Software Update Adds Autonomous Driving To Tesla's Bag of Tricks (nytimes.com)

An anonymous reader writes with the news that Tesla owners today found their cars had been upgraded with the company's new autopilot feature: "That means the next time you see a Model S cruising next to you on the interstate, look closely: It may be driving itself." Adds the submitter: Well, I guess some of you will be celebrating this; but this submitters' fear, is that if this technology becomes pervasive, the skill of operating a vehicle will be lost, as is any skill that isn't practiced regularly. It is unlikely that 'self-driving cars' will reach a point where they can handle 100% of all driving circumstances without human intervention, emergency circumstances being the first and foremost example of what an automated system could not adequately handle unaided; what will we do then, when injuries that could have been avoided or when lives are lost because people aren't competent to operate a vehicle any longer?

Comments

Re:We do what we always do ...

[morethanapapercert]

Having worked in road construction, one of the more dangerous jobs in Canada according to Workman's Comp stats, I have one area of curiosity regarding autonomous vehicles:

How well do they handle signals by flagmen, police officers and so on? As far as I know, no autonomous system to date has the ability to see and correctly interpret traffic control flags or hand signals. (for that matter, how would one program a car so as to recognize a cop or construction workers hand signals but treat bicyclists hand signals differently and ignore non significant gestures by pedestrians, other drivers etc?)

Right now, as far as I know, they will correctly avoid barrels or pylons, but only by treating them as static objects to be navigated around, stopping if it can't figure out a safe path between or around them. There is no special rule set that tells it "objects of these shapes and colour combinations indicate a construction zone or accident site, switch to rule set B (for slower speeds, more weight given to moving objects in the sensor periphery etc)" Back when I was on the road crew, close calls by confused or distracted drivers was a daily occurrence. Sure, the computer is never distracted (one hopes!, the computer equivalent I guess would be wrongly weighting one set of inputs over another) but it would be easier to confuse it, especially when there are multiple workers in safety vests pointing and signalling to each other within the same view arc as the flagman or cop.

A related issue would be properly navigating the thicket of pylons or traffic "barrels", correctly following the temporary lane(s) and not mistakenly taking an opening in the pylon line right into the work site. This particular problem could be at least partly dealt with by more standardization on work site markings, minimum and maximum distances between pylons tightened up. On the car end, the software would have to allow for correct navigation between said pylons when the usual road markings are absent, indeed, even the usual pavement is missing.

As it stands now, construction and accident sites I think are places where the autonomous vehicle just gives up and signals the driver to assume control. Thing is, one of the hoped for benefits of autonomous vehicles is the ability to have a non-driver, sick, sleeping or drunk driver to safely get from A to B. And I'm sure the transport industry is looking forward to when they can have only a single driver or perhaps even no driver at all, allowing the truck to go non-stop. None of that is going to work very well if the vehicles can't handle a construction site.