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posted by Fnord666 on Monday December 16 2019, @04:03AM   Printer-friendly
from the not-ready-for-prime-time dept.

Lofty promises for autonomous cars unfulfilled

The first driverless cars were supposed to be deployed on the roads of American cities in 2019, but just a few days before the end of the year, the lofty promises of car manufacturers and Silicon Valley remain far from becoming reality.

Recent accidents, such as those involving Tesla cars equipped with Autopilot, a driver assistance software, have shown that "the technology is not ready," said Dan Albert, critic and author of the book "Are We There Yet?" on the history of the American automobile.

He questioned the optimistic sales pitch that autonomous cars would help reduce road deaths—40,000 every year in the United States, mostly due to human error—because these vehicles themselves have caused deaths.

As a result, self-driving maneuvers in the technology-laden vehicles are limited to parking, braking, starting or driving in a parking lot.

[...] "Automation may be used in areas such as closed campuses, where speeds are low and there is little or no interaction with other vehicles, pedestrians or cyclists or inclement weather," said Sam Abuelsamid, engineer and expert at Navigant Research.

The big problem is "perception": the software's ability to process data sent by the motion sensors to detect other vehicles, pedestrians, animals, cyclists or other objects, and then predict their likely actions and adapt accordingly, he said.

And that part is key, said Avideh Zakhor, engineering and computer science professor at the University of California-Berkeley.

"The perception part is not solved yet. The most advanced publicly available is 80-85 percent (reliable). That means that 15 percent of the time, it's going to hit objects and kill and destroy them," she said.


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  • (Score: 2) by takyon on Monday December 16 2019, @05:22AM (3 children)

    by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Monday December 16 2019, @05:22AM (#932699) Journal

    https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-10-27/driverless-cars-promise-a-victoria-without-crashes/10428760 [abc.net.au]

    Australia's transport ministers have set a national goal of having regulation in place by 2020 to support the commercial introduction of autonomous vehicles.

    [...] Roos, trams pose challenge to driverless technology

    It's not just the technology. Bureaucracy and roos have to be dealt with.

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  • (Score: 3, Funny) by c0lo on Monday December 16 2019, @05:44AM

    by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Monday December 16 2019, @05:44AM (#932703) Journal

    >blockquote>It's not just the technology. Bureaucracy and roos have to be dealt with.

    Heh, you don't feel like listening to the lessons of the history, do you?

    "First they came for bureaucrats and and I did not speak out because I was not a bureaucrat.

    Then they came for the roos, and...."

    (grin)

     

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  • (Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 16 2019, @06:55AM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 16 2019, @06:55AM (#932721)

    Kangaroos have user stories too ..

    The Australian Army developed a new helicopter flight simulator that would replicate the unique environment of fighting in the Outback. It would replicate weather patterns (hence why my friend who's a meterologist for the U.S. Air Force was shown this) and the wildlife of the Outback. The Australian Army proudly invited American observers from the US Army and US Air Force for the unveiling of this new flight simulator.

    Everything was going well. The pilot in the simulator was flying through the paces. The computer was performing perfectly. The simulations were behaving correctly. Like when the helicopter flew up over a ridge, it disturbed a mob of kangaroos. As a mob of Kangaroos will do when approached suddenly by a loud helicopter, they scattered like a flock of birds. Soldiers can observe the behavior of animals to detect an ambush.

    It was perfect. And then the helicopter got shot down by a surface-to-air missile. But there was nothing alive on the screen except that mob of kangaroos. The missile trajectory was traced and discovered that the roos had fired the missile!

    It turned out upon examination of the program that the programmers had cut some corners. They cut and pasted the infantry module for the kangaroos, and only changed the icon. Infantry, like a mob of kangaroos, would scatter when suddenly approached by a helicopter. They forgot to consider that unlike kangaroos, the infantry will regroup and get out their missile launchers. But this was after the observers had left Australia with a great respect for Australia's wildlife vowing they should never try invading Australia.

    https://www.erepublik.com/en/article/964834 [erepublik.com]

    • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday December 16 2019, @07:49AM

      by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Monday December 16 2019, @07:49AM (#932733) Journal

      Yeap - that's Ozland.

      The kangaroos will kill you with missiles, if the weather, geography, flora and the rest of fauna doesn't get you first.
      The fact that kangaroos never get to fire missiles speaks volumes about the efficiency of the first lines of defense.

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