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Helicopter Crashes While Filming Autonomous Audi

Posted by timothy on from the send-robot-ambulances dept.

telomerewhythere writes "A helicopter commissioned by Audi to film its autonomous Audi TT climbing Pikes Peak crashed early this morning. Four people on board were hurt, the pilot seriously. It's a surreal story — a manned vehicle crashes while the one climbing a mountain driven only by computers and sensors carries on. Here's more on the autonomous Audi, a project undertaken with the help of Stanford University."

49 of 218 comments (clear)

  1. So the weak point in the system is...... by scosco62 · · Score: 3, Funny

    Frighteningly obvious........

    1. Re:So the weak point in the system is...... by magarity · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I thought it was unpredictable winds around a mountain
       
      While the problem is related to air, it is not the movement of air but rather the lack of it. Pike's Peak tops out over 14,000 feet and the thin air makes a helicopter's responses much slower than at lower levels. If the pilot is having to track the moving car on the ground then his attention was divided, making the situation even more dangerous, so it's easy to understand how a crash could occur.

    2. Re:So the weak point in the system is...... by ceiling9 · · Score: 3, Informative

      I think the reason is that on a small scale, it is possible to control a quadcopter or quadrotor by changing the relative speed of the rotors, which is much simpler because there is no cyclic pitch, or swashplate mechanism, but this technique doesn't scale well. On a man-sized quadrotor, it would be difficult to accelerate and decelerate the rotors fast enough to have agile control, and so the use of cyclic pitch becomes the better method to control thrust. If you are using cyclic pitch, then it becomes simpler to have one (or 2) rotors instead of 4. Also, when a rotor tilts, it generates large gyroscopic forces. On a small model, these are small compared to the strength of the rotors, but on a man-sized vehicle, the rotors need to be able to "flap" in order to reduce stress on the blades, which again is simpler if you only have to deal with one rotor.

    3. Re:So the weak point in the system is...... by Sulphur · · Score: 2, Interesting

      If one has four rotors, wouldn't he use collective pitch on the individual rotors, rather than cyclic pitch or rpm change?

  2. Surreal? by Karganeth · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Since when is a helicopter crash surreal?

    1. Re:Surreal? by gEvil+(beta) · · Score: 2, Funny

      Since when is a helicopter crash surreal?

      The helicopter crash itself isn't surreal -- the story is ("It's a surreal story...").

      --
      This guy's the limit!
    2. Re:Surreal? by sakdoctor · · Score: 5, Funny

      Ceci n'est pas un helicoptere

    3. Re:Surreal? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      Correction: Un hélicoptère

    4. Re:Surreal? by CrashandDie · · Score: 4, Funny

      Except it isn't. Having the riot police interview an elephant based on what the spoon told them with regards to the crash of a helicopter that decided to kill itself during a full moon afternoon because its turbo-girlfriend was dry humping a humvee; now that would be surreal.

      This is just a story about a helicopter crash with a few coincidences. Absolutely nothing surreal.

  3. Too soon by CarpetShark · · Score: 2, Funny

    Damnit, I told Audi not to fit Kitt's microlock device before the car was tested against the Three Laws.

  4. Before jumping to conclusions.... by Chicken04GTO · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Before jumping to conclusions....yeah I know this is the internet...
    Flying @ 14,000' elevation aint easy for a helicopter, and it gets *windy* up there at the top of Pikes Peak. Until the NTSB completes the investigation, any comments about what happened and whose fault it is would be pointless.

    1. Re:Before jumping to conclusions.... by CarpetShark · · Score: 5, Funny

      Flying @ 14,000' elevation aint easy for a helicopter

      Irrelevant. The helicopter was given a pep-talk before take-off. Neither the confidence nor this determination of the helicopter were factors in the crash, and its endurance was second to none, as it has a lusty wife.

    2. Re:Before jumping to conclusions.... by alvinrod · · Score: 2, Funny

      Well the editors did say it was a surreal story.

