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posted by chromas on Friday May 25 2018, @12:01PM   Printer-friendly
from the I-want-to-drive-in-the-other-lane;-I-want-to-merge-like-humans-do dept.

Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard

In the field of self-driving cars, algorithms for controlling lane changes are an important topic of study. But most existing lane-change algorithms have one of two drawbacks: Either they rely on detailed statistical models of the driving environment, which are difficult to assemble and too complex to analyze on the fly; or they're so simple that they can lead to impractically conservative decisions, such as never changing lanes at all.

At the International Conference on Robotics and Automation tomorrow, researchers from MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) will present a new lane-change algorithm that splits the difference. It allows for more aggressive lane changes than the simple models do but relies only on immediate information about other vehicles' directions and velocities to make decisions.

[...] One standard way for autonomous vehicles to avoid collisions is to calculate buffer zones around the other vehicles in the environment. The buffer zones describe not only the vehicles' current positions but their likely future positions within some time frame. Planning lane changes then becomes a matter of simply staying out of other vehicles' buffer zones.

[...] With the MIT researchers' system, if the default buffer zones are leading to performance that's far worse than a human driver's, the system will compute new buffer zones on the fly — complete with proof of collision avoidance.

Let me know when someone finds an algorithm that can deal with unknown situations as intuitively as human beings can. Until then...

Source: http://news.mit.edu/2018/driverless-cars-change-lanes-like-human-drivers-0523


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  • (Score: 1) by choose another one on Friday May 25 2018, @01:28PM (3 children)

    by choose another one (515) Subscriber Badge on Friday May 25 2018, @01:28PM (#683998)

    blowing the horn or _giving_ the finger is trivial to automate (e.g. https://cdn.thisiswhyimbroke.com/images/drivemocion-message-system.jpg [thisiswhyimbroke.com] )

    Real question is if the cars are driverless who is going to be watching or listening to react to it?

    What we actually need before we get driverless cars is a proper standardised driving insult (giving and receiving) protocol.

  • (Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Friday May 25 2018, @03:12PM (2 children)

    by tangomargarine (667) on Friday May 25 2018, @03:12PM (#684044)

    What we actually need before we get driverless cars is a proper standardised driving insult (giving and receiving) protocol.

    Then could we add a hands-free car-to-car calling system? To call up and tell all those people, "hey idiot, your turn signal has been on for the last 6 miles."

    I get not hearing the quiet ticking, but how do people manage to miss the flashing arrow on their dashboard?

    --
    "Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
    • (Score: 2) by choose another one on Friday May 25 2018, @03:38PM

      by choose another one (515) Subscriber Badge on Friday May 25 2018, @03:38PM (#684054)

      Then could we add a hands-free car-to-car calling system? To call up and tell all those people, "hey idiot, your turn signal has been on for the last 6 miles."

      The 80s called, they want their CB radio back...

      [yeah I know, most were not exactly hands-free but less of a handful than using a damned phone]

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 25 2018, @06:25PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 25 2018, @06:25PM (#684126)

      This will be solved first by an Italian car company.