Google Wants To Test Driverless Cars In a Simulation 173
An anonymous reader writes Google has been testing its autonomous vehicles on U.S. roads for a while now. In fact, they're required to, by law. "California's regulations stipulate autonomous vehicles must be tested under "controlled conditions" that mimic real-world driving as closely as possible. Usually, that has meant a private test track or temporarily closed public road." It's easy enough to test a few prototypes, but whenever autonomous cars start being produced by manufacturers, it'll become a lot more complicated. Now, Google is lobbying to change that law to allow testing via computer simulation. Safety director Ron Medford said, "Computer simulations are actually more valuable, as they allow manufacturers to test their software under far more conditions and stresses than could possibly be achieved on a test track." Google spokeswoman Katelin Jabbari said, "In a few hours, we can test thousands upon thousands of scenarios which in terms of driving all over again might take decades." Shee adds that simulator data can also easily provide information on how human behavior creeps into driving. "It's not just about the physics of avoiding a crash. It's also about the emotional expectation of passengers and other drivers." For example, when one of Google's computer-controlled cars is cut off, the software brakes harder than it needs to, because this makes the passengers feel safer. Critics say relying heavily on simulation data is flawed because it doesn't take into account how other cars react to the computer's driving.
cool...it's so life-like! (Score:4, Insightful)
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so what is the problem? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:so what is the problem? (Score:5, Insightful)
Test in the fscking simulation and then test on the street. Win-win.
You don't need to ask for permission to test your car with simulations. You only have to ask for permission to replace real world testing with simulations. Personally, I'm not fond of replacing real world testing completely with simulations. The problem is that the point of testing software is to make sure the programmers have properly dealt with as many possible real world situations, and to reduce the likelihood the programmers haven't ignored an unexpected circumstance. Simulations can only test for what the simulation programmers have accounted for. Its substituting the system programmers' judgment for the simulation programmers' judgment. Its useful, but in my opinion insufficient.
Re:so what is the problem? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd flip it around. An automated car should be required to pass both a road test and a bevvy of simulated scenarios.
Re:so what is the problem? (Score:4, Interesting)
I'd flip it around. An automated car should be required to pass both a road test and a bevvy of simulated scenarios.
Certainly. But the question was whether automated testing should be considered sufficient. I think I would do my own flip-around. I think if Google wants to change the California law that requires road testing to make it so that simulation testing is sufficient, then I think Google should donate the simulator, and if an automated car passes the simulation but fails in the real world in a way real world testing would have uncovered but the simulator did not, Google should be held liable for all damages associated with that failure. Under that circumstance, I would be inclined to trust that Google's simulators are a sufficient match to reality to consider substituting simulation testing for road testing.
If Google doesn't want to subject itself to that criteria, then that's a tacit admission the simulation is not guaranteed to catch all the problems real world testing can catch, and I would consider their proposal to be invalid on its face.
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If Google doesn't want to subject itself to that criteria, then that's a tacit admission the simulation is not guaranteed to catch all the problems real world testing can catch, and I would consider their proposal to be invalid on its face.
I think this is more along the lines of them wanting to avoid the time and expense, since every new model will have to be tested after every code change, I guess.
The problem is.... can we really trust the simulations?
I would rather it be required to have a small f
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Personally, I'm not fond of replacing real world testing completely with simulations.
Exactly. A broad battery of simulations makes sense for regression testing to prove that the 2027 model year software handles all the situations that the 2026 did. But real world testing is required to verify that the system doesn't do nutty things when confronted with unusual conditions -- dust clouds, ice coated wall to wall potholes, a trackless rural road or rarely used off ramp covered with four inches of snow with w
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Please define "simulation".
You can't test some rare situations in real life because they are so rare.
For example car accidents. We're glad that they have been greatly reduced in real life and aren't predictable enough so that cars can be deliberatly sent into real life accidents. That's why we're running simulated accidents, crash tests. Of course not a computer simulation, it's still a simulation that neglects human factors. (evasion maneuvers might lead to other impact angles and speeds, passengers tensin
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You don't need to ask for permission to test your car with simulations.
Agreed. Google is being misleading in its arguments, which raises the question of whether it is being dumb or acting dumb. I have my opinion as to which it is, but neither inspires confidence in Google's judgement and motives, and confidence is of the essence when it comes to getting self-driving cars accepted.
Simulations can only test for what the simulation programmers have accounted for.
And they are also based on assumptions about the response of the cars' sensors to the real world.
