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A First Look at How Google's Self-Driving Car Handles City Streets
- donpdonp 13y agoThe video of the LIDAR data and the software's interpretation of the environment is fantastic. The "augmented reality" of the long barrier in front of potential collisions, and the green/red road-ahead indicator makes it easy to see what the software is seeing and thinking.
- chrismealy 13y agoI want to know how it handles rain.
- r0fl 13y agoI think a self driving car will do a much better job operating in the rain than a human being. Rain makes it difficult to see and wipers are sometimes worn out and make visibility even worse. Slick driving conditions are also dangerous for human drivers but these days there are electronic stability systems in place to make it less dangerous to drive in the rain. If you have a car that can turn all traction controls off you can easily see the difference of assisted and non assisted driving in the rain. I think the bigger problem will be heavy snow. What happens when you park your car at the mall and come back to find the sensors covered in 4 inches of snow? Very curious to see how they deal with that issue.
- chrismealy 13y agoNot yet. That's why Google's been testing in Nevada.
- SatoshiPacioli 13y agoWait, did you actually want to know how it handles rain, or were you asking a rhetorical question implying that it can not handle rain? If the latter, it would've been friendlier to say "it doesn't handle rain well, here's why: [...]"
- ryanmcbride 13y agoI think he probably started searching for answers after he posed his original question, and found some. Not that he was asking a question he knew the answer to.
- greiskul 13y ago> What happens when you park your car at the mall and come back to find the sensors covered in 4 inches of snow? Very curious to see how they deal with that issue. You turn off the self driving and manually drive home? The car doesn't have to be perfect to have value. It's perfectly ok if the first version doesn't handle rain, or snow, or fog.
- josho 13y agoSince the article didn't touch on environmental factors I suspect "it doesn't" is the answer to handling rain/snow. However, since one of the cameras is a laser that builds a 3d model of the world, I suspect that once the algorithms are developed it will have the potential to surpass human performance when visibility is poor (heavy rain/fog).
- agildehaus 13y agoThe LIDAR sensors should be able to handle most rain conditions, but it breaks down when you get into heavy rain. I'm not precisely sure where the line is drawn. Snow however is a different problem. I think even light snow is impossible for LIDAR to penetrate. Not to mention the issues that arise when tires slip on ice, snow is covering signage, etc, etc.
- sigmar 13y agoDo you have any sources for any of this information? Because they seem entirely made up and the "issues when tires slip on ice" have been mitigated with computerized ABS systems for the past 20 years
- Qworg 13y agoI've done a lot of work with perception systems and sensors. GP is right on the money with the problems. Rain is even difficult. Snow is the worst though - it is both wet and super reflective. Super reflective dazzles your laser/obscures cameras. Wet screws up your radar.
- chiph 13y agoFunny thing about ABS systems is that the pump actually forces the brake pads open. The designer's thinking is that a turning wheel is able to steer, while a vehicle with sliding wheels is directed pretty much by momentum alone. This results in longer stopping distances. So far as ice -- it's coefficient of friction in the real world is not a constant -- it varies based on local conditions. So you can't predict your ability to stop & steer on it - you can only react. Your best defense is to install ice-rated tires in early winter to increase your traction. Google will likely have to do some testing in Wisconsin to see how the software reacts to icy conditions, and is able to somehow automatically recognize ice/slush and adjust stopping/acceleration rates appropriately.
- andrenotgiant 13y agoThe amount of sensor data that Google could pick up from a fleet of self-driving cars is staggering. If Google wanted, they could use these Self-Driving cars to: 1. Convert Streetview to show same-day photos. 2. Bring in Traffic data that is WAY more precise than phone GPS pings. 3. Scan for and report open parking spots 4. Monitor for design-based congestion problems (e.g. no-bike-lane street with lots of bike traffic, areas where speeding is norm) 5. Track location of food trucks in real time. 6. Monitor foot traffic by street address.
- jonknee 13y ago> 2. Bring in Traffic data that is WAY more precise than phone GPS pings. They already have that with Waze.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- afarrell 13y ago#5 is probably more easily done by selling it as a service to the food trucks themselves, who then self-report.
- lftl 13y agoThrow in some license plate recognition and they could track individual car locations with a pretty wide breadth.
- toomuchtodo 13y ago
- Aloisius 13y agoThe defensive style driving of the Google car won't work in San Francisco where you literally have to break the law in order to turn left (by stopping in the intersection and often finishing the turn on a red).
- josephschmoe 13y agoI suspect if there are large numbers of these vehicles, San Francisco (or more likely California) will have to change the rules its lights follow instead of the other way around. It's hard to argue with a perfectly reasonable, perfectly safe driver.
