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A comment on Google’s Self-Driving Car Project Is Losing Out to Rivals. Parent comment

Re:Google’s Self-Driving Car Project Is Losing Out to Rivals by mcphilip on Monday September 12, 2016 @10:30AM (#12479938)
Agreed.

My suspicion is that they are way ahead of competitors in terms of data from testing self driving cars and realize there are still so many unsolved problems that true autonomous vehicles aren't going to happen nearly as soon as competitors claim.

For instance, I see self-driving Google cars on a daily basis here in central Austin. There are a ton of zero visibility turns where you have to slowly edge out and hope no one is coming because visibility is blocked by a hedge.

How can self-driving cars handle that scenario without delegating to manual intervention?

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Re:Google’s Self-Driving Car Project Is Losing Out to Rivals by daveFNbuck on Monday September 12, 2016 @10:38AM (#12480023)
My question would be how can a human handle that scenario without computer assistance? You can always add a visual sensor near the front bumper of a self-driving car to safely let it peak around the corner without having to pull forward far enough to get hit.
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Re:Google’s Self-Driving Car Project Is Losing Out to Rivals by stcredzero on Monday September 12, 2016 @01:14PM (#12481563)
peek
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Re:Google’s Self-Driving Car Project Is Losing Out to Rivals by therealdrag0 on Monday September 19, 2016 @09:35PM (#12536328)
Reminds me of: https://twitter.com/stealthmountain
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Re:Google’s Self-Driving Car Project Is Losing Out to Rivals by daveFNbuck on Monday September 12, 2016 @01:42PM (#12481844)
Oops! Too bad I can't edit :(
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Re:Google’s Self-Driving Car Project Is Losing Out to Rivals by futureproofd on Monday September 12, 2016 @10:56AM (#12480186)
Mud on front bumper...hmm
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Re:Google’s Self-Driving Car Project Is Losing Out to Rivals by captaincanoe on Monday September 12, 2016 @11:06AM (#12480300)
How is it better to prevent the computer from safely see around the corner almost all the time only because mud will prevent it some of the time, but allow the human to continue driving while never being able to safely see around the corner?
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Re:Google’s Self-Driving Car Project Is Losing Out to Rivals by Naritai on Monday September 12, 2016 @11:02AM (#12480253)
No different from mud on a windshield. Alert goes off that it can't drive until the camera is cleaned off.
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Re:Google’s Self-Driving Car Project Is Losing Out to Rivals by damienkatz on Monday September 12, 2016 @12:22PM (#12481011)
Or some sort of cleaning mechanism on the sensor. A "wiper" if you will.
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Re:Google’s Self-Driving Car Project Is Losing Out to Rivals by ZanyProgrammer on Monday September 12, 2016 @11:30AM (#12480547)
So they'll automatically pull over to the side of the road, even if there's no shoulder? Or unsafe?
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Re:Google’s Self-Driving Car Project Is Losing Out to Rivals by icebraining on Monday September 12, 2016 @11:59AM (#12480802)
No, they just won't do turns with poor visibility in the meantime.
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Re:Google’s Self-Driving Car Project Is Losing Out to Rivals by pinko on Monday September 12, 2016 @10:37AM (#12480013)
I agree with your point, but I'm not sure about your example! Can't self-driving cars "see" around the blind corner much earlier than a human could due to the fact that they have sensors on the very front of the car, as opposed to our "sensors" (eyes) back behind the windshield? They might do better!
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Re:Google’s Self-Driving Car Project Is Losing Out to Rivals by Strom on Monday September 12, 2016 @10:47AM (#12480101)
Not only the placement, but with radars [1] you can see through a bunch of objects like trees, wooden fences, and indeed also hedges. Of course making sense of the data in a completely new environment is hard. This is where fleet learning helps a lot.

[1] This one police radar seems to also nicely work through stone http://www.camero-tech.com/product.php?ID=38

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Re:Google’s Self-Driving Car Project Is Losing Out to Rivals by smileysteve on Monday September 12, 2016 @04:31PM (#12483360)
The self driving car can also react without a >=.7 second reaction time; which, at 60 mph is nearly 100 feet.
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Re:Google’s Self-Driving Car Project Is Losing Out to Rivals by DannyBee on Monday September 12, 2016 @11:27AM (#12480513)
There are a lot of things that are opaque to normal-band light that are transparent to other things, like infrared, ultraviolet etc (and vice versa). This goes for more than just light. It all depends on the wavelengths.

