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Volvo's Driverless Cars 'Confused' by Kangaroos (bbc.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: Volvo's self-driving technology is struggling to identify kangaroos in the road. The Swedish car-maker's 2017 S90 and XC90 models use its Large Animal Detection system to monitor the road for deer, elk and caribou. But the way kangaroos move confuses it. "We've noticed with the kangaroo being in mid-flight when it's in the air, it actually looks like it's further away, then it lands and it looks closer," its Australia technical manager said. But the problem would not delay the rollout of driverless cars in the country, David Pickett added.
No animal on the planet would run into a kangaroo.
Except for humans. According to TFA there are 16,000 kangaroo strikes per year.
It's not about depth perception.
Roos are erratic creatures and can move very quickly. So one will be grazing 20 metres off the side of the road, become spooked by your headlights, bound onto the road in two or three hops, and hit your car.
It's about a second per hop for roos, so this takes place very quickly, well inside the illuminated area that your headlights project. Often they will appear from the vegetation on the side of the road and then be on the road in one hop, only 10 or so metres in front of you. It's why most cars in rural Australia are festooned with LED light bars and spotlights because the further and - most importantly - the wider you can see at night, the better.
Here are a few typical roo strikes to give you some idea of the problem -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... - This one in particular.
You are in a twisty maze of processor lines, all alike.
There is a lot of hype here.