    3. Re:Before jumping to conclusions.... by Rich0 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I'm not big on the whole "pilot error" thing. Too often it just amounts to blaming somebody for the inevitable.

      Take 200 of the best truck drivers on the planet. Keep them awake for 48 hours straight. Then set them behind the wheels of big trucks at 2AM and tell them to cover a distance of 800 miles at an average speed of 50MPH or greater.

      I can pretty-much guarantee that there will be an accident. Will it be the result of human error - well, sure. However, humans are just another kind of machine. If you took 200 trucks and drove them for 5 years without inspecting their brakes you'd have accidents too - for basically the same kind of reason.

      In this case a helicopter at 14k feet is likely at the edge of its performance envelope. That means that any mistake can get out of hand very quickly. Aircraft aren't safe because pilots don't make mistakes - they're safe because they are engineered and operated in a manner that allows recovery if there is a mistake (while preventing the kinds of mistakes that would be unrecoverable). If you operate an aircraft in a way that is at the boundaries of its operational limits, then sooner or later there will be a crash. Sure, most of the time there won't be one, so it is easy to blame the pilot when the inevitable happens.

    4. Re:Before jumping to conclusions.... by drinkypoo · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I'm not big on the whole "pilot error" thing. Too often it just amounts to blaming somebody for the inevitable.

      You have a choice on whether you will put yourself in that situation. That makes it not inevitable by definition.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    5. Re:Before jumping to conclusions.... by ultranova · · Score: 2, Insightful

      You have a choice on whether you will put yourself in that situation. That makes it not inevitable by definition.

      Oh, sure: you can choose to take the risk and do it, or refuse to do it, get fired and be unable to find a new job because you got a reputation for not doing risky jobs. Given the permanent high unemployment caused by modern technology making more and more jobs redundant, you've better be prepared to live in abject poverty the rest of your life.

      Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

      --

      Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.

  5. GPS? by Esospopenon · · Score: 2, Interesting

    As mentioned in TFA, they hope to create "autonomous driving systems that will one day be integrated into all vehicles as a safety measure". That being the case, I think they still have a long way to go since they have fitted a $100.000 GPS system for guidance. They also have a driver running the course first so the system can "incorporate human reactions", which probably means "learn when to breake" The real test for this system will be when it can cope with unpredictable situations, like traffic lights and old men with hats.

    1. Re:GPS? by MakinBacon · · Score: 4, Insightful

      There's also the problem that any time somebody using their system gets into an accident, they'll probably try to sue the manufacturer.

    2. Re:GPS? by timholman · · Score: 5, Insightful

      There's also the problem that any time somebody using their system gets into an accident, they'll probably try to sue the manufacturer.

      As opposed to suing the manufacturer(s) and/or driver(s) like everyone already does for most car accidents?

      The old saw about "We'll never have autonomous cars, because the manufacturers will be sued out of existence after the first crash" is pure nonsense. We already have an enormous amount of computer control in cars, and people are already suing the manufacturers, e.g. Toyota, claiming that those systems malfunctioned after a crash. Toyota is still in business, and the costs of those suits are just folded into the manufacturing costs, as always.

      In the U.S. alone, human drivers account for 40,000 fatalities, millions of injuries, and $250B in costs due to auto accidents every year. It would take a pretty unreliable computer system to even get within an order of magnitude of what we do to each other through inattentive or drunken driving. Maybe Microsoft could manage it, but it would be a reach even for them. :-)

      When the first autonomous cars hit the road around 2020, what everyone is going to see is the exact opposite - accident rates and costs will plummet. When that happens, auto insurance rates will be adjusted accordingly for autonomous vehicles, and soon you'll find that manual driving is not only expensive, but even illegal in many areas.

      Human beings have no business driving. I know this statement bothers a lot of people, but the statistics bear it out. I, for one, will gladly hand over my keys the day I can buy an autonomous vehicle, and never think twice about it. Driving is a chore 99% of the time, and one that I'd be just as happy to turn over to a computerized device as any other chore.