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If I'm driving a simulated vehicle, I doubt I'd act the same way in the simulation as I would in real life. For one thing, I have no skin in the game in the simulation.
Simulations are limited by imagination (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem with simulator testing is that you can't test scenarios that you didn't think of. This is particularly important to find problems arising from multiple simultaneous situations. For example, you might test the scenarios "front camera obscured by rain", "car ahead of you performs emergency stop", and "dog runs into street", but that doesn't necessarily tell you how the car will respond to a combination of the three.
Real life is far more creative than any scenario designer.
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A simulation is also only as good as its simulator. The idea of a simulator that doesn't let errors slip that will only show up in the real world doesn't pass the sanity test.
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Even if you account for the physical distraction that texting or talking on a cellular phone creates, you have not slayed the Dragon.
It's the mental distraction these tasks create that takes you out of the Driving Game, and you don't get three lives.
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For example, you might test the scenarios "front camera obscured by rain", "car ahead of you performs emergency stop", and "dog runs into street", but that doesn't necessarily tell you how the car will respond to a combination of the three.
Now that really leads to a difficult decision for the car. Should it:
- Maintain heading and come to a halt? Or perhaps
- Maintain heading and come to a halt? Or even
- Maintain heading and come to a halt?
Let's wait for strong AI to solve that problem for us.
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Decades of aircraft autopilot failures tells us it will immediately hand control back to the driver, then blame 'human error' for the crash.
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Good post.
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Of course, since this IS actually the best thing the autopilot can do for its own survival and the survival of others of its own kind - since any failure that can actually be blamed directly on it might result in the humans deciding to build different autopiloting devices or just do away with them altogether - then this could be taken as a sign that the AI works really, really well. ;)
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Are you sure the car won't spot the dog, mistake it for a child (remember, the quality of information from the front camera is reduced), and perform an emergency turn to the left? Are you sure the presence of the car won't mask the presence of the dog, or vice-versa?
It's easy to say "when in doubt, maintain heading and come to a halt". It's much harder to define "doubt" in a way that's useful to a computer.
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When not in doubt, it's often the safest option too.
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Are you suggesting simulators can't deal with multiple scenarios at the same time?
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Where are simulator completely and utterly fails should be obvious to everyone, it does not test environmental analysis at all. The environment is not detected, analysed and correlated, it is simply fed into the program and so only half the system is tested, not the whole system.
The system should be tested on the road under normal conditions, from rush hour to night driving with a driver ready to take over and at lest two randomly chosen independent observer. Things that need to be tested, missing or wor
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That's going to double travel times right away.
wrong, wrong, and wrong (Score:2)
Steering around a problem is, on average, safer than applying the brakes. Frequently, pulling onto the shoulder and THEN applying the brakes in order to come to a stop next to the car you would have rear-ended is the best course of action.
In the scenario, visibility is reduced and the pavement is slick with rain. "Maintain heading and come to a halt " in those conditions practically guarantees you'll get rear-ended. The car behind you has their vision obscured by rain, can't stop quickly on the slick
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You (or the car behind you) were following too closely. Something an automatic car wouldn't be doing. In that case, swerving onto the shoulder is likely safer but you run the risk of say striking a cyclist or an expectant mother trying to get her spare wheel from the trunk of her car because she has a flat and is using the emergency lane for its intended purpose and not as a crutch for her bad driving.
lanes more likely to have traffic than shoulders (Score:2)
Someone COULD have pulled off onto the shoulder in front of you.
Someone DEFINITELY is in the lane in front of you. "Could" is less likely than "definitely" . The shoulder is the therefore the safer bet.
"Or the car behind you is following too closely " - it normally is, most of the time. Especially considering that the driver of tge car behind you may well not be focused 100% on driving. If they are turning down the radio because they're calling in to try to win Aerosmith tickets, 1/4 mile is too close
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The payoff is *not* the convenience, it's reducing the chance that you will be killed or maimed on the way to your destination. Average humans are terrible automobile operators.
It's going to happen, get used to the idea.
(I'll get off your lawn now, sir.)
Re:Simulations are limited by imagination (Score:5, Insightful)
For example, you might test the scenarios "front camera obscured by rain", "car ahead of you performs emergency stop", and "dog runs into street", but that doesn't necessarily tell you how the car will respond to a combination of the three.
This seems backwards to me. Testing combinations of scenarios happening simultaneously would be far easier in a simulator.
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But only the combinations you think of, while in real life something might happen that you did not expect.
