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posted by takyon on Tuesday May 08 2018, @03:11PM   Printer-friendly
from the false-negative dept.

The first machine to kill a human entirely on its own initiative was "Likely Caused By Software Set to Ignore Objects On Road" according to a new report on the collision which happened last March:

The car's sensors detected the pedestrian, who was crossing the street with a bicycle, but Uber's software decided it didn't need to react right away. That's a result of how the software was tuned. Like other autonomous vehicle systems, Uber's software has the ability to ignore "false positives," or objects in its path that wouldn't actually be a problem for the vehicle, such as a plastic bag floating over a road. In this case, Uber executives believe the company's system was tuned so that it reacted less to such objects. But the tuning went too far, and the car didn't react fast enough, one of these people said.

Fast enough? She walked across three and a half lanes in what should have been plain view of the car's LIDAR the entire time.

takyon: Also at Reuters. Older report at The Drive.

Previously: Uber Pulls Self-Driving Cars After First Fatal Crash of Autonomous Vehicle
Video Released of Fatal Uber - Pedestrian Accident, and More


Original Submission #1Original Submission #2

 
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  • (Score: 2) by choose another one on Tuesday May 08 2018, @07:19PM

    by choose another one (515) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday May 08 2018, @07:19PM (#677146)

    > Imagine being in a court. And quite literally saying "Sorry, your Honour, but I couldn't tell if the woman with the bike was a paper bag or not, so I just drove over it".

    But that isn't what happened, your statement implies you have already decided the object is a woman with a bike, and then drove over it.
    A more accurate comparison would be: "Sorry your Honour but I couldn't tell if what I saw in the road was a black bag or some clothes or a human being, so I just drove over it".

    > Would it pass muster for a human?

    Yes, sometimes at least - in fact I know of cases where (my version, roughly) it has.

    I also know of cases where the same argument didn't pass muster - but it took two trials to get a verdict and was probably because reconstructions showed the obstacle-that-was-actually-a-human would have been visible for over 100m in a 30mph limit, giving 9 seconds to act (the driver wasn't speeding). The Uber vehicle was going faster (but not speeding) and a human driving it would have had a lot less time.

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