Even when trying to identify objects, I don't get the push for trying to understand what they are. The way I see it (and I might be very wrong here), you should be able to get good enough results by identifying things around you that are solid (that's the most important part), and tracking their velocity. This should be doable without any kind of understanding of what the objects are. Then the car's control system should keep the speed and direction such that the car can always be stopped before any of the tracked objects hit it.
Having done that, you can play with identifying lanes of traffic and sidewalks and other "normal" features, and potentially ignoring objects there as long as they behave according to expectations. But I'd think the first order of business would still be ensuring that you don't run into solid objects, whatever they are, and whether or not they're moving.
Some things you need to identify and understand: lane markings, police officers, temporary road signs, construction workers guiding traffic, traffic lights, someone waiting at the "yield to pedestrians" crosswalk, emergency response vehicles, ice patches. Just "not running into things" isn't enough to drive on roads. Really you should be trying to understand every vehicle since a naive approach of just extrapolating their velocity is insufficiently cautious since it doesn't account for future acceleration which can cause a crash.
>3) Which you're better off hitting if you need to swerve to avoid another car (is it better to hit the fruit stand or the 10 year old boy?)
This is a non-issue in practice. Just brake and don't turn the wheel. It's a naive approach and it leaves a lot of accident avoidance potential on the table in most situations but it's what most people do and expect everyone else to do. Trying to do anything else is impossible to justify to the public because everything you have to say about why you shouldn't panic stop for a object in the middle of the freeway when there's an open lane beside you will be drowned out by people telling you you're crash the car if you dare touch that steering wheel in an attempt to not crash.
You're 100% wrong. Many people, especially big trucks, have swerved off the road to avoid killing people and animals. If you'd ever taken a defensive driving course, you'd know that it's always quicker to steer avoid collision than it is to brake. This takes a supreme amount of context and situational awareness.
>You're 100% wrong. Many people, especially big trucks, have swerved off the road to avoid killing people and animals. If you'd ever taken a defensive driving course, you'd know that it's always quicker to steer avoid collision than it is to brake.
You are 100% failing to properly parse my comment. I'm expressly saying that braking with zero regard for the situational details is not ideal but it accomplishes the goals of a self driving car.
* be as good or better than humans at not crashing
* react to situations in a manner similiar to and predictable by humans
* not make any important stakeholders more likely to get sued
* actually be implementable with current or near future technology
>This takes a supreme amount of context and situational awareness.
Which is hard enough to teach to people, let alone an AI.
Err, if a self driving car just breaks in that situation, then it fails all of the above goals:
1) "be as good or better than humans at not crashing"
It could still crash because of momentum/distance. It could cause a pile-up.
2) react to situations in a manner similiar to and predictable by humans
People would swerve depending on the situation. It's extremely common, and the logical thing to do in many cases.
>not make any important stakeholders more likely to get sued
Getting sued depends on the effect of your actions. If you kill/hurt your passengers, cause a pile-up, hit the person in front, etc. you will get sued.
>actually be implementable with current or near future technology
>This is a non-issue in practice. Just brake and don't turn the wheel.
That's really not what a driver would do. Depending on speed, setup, it risks being hit from behind, causing a pile-up, and of course being forced forward (by the car behind you hitting you) and hitting the 10 year old...
Not to mention the chances of hurting/killing the passengers of your own car if you just break suddenly, as opposed to swerving...
The part on choosing to swerve vs brake based on risk being hit from behind does not make sense to me.
It reminds something motorcycle riders say after a crash: "I felt that I won't be able to stop in time, so I leaned over the bike".
The real reason is: they press the front brake too hard (instinctively), the wheel locks up and without gyroscopic effect the slightest disturbance let's the gravity do it's work. However, admitting the mistake is embarrassing, so a story justifying the action is being told.
In the fractions of second needed for the decision, instincts prevail. Some people swerve, some people brake. If there is enough time to evaluate the action- it doesn't matter which choice was made (either the distance is enough to brake or there are no other cars around).
Wouldn't you need advanced AI for that? I mean even humans that are basically conditioned from childhood, at least in the western world, to judge traffic have at times trouble doing that. That's why we have safety distances. In case your prediction fails you need enough distance to just react and avoid an accident. Just one of the reasons why true self driving is such a hard problem. Already solving the question of what is ahead and around a car a reliably come up with course around these stationary and moving objects would be a major step forward.
There's no safety distance available when cars can pull into the road on which you're driving. That's one reason it is valuable to ID objects--there's a big difference between a building sitting by the side of the road, and a running car sitting in a driveway with a driver behind the wheel, on the side of the road.
Safe driving can mean taking proactive action in the latter case, like changing lanes away from the driveway (if you can) or slowing down, just in case that other driver screws up and tries to pull out in front you at the last second.
So, yeah, you would need pretty advanced AI for that. Throw it on the pile of reasons I think it will be a long time before we see self-driving cars that are good enough (and safe enough) to replace humans.
Having done that, you can play with identifying lanes of traffic and sidewalks and other "normal" features, and potentially ignoring objects there as long as they behave according to expectations. But I'd think the first order of business would still be ensuring that you don't run into solid objects, whatever they are, and whether or not they're moving.