Sorry if this has been covered elsewhere...

[jdrrco]

A couple of times in the last week or so, there have been significant obstacles directly in front of my car on the road, which I have had to avoid. One was an iron bar and the other was a (dead) badger. Neither was particularly tall, but I would not have wanted to drive over either.

My question is how would (do?) autonomous cars deal with such obstacles? Would they spot the obstacles and take appropriate action or would they plough ahead risking damage to the car and driver? Same question for potholes, missing manhole covers etc.

Just curious as I've not seen the answer in any articles etc about autonomous vehicles, which are always pictured driving on spotlessly clean and clear roads.

Anyone out there know about such things?

 

[lisa110rry]

Good question! I look forward to hearing the answer.

 

[MancMike]

They do what you do, scan the surface of the road! Then calculate the size of the object, try to fit the object to a known database of objects and take action accordingly.

If it's a child, avoid at all costs even if it means glancing another car, if it's a 10cm tall child, it's probably a doll, avoid if it's risk free to do so.

There's huge debate on the morals of autonomous driving, but while the jury is out on all that, now autonomous cars require the driver to have hold of the steering wheel, or to take hold of it on demand, when the car wants to offload a decision to the human.

Some of the debates include things like, if an impact is unavoidable, you can steer left and hit biker A, or swerve right and hit biker B, but B has no helmet on, what do you do?
Hit A because he's most likely to survive? But B was being careless in not wearing the helmet, his fault. Do you penalise A for doing the right thing in wearing a helmet, by hitting him? Then bikers will start not wearing helmets, knowing self driving cars won't hit them.

It's a minefield.
Here's a video from one of my favourite Youtube channels, on the messy ethics of driverless cars. Covers this and much more.
[YOUTUBE]avh7ez858xM[/YOUTUBE]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=avh7ez858xM

 

[Mr-Goose]

How about not swerving into either of the cyclists and making use of the far greater protection you have compared to them?

I see a big problem with the autonomous car handing over control to a mere human in that the human will have far less time to react once they realise they need to take control or after they have been given control when the car shouts out "not my problem".

 

[GeeJayW]

Handing control over to the unsuspecting idiot sat behind the steering wheel (who immediately prior to handover was puzzling over the answer to 15 across while drinking a cup of tea) is at best a seriously flawed strategy. It's actually a cop out on the part of the vehicle manufacturer.

 

[MancMike]

That's not how it works right now. Some systems won't let the driver take his hands off the wheel, if you do (after a warning or two), it disables the autonomy for the rest of the journey. Other systems, will do full collision avoidance, but on some roads where it can't read the road as clearly as it needs, will hand control back.

 

[GeeJayW]

Can't think of anything worse than having to hold the steering wheel, pay full attention to everything that's going on but not actually be driving the car. What's the point? I for one aren't interested in that at all.

 

[MancMike]

You've only got to hold the wheel now, while law dictates the the driver must be in control of the vehicle at all times.

It's like you're suggesting the whole self driving cars thing should just be knocked on the head because it's not perfect right now, right in it's infancy...

A lot of the situations described to illustrate the decisions the car's software will make are right now, thought experiments and it won't be the car manufacturers making those decisions.

 

[GeeJayW]

Well, I think what I'm suggesting is that an autonomous vehicle is either autonomous or it isn't. The halfway-house version is not something I would enjoy 'driving'.

How engaged in driving is the human passenger/driver going to be after a few hours of the car doing pretty much everything for itself. Once the car is in self drive mode, it should not IMHO as a last resort be handing over to a human driver (that could well be less than fully prepared to intervene instantaneously) whilst the vehicle is in motion.

There are a whole bunch of issues/scenarios that have yet to be closed out before truly self-drive vehicles will be competent enough to mix it in real world traffic flow. I understand that it's early days for the technology.

It's also early days for working out who is responsible/liable/accountable for what, when things go pear shaped. FWIW I think greater clarity and transparency in these areas will help steer the self-drive technology in the direction where it provides the most benefits e.g.
a) providing personal transport options for those that are currently unable to drive themselves;
b) providing on-demand personal transport, reducing the number of vehicles on the road.
c) reducing the burden of personal transport ownership.

Replacing the current human drive car parc with self drive vehicles is to me a solution looking for a problem or simply a whole bunch of business opportunities for those with vested interests.