- ScottBurson 13y agoThat's actually legal. Provided you entered the intersection legally, you have the right-of-way over cross traffic (but not over oncoming traffic, obviously) to exit it. I don't have the California Vehicle Code in front of me, but I'm pretty sure about this because the situation arose during my road test to get my first license (yes, I still remember this, even though it was almost 40 years ago!). I had entered the intersection to turn left, and when the light turned yellow, the tester lady said "clear the intersection" or words to that effect. (I passed.) Anyway it has to be that way -- you can't have cars stuck in the middle of the intersection while cross traffic tries to go around them!
- Aloisius 13y agoI have actually gotten a ticket for this near Mendocino. From the DMV handbook: > If you are turning left, make the turn only if you have enough space to complete the turn before creating a hazard for any oncoming vehicle, bicyclist, or pedestrian. Do not enter the intersection if you cannot get completely across before the light turns red. If you block the intersection, you can be cited.
- DatBear 13y agoI would think this rule (law?) applies more to prevent gridlock... If you don't have enough room to actually be on the other side of the intersection after you've finished the turn, you shouldn't start it.
- Holbein 13y agoFrom the article: "The first rule of riding in Google's self-driving car, says Dmitri Dolgov, is not to compliment Google's self-driving car. (...) I have just announced that so far the trip has been "amazingly smooth." "The car knows," says Dolgov." I'd say considering remarkably complex work, compliments are absolutely justified. Why shouldn't we compliment a creator of a for a job well done anymore? What's wrong with these people?
- minimax 13y agoThe point is not to jinx it. It's not about about not giving credit where credit is due.
- epi8 13y agoIt's just a superstition. I give demos all the time, and I hate it when I do a test run and people tell me how awesome it's working. Tell me afterwards, you'll jinx it if you tell me before. It doesn't actually work that way, but hot damn it feels like it does. And the demos I give don't put anyone's lives at risk!
- kristiandupont 13y agoI read that to mean that the car knows and handles compliments poorly, i.e. an obvious joke.
- ScottBurson 13y agoDolgov logs the road work incident in the computer. He explains that feedback from the driving teams is critical to the car's development. "Every disengage has a severity associated with it," he says. "That was not the end of the world. We would have gotten through the cones. But it was a problem. Once we go back we'll pull the disk out of the car. We'll import the log from this run. This will get flagged to developers. It will go into our database of scenarios and test cases we track. We'll have more information about this on the desktops, but from what I saw on the screen it looks like we detected [the cones] correctly, but for some reason the planner was conservative and decided not to change lanes. We'll create a scenario that says, here, the right thing would have been to change lanes, and the next versions will have it addressed." Interesting that this is done so much in a scenario-by-scenario way. I would have thought something like this would be covered by a general rule, such as "choose an unobstructed path if one exists, otherwise stop". I suppose such general rules can conflict sometimes, and that's why you need the database of scenarios; but still, this case surprises me, since there was no reason the car couldn't simply change lanes. And I would think you would need the general rules because there will always be scenarios you couldn't have anticipated. Maybe the answer is that as long as you have the alert test driver, it's better for the car not to try to apply general rules; but once the car is truly autonomous with no driver, it shouldn't be quite so conservative, particularly in a situation like this where a danger-free solution existed.
- jonknee 13y agoIt sounds like they're just adding unit test cases--the new scenario is the test and what actually changes is separate (be it a new algorithm, a special case, changes to existing algorithms, etc).
- Qworg 13y agoThis is exactly how it works - testing reveals corner cases and you address them.
- vaadu 13y agoHow is this a realistic future with an ambulance chaser around every corner? What company is going to insure the vehicle owner? It's gotten so bad that the the killers are suing the victims. http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/04/26/newser-driver-sues-boy-she-hit/8201609/ http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/04/26/newser-...
- driverdan 13y agoInteresting article. Anyone catch this? > Larry Burns ... says taxi-like fleets of shared autonomous vehicles can become viable business models if they can capture just 10 percent of all city trips. "Just" 10%? Sounds like typical startup BS numbers.
- ableal 13y agoIt's pretty clear that autonomous vehicles are going to be standard, sooner or later. The technology will be mandatory for any new vehicle allowed on public roads. I'm just curious what's Google plan for it. Are they solving the problems, getting patents and licensing to car manufacturers? Selling devices, with data collection built-in? Something else?
- eurleif 13y agoRegardless of Google's plans for the cars themselves, if people are freed from having to watch the road, they will probably use most of their newfound free time to stare at a screen. That benefits Google.
- Thrymr 13y ago> autonomous vehicles are going to be standard, sooner or later. It's hard to disagree, but I think it will be closer to later than sooner. At least decades, I'd guess.
