Autopilot Maturity

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Still not mature technology and requires situational awareness of the driver. The Tesla driver wasn't paying attention. I thought I read somewhere the driver had a similar glitch at the same spot but retained control and had complained of glitches in the auto pilot software.
 
Originally Posted By: Y_K

First Volvo, then Tesla X


You need to be educated . Volvo does not have auto pilot software or ability. Furthermore the Volvo auto braking safety feature/system that likely would have saved the pedestrian was disabled by Uber.

Uber was testing:running its own system for auto pilot inwhat happened to be a Volvo. I concur that the Uber system clearly not ready for prime time. However you cannot associate Volvo with it.
 
All of Tesla's blah blah excuses.

Couldn't "See" a semi trailer as there was clear air under the trailer. Driver having hands off the wheel for 6 seconds, and should have been paying attention are all excuses for product testing in the real world, with other people's lives to use as learning points.

It, their driver into the semi trailer are all great to blame the "driver", when clearly their "auto pilot" can't "pilot", even on the Telsa picked sections of road that it's enabled on.

Was nice of them to have such an egress friendly accident performance however...

Uber, same thing...first, release the video that showed the "driver" texting, when the computer should have seen clearly what the person with the bicycle was crossing the road, whole lanes before not slowing before strike.
 
The fact is, humans and autopilots are going to make different kinds of mistakes. We can "hone" autopilot technology over time. We cannot improve the typical driver, even with drastic measures.

In the aviation world, pilots have been trained to absurdity, yet continue to make the same mistakes they've always made. The crash rate remains relatively unchanged over the last 60 years.

HOWEVER, I've been driving for 40 years and I'm still alive. The autopilot killed this guy 6 seconds after he took his hands off the wheel. Self driving cars are NOWHERE near ready.
 
Aircraft autopilots have a limited set of things that they have to get right...x, y, z, and a limited number of things in the way...

Cars, have a virtually infinitely changing environment that even the same path day to day will need thousands of different scenarios run and solved for today's variables.

Impossible to pre-emptively programme for, the most sound systems look like engaging "deep learning", from tagging along with experienced drivers, and developing the "instinct" ...same as we teach people, tagging along with an experienced doer/mentor.

Scary part is that we can never find out why these self learning programmes do what they do...same systems in medicine can pre-diagnose mental illness episodes. No-one will ever find out why.

But the current systems are dumb...as smart as the programmer thinks he is.
 
Originally Posted By: Shannow
Aircraft autopilots have a limited set of things that they have to get right...x, y, z, and a limited number of things in the way...

Cars, have a virtually infinitely changing environment


That's correct, in fact the term "autopilot" is not even close to accurate for cars. I prefer the term "self driving cars". (NOTE: current gen aircraft autopilots are exceptionally capable and can autoland million pound aircraft)

Nor can a self driving car make a moral judgement, such as whether to careen off the road, into a playground on the right or sidewalk on the left. Humans can, and regularly make these judgements instantly.
 
Last year some young guys flew up behind us as we did 70 mph on the freeway (country areas) … you know, gonna be cool and whip their cheap sedan right by our rear bumper. Darn - an F150 barely ahead and they can’t slow so they shot a tiny gap between us and the car can’t handle. So now they are doing ~70 mph SIDEWAYS … blue smoke pouring off of all 4 tires!!!
So my microprocessor is going “heavy lean, roll over potential, F150 now blocks my left, side road culvert on right … another pickup close behind me …
Braking is all I had for a split second ~ but knew that car would of gone airborne, or launched parts or debris and right after the culvert I was going to put mine in the grass to the right … (gentle slope …progressive shoulder … ground was very soft from heavy rains, I knew my angle would not be severe) … All of that info passed my mind …
Fortunately the sedan flew into a wide grass median to the left and never rolled …the soft soil spared these punks …

Would the autonomous car have had my contingency plan?
 
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That's correct, in fact the term "autopilot" is not even close to accurate for cars.

Agreed. I think the name is actually a poor choice. I suspect the reason they chose that name was because it was similar to how an airplane autopilot works, the airplane autopilot will also delegate control back to the pilot in unforeseen circumstances.

The problem is, pilots are experienced, trained and they're professionals. The likelihood they will be doing stupid things behind the controls is extremely slim. They know they have a serious responsibility and that they have to be ready at all times.

