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Tesla Files Patent For Automatic Turn Signals (cnet.com)
Tesla has filed a patent for automatic turn signals. The filing details a system that uses Autopilot sensors to determine when drivers are going to make a turn and signal automatically. CNET reports: Tesla wants its vehicles to signal automatically without the driver needing to go through the agony that is lifting their finger and moving it up or down by several inches. The way that Tesla envisions it working is that the car detects the driver's intent to change lanes or make a turn by using the Autopilot hardware at its disposal, it then works to sense if there are other vehicles nearby and if it detects them, it puts the signal on for the driver. If it works, it will be brilliant but given the fact that Tesla has remained adamant that it doesn't need driver monitoring systems for Autopilot, it seems questionable that the vehicle would be able to detect a driver's intent to turn based solely on external observation.
The point of turn signals is not to engage when the turn is in progress, but to indicate the intent of a turn. Doing it when the drive is pulling on the wheel to make the turn will go against the road rules of many locales.
Unless of course Tesla has developed a telepathic module for their cars. In which case I take back what I said.
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the agony that is lifting their finger and moving it up or down by several inches.
Several inches? Is that what it takes on a Tesla? On all my cars, and my parents cars, going back nearly forty years of driving, the turn signal only takes (or took) a half and inch or so – up or down – to activate.
OTOH, getting drivers – Tesla or otherwise – to put down their phone or coffee to signal a turn probably is asking a lot.
In other news I predict a fresh rash of accidents as people pull out in front of a Tesla that has its turn signal on.
The way that Tesla envisions it working is that the car detects the driver's intent to change lanes or make a turn by using the Autopilot hardware at its disposal, it then works to sense if there are other vehicles nearby and if it detects them, it puts the signal on for the driver.
Except the law requires you to signal when turning even if no other cars are nearby in many states. Similarly for lane changes. This needs to be done ahead of time, say 100 feet for example. So it would have to be fairly floolproof or it could wind up backfiring if it failed and tickets were issued or an accident happened. Sometimes when a company files patents like this it is simply and attempt to create a wall of IP such that others find it difficult to compete or sometimes it's simply to pad a portfolio even if it's not used. I'm personally not able to see how this would be useful as part of a manually plioted car.
Presumably if the car knows where my destination is and the route I intend to take, it can use the turn signals appropriately without my input - no sophisticated body-language-reading AI required.
You'd make a fortune in Kentucky. When I lived there ~20 years ago if you saw someone use their turn signals on I64, it was even odds that they had out-of-state plates.
I have no idea what the situation is now, but based on my co-workers being surprised when I turned my head to check my blind spot when changing lanes, I'm guessing it hasn't changed much.
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
So Tesla is doing mind reading tech now?
If you are using the built in GPS, then the car knows the destination. If the directions say to turn at the next intersection, and the driver merges into the right lane and slows down, it is reasonable to assume the intent is to turn. They can also keep a count of how often the driver turns without signaling, and "help" those with poor habits.
Anyway, 99% of "obvious" patents posted on Slashdot are really not so obvious. You have to read the "claims" section, written in dense legalize, to understand what is actually being patented, and it is usually very different from the headline written to manufacture outrage.
Disclaimer: I have not read the patent.
Seriously.
How will the former BMW drivers disable it?
Decent drivers give a fairly early indication of a turn with small movements of the steering wheel (invisible from outside the car), but plenty of not-so-good drivers will turn the steering wheel left before starting the intended right turn. And you wait till it's clear you have turned to turn on the turn signal that's maybe avoiding a ticket with no improvement in safety. Unless this is really meant for slow city traffic and pedestrians in which case...ok...maybe.
Have autopilot execute the turn, but only after the turn signal has been activated (by the driver) an appropriate amount of time.
That is, make it so that the cars make turns that have been properly signalled.
It reduces driver workload and enforces safe driving habits.
tone
seems unsafe!
Why don't people actually read the patent?
