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Posted Nov 12, 2014, 8:49 AM
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Registered User
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Join Date: Aug 2013
Location: Salt Lake City, Utah
Posts: 1,430
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A little honesty about the current state of technology is always welcome:
Korean Competition Shows Weather Still a Challenge for Autonomous Cars
http://spectrum.ieee.org/cars-that-t...utonomous-cars
Quote:
Last month, Hyundai quietly held its 2014 Future Automobile Technology Competition in South Korea. Out of 12 participating teams, four made it to the final round, which required the cars to navigate a test circuit. The autonomous cars were required to avoid obstacles, stop for pedestrians, obey traffic laws, and do all of the stuff that self-driving cars will have to be able to do if we’re ever going to be able to hop in, plug in a destination, and turn our attention elsewhere. The competition wasn’t anything that we haven’t seen before—except that during the second day of the competition, it rained.
It looks like the team from KAIST’s Unmanned Systems Research Group wasn’t required to let its car traverse the course while it was actively raining, but it started out immediately after a heavy shower, on a wet road. The surface was slippery, certainly, but the real problem is that depending on the angle between the car, wet surfaces, and the sun, the car’s cameras can have a difficult time recognizing all kinds of things, including lane markings and street signs.
What’s particularly interesting here is that KAIST has posted videos from both days of the competition: it’s the same car, on the same track, with the same hardware, running the same SOFTWARE. The only difference is that the road is dry on the first day, and wet on the second day.
We’ve embedded both videos below, but I’d suggest watching them with YouTube Doubler via this link, which plays both videos at the same time, side by side. Or, you can just hit play on both of the embeds below. In either case, if you want to do a comprehensive side-by-side viewing, you’ll need to occasionally skip ahead on the wet track video, since that car has a few, um, issues that it has to work out. Highlights from the second video, when the track was wet, are beneath both vids.
• Video Link
• Video Link
2:02 – Hyundai hits the e-stop when the car appears to miss the center line and veer off to the side of the road. The car is turning straight into the sun when this happens. The car had no issues here during the first day’s “dry run,” and kept to the correct side of the road.
2:50 – Car fails pedestrian detection. Again, it looks a bit like the sun is right behind the pedestrains. The car also did fine here during the dry run.
3:20 – A bit of uncertainty at the intersection here, relative to the dry run.
4:15 – Lane and road detection failure. Looks like the SOFTWARE may have had to be soft-reset?
5:43 – Oops. Car completely fails to detect the curb at the center of an intersection and comes very close to plowing into a light pole. During the dry run, unsurprisingly, it aced this.
7:20 – Hyundai again hits the e-stop. May have been an overabundance of caution with this one (KAIST certainly thinks so), but it does kinda look like the vehicle was heading for another curb. At the very least, it was not following the path that it was expected to follow, and followed a different path than it did when the roads were dry.
8:40 – Car detects one road sign but fails to detect another.
9:15 – During the dry run, the car ran into the barricades here, but did fine on the wet run. Go figure.
9:45 – The car does manage to back into the barricades while parking at the end of the wet run, though.
So, what have we learned?
×Ads by Plus-HD-V1.9cThe first step with any self-driving car is, of course, to get it working under optimal conditions. KAIST and many other groups are very close to being able to do this. But weather is a major source of uncertainty, for both human and robot DRIVERS. Robots are likely to be better at dealing with slippery road surfaces, because they can do things such as controlling the acceleration or braking of each wheel of a car individually to maximize traction. Humans can’t do this.
But the weather-related challenges for autonomous cars are, at this point, nearly all in perception. Wet roads are an issue, but so is heavy fog, rain, and snow. Combining any of these conditions with darkness only compounds the problem. Autonmous cars generally understand the rules of the road, and they know what to do and what not to do in virtually any situation that they might face. But if they don’t have enough accurate information from their sensors, any decision that they make is likely to be a poor one.
We want to thank KAIST’s Unmanned Systems Research Group for posting these videos, even if the competition didn’t go as well as the team might have wanted. We’re very used to seeing the successes of autonomous cars, but it’s much more interesting (and educational) to see what challenges them. And hey, at least KAIST didn’t end up in a ditch:
• Video Link
Good job signaling, though.