    3. Re:GPS? by morgan_greywolf · · Score: 2, Informative

      Or is this "GPS" actually much more than a GPS -- something more like an aircraft tracking computer?

      Probably they were using something like that. Something along the lines of an inertial measurement unit (IMU) or similar navigational computer. These things usually combine GPS tracking with a precision gyroscope. They can pretty much fly a plane all by themselves, and the military uses them in land-based vehicles, such as autonomous or semi-autonomous tanks. That they could be used to drive a car is not surprising.

      --
      My blog
    4. Re:GPS? by mindriot · · Score: 5, Informative

      Your $70 GPS addon is way too inaccurate for the kind of autonomous navigation they're trying to achieve. I mean, your standard SiRFstar III claims 2.5 meters of accuracy 50% of the time (a sigma of 3.7 m). That means you can't even be sure whether you're actually on the road, never mind what lane you're in. And that's only in a clear-sky situation. Once you're in a downtown "Urban Canyon" where you hardly pick up any GPS satellites anymore or get wrong readings due to multipath propagation, good luck. Your standard GPS SatNav simply always assumes you're on the road. That won't do for an autonomous vehicle.

      You'll need something closer to this high-speed INS+GPS, the better models of which can be accurate in the decimeter range (assuming careful calibration). The ones I know about are all in the US$50,000 and above price range.

    5. Re:GPS? by mindriot · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Wow, no you can't. For one thing, you don't have to deal with other cars when you're making an exhibition run up Pikes.

      That depends on what you mean by "taking over". If someone falls asleep or has a heart attack while driving, "taking over" can just mean bringing the vehicle to a controlled stop in a safe location and turning on the hazards. In that particular situation, there also won't be much room for suing anyone if something goes wrong -- because had the vehicle not done anything, the situation would've ended gravely anyway.

      Also, while you may not have to deal with oncoming traffic running up Pikes, you have to have a damn robust and fast perception system that is able to react to its environment quickly and safely ("oh, pothole on the right, better avoid that"), and you need to have a software capable auf autonomously controlling a vehicle in the most extreme situations (such as going round a curve on a dirt road at 60 miles with a hundred-foot drop on one side. I dare say that if you manage that, you'll be doing pretty well in "normal" traffic as well. Combine this with the expertise gained from the DARPA competitions, and that "long way" is already getting shorter.

    6. Re:GPS? by morie · · Score: 3, Funny

      You want statistics? There seems to be overwhelming evidence that close to 100% of the cars that cause an accident are driven by humans!

      --
      Sig (appended to the end of comments I post, 54 chars)
    7. Re:GPS? by turbidostato · · Score: 2, Interesting

      "Now, if a robot drives a car, he has two options: Follow the law, cause a traffic jam behind himself"

      Provided all other cars were robotical, how could this happen? A traffic jam creates when vehicles reaching a point are faster than vehicles at that point. Provided our car is respecting security distance from a car that was at top legal speed, it would go at top legal speed as well as those after it. No traffic jam is possible. And with regards to speed change and wave effect since robots would have faster and finer-grained reactions, those would be minimized too.

      "(or even provoke somebody to cut into the seemingly extremely long clearance)"

      It can only seem to be to long if you think you can do it better. On one hand, other robotic cars neither would nor could find it "too long" but just "as it must be"; on the other hand, provided robots have better reaction times than humans (and that's a perfectly defensible position) clearance distances could be reduced basically to the dynamic envelope of running vehicles, no need to take human reactions into account.

    8. Re:GPS? by khallow · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Human beings have no business driving. I know this statement bothers a lot of people, but the statistics bear it out. I, for one, will gladly hand over my keys the day I can buy an autonomous vehicle, and never think twice about it. Driving is a chore 99% of the time, and one that I'd be just as happy to turn over to a computerized device as any other chore.