The patent is an extension on an already-extant concept of automatic turn signals based on a person about to leave a lane. These suffer from an excessive rate of false negatives and can annoy the driver. The patent extends the concept to reduce the rate of false negatives by checking to see if a turn signal would actually even benefit anyone, and if not, not bothering to turn it on. The flow chart (as spelled out in Fig. 12-14) is "Is vehicle about to cross lane line?" -> "Is driver applying steering action?" -> "Is another vehicle in the vicinity that would benefit?" -> "Activate turn signal". Other elements of nuance include things like where the road is going and thus whether the steering input is likely simply to keep the driver within their lane; and looking at the route the user has selected in navigation to see whether they're likely to (or at least supposed to) be taking a given exit and are likely switching lanes for that.
It's basically just taking more data into account in order to reduce the false positive rate on an already-existing concept.
The chloride owes the sodium money.
Interesting that they could get.a patent for this. So all other automated cars for ever more will have an excuse not to signal, because Tesla owns the patent?
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
If ... the driver merges into the right lane and slows down
Which should only happen after a turn signal is activated, and a head and mirror check. Right?
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That would be illegal in Washington, and many other States. Changing a lane without a signal is a traffic infraction; I hope Tesla likes to pay for those!
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From TFS:
Here's the thing. A very large number of drivers out there are too... something... to signal when they're going to be making a turn. Lazy, stupid, incompetent, rude, selfish, clueless... pick your adjective. Or all of them. So this is a very good thing, in that the rest of us will get more warning that memaw or peepaw is about to disrupt the traffic flow.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
So if the highway or road has a bend in it, your signal will pop on and indicate to those around you that you wish to change lanes. Wonderful!
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I can tell with a decent accuracy whether someone is planning to change lanes. Most of the time they'll shift slightly closer to the other lane first to get a better look. If there's a slow car in front of them, they'll also scoot a bit closer. Some will slow down a bit to let me pass more quickly.
Then every once in a while some idiot in the fast lane will suddenly brake. When I see this I know they're about to miss their exit and will try to cross 4 lanes of traffic in just as many seconds.
Other cases aren't so certain, but helps me prepare for sudden movements. If there's a long line of cars joining the freeway, a few of them will pull out into the 2nd lane, usually the ones doing the tailgating first. Same goes for anytime there's a sudden slowdown in the fast lane.
How about a patent to automatically turn OFF the turn signal that has been left on for the past 5 miles...and the car is still in the same lane? You know the type of driver I'm talking about. The one in the left lane, 10 MPH below the speed limit, driving the late 90s or early 00s Cadillac. Yeah...the one with the tuft of blue hair just barely above the dashboard. On the way to the bingo or shuffle board tournament.
Yes, the dreaded Snow Bird. The only thing worse than no signal is the perpetual signal. You have no idea what their true intention is. All you know is that you need to get the heck away from them. NOW.
This is the car "saving you" from violating this law. It's OK if it tries to only do it when it's pretty sure you forgot and not other times when it thinks you chose not to signal on purpose or that signalling may not be appropriate.
Or were about to turn in the opposite direction. I gave a summer seminar at the University of Louisville years ago, and I never saw so many drivers who were clearly totally wasted. They make some nice bourbon down there, so it was totally understandable. I knew tenured professors there who kept a bottle of Pappy or some other fine bourbon in their desk.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Yes, the fact that he said "marques of car" gave it away.
You are welcome on my lawn.
While this seems a little silly on the surface,
I've noticed since moving to LA that almost nobody uses their turning signals here. It's gotten much worse over the past 7 years.
I'll take any additional help that the car can give these idiots, but I'm concerned that common adoption of features like this will make people even less likely to signal in advance of doing something stupid.
Not sure if patentable but if so Tesla should make available for free to others. Volvo first to widely deploy cross chest seat belt but did not patent and allowed others to use since safety in the interests of advancement of automobiles adoption. A shared safety pact should be adopted by the industry for such features as they are for others.