One should not assume that simply because a human can't see through it, doesn't mean a computer with the right kinds of sensors can't.

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Re:Google’s Self-Driving Car Project Is Losing Out to Rivals by OldSchoolJohnny on Monday September 12, 2016 @11:41AM (#12480647)
You are not familiar with the technology. The sensors can easily "see" beyond a hedge easier than a person could. Look into it you'll see that the sensors have a far wider range of perception than a human driving.
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Re:Google’s Self-Driving Car Project Is Losing Out to Rivals by stephengillie on Monday September 12, 2016 @10:39AM (#12480028)
Get a human (or some other sensor) to look around the hedge? At some point, humans are going to become "just another sensor platform" for the car's autonomy to utilize. And then we can just work to replace human sensors with cheaper sensors.
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Re:Google’s Self-Driving Car Project Is Losing Out to Rivals by sosuke on Monday September 12, 2016 @10:37AM (#12480015)
As an Austin driver I can agree with the dangers of our roads but I think those zero visibility turns are solvable in exactly the manner you propose. Slowly edge out until a front corner sensor can look down the road. I'm sure there are an unlimited other factors I can't imagine so I understand it isn't as simple as that.
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Re:Google’s Self-Driving Car Project Is Losing Out to Rivals by Animats on Monday September 12, 2016 @02:17PM (#12482219)
Exactly. With a point cloud system, the sensor system is aware of where its sensing is blocked.
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Re:Google’s Self-Driving Car Project Is Losing Out to Rivals by icebraining on Monday September 12, 2016 @10:52AM (#12480140)
How can self-driving cars handle that scenario without delegating to manual intervention?

One possible way: http://web.mit.edu/~velten/www/corner/

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Re:Google’s Self-Driving Car Project Is Losing Out to Rivals by 1123581321 on Monday September 12, 2016 @10:43AM (#12480053)
I agree with your main point. Google certainly has enough data to have encountered issues beyond the progress of the automakers advancing incrementally. However, I would not be surprised if Tesla's approach is also yielding advances unavailable to Google. I would love to see their results combined at some point.

Discussing your specific example, I wonder if autonomous vehicles might learn to avoid blinds given enough crash data.

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Re:Google’s Self-Driving Car Project Is Losing Out to Rivals by cwilkes on Monday September 12, 2016 @11:46AM (#12480691)
Another thought: because all this data is collected and analyzed it will be easier to automatically report this as a problem intersection to the city planners.

Granted this can happen now with people calling in but they will forget to do so, won't have images to show for backup, etc. Roads can be made safer this way.

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Re:Google’s Self-Driving Car Project Is Losing Out to Rivals by PinguTS on Monday September 12, 2016 @10:37AM (#12480022)
Mercedes is working on that and it is partly available as a driving assistant called: Cross-Traffic Assist. But I assume there is still a lot of additional work to do.

Second, it will come when cars finally talk to each other, which will become mandatory in a few years.

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Re:Google’s Self-Driving Car Project Is Losing Out to Rivals by snowwrestler on Monday September 12, 2016 @01:16PM (#12481583)
Cars talking to each other is a terrible idea. I don't want your car to infect mine with a virus. It's bad enough that cars talk to central servers.
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Re:Google’s Self-Driving Car Project Is Losing Out to Rivals by electricEmu on Monday September 12, 2016 @10:41AM (#12480044)
I agree with your sentiment. Wouldn't the scenario you posed be solved by not turning in red lights though?
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Re:Google’s Self-Driving Car Project Is Losing Out to Rivals by ape4 on Monday September 12, 2016 @10:53AM (#12480164)
A camera on a telescoping pole.
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Re:Google’s Self-Driving Car Project Is Losing Out to Rivals by taigeair on Monday September 12, 2016 @02:46PM (#12482510)
Radar?
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