      Human beings have no business being alive either. I think statistics will bear that one out too. Look, I recognize that there are plenty of activities, even plenty of transportation activities that don't require me to be in control. For example, we routinely travel by means that have someone or something else doing the driving (passenger trains, airlines, etc). And these means of travel are usually (at least in the developed world) safer than if I were driving myself. But driving is "do it yourself" mobility. In exchange for a somewhat elevated chance of injury and death, you gain a great deal of freedom.

      Second, driving engages me. It is often fun to drive a car.

      Ultimately, safety is not the key point of driving or for that matter, it isn't always a chore. Else we never would have left the house in the first place. And an autonomous system won't be able to cover all those needs that formerly used a human driver.

    9. Re:GPS? by vux984 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Provided all other cars were robotical, how could this happen?

      The leprechauns riding bicycles and fairies riding unicorns would still get in the way.

      Seriously, getting 'all the other cars robotical' is a fairy tale.

      1) The roads are literally full of cars 2 - 10 years old, with cars up to 100 years old still rolling around. There is absolutely no way you can mandate a 'switch-over' date from human to robotic... any plan would -have- to be gradual which would give you at least a decade or more of robotic cars alongside human drivers.

      2) There would be serious resistance to giving up human control in our car centric culture. (at least in North America) Political resistance would be immense. We have a society that still loves to drive, that values classic cars. There isn't enough political capital in the world to push something like that through.

      3) The comment about unicorns and leprachauns was more than just sarcastic... pedestrians and cyclists aren't going away.

      Provided all other cars were robotical, how could this happen? A traffic jam creates when vehicles reaching a point are faster than vehicles at that point. Provided our car is respecting security distance from a car that was at top legal speed, it would go at top legal speed as well as those after it. No traffic jam is possible. And with regards to speed change and wave effect since robots would have faster and finer-grained reactions, those would be minimized too.

      Traffic jams still occur even in idealized situations. Just look at the internet for an example of how congestion and wave effects can still easily accumulate and propogate despite being completely computer controlled. And the internet has the luxury of being able to drop packets to cope... something that isn't going to work out on the highway system.

      1) bicyclists and pedestrians are an actual concern
       

    10. Re:GPS? by SparkleMotion88 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Right, this was probably an expensive INS (e.g. ring laser gyro) + GPS system. I imagine they would use something like this for a prototype, because they can get precise acceleration information without having to recalibrate after changes to the vehicle. The good news is that it is easy to get acceleration data for cars because they only have one axis of rotation, and they have wheels that are always on the ground. For production cars with this sort of technology, they can probably just use the speedometer along with something that measures how much the front wheels are turned. Maybe they will throw in a cheap INS to detect loss of wheel traction or otherwise improve the quality of the speed/acceleration data.

      Of course, this only helps for navigation, which is probably the easiest part of the problem. Collision avoidance would probably be done with cameras, radar, ultrasonic ranging, etc.

  6. Surreal by dimethylxanthine · · Score: 2, Informative

    It's a surreal story

    No, it's just a clever PR stunt by machines from the future.

  7. Something smells fishy... by Type44Q · · Score: 2, Informative

    I believe this to have been a joint false-flag operation conducted by Intel, the NSA and VW/Audi, to convince us that we should relinquish control of our Quattros to the machines. I knew there was something suspicious going on when they replaced the five-cylinder with a V6, but no one would listen...

  8. Re:Uber-silly by CarpetShark · · Score: 4, Insightful

    There is no way they would ever be approved for use on public roads.

    Oh, they will, but the roads might need a few upgrades. As soon as it can be proven that a car can drive better than a person when the person is trying their best to drive safely, cars will be favoured, since we know people sometimes deliberately drive wrecklessly.

    Unfortunately one of the upgrades will probably mean no unpredictable human drivers allowed on the same roads.

  9. Re:Uber-silly by thegreatemu · · Score: 2, Insightful

    And this is "unfortunate" why, exactly?

  10. Re:Uber-silly by Marcika · · Score: 5, Funny

    As soon as it can be proven that a car can drive better than a person when the person is trying their best to drive safely, cars will be favoured, since we know people sometimes deliberately drive wrecklessly.