That's how my mother-in-law's been driving for years.
You are welcome on my lawn.
I think I'd like a feature like this if it at least FORCES the signals to come on as someone is starting to turn, in case they were otherwise going to skip using them at all.
As others said, half of the purpose of a turn signal is to indicate you'd like to turn ... hoping other drivers will cut you some slack and open up a space for you to begin doing it. Automatic signals will be totally useless for this.
So you wouldn't want to get rid of the signal lever here, IMO. But you might want the automatic functionality to kick in when you fail to use it manually.
I could see how this might be cool from a technology perspective, but I have a lot of difficulty believing that it could reach a level of accuracy that could have any practical value.
The real solution is that any driver relying on "automatic turn signals" needs to be taken off the road and not allowed to drive.
But you are a human being with actual intelligence.
Artificial "intelligence" comes nowhere close to the intuitive understanding humans have of other human behaviors.
This is the usual pseudo-futuristic mumbo-jumbo from Tesla they sprout out to change the subject when they are about to miss a financial or a production goal. It used to work, but these days even the rabidly pro-Tesla media are starting to stay away from peddling these musk nuggets, and fewer and fewer people fall for them.
Remember how Tesla announced a few weeks ago how their "security" was second to none and how they would be graciously gifting it to the rest of the automobile world to save it from mistakes? Remember how it happened just before they announced there is no funding and there'll be no buyout?
Remember how we later learned that their software is a hopeless half-maintained hodge-podge of spaghetti code and how their security is worse than the security you typically find in an FX trading startup? Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/Enoug... Only yesterday we received a confirmation - Tesla's "network" melted down precisely in the manner the link above describes it can.
Did we see an article on Slashdot about the Tesla IT problems (a legitimate "nerd news" topic)? Nope. Did we read the news about Tesla's network meltdown? Nope, although in the past much smaller problems with a single company network have been covered regularly.
This announcement is all smoke and mirrors, and it is being spread about to try to build "a positive momentum" ahead of the Tesla troubles that are stacking up for the next few weeks - missing profitability targets, disappearing demand, supplier issues and customer service issues.
Musk may have his left turn signal on, but he's really braking.
I have no question a system which had enough data could do better than random chance at anticipating a turn. The question is how far in advance and how much better than chance?
It's a long established result in neuroscience that your conscious awareness of deciding to move voluntarily actually lags the activation of your motor neurons to actually move by hundreds of milliseconds. Our conscious timeline in which we are aware of the desire to move and the move follows is actually an out-of-order fiction constructed by our brains. Recent research has pushed the awareness of intent in some cases as far back as ten seconds after the actual unconscious decision is made.
If you've ever played a sport like boxing or fencing you'll have had the experience of apparently instantaneous reactions, but really that's just things happening faster than your brain can construct conscious experience of them.
A system that had access to your neural state could probably reliably anticipate your conscious intent to turn by a second or more, but presumably you won't be sticking electrodes on your scalp when you get in the car. The car is going to have to infer what's going on in your head by behavioral cues, and I doubt it will be able to do it accurately enough far enough ahead to be useful -- unless Tesla engineers have noticed something about driver behavior that nobody else was aware of yet. But an invention doesn't have to work well enough to be practical to get patented.
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Some racing video games had this feature where when you changed lanes, the car would start to signal in that direction. There is a game on the Google Play store right now that does this.
Or is prior art negated because it is virtual and doesn't send the actual CANBUS command to trigger the turn signal?
P A T E N T S
-dk
I'm sure they will use recurring trips / timing to calculate likely destination.
Home -> School
School -> Work
Work -> Shop | Work -> Home
[Shop -> Home]
Think roundabouts (or whatever you call them in whichever country you reside). You are required to indicate according to the direction in which you intend to leave the roundabout (or not at all if you're going straight ahead). This could be literally the reverse of the direction you turn upon entering the roundabout, which would be a major source of confusion for other drivers trying to figure out whether or not they could safely enter the roundabout or not.
