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According to a [PDF] paper to be presented at the 2019 Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, June 15-21 in Long beach, California, researchers have discovered a "simple, cost-effective, and accurate new method" of enabling self driving cars to recognize 3d objects in their path.
Currently bulky expensive lasers, scanners, and specialized GPS receivers are used in LIDAR (Light Detection And Ranging) sensors and mounted on top of the vehicle. This causes increased drag as well as being unsightly and adding another ~$10,000 to the price tag. Until now, this has been the only viable option.
Cornell researchers have discovered that a simpler method, using two inexpensive cameras on either side of the windshield, can detect objects with nearly LiDAR's accuracy and at a fraction of the cost. The researchers found that analyzing the captured images from a bird's eye view rather than the more traditional frontal view more than tripled their accuracy, making stereo cameras a viable and low-cost alternative to LiDAR.
According to the paper, which goes into this in considerable depth, it is not the quality of images and data which causes the difference in accuracy, but the representation of the data. Adjusting this brings the object detection results using far less expensive camera data for 3D image-analysis up to nearly the same effectiveness as much more expensive LiDAR.
Kilian Weinberger, associate professor of computer science and senior author of the paper, notes that
stereo cameras could potentially be used as the primary way of identifying objects in lower-cost cars, or as a backup method in higher-end cars that are also equipped with LiDAR.
The paper concludes that future work may improve image-based 3D object detection using the denser data feed from cameras further, fully closing the gap with LiDAR.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 24 2019, @10:06AM (23 children)
The problem with this is keeping the lens clean and free of mud, debris, scratches etc. Wouldnt it be simpler to just use ultrasonic waves and echo location like they do on submarines?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by ledow on Wednesday April 24 2019, @10:30AM (5 children)
Worse, this could be dazzled by a strong light at night.
Relying on optics the same way humans do is a really bad idea, and humans show you why - 65m years of evolution and we still can't judge distances or speeds accurately. That's why we invented cheap, easily-available tools that *can*.
Sure, we might be able to spear a gazelle from a standing start if we practiced for years, but in terms of judging anything in motion, we're useless. Which is why we have to have speedometers, braking-distance warnings, mnemonics, very powerful brakes, early-warning systems and sensors, and our complete attention to do so anywhere near reliably.
This is very much the old story of trying to anthropomorphise a computer-based approach to a problem. Rather than use computers, electronics and other hardware to do what they are actually good at, we throw away all their advantages to try to make something that replicates how we do it ourselves, which we do quite badly in the grand scheme of things anyway.
The solution is so damn obvious but nobody will say it... get these things away from human drivers and assign a lane / road to be automated driving only. Then you can mark fecking barcodes along the road to give away information like position, what the road ahead is shaped like, where the lane boundaries are, etc. and have the cars talk to each other and solve all these problems immediately, for very low cost.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by doke on Wednesday April 24 2019, @12:22PM (1 child)
Humans have trouble judging distance for many reasons that would have less effect on stereo cameras. We move our heads around a great deal. We move our eyes around. We even do micro-movements of our eyes, to shift the image edges around across cones. Cameras would be fixed, relative to the car, so an edge position can be easier compared between them. Our mental image processing is distracted by many other tests, ie is that object a gazelle that I can hunt and eat, or a bear that will hunt and eat me? The car would just want to know if there's something there to avoid. Red light cameras already do an excellent job of measuring speed, deceleration, distance, and location.
Assigning a dedicated lane for autonomous vehicles would only be viable in a few places. The main multilane roads around where I live (Northern Delaware USA) are highways, and they're overcrowded. Most of the roads are one lane each way, and there are quite a few single lane bridges.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday April 24 2019, @01:42PM
Single lane bridges? What part of the world do you live in? It's been a long time since I've used on on a paved road. I can still find some low water crossings, on gravel roads, and I know Pennsylvania still has some old wooden covered bridges that are one lane. It's been a long time since I've even crossed a "singing bridge", all steel with a steel grid road surface, and often times not wide enough for two trucks meet in the middle.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by c0lo on Wednesday April 24 2019, @12:38PM
Cheap tools like...?
You know binary vision is not human specific.
Say, how about we don't say we try to imitate our vision, but the kestrel's or sparrowhawk's vision (you know? those predatory birds hunting with great precision and at high speed) - they have two eyes as well. Very much like the computer stereo vision [wikipedia.org]
O'realy? You mean we are so stupid we can't imagine how to improve the things we are making?
Picking an example of using "two separated eyes", we never made a coincidence rangefinder [wikipedia.org] to help us throw a 10cm-caliber shell at 15km distance [wikipedia.org], those didn't happen, right?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 24 2019, @01:32PM
I'm willing to bet that the self-driving car will also have access to a speedometer.
Whatever sensors the braking-distance warning uses, will likely also be included in the self-driving car. The rest is already software anyway (and an optical/acoustic signalling device, which the self-driving car won't need).
It won't need mnemonics, as doing calculations and reliably storing and retrieving data is exactly what computers excel at.
I also don't see why self-driving cars would have less powerful brakes.
The self-driving cars also will likely have the same sensors as a normal car. The early-warning system? Well, apart from those sensors that already is just computer code. There's no reason to assume that the computer code in the self-driving car won't be able to do what the computer code of those much simpler systems already are able to do.
And guess what human-driven cars do not have? LIDAR.
No. It's another story, much older than electronic computers: Trying to bring down cost. Make a LIDAR system that's cheaper than two cameras, and they will happily throw out those cameras for LIDAR.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 24 2019, @04:59PM
It shouldn't be one or the other; a combination of techniques may be the best approach to both reinforce each other and to provide a backup if one fails.
