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That's a tough problem - distinguishing wet pavement from deep water. Humans make that mistake frequently. Autonomous vehicles should probably be equipped wit
by Animats 5mo ago
That's a tough problem - distinguishing wet pavement from deep water.
Humans make that mistake frequently.
Autonomous vehicles should probably be equipped with a water sensor. (We did that in our DARPA Grand Challenge vehicle back in 2005). Then they can enter water very cautiously and see if it's too deep. This may make them too cautious about shallow puddles on roads, though.
- alexnewman 5mo agoDo they make this mistake frequently? How frequently? I've seen people overestimate things, but I don't think this is as hard as one might think
- wombat-man 5mo agoIf they have a laser measurement of the road from before, couldn't they see that the level of water vs the expected road surface?
- AnimalMuppet 5mo agoIf they have a pre-existing database of every road, sure. And if it's kept up-to-date at all times in all vehicles.
- mortenjorck 5mo agoIsn’t that the Waymo data model, though? They extensively pre-drive every new market, building dense volumetric maps of the entire service area before they begin service, so they essentially do have that database of every road (that they drive on).
- filoleg 5mo agoGranted, I am not sure exactly how Waymo operates, but I thought that the extensive testing was mostly for legal reasons+just handling edge cases. I am saying this, because I noticed that they typically start with a low-tier restrictive permit to operate (with a rather small number of cars in the fleet). Then they run it for a year or two, iron out edge cases particular to a given city (e.g., climate particularities, crazy spaghetti junctions in ATL, etc.), and log a lot of data. Then they take that data, go to the city/state, say "we have all this data that demonstrates we were very above the board while running the test pilot program, we are safe, and now we want to expand out of a very limited test pilot program." And then it either goes well (Bay Area, LA, etc.) or goes off the rails for other reasons (often failing earlier for entirely unexpected reasons, like the pushback against it from taxi driver unions in NYC). My point being, I could be entirely wrong, but I don't think that they literally map every single inch of the road before being allowed to operate. I just don't see it as being possible in any large populated city, given how often things change there. Just in 3 years living at one apartment in Seattle, I had a road directly adjacent to me changed from 2-way to 1-way, and then had 3-4 lanes that were basically highway entrances/exits (a block away from me) created and the whole area being rerouted entirely.
- flutas 5mo agoWaymo explicitly lidar scans and "HD maps" the area: https://waymo.com/blog/2020/09/the-waymo-driver-handbook-mapping/ https://waymo.com/blog/2020/09/the-waymo-driver-handbook-map... Tesla is less "HD", they have standard maps like we all think of, and a lane level "see-ahead" system where they basically just grab a satellite image tile, and align it with what the car sees for "FSD".
- cma 5mo agoSome of the Tesla robotaxi deployments have relied on HD maps too, or at least they were spotted extensively lidar mapping Austin.
- flutas 5mo agoThose vehicles with lidar roof racks are validation for "FSD" look up project rodeo for some news reporting (they also have cameras further up mounted on a pole to validate "FSD"s reprojection technique). Images of the cars screens show "project rodeo controls" is the only reason I say that we know these are validation vs mapping.
- fragmede 5mo agoWaymo does high resolution scans, the question only they know the answer to is how well does their model do without them and on camera only. I bet it's way better than is publicly acknowledged.
- asdff 5mo agoThey actually do significant mapping. Where it operates currently it is not unusual to see this. It will be a waymo with a human driver operating someplace not currently in the waymo zone and clearly not en route to any maintenance facility either. Stuff like windy canyon roads with no thru access anywhere that are currently gated away, you might see a waymo with a human today. Waymo is not the only company making lidar maps right now either. I've seen UPS deliver trucks with retrofitted lidar scanners on the roof now. I've even seen this on a police car already, looked like a black rooftop industrial ventilator on a 2ft mast installed directly on the crown victoria roof.
- spankalee 5mo agoWaymo does have a database of every today they drive, but for this they don't need one. If the car comes to a road covered with water, and that road is in the database, and the water level appears low compared to the historical level of the road in the DB, then the car could cross. if the road is not in the DB, then a different decision might be made. This is similar to humans: you might make different decisions depending on whether you know the road well or not.
