Speaking of things autonomous and winter related

"whiskeybusiness NOW A DANGER TO CROWDS NEAR YOU" (whiskey-business)
10/15/2015 at 15:04 • Filed to: None

How are the autonomous vehicles going to do in snow and ice? Specifically the Tesla- fully autonomous driving, in heavy traffic, on continuously varying m surfaces. With boatloads of instant torque. I expect to see a lot of this

DISCUSSION (17)

HammerheadFistpunch > whiskeybusiness NOW A DANGER TO CROWDS NEAR YOU
10/15/2015 at 15:14

No worse than people...at least for managing traction. They wont work at all, however, in the snow for lack of confident sensor vision.

Battery Tender Unnecessary > whiskeybusiness NOW A DANGER TO CROWDS NEAR YOU
10/15/2015 at 15:45

I think a bigger issue will be inclement weather and salt accumulation on cameras, etc. impairing the cars ability to quantify the world around it. Tunnels also pose a problem for radar based sensor systems.

functionoverfashion > whiskeybusiness NOW A DANGER TO CROWDS NEAR YOU
10/15/2015 at 15:48

In reading the articles about the automation - at least in its current state - it will only take control when it’s confident in its surroundings enough to do so. Then, it pings you to take back control if it feels the need, which seems to answer the adverse conditions question. So for this iteration of semi- autonomous vehicles, they will be limited to conditions in which they are able to accurately sense the world around them in order to function within the rules that are being built to guide them.

Basically, the answer to every question of, “What about ____?” is that the car will require you to take control. Given that weather will always be a problem for driving, not to mention the imperfect nature of our road infrastructure, I would imagine that would be the case for quite some time.

Maybe those who choose to have a fully-autonomous vehicle will not be able to go out on the roads when it’s really snowy! Leaving more room for those of us with “old-fashioned driver-controlled” cars to have fun! Sounds great to me, it seems like half the people out in the snow should have stayed home anyway.

Wrong Wheel Drive (41%) > whiskeybusiness NOW A DANGER TO CROWDS NEAR YOU
10/15/2015 at 15:48

Based on how bad people are at driving on clear roads, how much worse they are in the rain, and how apocalyptically bad they are in the snow, I can't imagine it being very difficult for a computer to do a better job than most people.

jariten1781 > HammerheadFistpunch
10/15/2015 at 15:51

Yep, going to require redoing infrastructure to do something to allow the cars to see through opaque covering of lines if you want full autonomy. Probably something like laying cable that can be sensed where all the standard road markings go. Ain’t gonna be cheap.

Other, more fun, option I’ve thought of is to certify folks to be car train drivers. When weather goes poor the folks in the fully autonomous pods pull off and wait for a good Samaritan/city employee whose certified for full manual control/foul weather to come by then their auto-pods sync in behind and follow. Could go hilariously wrong but it’d be way cheaper so it has potential.

whiskeybusiness NOW A DANGER TO CROWDS NEAR YOU > Wrong Wheel Drive (41%)
10/15/2015 at 15:58

Eh proximity sensors in snow are always questionable, computers can’t really make up for that.

whiskeybusiness NOW A DANGER TO CROWDS NEAR YOU > functionoverfashion
10/15/2015 at 15:59

Making people go back to driving while enjoying not driving seems. . . interesting. We’ll see how it goes. And I agree, more room on the road for us funloving plebs.

whiskeybusiness NOW A DANGER TO CROWDS NEAR YOU > Battery Tender Unnecessary
10/15/2015 at 16:00

Didn’t even think about that. Ooh, and wiring for those things is gonna have to be replaced as scheduled maintenance lol.

AMGtech - now with more recalls! > whiskeybusiness NOW A DANGER TO CROWDS NEAR YOU
10/15/2015 at 16:25

Oh, haven’t you heard? The world’s top automotive manufactures have teamed up with various mad scientist villains and are currently developing a weather control device to prevent there every being anything but light rain and sunshine ever again.

CB > whiskeybusiness NOW A DANGER TO CROWDS NEAR YOU
10/15/2015 at 16:30

Well, apparently the roads in Ontario open up for autonomous testing in January, so we’ll see!

whiskeybusiness NOW A DANGER TO CROWDS NEAR YOU > AMGtech - now with more recalls!
10/15/2015 at 16:55

Elon is gonna start nuking our poles too?

whiskeybusiness NOW A DANGER TO CROWDS NEAR YOU > CB
10/15/2015 at 16:57

I look forward to the madness.

Kinja'd!!!

BoxerFanatic, troublesome iconoclast. > whiskeybusiness NOW A DANGER TO CROWDS NEAR YOU
10/15/2015 at 17:49

1: How do you account for people sleeping at the wheel when the car is autonomously driving, and needs to hand back control?

2: How do you account for liability? If the car is driving, is the car company liable if it can’t avoid an unexpected dangerous condition, or if it can’t properly fail safely if something on the car breaks, or if some other driver is still driving their car, and has to make an emergency maneuver to avoid an unexpected event?

There is no computer better than the human brain, even if some people choose to ignore theirs sometimes... no silicon mathematics and logic machine is as adaptive, perceptive, or versatile, even if the silicon machines are possibly faster, they are still limited by rigid adherence to almost-certain programming issues of unforeseeable situations or input/output failures.

whiskeybusiness NOW A DANGER TO CROWDS NEAR YOU > BoxerFanatic, troublesome iconoclast.
10/15/2015 at 18:51

I agree wholeheartedly. The whole thing is a big shit-show that could be avoided by people being less lazy and stupid.

The Transporter > whiskeybusiness NOW A DANGER TO CROWDS NEAR YOU
10/15/2015 at 21:20

Autonimous cars will be like EVs: only Californians will buy them, so your question is moot.

AMGtech - now with more recalls! > whiskeybusiness NOW A DANGER TO CROWDS NEAR YOU
10/15/2015 at 22:35

Pretty much. He is the key after all. Being both manufacturer and mad scientist.

whiskeybusiness NOW A DANGER TO CROWDS NEAR YOU > The Transporter
10/16/2015 at 01:37

I almost made a snarky Silicon Vally quip in my OP, and I’m glad someone thinks like I do.