Contrast that to the stupidity of Tesla drivers, watching movies, being totally asleep at the wheel, they don't appear to care about the danger they pose to everyone else on the road.

They should choose a different name like "driving assist".
 
Human nature being what it is, as the software matures, folks will pay less and less attention to the road while taking care of various other tasks such as texting, email, surfing the net, zoning out, etc. I see then doing these things as a greater and greater portion of the time as these things mature.

Not sure if it will be better with the self driving software, or as it is now with folks texting, etc. It will be interesting.
 
Originally Posted By: 4WD
Last year some young guys flew up behind us as we did 70 mph on the freeway (country areas) … you know, gonna be cool and whip their cheap sedan right by our rear bumper. Darn - an F150 barely ahead and they can’t slow so they shot a tiny gap between us and the car can’t handle. So now they are doing ~70 mph SIDEWAYS … blue smoke pouring off of all 4 tires!!!

Exactly, a defensive driver may anticipate that out of control vehicle's dynamics correctly. Those 4 smoking tires might obscure a camera, but a good driver knows what's happening next! Furthermore, a good driver avoids being in the vicinity of idiots on the road. Let's see your camera based system do that.
 
Originally Posted By: Cujet
“Exactly, a defensive driver may anticipate that out of control vehicle's dynamics correctly. Those 4 smoking tires might obscure a camera, but a good driver knows what's happening next! Furthermore, a good driver avoids being in the vicinity of idiots on the road. Let's see your camera based system do that.”

This is a key point. A good driver doesn’t just concentrate on the vehicles just ahead but scans the roadway up ahead. On a freeway when I see brake lights half a mile ahead I am already backing off the throttle and checking my spacing. Many drivers will speed on past only to slam on the brakes which shows they were not aware. Self driving systems are not this smart and this is just one scenario out of many.
 
A good driver usually does not stay glued to their smartphone while driving.

I'd like to think that I'm a fairly competent driver and it took me roughly 30 minutes behind the Model S and it's autopilot to realize that it has some serious shortcomings and should not be left unattended.

Fact that so many people blindly put their lives in the hands of a beta tester program tells me that they're pretty bad driver to begin with and can't determine good driving characteristics from bad ones.
 
Here is a poser: You are in a self driving car. There is a woodchuck in the road when you go around a sharp bend, if the car goes off the road there will be severe damage (big rocks, trees, alligators, what have you). If the car goes straight ahead it will run over the woodchuck. There is not enough time to stop. What will that car do? I don't think the autonomous cars are smart enough to tell a big ol' woodchuck or a small bear or a dog from a person. My point is that a human driver would take a larger risk of damaging his car or person to avoid hitting a person than hitting a woodchuck. I don't think the autonomous car can discern the difference.
 
Being raised on a farm I don't have the Bambi syndrome, so the woodchuck would get run over. In fact any animal smaller than a deer probably would in the situation you described.

Larger animals like deer, cattle, moose, definitely try to avoid because they can go through the windshield and kill all occupants.

A person, well that also depends, if I have my wife and kids with me, I'm not going to put their lives at risk.
 
Good points made above. It is true that airplane autopilots do not use "Artificial Vision" to guide the airplane down to a landing or in other modes. Airplane autopilots are more just into speed control, pitch control, roll control, altitude control, heading control, turn coordination, velocity vector control, vertical speed control, yaw damping, and/or path control (ILS, GPS, etc.) depending on which autopilot mode you want to talk about.

No obstacle avoidance built in to autopilots. (TCAS requires the pilot to act on the warnings.)

This is indeed a lot simpler than the self-driving cars task of being able to make velocity vector decisions based on radar, visual, and acoustic (sonar) sensor-fusion correlations. Humans are usally pretty good at that. Artificial intelligence algorithms must be used to decide which way to steer the car, base on uncertain, noisy, or partially attenuated inputs.

And then, the computer operating systems and overall hardware/software reliability & availability must be very high to keep from killing somebody from time to time.
 
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I recently had to negotiate my lane in freeway traffic when some items fell off a car in front of me. I had to decide whether the items were soft or rigid. It took me a moment, but decided they were rigid and took evasive action to avoid car damage. Again, this was human decision that was better than any computer with sensors.
 
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