- jtchang 13y agoThe technology inside the self driving car is amazing. It almost makes me think that we will have AI at the same time we will have a self driving car.
- ableal 13y ago"It's those little tweaks that bridge the gap between a jerky robotic ride and an amazingly smooth one." Properly taught robots know about jerk, snap, crackle and pop (the third, fourth, fifth and sixth derivatives of the position vector with respect to time, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jounce https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jounce ). "Amazingly smooth" is probably the minimum jerk trajectory.
- erobbins 13y agoWhile the technology they have built is very impressive, I can't help but think they are doing the wrong thing., in a way. I think the huge wins from automated cars will be in interstate cargo transport.. semis that drive themselves from city to city on the freeways and are dropped of and picked up by human drivers over the last mile. City driving is so chaotic and unpredictable that I'm not sure there's a win there. For human transport, including in urban areas, I think the target should be aerial... automated electrical air taxis that recharge themselves as needed. Automating flight is a whole lot easier. No pedestrians, no bikes, no couches or trash cans in the road.
- ScottBurson 13y agoOn the subject of city situations that a self-driving car might have trouble with, I'll relate a story I heard years ago when living in the Boston area: An out-of-state driver pulled up to a Y intersection -- for concreteness, let's imagine this as an upside-down Y, with our driver arriving on the right leg. There was continuous traffic flowing up the left leg and out the top, oblivious to the stop sign on their side of the intersection. (On top of that, there was a police car parked on the side of the road nearby, oblivious to their obliviousness. It was clear that the social contract was that that particular stop sign was inoperative when traffic was heavy.) So the driver turned to his passenger, a local, and asked "what do I do? how do I get in?" The answer came back: "You have to convince them you're serious."
- b_emery 13y agoI learned the same lesson crossing streets (as a pedestrian) in Rome by watching the locals. Make eye contact, go, and be consistent. The drivers are so alert (because you have to be), that they will stop. Once I learned how to walk across the street there, I had everything I needed to know in order to attempt driving.
- lutorm 13y agoI had similar experiences with merges around Boston: the painted lane markings, if they were even visible, seemed to be treated as mere suggestions and people just squeezed in semi-randomly. Of course traffic barely moved, so it wasn't really dangerous, but I can imagine an automated, defensive-driving robot just waiting until the end of days.
- toastedzergling 13y agoThis is my personal favorite intersection right outside of Boston where I've witnessed at least 2 accidents comutting: https://goo.gl/maps/OKlnT https://goo.gl/maps/OKlnT
- brownbat 13y agoThat's the problem for the 99% humans 1% driverless scenario, the inverse is equally troubling to me. Driving currently involves a range of aggressiveness strategies, it may have hit a certain equilibrium mix of insane and polite drivers. If 99% of the cars dodge whatever you do, then you're messing with the metagame. Suddenly driving like a maniac, forcing all the polite computers out of your way gets you everywhere faster. If driverless systems become common, they'll almost have to be required.
- azth 13y agoDo the radar systems on these vehicles have any effects on health?
- ramchip 13y agohttp://www.google.com.tr/patents/US5821897 http://www.google.com.tr/patents/US5821897 > The 76-77 GHz range is assigned by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for collision avoidance radar systems. Some info on what that means: http://www.rfcom.ca/faq/answers.shtml http://www.rfcom.ca/faq/answers.shtml
- elwell 13y ago> The Google car can now recognize temporary stop signs, making it less reliant on pre-programmed maps 1. Obtain handheld stop sign 2. Troll self-driving cars My point is, a human would know when a kid is just messing with you by holding up a stop sign; a self-driving car would slam its brakes?
- altcognito 13y agoPicture taken of offender. Authorities called, charges filed; Impeding traffic.
- inthewoods 13y agoMaybe it's just me, but the idea that Google is testing these cars on regular street is pretty amazing. What happens if someone dies while they're running their tests? I'm not trying to troll, but it seems to me that the liability concerns here would be huge.
- jabelk 13y agoI believe the tests are closely supervised, with a fully attentive person sitting in the front seat ready to take over. If anyone died or there was some accident, that person would be liable. (Although the public outcry/fear mongering over a death in that situation would likely be a huge setback. I'm sure they're being extraordinarily careful.)
- rdl 13y agoI can't imagine not wanting to work on this. It must be really complicated at Google -- I'd take a 50-75% pay cut to work on this project at Google, rather than ads optimization. It must be an interesting organizational challenge figuring out how people get assigned to it; sort of like PARC vs. optimizing photocopier software at Xerox back in the day, except back then they kept PARC pretty much secret from engineering (from what I've read).