Slashdot Mirror
Google Wants To Test Driverless Cars In a Simulation
An anonymous reader writes Google has been testing its autonomous vehicles on U.S. roads for a while now. In fact, they're required to, by law. "California's regulations stipulate autonomous vehicles must be tested under "controlled conditions" that mimic real-world driving as closely as possible. Usually, that has meant a private test track or temporarily closed public road." It's easy enough to test a few prototypes, but whenever autonomous cars start being produced by manufacturers, it'll become a lot more complicated. Now, Google is lobbying to change that law to allow testing via computer simulation. Safety director Ron Medford said, "Computer simulations are actually more valuable, as they allow manufacturers to test their software under far more conditions and stresses than could possibly be achieved on a test track." Google spokeswoman Katelin Jabbari said, "In a few hours, we can test thousands upon thousands of scenarios which in terms of driving all over again might take decades." Shee adds that simulator data can also easily provide information on how human behavior creeps into driving. "It's not just about the physics of avoiding a crash. It's also about the emotional expectation of passengers and other drivers." For example, when one of Google's computer-controlled cars is cut off, the software brakes harder than it needs to, because this makes the passengers feel safer. Critics say relying heavily on simulation data is flawed because it doesn't take into account how other cars react to the computer's driving.
until it's your life.
Test in the fscking simulation and then test on the street. Win-win.
The problem with simulator testing is that you can't test scenarios that you didn't think of. This is particularly important to find problems arising from multiple simultaneous situations. For example, you might test the scenarios "front camera obscured by rain", "car ahead of you performs emergency stop", and "dog runs into street", but that doesn't necessarily tell you how the car will respond to a combination of the three.
Real life is far more creative than any scenario designer.
"They redundantly repeated themselves over and over again incessantly without end ad infinitum" -- ibid.
may help test software but not the full hardware and how well it works in all kinds of weather / settings. Also what about road conditions / slight lines? odd traffic light layouts / intersections? Just useing google street view as the input likely will not get the full lay out from each lane / all times of day / all cycles.
... lack of randomness.
Will they simulate a 3 year old tossing a sandwich out the window into oncoming traffic?
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
Are we really having a public, political, emotional discussion about the relative merits of ATE vs Validation testing? Come on, Slashdot, you're a bunch of engineers, right? Does the CA state legislature have ANYTHING of value to add to your FMEA? What about your production planning? Test plan? V&V protocols?
It's the height of hubris for outsiders (especially lawyers in the state legislature) to come in and dictate low-level engineering details. A responsible legislature (and public) would acknowledge that they have NOTHING of value to add to the discussion.
The only appropriate regulation is "make it X safe." Don't tell us engineers to get there, and we won't tell you lawyers how to snort coke of a hooker's tits.
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-Scott Adams
Simulations don't account for faults in the design or manufacturing.
You don't have to test every car to find faults in the design. You only have to test one.
Faults in manufacturing are not unique to self-driving-cars. So why should only SDCs require testing of every car?
Sure, but the article isn't taking about simulations vs real life. It's talking about simulations vs contrived but legally required tests on manufacturer test tracks. Both are limited by imagination but simulations are more thorough, at least according to Google
Can someone give me the obligatory car analogy?
moose and squirrel. well played, sir.
Found a bug in physics.c, those cars we mass produced last year will spontaneously explode after 367 days of exposure to an atmosphere containing oxygen, or when white lines are painted rather than vinyl, or when attempting a corner of a prime number of degrees when speeding on a cambered road.
Why wasn't this spotted sooner?
Because we hadn't expected to need chemistry or non-Euclidian geometry in a physics engine.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)