    The problem is not with the people who actually try to drive wrecklessly -- it is with the rest of them, the ones who drive recklessly....

  11. Re:Uber-silly by Copley · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I think you're over-estimating the attention that many people pay to what's going on. For some drivers, your above list would be more like (1) Oh crap, I can't find the track I want on my iPod. (2) Just got to text my BF. (3) How does my hair look in the mirror? (4) Whoops, almost hit that cyclist when I pulled out without looking - better wind down my window and call him a dick.

    I think the research into these autonomous systems will never lead to entirely self-driving cars, but instead will lead to driver-assist type systems where dangers ahead (e.g. approaching a corner too fast) that aren't being heeded by the driver, will cause the car to react instead.

    --
    I am bald
  12. Re:Uber-silly by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    ...since we know people sometimes deliberately drive wrecklessly.

    I think wreckless driving is desirable. Reckless driving.on the other hand tends to result in wrecks.

  13. Re:Uber-silly by timeOday · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I don't think your ambulatory computers will ever be clever enough to figure out those situations.

    Never say never. It's just a matter of time. Even if some situations are hard to automate, a large percentage of all driving hours (freeway driving, I would think) could be automated much more easily.

    The motivation to reclaim driving time is huge. People spend / waste a fantastic amount of time driving. I couldn't find global figures, but apparently Americans spend over 100 hours per year commuting (not driving in total - just commuting); the total driving figure in Israel is 577 hours per year; and about 40% of mothers in the US spend over 2 hours per day driving. Then there are truck drivers and delivery workers whose annual total must be closer to a couple thousand hours per year (i.e. basically their whole life).

    Dishwashing machines are very popular, and how much time do they actually save, 20 minutes per day? I can't think of anything the average person more, that could be automated as easily, as driving.

  14. Condolences by gavron · · Score: 3, Insightful

    As a fellow helicopter pilot, I'm happy the pilot and three film-crew members survived.

    My condolences to the family and friends of a brand-new (to Air-Cam) Bell 212HP Helicopter.

    The world is now smaller by one less helicopter :(

    E

    1. Re:Condolences by gavron · · Score: 2, Informative

      Correction... while the color scheme looks like their new Bell 212HP... it appears that this is actually an Aerospatiale Astar 355 ("Twinstar") dual turboshaft operated AS350 series aircraft.

      E

  15. too bad for the crew by quitte · · Score: 2, Interesting

    but still I want to see the existing footage now. The teaser clip is pretty cool. Apparently this is not about getting up Pike's Peak but getting up fast. If there are ethical issues showing the helicopter footage at least show the footage from the cars onboard camera that surely exists.
    This is so much more exciting than the stupid soccer bots with their Robocup.

  16. The one thing they ARE keeping under wraps by Provocateur · · Score: 3, Interesting

    ...is that the car called to report the accident.

    --
    WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
  17. Ironically... by shrtcircuit · · Score: 5, Interesting

    We were up on Pikes Peak last weekend staffing a charity hike event when the autonomous car itself also crashed, running off the road somewhere. The wrecker they sent up to fetch it also broke down blocking the road, so they had it shut down for a while getting yet another wrecker up the mountain to help relocate the first one, and get the car out of there.

    That thing has some sort of bad omen surrounding it. Everything mechanical around it, including itself, seems to break or crash! I'm amazed nobody has been killed yet, especially with the helo going down on the side of the mountain (that usually ends very badly, so my props go to the pilot for keeping everyone alive).

  18. Physics is a bitch by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    The elevation at the crash site: 13,800ft

    Service ceiling of the helicopter 11,150ft

    The data is taken from Eurocopter AS355F2, the crashed one was a AS355F1.

    1. Re:Physics is a bitch by wjsteele · · Score: 3, Informative

      Wrong. Simply put, the elevation of the location and the service ceiling of the helicopter itself have nothing to do with each other.

