definitive that audio sensors are already part of the kit.
- lumost 3y agoHow good are those sensors relative to human ears? Human ears are still freakishly effective at filtering out background noise.
- hypothesis 3y agoThat should be part of an assessment that government does before allowing those vehicles onto our streets.
- shwaj 3y agoA small nit (sorry): it’s probably not a matter of sensor quality (decent quality microphones are not very expensive), but rather the neural networks that process the audio signal.
- lumost 3y agoIt’s a blend of both. The human ear has a vastly more complex structure than a membrane and a sensor. We have complex flexible shapes to channel audio. Alongside an extremely complex set of hairs for hearing.
- Dylan16807 3y agoI don't think you need freakishly good filtering to find something as pure as a siren.
- bombcar 3y agoIt’s almost a harder problem - I can regularly hear sirens in my town the moment they leave the fire station until they arrive at their destination - more than a mile away in each case.
- KirillPanov 3y agoAnd the training data for that situation is hundreds/thousands of times less plentiful than training data for other scenarios.
- jfoster 3y agoCone blocking isn't hacking. It's simple criminal behavior.
- Kamq 3y agoUnderstanding a system well enough to manipulate it in ways that the owner doesn't want seems at least in the same category of phone phreaker behavior. Which was also criminal behavior, but the point is that I don't think it automatically disqualifies it from the category.
- bombcar 3y agoExactly. Some criminal acts are so simple even an animal could do them - destroy something. Others are so complex or use the software against itself that they clearly are hacking; even if they remain criminal.
- jfoster 3y agoIs putting a cone on a vehicle to cause traffic jams really so complex? Perhaps the first person to do it was a bit clever, but anyone imitating it really isn't.
- Kamq 3y agoI think it depends. To compare it back to the phone phreaker example, putting up a single cone that blocks something is roughly the equivalent of cutting a phone line. That is to say, probably not hacking. But what about when you add a level of complexity and creativity? Say, putting up a series of cones that trap the car in an endless circle?
- jfoster 3y agoI don't really think the semantics matter too much. Sure, call the circle of cones a hack. The point is, it's criminal & likely causes a degree of chaos well beyond a simple prank.
- agnosticmantis 3y agoMaybe we should try other signaling methods (radio?) for emergency vehicles that’s easier to process for computers. That may be end up being useful for human drivers too ultimately.
- Gabrys1 3y agoWhy would we do that?
- agnosticmantis 3y agoBecause nowadays cars are computers on wheels with lots of sensors, so we don’t need to only rely on human ears and brains like we had to in 1950s. I think modernizing traffic signals will end up making transportation more efficient and safer. (Just imagine knowing the timing of the next 5 traffic lights on your path.)
- Gabrys1 3y agoThis would make roads undrivable by human drivers (unless augmented by modern tech). Probably exactly what you had in mind, but I don't want this future (at least not now)