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- tintor 5mo agoSuch detailed database of fine grained road geometry gets stale very quickly, due to road maintenance and road construction. In US highway lanes are shifted sideways frequently.
- dietr1ch 5mo agoBut are they not continuously updating the road database with their fleet?
- nomel 5mo agoFor common routes, yes. For getting to John's house, where the path there sometimes floods, no.
- harry8 5mo agoSo the first waymo to get to this less used road to john’s will not have the data rather than every waymo that travels down a new highway, that then becomes a problem if it rains. One car with an issue of first coincides with rain on a less used road?
- nomel 5mo agoWell, it's closer to: any car with stale data and sufficient water depth is a financial and PR disaster. These cars are not cheap, and a tiktok of someone being driven into the water is even more expensive!
- cma 5mo agoAs soon as the car descends below what was mapped it should be able to know there is a discrepency. Satellite monitoring is also available for detecting extensive road work which they could use to invalidate and send out something to remap.
- 5mo ago
- kpw94 5mo agoThat seems a very risky assumption for any car (self driving or human driver) during flash floods. "Turn around don't drown": You think you know how deep it is under because you've taken that road many times before (or in your case you have historical laser measurement) But you don't know: - Maybe the road under fully collapsed - Maybe the flow of water is extremely strong, so you need to accurately estimate that too.
- cma 5mo agoFlow should be able to be done with vision, radar can as well: some bridges use surface flow monitoring radar.
- wombat-man 5mo agoI more meant that it could maybe see a significant difference in the road, and know to take caution, not to try to gauge the depth of a submerged roadway.
- ex-aws-dude 5mo agoThat's so much extra complexity
- jandrewrogers 5mo agoYou underestimate how frequently details like this change in the real world and how difficult it is to reliably integrate them into the mapping models with very low error rates. Aggregating this data in something close to real-time, verifying and corroborating that the change to the road model is real and correct, and then pushing those model updates to every vehicle that may need it almost immediately is not really a solved problem.
- OptionOfT 5mo agoDoesn't Land Rover historically have like a wading sensor?
- drob518 5mo agoIt’s a particularly hard problem in Texas. We get torrential rains and the landscape is relatively flat. Couple that with shallow soil over lots of limestone and it means flooding is really common. We also have roads that have a “low water crossing,” where a road crosses a creekbed that is normally dry but which will flood. There are often water depth signs there (basically a vertical ruler with feet marks so you can see where the water is up to). We lose people to this scenario (driving into flood waters) every year. It’s particularly problematic when it’s dark and you miss a warning sign. Before you know it, you’re in deep water and the flow can sweep the whole car downstream until it gets pinned against a tree, possibly with water forcing its way into the car.
- reaperducer 5mo agoTexas has it easy. I've seen several places in England (and at least one in the western United States) where they have fords. For those not familiar, water runs over the road full-time, and people are expected to just drive through it like it's no big deal. Except for right after a storm, when it is a big deal. It's essentially the intersection of a road and a stream where a bridge should be, but nobody ever built one.
- michaelt 5mo agoFor example: https://maps.app.goo.gl/eqjHKqDxGxFNz47D7 https://maps.app.goo.gl/eqjHKqDxGxFNz47D7 complete with the google streetview car (presumably) driving through it And a collection of videos https://www.youtube.com/@jawalton2001/videos https://www.youtube.com/@jawalton2001/videos - it goes without saying, these aren't major thoroughfares.
- kylecazar 5mo agoHa, the stream is not that bad in 2021 when the Google car drove it in your link. But if you go forward two steps, the date changes to 2024, and if you pan back to the river there is a much stronger/higher flow. Maybe they drove through it in 2021 but said no in 2024. Also, there's a quizzical cow up the road a bit and now I want to live in this place. Thanks.
