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posted by mrpg on Monday October 30 2017, @01:45PM   Printer-friendly
from the cool-story-bro dept.

Submitted via IRC for SoyCow1

Waymo is the name of the autonomous vehicle program being developed under Alphabet, the parent company of Google.

Waymo announced on Thursday that it is bringing its Chrysler Pacifica minivans to the Detroit area to test how the company's technology performs in the region's harsh winters.

"Our ultimate goal is for our fully self-driving cars to operate safely and smoothly in all kinds of environments," Waymo CEO John Krafcik writes.

Krafcik says that Waymo has been doing cold-weather tests since 2012. But so far Waymo has done most of its testing in sunny places like Mountain View, California; Phoenix, Arizona; and Austin, Texas. where snow is rare. Waymo believes it has largely mastered driving in sunny climates and is preparing to launch a commercial service in the sun-drenched Phoenix area.

[...] "This type of testing will give us the opportunity to assess the way our sensors perform in wet, cold conditions," Krafick writes. "And it will also build on the advanced driving skills we've developed over the last eight years by teaching our cars how to handle things like skidding on icy, unplowed roads."

Source: Waymo starts testing in Michigan to master snow and ice


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  • (Score: 2) by jdccdevel on Monday October 30 2017, @08:48PM (1 child)

    by jdccdevel (1329) on Monday October 30 2017, @08:48PM (#589668) Journal

    I live in Alberta, Canada. I'm very, very familiar with driving in the snow and ice. (More than 20 winters without a single accident.)

    Driving in the winter is a whole different skill set than just regular driving. It's about a lot more than just "taking your time" and "leaving space" (although that's important too!). Sometimes driving too slowly is just as likely to get you stuck or in an accident (rear ended) as driving too fast. It's more about understanding how to react when conditions change, listening to your vehicle and what the road is telling you, and anticipating issues before they start (planning ahead for emergencies.)

    Sometimes that means a controlled loss of traction to understand road and tire conditions (Accelerating/turning on ice). Other times, it means you have to spin your tires (loose snow). Many times the only way to tell you're driving on ice is the sound of the tires changing. Sometimes, it means turning around and going home, because you're not going to make it.

    Often driving safely in adverse conditions means disabling electronic traction control. Additionally, you should never drive in the winter with cruise control on. (You're oo slow to react, and the power needed to maintain speed up a hill can cause unexpected loss of traction.) I would hope they can at least get those right before trying a fully self driving car.

    I can't recall how many times I've had to pull over just to wash my headlights with snow, or peer through the tiny clear spot on the windshield because the heater can't keep up with the freezing rain. How's that going to work with the sensors? What about the deluge of dirty, sandy snow from the semi truck in the other lane?

    Here's just a sampling of situations I've personally encountered that I wouldn't expect a self driving car to be able to handle well at all, if ever.

    1) Ice under hard packed snow. Electronic traction control almost got me in an accident because of this. I was making a left-hand turn with plenty of space, the traction control detected some tire slip and killed the engine power trying to regain traction, which is exactly the opposite of what it should have done. Just barely made the turn without being broadsided. Sometimes you just need to let the wheels spin.
    2) Snow conditions where ice is forming under the tires. Following in the tracks of the car in front of you means almost no traction, but making your own tracks you have lots.
    3) Black ice. Once ice has been driven over enough, it gets polished in such a way that you can't see it.
    3a) Sometimes the traction conditions vary hugely within 30cm (12in) to the left or right on the road. (From almost bare and dry to OMFG I can't even walk on this.) That'll be a challenge for the computer!
    4) Windblown snow completely obscuring the road. Sure, GPS can help keep the car on the road, but how will the car react when all identifying features of the road are gone, and all there is to see is a flat expanse of blowing snow in the headlights?
    5) Snow/ice/sand/salt accumulation on sensors. This is probably the easiest to fix, but I've driven in conditions where the back of my vehicle has been caked with 10cm (4in) of snow, and come out of fog banks with 2cm of solid ice on my grill. Sometimes Sand and Salt from other vehicles covers everything! What if you run out of washer fluid? Will the car be able to pull over safely so you can throw snowballs at the windshield? How will the Lidar/Radar and other computer vision systems react to being partially blinded?
    6) Snow-Drifted in the middle / edges of the lane, and Grader ridges. Hard packed snow can accumulate where the traffic's tires have pushed it out of the way, or a grader has, making it difficult or impossible to change lanes. Also, Grader ridges are much, much, harder than tire ruts. Knowing the difference by sight is the difference between a slightly tricky maneuver (crossing a tire rut) and the airbags deploying because you hit a grader ridge.

    So, as I said, good luck to them. I'd predict they're going to run into the 80/20 rule soon. (i.e. The last 20% of the functionality takes 80% of the work!)

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 31 2017, @12:40AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 31 2017, @12:40AM (#589792)

    Nice summary, saved me the trouble of writing down all these corner cases! Been driving in Buffalo NY winters since my father taught me (off the road) at a tender age -- nearly 60 years of similar experiences.

    One you missed is being blown off the side of an icy road, when there is a big open field next to a road that is otherwise lined with houses and trees. In my case there are summer sports fields alongside a major road. The trick was to start way over to the upwind side of the lane and hope you got past the gusty area before the wind forced you too far sideways. Since everyone takes a slightly different path through, the areas that have a little extra grip are randomly arranged, and mostly invisible with blowing snow over the ice.