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Poltras t1_iuf3wl3 wrote

Reply to comment by Andyb1000 in Ford and VW Abandon the Self-Driving Road to Nowhere. Big story that with little fanfare by newleafkratom

I’ve stated here and offline multiple times that the single best thing we could do for self driving would be to improve our signage to also have a wireless communication protocol. Teslas get distracted by the moon thinking it’s a yellow light all the time. There’s too much contextual information necessary and ML isn’t capable of properly knowing if a light is green for your lane and if it’s safe to drive, yet.

Put a wireless beacon on lights that indicate lane setup, light status, directions, etc. It wouldn’t be expensive, and it would save all the self driving developers a lot of efforts.

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Martin8412 t1_iuf6f4u wrote

Until someone spoofs that signal and supplies false information killing people

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Infamous_Yogurt2858 t1_iuffrph wrote

Which would be a crime. People may do that, but then it's up to the law to find them and hold them accountable, just like any other dangerous or improper violation of traffic or any other laws.

That strikes me as the same as saying because some dumb teens throw boulders off of overpasses and kill people we shouldn't have overpasses.

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Phssthp0kThePak t1_iug6zqt wrote

Yeah but it's easier to catch teenagers running down a bridge.

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DrCashew t1_iuh0u6g wrote

It would actually be easier to catch someone sending an illegal wireless signal, since it would need a transmitter.

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Deranged40 t1_iugdhil wrote

I'm confident that will be exactly as big of a problem as people getting into fatal wrecks due to stolen stop signs.

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Martin8412 t1_iuk198u wrote

Not really comparable. Humans have a sense of their surroundings.

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Deranged40 t1_iuk2iiu wrote

It is a perfectly comparable scenario. My Honda Civic already has a sense of its surroundings, and it's not "self driving" at all. It knows when I'm swaying out of the lane, it knows when I need to slam on the brakes. And that sense will only improve as we do take the step into full automation.

Cars that are using signals from the street won't ever be only relying on those signals, they'll be relying on visual and audio (sonar/ultrasonic range finding) methods as well.

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Andyb1000 t1_iuf89dz wrote

ETO Gruppe are utilising a tamper proof ledger in their system. Each unit will be individually registered upon installation and should negate any issues with malicious actors. If it’s proven to work at scale then it could accelerate the adoption of a global standard for IOT enabled devices.

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Plyphon t1_iuf5rgm wrote

Agreed.

The reason that hasn’t happened though is someone needs to pay for it, and no manufacturer will pay for the development of systems all the competition can use, and no government can afford anything like that as it’ll take years to develop and great cost.

A neutral private company could agree to finance the development and install and licence the hardware to manufacturers but that’s a real risky bet.

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ChinesePropagandaBot t1_iuhjlx0 wrote

> and no government can afford anything like that as it’ll take years to develop and great cost

Really? The Netherlands already has something like this, although it works with an API, not wireless sensors.

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Plyphon t1_iuhju0o wrote

That’s cool - never heard of that - do you know what it’s called or have a link I can read about?

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ChinesePropagandaBot t1_iuhp5fy wrote

You can find the real time traffic data for the netherlands here: https://opendata.ndw.nu/?C=M;O=D

Not entirely sure which one contains the traffic light data, but basically there's different streams for live traffic, traffic lights, bridge openings, informational signs above the road etc. which you can all read from the car, live.

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Plyphon t1_iuhpop8 wrote

This is cool. I love this type of open data utopia.

Now we just need all car manufacturers to agree to using this data, and to agree to exchange the data not only with the government but also with other cars on the road.

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Black08Mustang t1_iuf5s0j wrote

>Put a wireless beacon on lights that indicate lane setup, light status, directions, etc. It wouldn’t be expensive

If the beacon info is wrong, who is responsible for an accident? This is not inexpensive or straightforward.

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Vincent_LeRoux t1_iufagyz wrote

The operating agency would typically be responsible, same as with the red yellow green light liability. There are established protocols and systems but voluntary adoption is incredibly slow. The latest push only got about 10% of the very modest goal of 2,000 traffic signals broadcasting by 2020. https://transportationops.org/spatchallenge/resources/Implementation-Guide

There are many challenges both technical, funding, and end user adoption. There is no mandate for this either at the traffic signal or for equipment in new vehicles to receive it. For the cities, they need to geographically map their lanes and intersections to the lights. Like here's the 4 lanes and the left arrow is for the left 2 lanes. And keep it up to date with any changes. That isn't hard, but it takes money to hire a survey team and someone to program it each time.

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UrbanGhost114 t1_iufg7p2 wrote

My city cant keep up with the issues they have with light sensors now, and you want to add to it, and make me pay for it?

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Vincent_LeRoux t1_iufpox2 wrote

Exactly, and that's a major reason it isn't taking off. We can't even keep up with routine maintenance let alone improve the infrastructure that would help support automated driving.

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Infamous_Yogurt2858 t1_iuffdzd wrote

That's a question for the law to settle, but it raises the question of whether it's a fair or reasonable standard to assume that self-driving cars will never have accidents.

Human drivers cause a ton of accidents, but we all more or less accept that a certain amount of them is just a reality of having a large number of drivers on the road. The elephant in the room is that self-driving cars will never have an absolutely perfect operational record either.

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rcxdude t1_iug0lxd wrote

The single best thing we could do is clearer signs and road markings. As a bonus it also helps human drivers. Making them wireless helps very little because clear signs are some of the easiest things to recognise and for self-driving you need to recognise everything else on the road, or there's little point. So if you can't recognise signs reliably then there's no point trying the rest of the task because you already suck and should get good at that before you try anything else (which should be a hint about where Tesla's at if they still can't do it). What self-driving cars (and humans) struggle with are ambigious signs and road markings, and they both struggle more with dealing with identifying and predicting the behaviour of everything else on and near the road.

(And this is the actual conversation actual self-driving companies are having with governments around the world, but it doesn't tend to result in anything because 'just do what we should be doing anyway but better' tends not to result in sexy headlines or votes)

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xtraCt42 t1_iuh71h3 wrote

And that's where V2X-Communication comes into play. There is no amount of sensors that will allow a car to drive fully autonomous. But if it can communicate with other cars and the infrastructure the missing gaps of information can be filled

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