- mmooss 5mo ago> frequently I've never made that mistake; I'm not aware of anyone I know doing it. I very rarely see it myself, except on news footage. Of course it happens some time somewhere but that says nothing about frequency. > That's a tough problem Not really. Don't drive where you don't know it's safe. Definitely don't drive into moving water - puddles only, and only if not too deep: I can usually figure it out based on the rest of the road - unless it's a sinkhole, the geometry is somewhat consistent - and especially by looking at objects in the water such as other cars driving through it. Sorry your friend isn't competent to figure it out. People here are always quick to defend the autonomous cars, like a close friend. How often will we fall in love with a technology or company? It always distorts the truth.
- hawaiianbrah 5mo agoIt’s definitely a thing humans do a lot in certain places. Perhaps where you live, it isn’t as much of an issue, so naturally you and nobody you know has encountered it.
- mmooss 5mo ago> humans do a lot I suppose we can redefine 'a lot' to mean many things, but 99.9..% don't do it. It's the exhausted talking point of the autonomous vehicle industry that humans are awful drivers and we are better. What is sad is seeing HN users doggedly repeat it like PR reps - it was the first line of the original comment, even though irrelevant to it - as they've done with other passions like Uber, Musk's entities, etc.
- amluto 5mo agoBy a water sensor do you mean a sensor to detect the water level relative to the chassis? It seems like a very inexpensive downward-facing ultrasound sensor could work.
- computomatic 5mo agoIs ultrasound less expensive than a moisture sensor? The problem with both is they effectively require the vehicle to be in the water already. They need something that can tell depth before the vehicle has to slow down.
- tempaccount5050 5mo agoWhen you're going 35 mph and suddenly hit a 2 ft deep puddle (I've done this), that sensor isn't going to help at all.
- brookst 5mo agoGoing 35mph into water of uncertain depth is a bad strategy. Even well equipped jeeps approach potentially-deep water at like 5mph.
- tempaccount5050 5mo ago
- ajkjk 5mo agoPretty sure the right answer mainly involves the car knowing about the weather and other emergency events.
- asdff 5mo agoIt doesn't take much of a rainstorm to see localized flooding. Some debris over the storm drain is enough to flood a street. Hard to anticipate that happening.
- nradov 5mo agoDangerous localized flooding has also occurred for other reasons unrelated to weather, like broken dams or embankments.
- bombcar 5mo agoIt can also occur downstream many many miles from the rain - see flash floods in the desert from mountain rains far away - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORJtxkuD62E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORJtxkuD62E
- lazide 5mo agoAll that it can take is a broken fire hydrant in the wrong place.
- eraGq 5mo agoAny human can distinguish wet pavement from a flooded street. Some voluntarily drive into the flooded street. And that is the difference. In a Waymo you are a prisoner, in your own car you can turn around.
- AnimalMuppet 5mo agoAny human can't necessarily tell the difference between an inch of water, which is perfectly safe to drive on (if slow enough that you don't hydroplane), and a flooded street. They can tell the difference between an inch of water and wet pavement, though.
- LorenPechtel 5mo agoDefinitely. I used to live in a place where the main streets would flood in any heavy storm, they effectively were the flood channel. Safe to enter? Completely impossible to determine by looking at the water, the only way I could decide was comparing what I was looking at to normal, especially looking at the curbs; or by looking at what was happening to cars on the road.
- cucumber3732842 5mo agoThis is the naive "if you can't stop you're following too close" circular definition based take. Makes for good rightthink points on reddit and communities of similar quality membership but you're not actually gonna build anything useful thinking like that. In order to drive reasonably humans need to drive through water that is 6-12in deep on occasion. That's just how it is. Near me it's whenever the storm drain at the bottom of the hill clogs.
- 329187 5mo agoWhy do you ignore the context (humans cannot distinguish?). If what you say is true, Waymos are useless in your areas. Thank you for confirming this!
- 5mo ago
- themafia 5mo ago> Humans make that mistake frequently. They have been known to make that mistake. To use the word "frequently" demonstrates a misunderstanding between number of incidents and total miles driven. It also ignores that humans often drink and most of these types of accidents happen after 2am and most often in the state of Florida. > equipped with a water sensor Car washes will be fun. > DARPA Grand Challenge The problems the grand challenge ignores are more important than the ones it solved.
- cindyllm 5mo ago[dead]
- Aaronstotle 5mo agoThis is also why they recommend not to use polarized while cycling, it can obscure slicks or water in certain sections. I still use mine but I know it's not as ideal as photo chromatic lenses.
