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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.
I don't think you need to get very fancy... I would think a laser or extremely bright light bought from eBay would similarly blind a human "sensor".
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
If you spent the same resources to fool a human driver, how hard would that be?
Exactly, for far less than $90,000 you can set up a water curtain projection system that would fool any unsuspecting driver. Put one on a highway and show a film of an approaching wrong-way driving semi and let the hilarity commence.
They are already used as hard-to-miss warning signs on some roads: https://youtu.be/Dk9DjO-_rT8
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.
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.