SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
from the ongoing-quest-to-capture-the-Roadrunner dept.
Light shaken and stirred to help autonomous vehicles better scan for nearby fast-moving objects:
A self-driving car has a hard time recognizing the difference between a toddler and a brown bag that suddenly appears into view because of limitations in how it senses objects using lidar.
The autonomous vehicle industry is exploring “frequency modulated continuous wave” (FMCW) lidar to solve this problem.
[...] FMCW lidar detects objects by scanning laser light from the top of an autonomous vehicle. A single laser beam splits into a comb of other wavelengths, called a microcomb, to scan an area. Light bounces off of an object and goes to the detector through an optical isolator or circulator, which ensures all reflected light ends up at the detector array.
[...] The technology integrates microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) transducers made of aluminum nitride to modulate the microcomb at high frequencies ranging from megahertz to gigahertz. The optical isolator that the team developed as part of this process is further described in a paper published in Nature Communications.
[...] “The stirring motion modulates light such that it can only travel in one direction,” said Sunil Bhave, a Purdue professor of electrical and computer engineering.
[...] Other transducers in the same technology excite an acoustic wave that shakes the chip at megahertz frequencies, demonstrating sub-microsecond control and tuning of the laser pulse microcomb or soliton.
Journal Reference:
Junqiu Liu, Hao Tian, Erwan Lucas, et al. Monolithic piezoelectric control of soliton microcombs, Nature (DOI: 10.1038/s41586-020-2465-8)
Hao Tian, Junqiu Liu, Bin Dong, et al. Hybrid integrated photonics using bulk acoustic resonators [open], Nature Communications (DOI: 10.1038/s41467-020-16812-6)
(Score: 2) by jmichaelhudsondotnet on Wednesday July 22 2020, @06:25PM
So a paper bag on the road, how does anyone know what is in it without looking?
Like the salt around the AI car which convinced it that it cant leave the circle, put 20 empty paper bags around the car, it wont know they are empty.
When I see a "paper bag sized object" on the "road", I have to assume it is full of something that might damage my car, I can never really assume it is empty.
I do not see how "shaking" laser transducers would ever change this equation.
At some point there will be a baby in the bag, and the car will hit it, and who will be responsible?
As our system currently functions no one, and it wouldnt make a difference if the baby was just sitting there and the tesla hit it.
To me this entire self driving car project is a coverup for autonomous weapon development. The civilian application will never work, robocars will always run over poor people, and rich people will always point fingers at the engineers, driver, ceo, god, and people will be murdered by....nothing...and no one will be punished.
This is similar to the drone situation, where rich countries murder bystanders. No witnesses, no lawyers, no judges, no courts, no historical record.
I see it far more likely, at least at this rate, these lidar advances like this will identify that there is a baby in the bag that needs to be exterminated for long term skynet survival, a lot sooner than it will do anything to save such poorly placed babies and improve the efficiency of modern driving.
The skynet future is looking more and more likely by the second.
Thesesystemsarefailing.net