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Researchers Discover How To Fool Tesla's Autopilot System (cnet.com)
An anonymous reader writes from a report via CNET: Researchers from the University of South Carolina, Zhejiang University and Qihoo 360 have discovered how to fool Tesla's Autopilot sensors, according to a report from Wired. The researchers were able to trick the system into thinking an object didn't exist when it did, and that an object existed when in fact it did not. Therefore, possible security concerns arise as Autopilot could drive incorrectly, potentially putting passengers and others in danger. CNET reports: "Two pieces of radio equipment were used to convince Tesla's radar sensor that a cart was not placed directly in front of it. One of those pieces, a signal generator from Keysight Technologies, costs about $90,000. The group also tricked the car's short-range parking sensors into malfunctioning using about $40 worth of equipment. Wired points out that this was, thankfully, a rather difficult feat. Most of the technological tomfoolery was done on a stationary car. Some of the required equipment was expensive, and it didn't always work. But it brings up an important point -- even though Autopilot is quite capable, there's still no substitute for an attentive human driver, ready to take control at a moment's notice."
Because it's so hard to make humans see or not see things.
If you spent the same resources to fool a human driver, how hard would that be?
Of course you can trick any sensor invented by man some way or other. That's nothing new. We even know tons of ways to trick the sensors made by god/nature aka our eyes as well. Shine a bright light into them for $10 or maybe $100 and the driver will be forced to drive blind. Or you can have a $0 natural snow storm and the driver will also be on literally very dangerous ground: zero visibility and icy roads.
The point is not that either can be fooled, the point is, is the mechanical sensor better or at least equal to mark I eyeball? Is the program doing the automatic driving at least as good as an average driver? as good as the best driver possible?
Yes, someone going through great effort can cause a crash. I've know cases where people stoodn on overpasses and threw down bricks to cause crashes. Nobody published papers on the "brick loophole" in car security. In most of the examples, it'd have been easier to just cut the brake lines. But we have to target the sensors to get media attention, for a non-story.
Learn to love Alaska
Researchers discover that for $100 they can dig a hole, cover it with a thin layer of asphault and potentially kill a driver.
In other news, researchers also discover that $3 hedge clippers can cut a brake line endangering drivers.
Researchers discover that $10 high powered flash light carefully timed at a blind corner can confuse a human driver's imaging sensors.
The last sentence sums up what Elon Musk has been saying about AutoPilot:
"even though Autopilot is quite capable, there's still no substitute for an attentive human driver, ready to take control at a moment's notice."
The technology is not called "self driving" - it is called autopilot. Similar to plane where course and speed are maintained. Tesla reminds users to keep hands on the wheel and remain attentive.
No news here. Couple that with the cost of the hack, and there is not much to report. I could fool a real driver with mirrors and some Acme landscape canvas.
It seems to me that the best choice is if both the human driver is paying attention and the autopilot is on.
And how in the HELL do you figure that when the autopilot is going to make split-second sub-human decisions to react and manipulate a vehicle to dodge an imaginary object that the human can clearly see does not exist? By the time the human reacts, the autopilot may have already put them and others around them in considerable danger (like SLAMMING on the brakes to avoid an imaginary object on a freeway).
Second best is the autopilot by itself (at least it can pay attention all of the time)
And as these sensor hacks get fine-tuned, they will be able to fool the autopilot all of the time. No, this isn't the answer either.
, and last is the human (who can both be fooled and be inattentive).
Inattentive? Yes. Fooled by an imaginary invisible object? Highly unlikely.
This entire proof of concept was to demonstrate that machine sensors are still not that intelligent, and can be fooled worse than a 5-year old.
That it takes $90,000 worth of equipment and then always doesn't work right is pretty darn impressive to me. Where I live a good 30 percent of drivers are too old to be behind the wheel and another 10 percent are functional alcoholics. Share the road with south Florida drivers long enough and you'll be begging for autopilot.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Basically.
I was thinking more of painting the road lines into a rock wall, then painting a picture of a tunnel on said wall.
(Then waiting for a roadrunner to come by)
After all, Coyote v. Acme was this country's longest running product liability suit. Though the plaintiff, a partially disabled male Canis latrans, meticulously documented his problems with Acme's mail order line of bird-trapping hardware in a long series of filmstrips and videos, his evidence was leaked to the public, exposing Coyote to generations of ridicule. Most recently the Ninth Circuit sent the case back to lower courts, ruling that Coyote had no standing to invoke the Americans With Disabilities Act, since the ADA applies only to humans.
... by a painted tunnel.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
> After all, Coyote v. Acme was this country's longest running product liability suit.
I don't see where he'd have standing to sue under the ADA in any case, since Wile. E. Coyote _won_ his lawsuit for manufacturing defects in 1990.
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