And, too much LIDAR may have other problems, such as damaging the human eye and/or cameras, and confusing other LIDAR vehicles. Under "ideal" conditions they are safe, but since when is anything ideal? If most the cars on the street have lots of LIDAR, the side-effects will become more pronounced. Light LIDAR and optical recognition in combination may be the best approach.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by c0lo on Wednesday April 24 2019, @10:59AM (12 children)
You can keep your windshield clear enough for you to see ahead, don't you?
Why couldn't you use the same methods for the cameras?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 24 2019, @12:45PM (6 children)
Some worn ass wipers? I think that is a problem.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday April 24 2019, @01:49PM (5 children)
The next time you are out driving around some town or other, keep an eye open for a place called "NAPA" or "O'Reilly's" or - well, just any place with "auto parts" in the name. You can go inside, ask for a windshield wiper to fit your car. The salesman will even stick his head outside, to inform you of what model and make your car is. Then he will look up the part numbers that fit your car. You can choose the least expensive, the most expensive, and sometimes, as many as five other options in between. You'll be amazed at the difference changing your worn ass wipers with new! If you've never changed your wipers before, and you don't know how, a lot of salesmen these days, will change the wipers for you. He'll even dispose of the old ones, so you don't have them lying in the floor, or on the passenger seat, and you won't have to throw them out the window on the highway. It's like magic!!
Perhaps on next week's episode, we'll discuss the idea of replacing your worn out windshield wiper fluid tank, pump, and tubing. Or not.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 24 2019, @02:10PM (4 children)
Heh, funny, but think about it. It's a self driving car, that needs them replaced. It'll be the part that will worn out most often. When the car drives itself, how often are you going to be changing some camera wipers, escpecially after a generation that doesn't even know how to drive. Perhaps the windscreen is obsolete anyway at that point. I see it as a problem, that they must be replaced as often as i suspect for the cameras and that they might not be.
And another issue is that it can take several seconds to get them clean after some truck goes by and that sort of thing has to be taken into account aswell.
I see issues, if they are not, then good.
There are no Napas, O'Reillys' and no Autozones around here. I kind of like Autozone, so too bad.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday April 24 2019, @02:30PM (1 child)
That is interesting. So - gotta wonder about state mandated inspections. Some years ago, Arkansas eliminated annual inspections of cars. Texas, meanwhile, is quite strict on inspections. Will Arkies decide to start inspecting again? Will Texas get even stricter? If the day comes when the average driver NEVER looks his car over, and people die routinely for very stupid stuff, will all states come around to annual or semi-annual inspections? Might there be quarterly inspections one day?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by takyon on Wednesday April 24 2019, @03:35PM
The state will force your car to drive to the quarterly inspection while you're asleep.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 24 2019, @03:16PM (1 child)
Simple. The car will remind you of changing the wipers. If, after getting the message, you still don't do so for a prolonged time, it will refuse to start until you have them replaced.
(Score: 2) by MostCynical on Wednesday April 24 2019, @10:30PM
European and Japanese cars already have bongs, bings and trills for seatbelts, lights, doors, etc.. And dashboard warnings for failures (lights blown, errors in electronics, flat key fob battery..)
Adding one more for "obscured self driving camera" is not going to cause the end of the world.
I think vehicles with autonomous braking or radar cruise control already have some sort of warning if the radar unit is covered.
The problem with extending the period between inspections comes down to brake and tyre wear. Heavy braking and hard acceleration (the way most people seem to drive these days) can wear out brakes and tyres in under a year..
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 5, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday April 24 2019, @01:05PM (4 children)
Most of the time, though early morning low sun angle with condensation and other glitter/glare sources on the glass can become pretty challenging even for a wetware neural net.
The thing about a windshield is that it's a huge area, and if a bug splatters in the middle of it you can adjust your sight lines to compensate. Picture, instead of a windshield, a pair of goggles on your eyes - when a bug splatters on a small area like that, it's a much bigger problem.
In-car cameras for racing have used rolling protective films, with limited success, and that's just for an entertainment feed. Open cockpit drivers have tear-off covers on their helmet lenses, and again, even in a race that lasts just a few hours it's not uncommon for those to become less than adequate when something like a rainstorm happens.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Wednesday April 24 2019, @01:33PM (1 child)
I wear glasses and often find myself wandering around with all sorts of gloop on them.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday April 24 2019, @01:43PM
Me too, and my neural net somehow compensates. What amazes me is that sometimes I can't read with my right or left eye alone, but the two together manage to do it.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by RedIsNotGreen on Thursday April 25 2019, @01:00AM (1 child)
Luckily, with the current rapidly progressing insect extinction event, bug splatter won't be an issue for much longer.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday April 25 2019, @01:59AM
I don't think it really works like that - with fewer species I'd expect bigger and more frequent plagues of the survivors...
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday April 24 2019, @01:01PM (3 children)
I came here to say: "until a bug splatters on one or both of your camera lenses." Which, to be fair, probably applies to LIDAR too... One saving grace at the moment is that self-driving cars aren't attempting to go much over 30mph, at which speeds most bugs just bounce off.
As for ultrasonic waves - sure, that works great, when you're the only one using it. Get into heavy traffic and the cars are going to have to time division multiplex to avoid confusing each others' pings, like whales and dolphins do, but, unfortunately, heavy traffic is exactly the scenario where you need the best data update rates, not a degraded picture of what's around you. And, again, at higher speeds wind, tire and other noises become a strong confound for sonic signals.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by mhajicek on Wednesday April 24 2019, @02:21PM (2 children)
Bounce off... That gave me an idea. Put an air knife in front of each camera to deflect incoming debris.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 24 2019, @03:25PM (1 child)
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Wednesday April 24 2019, @07:40PM
Heavier than the metal chips in the coolant?
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek