Self-Driving Cars' Shortcomings Revealed in DMV Reports (mercurynews.com)

A demand from the California DMV of eight companies testing self-driving cars has highlighted a number of areas where the technology falls short of being safe to operate with no human backup. From a report: All companies testing autonomous vehicles on the state's public roads must provide annual reports to the DMV about "disengagements" that occur when a human backup driver has to take over from the robotic system. The DMV told eight companies with testing permits to provide clarification about their reports. More than 50 companies have permits to test autonomous vehicles with backup drivers on California roads but not all of them have deployed vehicles.

It turns out that a number of the issues reported are shared across technology from different companies. Some of the problems had to do with the way the cars sense the environment around them. Others had to do with how the vehicles maneuver on the road. And some had to do with what you might expect from systems made up of networked gadgets: hardware and software failures. The disengagement reports themselves identify other problems some self-driving vehicles struggle with, for example heavy pedestrian traffic or poorly marked lanes.

Comments

Holy shit ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Baidu, a Chinese internet-search giant, reported a case in which driver had to take over because of a faulty steering maneuver by the robot car; several cases of âoemisclassifiedâ traffic lights; a failure to yield for cross traffic; delayed braking behind a car that cut quickly in front; drifting out of a lane; and delayed perception of a pedestrian walking into the street.

Automotive supplier Delphi noted that its autonomous system âoeencountered difficulty identifying a particular traffic light,â and also said a GPS problem meant a vehicle didnâ(TM)t know where it was. Delphiâ(TM)s system also had issues with unexpected - usually illegal - behavior by other drivers, the company said in its report to the DMV.

Drive.ai - which makes artificial intelligence software for self-driving vehicles - cited reasons for disengagement that included the swerving of a vehicle within a lane and "jerky or uncomfortable braking." The firm also noted a "localization error" that meant a vehicle was uncertain of its location, and a discrepancy in data from different sensors on a vehicle.

Holy shit, they've just described, you know ... driving.

This shit is what happens pretty much daily, and for which the act of driving requires you to have a high degree of situational awareness.

Just this morning as I was driving into work, some clown turning off a street into the road I was driving on ... he hesitated, then apparently said "fuck it" and went anyway. Unfortunately he didn't seem to be aware enough or intelligent enough to have noticed me. The end result was I had to pretty much do a panic stop behind some idiot who unsafely pulled out into oncoming traffic, and was pretty much suddenly in front of me and driving at half my speed (which was the posted limit).

Why the hell are these companies acting like they have self-driving cars when they clearly can't handle driving in the real world.

This shit is never going to work if it can't handle random, illegal, and stupid behaviour from the humans on the road. And if they think the world is going to replace all cars with autonomous vehicles, then clearly they expect the rest of us to pay for that future.

This is just hubris from the tech industry who are pretending they're closer to solutions that work in the real world than they really are. The fact of the matter is, we're not all going to run out and buy new cars to allow this awesome future as envisioned by corporations to actually ever happen.

Sorry, but all of the stuff in the above quote is pretty much mandatory for driving a car.

Re:what's the plan for moral choice?

[The Grim Reefer]

so if I'm a self driving car with no backup operator, do I prioritize the safety of my passengers? if I have to run down 5 people to keep my rider safe, do I do that?

The car should run over the 5 pedestrians, then the litter of puppies across the street and finally drive off of a bridge. Bonus points if the horn sounds like a maniacal laugh or plays Dixie.

what if I have to do the whole run over your mother / a baby / a nun or run over a bunch of assholes? how are they ever going to solve for this, because whatever it chooses will be wrong

Run over my mother, sideswipe the baby so it goes airborne into a dumpster, and back over the 5 assholes. Preferably spinning the tires on their dismembered corpses. The nun is difficult. I'm not sure if it will piss off more people to hit the nun, or avoid her after all of the other carnage.

You're right, some situations are difficult. Oh wait, avoid the nun and run a bus full of orphans off of a cliff. That will probably piss the nun off to. Problem solved.