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Once again the title of a post doesn't remotely represent its contents. In this case a student's solution costing $71,000 less passed 47 of 50 self imposed tria

Once again the title of a post doesn't remotely represent its contents. In this case a student's solution costing $71,000 less passed 47 of 50 self imposed trials. Google on the other hand have driven half a million miles with their solution. Object recognition from video is probably the future, it's how we work after all. The title though? Quite misleading.

hkmurakami 13y ago
3/50 is an unacceptably high failure rate for automobiles... "in-factory" failure rates are measured by PPM (parts per million) and in-field failures I imagine must be in the order of "trillionths" in order to maintain reliability across millions of cars driving tens of thousands of miles per year each. edit: I don't mean to dismiss the student's accomplishments, but wanted to bring some perspective
- contingencies 13y ago
  What he did was utilize an additional channel of input, and combine the two channels. Adding this kind of additional input system might actually enhance safety, as a failed radar component would still leave the vehicle with partial sensory capacity. (Also: limited capabilities of the current model could easily be effectively reduced via an enforced speed limit or similar. Failures were at 20-30m, which is a serious distance at average driving speeds in urban environments.)
- tubs 13y ago
  "Trillionths", unless you're Toyota and you're shipping brakes.
- ekianjo 13y ago
  It's not because they are measured by PPM that they are not high :P I have seen cases where a certain process deviates and gives more than 10 000 PPM of "out of range" quality. What's important is to understand the impact of the deviation and if this has a negative impact on the finished product quality. In short the answer is "not always". To mitigate the issues in complex systems like planes and so on, the systems are built with multiple redundancies in place. That way even if something fails, the system remains stable and operative. So you don't need to have a "per trillionth" (and you are using the wrong word) quality system in order to deliver a very robust system.
- davidiach 13y ago
  I think the student is perfectly aware that his product must be improved a lot before hitting the road. But it's a starting point. Right now it is 94% accurate in simulations, the next version might be 99%. I'm sure in time if he can get a team together to work with him and continues to innovate, he will make it into a product that meets the industry standards. Or Google might take him to work for them :)
  - shalmanese 13y ago
    We achieved 98% accuracy in 1995: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/usr/tjochem/www/nhaa/nhaa_home_page.html http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/usr/tjochem/www/nhaa/nhaa_home_... It's that last 2 percent that's the most challenging.
    - rmc 13y ago
      98% of the work was done in 1995. All that's left is the other 98%.
- yk 13y ago
  3/50 is I think a meaningless failure rate. If the system overlooks 3 out of every 50 pedestrians standing on the road by themselves and happily runs them over, then it is certainly unacceptable. If there is a test, in which the system is shown groups of pedestrians, in total 50 and it mistakes a group of 3 for a large immobile object, then it is probably acceptable, as long as it always labels pedestrians as 'do not run over.' And for the entire fleet of autonomous cars, the system does not need to be safe. It just needs to be better than humans driving. Realistically to gain acceptance they would need to be an order of magnitude better, which translates to roughly 1 fatal accident per year per 10^5 self driving cars. The current numbers for the US are 36000 fatalities and 250M cars.
  - DanBC 13y ago
    > And for the entire fleet of autonomous cars, the system does not need to be safe. It just needs to be better than humans driving. I really hope this is true. I really want self-driving cars everywhere, now. Road Traffic accidents kill very many people and this is an example of Google using money and smarts to do good. But looking at the way people deal with risk makes me wary. People drive cars all the time even though driving is a bit risky. People don't really understand how good or bad their own driving is. There's a bunch of cognitive biases and rationalisations. I hope people who are experts in communications are ready to dispel the FUD backlash against self driving cars.
    - objclxt 13y ago
      > But looking at the way people deal with risk makes me wary. One of the problems is insurance. Right now, everyone needs to have insurance to drive. If I accidentally hit a pedestrian or rear-end another driver they can claim on my insurance. Let's say that a software bug results in someone getting hit and injured by a self-driving car. Who's liable? I am not sure that this is FUD, so much as a genuine question. It is because driving is risky that drivers must have insurance. Presumably most people would want self-driving cars to be insured if there was a chance of failure (even planes, one of the safest forms of transport, get insured against crashing). We could very well have a situation where cars self drive, but drivers are still expected to pay attention to the road and 'drive' to avoid liability. I suspect there's going to be a lot of lobbying on both sides before mass deployment of self driving cars.
kokey 13y ago
Object recognition will certainly have to become important, since when most cars are using radar you could end up with interference.
Ovid 13y ago
This is, at best, a first-pass alpha, but a highly promising one. Further, the student apparently understood the reason for the errors and offered an inexpensive way to fix them. What would you have wanted int the title? "Student takes Google's self-driving car and offers the potential to make it $71,000 cheaper contingent upon correcting a misidentification issue that causes a possible failure rate of 6%" Yeah, that would be so much better ;) It's OK to take a little license with a title and try to summarize the main points. Maybe just adding the word "potential" in there would be enough, but some user named lololinternet would come along and claim how misleading the title is because ...
- lololinternet 13y ago
  No. Adding "potential" to the title would be okay and probably a little bit better than it is now.
- andyakb 13y ago
  He didn't "take" their car and do anything with it. He made a lower cost version of one of the systems, but not a fully functioning car. This is hugely impressive, but that doesn't mean the title isn't misleading.
- hahainternet 13y ago
  "Student develops low cost alternative to 3d radar imaging"