- dzhiurgis 5mo agoThis is how I got my shoes wet climbing around rock pools last weekend.
- ndsipa_pomu 5mo agoI've never heard that. I tend to buy photo-chromatic sunglasses due to them changing quickly to clear when it's cloudy/dark or in a tunnel or, more accurately in the UK, they go dark for those few minutes of sunshine we get per year.
- gpm 5mo agoIf they've mapped the surface of the water relative to themselves... couldn't they slowly wade in and just calculate the depth based on that 3d model without extra sensors. Assumes there's no abrupt cliff to fall off... but short of the ability to make a 3d map underwater that seems inevitable.
- alexnewman 5mo agoMy commaai can do this. I'm pretty sure tesla can as well
- JKCalhoun 5mo agoHuman drivers look for Waymos up ahead, water up to their windows. <jk>
- marvinkennis 5mo agoThey should really just park themselves on the side of the road (or observe in real time), wait for another car to go first, then follow that path
- ajsnigrutin 5mo agoIt would have to know the height of that car above ground, how high the air intake is, etc. A lifter offroader could make it through a much deeper body of water than eg. a prius.
- 1970-01-01 5mo agoI thought the same thing. A very small float switch would work here. Somewhere between the radiator and the bumper. Fording depth is different for every vehicle.
- esseph 5mo agoGoing to move up and down with every bump and pothole
- adrianmonk 5mo agoHave a rod that pivots in its center and has objects of equal mass at each end, like a balanced seesaw. But make one of the objects very low density (less than water) and other high density. Since the densities differ, water will cause the rod to rotate. But since the masses are the same, bumps will create no net torque around the pivot point and thus no rotation. ASCII art diagram: F------(x)------C (x): pivot point F: float C: counterbalance Also include a small spring to keep the float in the down position. I'm sure there are other ways like sensing the electrical resistance of the water. Or just let the float sensor bounce. It's underwater when it stops bouncing and is continuously in the up position.
- esseph 5mo ago> Or just let the float sensor bounce. It's underwater when it stops bouncing and is continuously in the up position. Road grime, break dust, grease, grit, etc will contaminate the shaft and make it stick, potentially telling you that youre: A) Never in water Or B) Always in 2.5" of water because the sensor is stuck.
- aitchnyu 5mo agoI surrender my speedometer ceremony for the wade sensor. Instead of a motor sweeping the speedometer from 0 to 200 on startup, put the motor to sweep the wade sensor.
- NetMageSCW 5mo ago
- doright 5mo agoReminds me of all the Waymo vehicles stalled during that San Francisco blackout a while ago. I have always believed that when people cite statistics on Waymos beating human drivers on safety statistics, that is only in the case of the happy path, or "happy road". The safety statistics could plummet in specific scenarios that lack training data or forethought, and they could crop up at any time.
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- nostrebored 5mo agoRight, but humans are terrible at the happy path. I’d take 20% safer on the happy path over 40% less safe in unforeseen circumstances. The failure mode being “stopped car” is also not that bad.
- scott_w 5mo agoYou’re presenting a false dichotomy. There’s the third part which is “foreseen but challenging circumstances.” Also, “stopped car” can be VERY bad in many circumstances. Stopped on lane 2 of a motorway, stopped in running water, stopped in snow. Also I suspect many “unforeseen” circumstances happen regularly. The unforeseen part is “what” and “when.”
- IdiotSavage 5mo ago... stopped on a railroad track. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/waymo-train-tracks-texas-b2935778.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/waymo-trai...
- brookst 5mo agoThere must be a term for this fallacy. “I’d rather survive 100% of the time in situations that happen 0.01% of the time than survive 99.9999@ of the time in situations that arise 99.99% of the time”
- LPisGood 5mo agoThey could be context aware and check if other cars go through and things of that nature.
- awesomeMilou 5mo agoBecause of the replies, I can't tell if this post is dripping with sarcasm or not.
- DANmode 5mo agoWeren’t they figuring out radar or radar adjacent technologies for measuring snow density etc? Did that get anywhere?