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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
(Score: 3, Funny) by c0lo on Friday May 25 2018, @01:12PM (1 child)
Blowing the horn isn't that hard to automated.
Giving the finger is even easier, just mount on the hood a miniature replica of the L.O.V.E. statue in Milan. As a perpetual act of culture, for all to see at any given time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Friday May 25 2018, @02:45PM
Yeah yeah funny mod, not disagreeing. However, seriously, does anyone know if any of the self driving cars have actually automated the horn and added it to driving algos?
A couple months ago some obviously crazy or high person jumped in front of a self driving car and died, possibly a self driving car should use facial recognition to tell if a pedestrian isn't looking at the car and then honk to get attention on the theory that maybe they could leap out of the way. I suppose road testing this kind of thing is going to be very exciting.
Oh and using the data on the driver's phone, gotta honk at hot chicks, hot guys, maybe both depending on tindr/grindr app config, and gotta honk at people you know, at least according to how the locals drive around here. Otherwise they'll get pissed off and think you don't care about them, and this is the era of social media not antisocial media. Supposedly.