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A comment on GM Cruise to delay commercial launch of self-driving cars to beyond 2019. Parent comment

Re:GM Cruise to delay commercial launch of self-driving cars... by barkingcat on Wednesday July 24, 2019 @01:18PM (#20517374)
This is so strange. As a cyclist, I would be very worried about self-driving cars since cyclists - to the eyes of an AI algorithm, don't look the same.

You can have road bikes, mountain bikes with similar sitting positions, or recumbents, which will need a very different training profile, or tandems, etc

Bikes are severely underrepresented in the list of things that car automation companies care about at the moment, so any self-driving car on the road today might misidentify bikes.

Bikes also often ride in positions (from the perspective of the car) that can be unexpected. Some can be as close to the side of the car that it can cover the full field of view of a side-looking camera for example. How do self-driving algorithms work when encountering such cyclists?

I sure don't want to find out myself - I would hope car companies are doing tests on closed courses with cyclist mocks or inputs.

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Re:GM Cruise to delay commercial launch of self-driving cars... by DenisM on Wednesday July 24, 2019 @01:31PM (#20517512)
> Bikes are severely underrepresented in the list of things that car automation companies care about at the moment

How can you possibly know that?

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Re:GM Cruise to delay commercial launch of self-driving cars... by barkingcat on Thursday July 25, 2019 @12:18PM (#20526644)
They don't even do testing with pedestrians ...
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Re:GM Cruise to delay commercial launch of self-driving cars... by DenisM on Thursday July 25, 2019 @12:32PM (#20526784)
And you know this how?
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Re:GM Cruise to delay commercial launch of self-driving cars... by WhompingWindows on Wednesday July 24, 2019 @01:39PM (#20517580)
The same logic applies to human drivers - various bike sizes and types are harder to see and adapt to. If everyone rode a Jump bike, bright red and upright with blinking lights, it'd be easier to see them all quickly. But I'm constantly seeing tiny mopeds, recumbents, kids' bikes -- it's all harder to spot than a Jump bike, even for a human driver.

So, why fall back on the status quo of a human to spot them? If SDCs are proven to do it better, then I will definitely cycle more once there are more SDCs. It's all about evidence, show me the evidence SDC's are better, then I'll be 95% on board.

[ Parent | on HN ]