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A self-driving Uber SUV struck and killed a pedestrian in Tempe, Arizona. It was in autonomous mode at the time of the collision, with a vehicle operator behind the wheel. Uber has suspended testing of its self-driving cars.
http://money.cnn.com/2018/03/19/technology/uber-autonomous-car-fatal-crash/index.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/19/technology/uber-driverless-fatality.html
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/self-driving-uber-kills-arizona-171055918.html
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/03/19/594950197/uber-suspends-self-driving-tests-after-pedestrian-is-killed-in-arizona
https://www.wsj.com/articles/uber-suspends-driverless-car-program-after-pedestrian-is-struck-and-killed-1521480386
https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/19/17139518/uber-self-driving-car-fatal-crash-tempe-arizona
https://techcrunch.com/2018/03/19/uber-self-driving-test-car-involved-in-accident-resulting-in-pedestrian-death/
I couldn't find any good analysis of the liability situation here.
(Score: 2) by pendorbound on Tuesday March 20 2018, @03:26PM (3 children)
That's unrealistic given the way gasoline automobiles work. It doesn't take much external force to alter the car's velocity a small amount. The nature of the drive train means over & under corrections are inevitable. A slight rise or dip in the terrain or a gust of wind would be plenty to change the car's velocity by a few MPH. The physical system that the computer is controlling (engine & brakes) isn't accurate enough to avoid inevitable overshoot when the computer applies control. You can see that at work with a simple cruise control on human-driven cars.
The only way you'd get a control system to keep the car exactly at a given speed would be to have it constantly alternate gas & brake to speed up and slow down. That's ruinously bad for mileage and the mechanical lifespan of the car, and would make for a really bumpy ride, but that's the least of the problems. A car constantly braking & accelerating would appear erratic to other drivers, probably resulting in them speeding around it to "get away from" the erratic driver.
Until/unless 100% of cars become fully autonomous, self-driving cars need to behave in a fashion that's similar to what human drivers expect of other human drivers. Drifting a few MPH over or under the posted limit is normal, and thus it's actually the safest way for an autonomous car to behave. The reactions of human drivers around it are the most likely source of accidents.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 20 2018, @08:03PM
I don't agree at all with this statement.
And if the control loop on those cars is under 1khz I'd be surprised - that means with in 1/500th of a second corrections can be applied to any external disturbance. Running at 1khz is trivial for the velocity control loop if they wanted to.
True but that is actually the nature of any control system. They always go over and under their set point and perform constant adjustments when that happens. They effectively always have error that is always being corrected with an average that is the correct value. This is a standard problem solved all the time.
The sensors are accurate enough that the deceleration can be measured as soon as the car starts traveling up hill at a fraction of a degree. With in a tiny fraction of a second the throttle will be adjusted and another reading from the sensors is taken.
Control systems always overshoot, this is not realistic to complain about. Perhaps you could say the performance is too high and the car will overshoot too far and not maintain the speed requirements but that's a problem the control loop tuning solves.
Is that how you drive? Jesus christ - you are always on the throttle or brakes? Do you even have a license or drive a car?
Dude the brakes and the gas pedal are not binary.
Well moving above the speed limit because it's safer in traffic isn't really a thing to worry about in the middle of the night, now is it?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 21 2018, @10:04PM
While I don't do it very often, I can keep within 1 mph of any speed limit on a reasonably flat straight road. Oftentimes even on curves and differing grades if I have the patience and attention. A robot has none of these limitations and having worked on cars from the 90s through late 2000s, I can tell you almost all of them have both the sensors and the ECU/ABS speedometer accuracy to hold speed at tenths of a mph within the vehicles operating range, and that is on MANUAL cars. Automatic cars with ABS, TCS, throttle and steering by wire should have no problems under conditions outside of 5mph or 5 percent grade in holding their speed steady at or below the posted speed limit. Furthermore having had a discussion about this just the other day: Most of the modern net-enabled GPS navigation systems have sign-accurate speed limit markers including with their navigation service, to notify you to slow down/speed up on a stretch of road. Given that, there really is no excuse for an autonomous car to not be driving almost exactly the speed limit. The entire point of autonomous vehicles is to provide better safety, reliability, and reproducability than human drivers can. If they aren't doing that then they fail at autonomous cars.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 22 2018, @12:54AM
It's unrealistic to expect the car to be able to maintain 35.00 MPH, but we're talking 38 in a 35 MPH zone here. That's almost 10% off. The simple cruise control on my relatively uninteresting car would have no problem with that, and it doesn't even have control of the brakes, only the throttle. Most human drivers could do a pretty reasonable job at it too, which makes me wonder what it must be like following you around if you can't maintain your speed within 35 +/- 3 MPH.