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from the what-happens^W-crashes-in-Vegas... dept.
Back in 2017, Las Vegas' self-driving shuttle service got into a minor collision after just an hour into its year-long trial. While it truly was a minor incident and nobody got hurt, the fact that an autonomous vehicle was involved prompted the National Transportation Safety Board to launch a probe. Now, the agency has wrapped up its investigation and has revealed two probable causes for the incident. First is that the truck that collided with the shuttle didn't stop when it was supposed to, which is consistent with the local government's claim after the accident. The other is that the autonomous vehicle attendant didn't have easy access to the shuttle's manual controller.
Apparently, the truck driver thought the shuttle would stop at a "reasonable" distance from the truck. Although the shuttle did start slowing down when it was 98.4 feet away, it's not programmed to stop until it's only 9.8 feet away from obstacles. The attendant hit the emergency stop button when the vehicle was 10.2 feet away from the truck, but it clearly wasn't enough to prevent the incident.
In an interview with the investigators, the attendant said they considered switching to manual mode to move the shuttle out of the way, but they didn't have easy access to its handheld controller. [...] When the accident happened, the controller was stored in an enclosed space at one end of the passenger compartment.
https://www.engadget.com/2019/07/12/las-vegas-autonomous-shuttle-crash-probe/
(Score: 4, Insightful) by maxwell demon on Saturday July 13 2019, @07:30AM (3 children)
No, technically, anything with a fixed guaranteed response time is a real-time system, even if that guaranteed response time is a year.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 13 2019, @03:18PM (2 children)
Good try, but wrong... :)
Computing
relating to a system in which input data is processed within milliseconds so that it is available virtually immediately as feedback, e.g., in a missile guidance or airline booking system.
Maybe real time responces at not needed. :)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 14 2019, @10:38AM (1 child)
Maybe try naming your sources next time?
From wikipedia [wikipedia.org]:
If a computer system has no set response deadlines, it cannot be called real-time, regardless of what your random dictionary says.
(Score: 1) by anubi on Tuesday July 16 2019, @11:23PM
Nothing said the response time could be measured in years, or even centuries.
I am acting as a closed loop controller for the pH of my soil. I use sulfur to control it. The response time is in years. Isn't that still real time control, albeit at a glacial pace compared to most human activity?
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]