      The actual "Service Ceiling" of any aircraft is dependent on the local "Density Altitude" and not the physical elevation of the ground. Depending on the temperature, humidity and other factors, the density altitude of a particular location can be several thousand feet under or above the actual local elevation. The pilot would take that information into account to determine how high they can safely fly the aircraft.

      Bill

      --
      It's my Sig and you can't have it. Mine! All Mine!
    2. Re:Physics is a bitch by tweak13 · · Score: 3, Informative

      Well, since we have historical weather data for the area available, it isn't hard to guess what the density altitude would be. Looking at weather reports for the 17th from stations in the area, temperature rose pretty quickly once the sun was up. The article says early morning, but without a more exact time the quick temperature swing makes it harder to pin down.

      At any point after 8am, the temperature profile looks to be quite a bit above standard atmosphere, meaning density altitudes were higher than pressure altitudes. Barring some unusual atmospheric conditions the density altitude at around 10,000 feet was probably closer to 12,000-14,000 depending on how high the temperature got at the time of the accident. The pilot underestimating the quickly rising temperature may have even been a factor.

      If 11,000 feet is in fact the correct value for the service ceiling of the aircraft, I would say this situation was caused by the decision to fly a heavily loaded aircraft outside of its performance envelope.

    3. Re:Physics is a bitch by tweak13 · · Score: 2, Informative

      Air temperature then was still close to the low for the night, around 50 degrees. While this is a lot cooler than the 90 degrees eventually reached that afternoon, it is still well above the standard atmosphere, and still clearly puts density altitude above pressure altitude. Atmospheric pressure was very close to standard, by the way, so there was no boost in density there.

      Of course, these weather stations all measure temperature at the ground, most around 6000 ft. So let's look at this another way. In order for the air at 13,000 ft to be at a density altitude under 11,000 ft, it'd have to be at about -20 degrees. The normal lapse rate is around 3.5 degrees per 1000 ft. Thus, the expected temperature given 50 degrees at 6000ft is around 25 degrees at 13,000 ft. Unless the lapse rate was more than double the standard atmospheric model, the density altitude places that helicopter above it's service ceiling.

      If I had to guess, I'd say that even in the early morning cool temperatures, that aircraft was still being operated in excess of its expected performance.

  19. Duh! by Alef · · Score: 2, Funny

    [...] and people are already suing the manufacturers, e.g. Toyota, claiming that those systems malfunctioned after a crash.

    Well, obviously the systems are gonna stop working if you crash the car!

  20. Insurance costs by nten · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Assuming the autonomous systems actually work most of the time car insurance providers could make a bundle offering discount rates for the feature (only slightly of course, they are evil), and then gradually raising the rates for the lack of the feature. So eventually we won't be able to afford to drive manual vehicles. At least I can read my kindle on the way to work.

    --
    refactor the law, its bloated, confusing and unmaintainable.
  21. The opposite by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Actually, it's the opposite. Thicker air dampens control responses, thin air amplifies them. It's a bit like walking in water versus walking in air. The surrounding medium helps cushion the movement. In thinner air, a helicopter slices more in banking and cyclic control feels looser. In any case, thin air is not the norm for most pilots and takes extra fine control.

    There are also specific maneuvers related to flying NOE (nap of the earth) on varying terrain that could have caused the crash. A rapid ascent/descent at a low advance ratio could have induced a vortex ring state, a pushover might have produced an unexpectedly high rate of descent that the pilot couldn't handle. These accidents aren't simple, and there's much we don't know.

    I am a rotorcraft engineer (and if this turns out to be one of my company's helicopters, I'll probably be working on this incident...).

    1. Re:The opposite by Kell+Bengal · · Score: 4, Informative

      Oh for mod points - fellow rotorhead here. There's so much that could have gone wrong. Without more info it's just speculation at best.

      --
      Scientists point out problems, engineers fix them
      altslashdot.org: The future of slashdot.
  22. All helicopter crew released from hospital by Animats · · Score: 4, Informative

    The helicopter crew is out of hospital. All four of them.