mr_bill

What *some* people mean by Level 5.


-mr. bill

Ninety5rpm

We're not ignoring legality. We contend this will be relatively easy to address, and legal minds and lawmakers seem eager to do so. Here's an article on the topic from 2015. They are on it.

Disagree if you wish, but don't lie by saying we cheerleaders are choosing to ignore it.

I-Like-To-Bike

Let's compromise on a Level 5 autonomous vehicle capable of handling and anticipating city, suburban and highway traffic at least as well as driver operated vehicles, especially in crowded urban centers, or busy shopping centers or in the vicinity of schools and playgrounds with numerous unpredictable motorists, pedestrians and (yes even) bicyclists who do not follow all the rules laid out in the software programing.

• Motorists who pull out suddenly from side streets and driveways, stop suddenly for whatever reason, or don't wait their turn at stop signs and may run amber and even red lights; motorists who merge erratically or out of turn on highway entrance ramps or make sudden lane changes both in high or low speed traffic;
• pedestrians who may or may not suddenly step off the sidewalk, with or against the lights, or from in between parked cars (or from traffic islands) or from someplace other than marked pedestrian crossings ( did you ever observe pedestrians acting irrationally in the rain? probably doesn't occur too often in the AZ sunny weather testing);
• cyclists who don't always obey every traffic rule as laid in the rule book or software playbook; may even be going in the wrong direction or coming from parking lots or sidewalks;
• delivery men, car drivers and passengers stepping out of stopped vehicles into traffic in all sorts of unexpected places?
• children doing what children do.

It is telling that the dashcam video from a GM/Cruise Chevy Bolt in San Francisco from almost a year ago. posted by ninety5rpm at
Would a self driving car world make it safe for cyclists? does not demonstrate the capability of the test vehicle to handle any problems other than stopping and starting at well marked intersections among motorists and pedestrians who comply with all the rules and do nothing unexpected.

Perhaps the tests vehicles are tested against some of the above listed more difficult scenarios but the GM and the other PR flacks choose not to publicize any of those videos. I suspect that vehicles tested under such conditions have an awful lot of "bewildered" stopping while waiting for interaction and a solution to be delivered from the test overseers (in vehicle or elsewhere) to get back under way.

Ninety5rpm

No rules are laid out in the software programming. That's one of the aspects of AVs that you don't seem to understand.

You seem to believe every possible scenario has to be anticipated and programmed for so that these vehicles will react properly. That's not how it works. They learn, literally, just like you and I did, except that anything any one car learns can be almost instantly learned by all the others.

I suggest you read more.

jefnvk

Except, that is level 4. Level 4 is the point where one can get in a car, punch in an address, and the car takes you there without any more input on your part on maintained infrastructure in anything but the most extreme weather conditions. Level 5 bumps it up from there to anything a person can do.

Many driver assist systems are already in place taking care of all of these scenarios, for HUMAN driven cars. I.e., reacting when the human misses something. The thing you are missing is these vehicles take a proactive approach to safety: they will be driving in a manner that reduces risk. They won't be speeding or distracted. They can pay attention to everything around them, not just something in the direction their head is turned.

As far as the GM vehicle, without knowing what sort of testing they were doing, what sort of systems were in the car, what level of autonomy they were developing for, or even where in the development cycle they are at, it is hard for me to make judgement on one video that I cannot watch at work. Assuming all autonomous vehicles are the same is silly, as is assuming whatever they were working on a year ago hasn't advanced by this point.

I-Like-To-Bike

The only "proper" reaction that these vehicles have to the unexpected is to stop and/or pull off the road and hope for the best, until someone tells it what to do; this time.

Next time it encounters a similar unexpected scenario what is it supposed to do, repeat the solution that it "learned" worked last time?

Good grief! Look out pedestrians, cyclists and motorists to a real smart vehicle that is programmed to "learn" what action to take when it anticipates or encounters unexpected events and react based on this "learned" response.

I-Like-To-Bike

Wrong.
Level 4 _ High Automation System capability: The car can operate without human input or oversight but only under select conditions defined by factors such as road type or geographic area.
Driver involvement: In a shared car restricted to a defined area, there may not be any. But in a privately owned Level 4 car, the driver might manage all driving duties on surface streets then become a passenger as the car enters a highway.
Example: Google’s now-defunct Firefly pod-car prototype, which had neither pedals nor a steering wheel and was restricted to a top speed of 25 mph.


https://www.caranddriver.com/feature...lained-feature

Ninety5rpm

You're catching on.

Now remember that they're all preloaded with learning attained in billions of miles in simulators and millions of miles on the road with human instructors. By the time they're let loose they will have had far more experience than any human driver, much less any newbie human driver.

genec

Based on legality, you currently are probably not going to encounter a self driving car in your state.
https://www.ncsl.org/research/transpo...gislation.aspx

But if YOU go to one of the other states, well, you might be able to get a ride, without a safety driver, between two selected destinations, in a self driving vehicle. Right now, Arizona seems to be the best bet.

These are the only states that have enacted any sort of legislation to allow (limited or unlimited use) of self driving car technology.



So currently no "Cannonball Run" is allowed for AVs.

Ninety5rpm

I think any taxi ride in any metro area will soon meet all the requirements simply by being restricted to all public roads within the given metro area.

The point of the examples is that a Level 4 car can be restricted to highways only, but if it isn't that doesn't mean it's Level 5. It's still a Level 4 car if it's geocaged to a given metro area, for example.

Ninety5rpm

Yeah, but as soon as New Mexico or Oklahoma opens up, you can go VA to CA.

