New York Begins Taking Applications For Self-Driving Car Tests (fastcompany.com)

An anonymous reader writes: New York Governor Andrew Cuomo says the state is now taking applications to test self-driving cars on public roadways. The program requires licensees to have a $5 million insurance policy. Cars must also pass federal and New York automotive safety standards and all test reports must be submitted to the state by March of next year.

Comments

How does a car...

[gfxguy]

... fill out an application? Mad props to those car makers!

Re:How does a car...

[Anonymous Coward]

If its able to drive on the road it should be able to fill out a form... Come on!

emulation

[nnet]

I can't wait to see these vehicles emulate NY road rage.

Re:emulation

[Applehu Akbar]

I can't wait to see these vehicles emulate NY road rage.

They're going to do it with a New York Language Module, preloaded with all those top-of-the-voice expressions like fakakte! and Ya talkin-a-me, pallie? A special swing-put arm will be used to signal the "New York state bird" when merging into traffic.

Criteria

[fluffernutter]

I hope this test is very different from a regular driving test. It should involve unexpected circumstances such as driving through construction zones (with flag men, with cones, with posts, with speed limit reductions), damaged signs and markers, hidden lane markings, and all types of possible weather conditions. Visibility of small animals, visibility of children, how it reacts to a shopping bag blowing across the road. General ability to drive in a way that is normal and expected to other humans on the road. If they have taken for granted all the situations that humans don't have a problem dealing with, then they aren't really testing self driving at all.

Re:Criteria

[ShanghaiBill]

With the exception of the flagmen, everything else you listed is something that SDCs already do better than HDCs. They handle damaged/missing signs better because they have a database that says what signs are supposed to be there. They handle missing lane markings better because they can fall back on GPS and data of where other cars drove on that section of road. They handle animals, children, and blowing bags better because of their much better attention and reaction times.

Re:Criteria

[fluffernutter]

I have yet to see any evidence of what you say. You can't rely on a database without a method to keep it up to date from every jurisdiction. Following GPS by rote is risky for the same reason. If they can understand what a construction zone is, that is news to me. My concern with children is that there has been evidence that some vehicles don't have 100% coverage by the sensors. For example, autopilot has trouble with overhanging trailers; any situation where the contact with the ground is recessed. So obviously there is no sensor guarding the top of the car, it is only pointed at the road. A shopping bag is the opposite problem. It should be able to determine that the bag is light enough to drive through rather than stopping unnecessarily and surprising drivers behind it.

Re:Criteria

[ShanghaiBill]

You can't rely on a database without a method to keep it up to date from every jurisdiction.

No you don't. An SDC only needs up-to-date info for where it is actually driving. If I am driving to work in San Jose, California, it doesn't really matter that the data for Mobile, Alabama is a little out of date. Anyway, SDCs have a method for keeping data up-to-date: The cellular network.

Re:Criteria

[fluffernutter]

You are never going to get any jurisdiction to keep a database of road markers up to date to real time, it just won't happen.

Re:Criteria

[ShanghaiBill]

You are never going to get any jurisdiction to keep a database of road markers up to date to real time, it just won't happen.

It doesn't work that way. As an SDC drives down a street, it recognizes road signs, mileage markers, etc. If these differ from what it is expecting, the change is reported back to the mothership. They don't wait on the jurisdiction's bureaucracy for updates. It is an automated process.

Re:Criteria

[fluffernutter]

Right but then if a stop sign is missing what does it do at that point until the 'mother ship' confirms what is going on? Still stop even though the jurisdiction removed the stop sign? That's going to cause traffic snarls and issues. What about 'no left turn during rush hour signs'? If it doesn't find one suddenly will it turn and risk a ticket or will it stop and frustrate everyone?

Re:Criteria

[torkus]

Observational data is what the SDCs use as their primary resource and will always trump any database records.

Your argument is classic straw man. If a no-left-turn sign is removed, then so is the restriction. You aren't risking a ticket, and there's no reason to expect a SDC would abide by a non-existent sign. And besides that, since you really want to use a nonsensical argument, the SDC wouldn't have planned a route that involved making a left hand turn that it already 'knew' was prohibited. So even before you get to your argument, it's moot.

Re:Criteria

[fluffernutter]

If the no left turn sign is bent in a way that it is not recognized, then it is a violation. In my city signs will stay bent for weeks. What happens once one car doesn't detect the sign? It will tell all the OTHER cars that it is ok to go that way! What if someone obscures the sign? Still a violation.

You're dreaming if you think this could ever work. The 'live database' solution is riddled with problems, not the least of which is that cars are not good at adapting to slight differences. In fact it would be a disaster if only one car were to make a mistake and the rest followed. You need to think this out more.

It is bad enough when a human gets confused in traffic, we don't need a thousand SDCs on the road that will confuse each other.