 

[Revvd]

There will come a situation at some point where an autonomous car makes the decision to sacrifice it's occupant.
If the only two choices it calculates are between ploughing into a school bus and potentially killing a bunch of kids , or swerving off a bridge.. will it chose the one with the least number of potential fatalities? And would a human driver have come up with a better third option?

 

[MancMike]

Yes exactly. But what if the choice is hitting a small group of elderly people, and swerving off the bridge, what if the driver is a pregnant woman carrying triplets? The old people have lived the majority of their lives, it's not just a numbers game. It's endless.

While there's many questions as to what the software must do in each of these scenarios, does it need to be able to determine age, gender, pregnancy, terminal illness, etc, one thing's for sure though, there'll be far fewer deaths on the road. No drunk drivers, no impatience, no stupidity, recklessness or distraction. Take all that out of the equation and there'll be almost no accidents now. Cars will be driven by software that can instantly take into account a million factors, come to the decision (whatever that happens to be) and perfectly execute it with no panicked mistakes.

 

[ash59fifty-uk]

I had to swerve around what looked like the rear bumper of a people carrier laying horizontally across lane 2 of the A14 earlier. I was in a workvan so was tempted to just drive over it, but natural reactions just kicked in and swerved around it, ample gap in traffic in lane 1 to do so.

The Audi driver behind me chewing my rear bumper must have sh*t themselves as the distance between us looked like warp speed as he/she must have just slammed on the brakes. Goes to show it doesn't do any good sitting up ones behind

 

[zipdip]

I must admit some of the answers in this tread have made me smile and at the same time have reinforced my belief that I will never drive one of the cars with these guidance systems,I am amazed at some posters utter belief in the car technology which in some small way scares the hell out of me.

 

[190]

I agree. I think autonomous cars with a "Human" level of discrimination and judgement are a long way off. In the mean time I think they'll be safe but slow. They'll stop a lot when they don't really need to, like a nervous human driver does now.

 

[tron]

You drive them already. tyre pressure monitoring, hill start assist and autonomous emergency braking, self parking and road sign recognition are all taking the work away from the driver. Who knows, someday we'll be able to dispense with the chap with the red flag, walking in front.

 

[MancMike]

All true, but the final step is the hardest one.

 

[GeeJayW]

You drive them already. tyre pressure monitoring, hill start assist and autonomous emergency braking, self parking and road sign recognition are all taking the work away from the driver. Who knows, someday we'll be able to dispense with the chap with the red flag, walking in front.

Spoken like a true Luddite....

 

[jdrrco]

I had to swerve around what looked like the rear bumper of a people carrier laying horizontally across lane 2 of the A14 earlier. I was in a workvan so was tempted to just drive over it, but natural reactions just kicked in and swerved around it, ample gap in traffic in lane 1 to do so.

Which brings us neatly back to my original question. Ignoring for now the deep moral judgements, can an autonomous vehicle detect a pothole or a de-lidded manhole and take the necessary preventative action?

The rear bumper/iron bar on the carriageway scenario isn't so uncommon. A friend, some years ago, wrote off his almost-new Porsche 928 (I said it was a while back) when he chose to straddle a lump of metal on the M1 only to find himself face to face with it in the cabin seconds later after it had flipped up and pierced a hole through his engine bay, dashboard and gearshift.

Having done a bit of internet research since posting the question, it seems this is indeed an area which is not yet resolved by those suggesting we should feel comfortable enough to have a kip in the back whilst our car delivers us to our destination. Apparently, at the moment, even heavy rain, snow and puddles can throw out the autonomousness. Seems it will be a long time before they are commonplace here in Cumbria!

 

[MancMike]

Yes, answered this in the original reply. They scan the surface of the road, wireframe it and identify objects/ditches and avoid as and where necessary.

The S Class has been scanning the road surface for years to prime the magic body control system.

Watch videos of the Tesla Model S and S Class autonomous driving.

Nobody is suggesting you should shut your eyes or not pay attention to the road, that'd be stupid and illegal. Cars can do it, but in the same way a 12 year old might be able to drive a car, you're not going to throw him the keys and wave him on his way.

Tech advancement is logarithmic not linear. What is a long time to you? Are you thinking 20 years away?

 

[markjay]

If Lane Keeping Assyst can track the white lines on both the sides of the lane using cameras.... shouldn't be too difficult to detect an object on the road?