[ KAIST USRG ] via [ Business Korea ]
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Permits for testing self-driving cars are a hot commodity in California
http://fortune.com/2014/11/11/califo...mous-vehicles/
Quote:
The next time you drive in California, be on the lookout for cars with what look like mini-radars spinning on the roof. The state is quickly become a hotbed for testing self-driving cars.
Seven companies have been issued permits letting them take their experimental vehicles out for a spin on the state’s public roads.
The latest to get permits in the nearly two-month old PROGRAM are Tesla, Nissan, Delphi Automotive, and Bosch, according to Bernard Soriano, a deputy director with California’s Department of Motor Vehicles. They join Google, Daimler’s Mercedes-Benz unit, and Volkswagen’s Audi unit, all of which received permits when the program first kicked off.
The growing list of companies with state approval to test autonomous vehicles on city streets and highways highlights the race to turn the sci-fi technology into reality. It also shows how California has become an important hub for innovation in the auto industry, which was once almost entirely centered in Detroit and Japan.
In general, the companies given permits have already publicly revealed their plans to develop self-driving car technology. In some cases, they have shown off early versions at auto shows and in online videos.
For example, Elon Musk, Tesla’s chief executive, made a splash last month when he said his company would INSTALL autopilot in his company’s electric sports cars that will help with parking, cruise control and crash avoidance. Fully autonomous vehicles, he predicted, would be available by 2023.
Tesla TSLA 3.78% did not respond to requests for comment about its California testing permit, which authorizes two test DRIVERS to drive an autonomous 2014 Model S sedan.
Delphi Automotive, an auto technology supplier, received state approval for eight drivers to test two Audi SQ5. Like many auto companies, Delphi DLPH 0.53% has a Silicon Valley innovation lab that is working on autonomous car technology.
Meanwhile, Bosch, a German auto parts supplier and home appliance maker, has a permit authorizing two drivers to test a self-driving BMW 325d sedan and a Tesla Model S. Nissan, which hopes to develop a “commercially viable” self-driving car by 2020, has eight drivers experimenting with two NISSAN LEAFelectric cars.
“This demonstrates our commitment to bring various autonomous technologies to market and allows Nissan to CONTINUE our efforts toward zero fatalities and zero emissions,” Maarten Sierhuis, director of Nissan’s Silicon Valley research lab, said in a statement.
Companies are not required to disclose in their applications where they plan to do their testing. Nor must they reveal any details about their technology. But they must report any accidents or instances when drivers had to unexpectedly turn off the autonomous technology within 10 days to the state’s DMV. Only one company has filed such a report.
Delphi told the agency that another car crashed into its Audi test vehicle on the evening of Oct. 14 in Palo Alto, Calif. The test car was stopped while waiting to merge with traffic when a Honda traveling in the opposite direction crossed an elevated center median and struck Delphi’s car. The accident left Delphi’s vehicle with a dented front end and right fender. No one was injured in the crash.
The crash doesn’t appear to have anything to do with Delphi’s autonomous technology. At the time of the crash, the car’s self-driving mode was turned off. Instead, a human DRIVER was in control. Furthermore, in their report, the police laid blame on the Honda’s driver, who they said caused the crash by making an unsafe turn.
In September, California officials started requiring companies testing autonomous vehicles on public roads to get permits. Until then, the state had no specific regulations related to the technology, and companies could test-drive without having to jump through any bureaucratic hoops. A number of them did so including Google GOOG 0.51% , which logged hundreds of thousands of miles in its self-driving cars as part of its plan to bring the technology to the masses.
The new regulations are intended to address the inevitable safety and liability concerns without crippling the development of autonomous vehicles. Under the rules, all test drivers must have CLEAN DRIVING records and get training in operating autonomous cars. Companies must also have at least $5 million in insurance or post a bond.
Still, many car makers with permits are testing on private or federal land, where state regulations don’t necessarily apply. Mercedes, for instance, is using the sprawling Concord Naval Weapons Station, near San Francisco, to experiment. INSTALLING traffic signals that communicate with cars—presumably to get them to differentiate between a red light from a green one—is among the experiments. The company is also subjecting cars to potentially dangerous situations, which would be unwise to do on city streets.
“Taken in conjunction with the results of our test drives on public roads,” said Axel Gern, head of autonomous driving at Mercedes-Benz Research and Development for North America, in a statement, “these tests will help us with the ongoing development of our autonomous cars.”
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