The patent is an extension on an already-extant concept of automatic turn signals based on a person about to leave a lane.
Really? Never heard of it. Even if all the claims held what you essentially got is an auto-blink that'll start after the person is already crossing into a different lane. Which is legally too late in most jurisdictions and would lead consumers to believe they don't need to blink because the car will do that. But I guess that's the same story as the autopilot, who needs to drive when the car can do that? Tesla makes really great electric cars, but when it comes to self-driving features they're one notch above Uber in shadiness.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Wouldn't 'even benefit anyone' not necessarily comply with traffic laws in all locations? It might need to be GPS-aware so it knows if you are crossing from state-to-state, or country-to-country. This is also a potential complication for SDCs, and in some places (e.g. Northern Ireland and Eire) the road can swap across borders every few hundred metres on an otherwise straightforward drive down the same road.
Indeed, you could be indicating to turn left (come off the roundabout in the UK) while still turning right around it, as you are supposed to initiate the signal to turn off immediately on passing the previous exit. On some roundabouts that are large but have relatively few exits, that could be 20 seconds before you actually turn off, depending on the level of traffic. In London, it could be closer to 20 minutes before.
Donate a license to use this tech to BMW users.
They need it bad!
They can also keep a count of how often the driver turns without signaling, and "help" those with poor habits.
It probably is a lot easier to detect if a driver should have signalled (and didn't), so that's not a bad idea. Especially if by "help" you mean electroshock to the groin.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Anyone who thinks Tesla cars are capable of self driving is drinking too much kool aid. The car can manage itself in some limited scenarios but even there it requires an attentive driver to hit the brakes or overrule the car if it does something dangerous. As such it should be a legal requirement that every semi-autonomous vehicles MUST enforce driver attention. i.e. they must monitor the driver in some way. For example, requiring them to hold the wheel or perform certain tasks, but more sophisticated monitoring is possible.
I think my intelligence allows me to reason about why these drivers do these things and maybe extrapolate it to other situations. As far as recognizing the risk though, just experience alone should be sufficient. It just so happens that that's also what today's "AI" is not terrible at.
Maybe in 70% of the cases, a car edging towards another lane means they're trying to change lanes. If you drive for a million miles, you'll be able to come up with that using just statistics. If you record and label those million miles, you can also train a neural network to recognize it.
The hard part is not that one situation, but thousands of other situations that also need to be recognized. And after recognizing them, some action might need to be taken to mitigate the risk. That's where self-driving cars are having trouble, since that must still be programmed the old fashioned way.
Now if you want to go one step further, you might also want self-driving cars to also behave the same way as humans, so other drivers can continue to receive those cues.
The patent extends the concept to reduce the rate of false negatives by checking to see if a turn signal would actually even benefit anyone, and if not, not bothering to turn it on... "Is another vehicle in the vicinity that would benefit?"
What about people?
When I'm walking down a road and reach a side road I need to cross if there's a car approaching parallel to me I'll pause and check to see if its indicators are flashing before I cross - call it a sensible self preservation tactic. Not that it's a particularly useful tactic though, as it's almost funny how many drivers only indicate after I've stepped into the road. My right of way at that point is somewhat moot.
Honestly this strikes me as just another aid in training bad drivers to be completely lazy and oblivious to everything around them.
It's largely because I can put myself in my own shoes and because I'm sure that I'm not always going to see pedestrians, cyclists, motorbikes, or even other cars that, when driving, I always indicate when I'm about to make a turn or to indicate where I'm going to exit on a roundabout - both on approach and during transit. Doing otherwise just isn't courteous, and is tantamount to dangerous driving.
Yeah, but the moment you add a feature like that to catch cases where a person forgets, people come to rely on it. That's why they got rid of the automatic landing gear extension feature on the Piper Arrow - they found that pilots were relying on it and leaving the control in the "retract" position at all times.