I-Like-To-Bike

You are entitled to think and predict any timeline you like for the successful fielding of self driving vehicles capable of being operated on all the public roads in any metro area. So far, none have been produced or seem anywhere close to being fielded, anywhere despite the best wishes and hopeful dreaming of cheerleaders for the project.

BTW what is your latest prediction for Tesla? Will they go bankrupt before they ever produce one dollar of profit on any of their motor vehicles, let alone self driving autonomous vehicles?

How about Uber, think they will pick up one paying passenger in one of their self driving vehicles before cleaning out their investors' bankroll?

So much promise, so little delivery.

I-Like-To-Bike

And still will not be able to anticipate when or where a pedestrian might step off the curb or from between parked cars; or whether an approaching car will turn in front of it, or pull out from a hidden driveway, or what a twitchy bicycle rider might do, no matter what it previously "learned."

I-Like-To-Bike

Not in any existing autonomous motor vehicle; perhaps in your dreams though.

Ninety5rpm

Is there any way these posts can be locked down so they can't be deleted. I can't wait to revisit in a couple of years.

genec

Remember a little company started over 20 years ago called "Amazon?"

https://www.recode.net/2017/5/15/156...ed-five-charts

I am not saying that Tesla is Amazon, but that techs have a way of surprising people.

The flipside... old staid GM... remember when they had to be bailed out?

I cannot predict the future, so don't put your money anywhere where YOU haven't done the research your self.

genec

Can a human do those things? You're setting the bar awfully high there... and there are close to 40,000 deaths a year that say that no, humans can't do that well either.

Remember AVs do not have to be perfect, only a bit better than the average driver now on the road.

jefnvk

Straight from SAE, as anything else is just the publisher's interpretation.

https://www.sae.org/misc/pdfs/automated_driving.pdf

"4 High Automation
the driving mode-specific performance by an automated driving system of all aspects of the dynamic driving task, even if a human driver does not respond appropriately to a request to intervene"

"5 Full Automation
the full-time performance by an automated driving system of all aspects of the dynamic driving task under all roadway and environmental conditions that can be managed by a human driver"

"Dynamic driving task includes the operational (steering, braking, accelerating, monitoring the vehicle and roadway) and tactical (responding to events, determining when to change lanes, turn, use signals, etc.) aspects of the driving task, but not the strategic (determining destinations and waypoints) aspect of the driving task.

Driving mode is a type of driving scenario with characteristic dynamic driving task requirements (e.g., expressway merging, high speed cruising, low speed traffic jam, closed-campus operations, etc.).

Request to intervene is notification by the automated driving system to a human driver that s/he should promptly begin or resume performance of the dynamic driving task."

Furthermore, your bolding is a bit misleading. There is no low speed requirement for L4, simply extraneous information given in an example. I find it intriguing that you left "The car can operate without human input or oversight" unbolded, and then highlighted exactly the point I was making: the difference between L4 and L5 is that L4 is restricted to upkept infrastructure and may not function in bad weather conditions, while L5 can function anywhere a human can.

Lastly, you are interpreting "In a shared car restricted to a defined area, there may not be any" incorrectly. This again is highlighting that in a good environment, the car can do everything at L4, not implying that there must be restrictions on where it can operate.

In any case, I now work on developing, tuning, and testing brake systems for autonomous applications, autonomous vehicles aren't exactly things in magazines to me.

350htrr

All an AV needs to do, is be better than the average driver, they do NOT NEED to be PERFECT, and nobody is saying they will be, as there WILL be many people killed by AV vehicles In the coming years, but guess what, it will be a lot less than by human drivers for the same number of miles driven... I believe they are ALREADY better, maybe even quite a bit better than the average driver...

EDIT; Just to be clear I don't think that AVs are anywhere close to as good a driver yet, as a good human driver... BUT, have already surpassed the average human driver as far as good driving is concerned...

KD5NRH

FIFY

The reality is that people like to go other places besides just to work and the grocery store.

350htrr

Quote them, and unless the thread gets locked they will be there for later for the "I told you so"...

350htrr

and... They will, eventually... But for now, it's still in a test phase all these AV vehicles and a limited area work best to sort things out.

SHBR

*Sigh*

Some people never give up.

Just wait until everyone is behind a geofence.

Life will be grand.

I seem to remember that not all human drivers, especially commercial drivers are incompetent.

I've personally known commercial drivers that have over a million miles of driving experience without a single accident or moving violation.

The current standard for acceptable driving is absurdly low, so low that most people accept it as one of the leading causes of death without question.

Yet here, we now have the comment, "they only have to be a little better than the average driver"

Like I said before, AV will work great when the majority of road users no longer drive their own cars.

Its a fine example of classic social engineering, train the public to suit your product, regardless of the quality.

I-Like-To-Bike

Yes I remember smartphones too, so what does Amazon or smartphones have to do with building and operating self driving automobiles?
Yes I remember Enron and Bernie Madoff too, as well as history lessons about speculative hysteria over Tulip Bulbs too. Even legit organization like Kodak and Lucent too which were not high flying money burning unicorns by any means.

Big money and/or big dreams do not ever guarantee success.

I-Like-To-Bike

They sometimes even work or shop or seek recreation or visit friends/relatives or do a whole assortment of various activities other than within their residential "designated area".
Reality doesn't seem to be a factor in the dreamy schemes proposed here as a profitable and practical environment for the introduction of autonomous vehicles.

These restricted traveling schemes may seem practical or desirable to the gang who pontificate elsewhere on BF about the joy of ascetic living.