hkmurakami 13y ago

3/50 is an unacceptably high failure rate for automobiles... "in-factory" failure rates are measured by PPM (parts per million) and in-field failures I imagine must be in the order of "trillionths" in order to maintain reliability across millions of cars driving tens of thousands of miles per year each. edit: I don't mean to dismiss the student's accomplishments, but wanted to bring some perspective

contingencies 13y ago
What he did was utilize an additional channel of input, and combine the two channels. Adding this kind of additional input system might actually enhance safety, as a failed radar component would still leave the vehicle with partial sensory capacity. (Also: limited capabilities of the current model could easily be effectively reduced via an enforced speed limit or similar. Failures were at 20-30m, which is a serious distance at average driving speeds in urban environments.)
tubs 13y ago
"Trillionths", unless you're Toyota and you're shipping brakes.
ekianjo 13y ago
It's not because they are measured by PPM that they are not high :P I have seen cases where a certain process deviates and gives more than 10 000 PPM of "out of range" quality. What's important is to understand the impact of the deviation and if this has a negative impact on the finished product quality. In short the answer is "not always". To mitigate the issues in complex systems like planes and so on, the systems are built with multiple redundancies in place. That way even if something fails, the system remains stable and operative. So you don't need to have a "per trillionth" (and you are using the wrong word) quality system in order to deliver a very robust system.
davidiach 13y ago
I think the student is perfectly aware that his product must be improved a lot before hitting the road. But it's a starting point. Right now it is 94% accurate in simulations, the next version might be 99%. I'm sure in time if he can get a team together to work with him and continues to innovate, he will make it into a product that meets the industry standards. Or Google might take him to work for them :)
- shalmanese 13y ago
  We achieved 98% accuracy in 1995: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/usr/tjochem/www/nhaa/nhaa_home_page.html http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/usr/tjochem/www/nhaa/nhaa_home_... It's that last 2 percent that's the most challenging.
  - rmc 13y ago
    98% of the work was done in 1995. All that's left is the other 98%.
yk 13y ago
3/50 is I think a meaningless failure rate. If the system overlooks 3 out of every 50 pedestrians standing on the road by themselves and happily runs them over, then it is certainly unacceptable. If there is a test, in which the system is shown groups of pedestrians, in total 50 and it mistakes a group of 3 for a large immobile object, then it is probably acceptable, as long as it always labels pedestrians as 'do not run over.' And for the entire fleet of autonomous cars, the system does not need to be safe. It just needs to be better than humans driving. Realistically to gain acceptance they would need to be an order of magnitude better, which translates to roughly 1 fatal accident per year per 10^5 self driving cars. The current numbers for the US are 36000 fatalities and 250M cars.
- DanBC 13y ago
  > And for the entire fleet of autonomous cars, the system does not need to be safe. It just needs to be better than humans driving. I really hope this is true. I really want self-driving cars everywhere, now. Road Traffic accidents kill very many people and this is an example of Google using money and smarts to do good. But looking at the way people deal with risk makes me wary. People drive cars all the time even though driving is a bit risky. People don't really understand how good or bad their own driving is. There's a bunch of cognitive biases and rationalisations. I hope people who are experts in communications are ready to dispel the FUD backlash against self driving cars.
  - objclxt 13y ago
    > But looking at the way people deal with risk makes me wary. One of the problems is insurance. Right now, everyone needs to have insurance to drive. If I accidentally hit a pedestrian or rear-end another driver they can claim on my insurance. Let's say that a software bug results in someone getting hit and injured by a self-driving car. Who's liable? I am not sure that this is FUD, so much as a genuine question. It is because driving is risky that drivers must have insurance. Presumably most people would want self-driving cars to be insured if there was a chance of failure (even planes, one of the safest forms of transport, get insured against crashing). We could very well have a situation where cars self drive, but drivers are still expected to pay attention to the road and 'drive' to avoid liability. I suspect there's going to be a lot of lobbying on both sides before mass deployment of self driving cars.

kokey 13y ago

Object recognition will certainly have to become important, since when most cars are using radar you could end up with interference.

Ovid 13y ago

This is, at best, a first-pass alpha, but a highly promising one. Further, the student apparently understood the reason for the errors and offered an inexpensive way to fix them. What would you have wanted int the title? "Student takes Google's self-driving car and offers the potential to make it $71,000 cheaper contingent upon correcting a misidentification issue that causes a possible failure rate of 6%" Yeah, that would be so much better ;) It's OK to take a little license with a title and try to summarize the main points. Maybe just adding the word "potential" in there would be enough, but some user named lololinternet would come along and claim how misleading the title is because ...

lololinternet 13y ago
No. Adding "potential" to the title would be okay and probably a little bit better than it is now.
andyakb 13y ago
He didn't "take" their car and do anything with it. He made a lower cost version of one of the systems, but not a fully functioning car. This is hugely impressive, but that doesn't mean the title isn't misleading.
hahainternet 13y ago
"Student develops low cost alternative to 3d radar imaging"