It would be better if instead of turning the turn signal on it just warned the driver that they were turning without indicating. Otherwise people are going to start relying on it like they started to rely on autopilot, and not bothering to do it themselves or pay any attention.
A loud an annoying warning would train people to be better drivers and indicate properly. False positives would be annoying but are going to affect this system just the same.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
If ... the driver merges into the right lane and slows down
Which should only happen after a turn signal is activated, and a head and mirror check. Right?
Well the indicator should only go on after mirrors have been checked and if it is safe. So I cant imainge Telsa managing to install automated indicators without installing driver monitoring (which they are adamant they don't need)
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
signal automatically without the driver needing to go through the agony that is lifting their finger and moving it up or down by several inches
Oh! So THAT'S why no one ever signals. Didn't realize it was causing them such torment.
"'Political News'. Notice that exhibit D. is news expressly designed for political impact, not news about political events."
Ummm.... I'm not sure I've ever seen news about political events that wasn't designed for political impact.
In most states, you must travel at least 100 feet in a lane with your blinker on before you switch lanes. I guess that Tesla software has to be able to predict the future!
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Whatever is written in the fine print of your state law I imagine it is enforced with roughly the same consistency as jaywalking. In other words, only if you do it on the day the cop quite smoking and his daughter fell in love with a guitar player.
It doesn't really matter what you are supposed to do if nobody does it we shouldn't be holding out until we attain better than actual human behavior. In the wild seeing someone signal a turn is rare enough let alone a lane change (with a few exceptions in very dense city commute traffic). I do habitually signal but as a defensive driver I generally ignore signals, defensive driving means not taking an action based on the assumption the signal is correct. You don't turn until their vehicle is stopped or there is enough of a gap to make the turn even if they kept going.
Well the indicator should only go on after mirrors have been checked and if it is safe.
I learned that you turn on the turn signal before checking your mirrors. Of course, when I learned to drive, it was because the driver in the lane next to you might be polite enough to slow down a bit to let you change lanes.
You mean that we're supposed to signal what we are going to do, and not what we are already in the process of doing? I don't know ...
And here I thought I was the only person that watches other drivers and freeway ramps as I approach.
Have they learned nothing from Uber killing pedestrians left and right?
Hey, Chicken Little, a grand total of 1 pedestrian has been killed by an autonomous Uber vehicle. That's one. Singular, not plural.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
In all fairness, actual intelligence also comes nowhere close to understanding human behavior.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
How many human lives are O.K. to kill recklessly? Is "a grand total of 1" the right number for you?
Probably correct about the sensors they are using now.
But the clever engineers designing these control systems are also imagining sensors Tesla might use in the future. Noticing that it is possible to improve an algorithm is important, even if it is a theoretical exercise in the medium term.
When the Musk is asked to write the checks to improve the sensor array from X to either Y or even swankier Z, he will want a list of the delta that Z enables. This could be one bullet point on that list. Now this particular item will be so far down the list that Musk will not even read it, but the little people who do the real implementation will consider it when/if the moment arises.
Don't move the goalposts. You said "Have they learned nothing from Uber killing pedestrians left and right?"
That's like you losing your virginity and immediately talking about how you're sleeping with women left and right.
You're just wrong, "pedestrians" have not been killed, that's just a simple fact. "A pedestrian" has been killed.
At least get the facts right.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
If you drive a SAAB or older Jaguar, the wiring is such crap that it does not matter if you try to use the indicator light.
I don't see why it's bad for the car to blink the turn signal to notify other people what's happening if the driver has failed to. It seems to deeply offend you, though.
No, it doesn't offend me, but it's going to make non-use of blinkers even worse. Why? "The car will do it for me". It's bad enough that lots of drivers don't use their turn signals, now it will become even more problematic as "something else will do it".
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Turn signal effort is an enforced exaction, not a voluntary contribution.
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