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Real life is good for testing scenarios you might not expect, simulations shine at testing infrequent scenarios and subtle variations upon them. Both are required.
Simulations are limited by imagination (Score:2, Interesting)
Sure, but the article isn't taking about simulations vs real life. It's talking about simulations vs contrived but legally required tests on manufacturer test tracks. Both are limited by imagination but simulations are more thorough, at least according to Google
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Google wants to replace expensive, real testing with inexpensive, fake (aka "simulations") testing. The two aren't comparable, and the danger is that Google can lobby to change the laws to allow simulations to replace real life testing. Whi
Re:Simulations are limited by imagination (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem with simulator testing is that you can't test scenarios that you didn't think of. This is particularly important to find problems arising from multiple simultaneous situations. For example, you might test the scenarios "front camera obscured by rain", "car ahead of you performs emergency stop", and "dog runs into street", but that doesn't necessarily tell you how the car will respond to a combination of the three.
Real life is far more creative than any scenario designer.
Which is why you should do both. A simulation can test millions of permutations -- including arbitrary combinations of events, and in far more variety than could be tested in a reasonable amount of time on real roads -- and can verify that software changes don't introduce regressions. Real-world testing introduces an element of randomness which provides additional insights for the simulation test cases.
Ultimately, governments should probably develop their own simulators which run the autonomous car through a large battery of scenarios, including scenarios which include disabling some of the car's sensors. Then autonomous vehicles from different manufacturers could be validated on a standard test suite before being allowed on the roads, and when real-world incidents occur in which an automated car makes a bad decision, those incidents can and should be replicated in the simulator and all certified vehicles tested. They should also do real-world testing, but I suspect that in the long run simulations will provide much greater confidence.
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"simulation" is also a technical description of "driving game". Let them also put the simulator on-line, to provide environment and background as hundreds of thousands of crazed and insane real humans try to crash into the auto-piloted cars. Each time someone succeeds, buff up their capabilities and give them credit and recognition, and develop response scenarios. That's how you "sim" car combat with real humans - you use real humans. It would be just like the dogfighting flight sims they use to train pilot
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While it would be entertaining, I don't think that's a very useful method for evaluating the performance of self-driving cars, unless you're trying to design a car for demolition derby competitions. I understand that your'e trying to design an extreme environment on the theory that if the car can perform well there, it'll definitely do fine on real roads, but I don't think that theory is valid. In real life, the vehicles on the road try not to hit one another, and the method they use (in most countries, at
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Ain't that the truth.
This is why I don't see everyone in driverless cars in any of our lifetimes. I'm thinking it's at least 70 years out. And not least because a) who's going to pay for all the necessary infrastructure? and b) shared liability will make it a nightmare.
Maybe first let's see if we can have a driverless NASCAR race without crashes. And then I want to see the CEO of a driverless car company put his kids in the car and send them on a
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You make an excellent argument for simulated testing. A real world test will only give you a few scenarios, simulation will throw millions at each individual unit.
Of course you're right about real life constantly surprising people--that's why the development team is performing continuous algorithm development in the real world. I hope my automated car has a real-world-tuned algorithm in combination with a moslty-simulated per-unit system test.
Reality is limited by probability (+consequences) (Score:2)
In a simulation you can have people do all kinds of crazy shit you wouldn't see in thousands of on-the-road miles. You can simulate malfunctioning equipment that you wouldn't get without years of wear and tear. You can test modifications to the AI without real-world consequences. You can test the human-ai interaction on average drivers without liability problems. I could totally see a simulation being superior to reality for testing purposes.
But you could also have a broken simulation, which could make the
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The problem with real life testing is that it's so absolutely slow you won't even go through the examples you can think of.
Simulator testing is a bit like property based testing on software. I come up with a 'test envelope' of things that could possibly happen, and let generators combine them in many ways, as to check way more options that I ever could with example based testing. Then we run a few thousand of those random scenarios every build. If there's ever a failure, it's recorded and we can reproduce i
test software but not hardware / road conditions (Score:3)
may help test software but not the full hardware and how well it works in all kinds of weather / settings. Also what about road conditions / slight lines? odd traffic light layouts / intersections? Just useing google street view as the input likely will not get the full lay out from each lane / all times of day / all cycles.
The problem with simulation is ... (Score:3)
... lack of randomness.
Will they simulate a 3 year old tossing a sandwich out the window into oncoming traffic?
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With AC coming almost as standard nowadays, I wonder if it will ever come to a point where you can't open the window if the car is going over a certain speed. It uses a lot less energy to cool the interior of the car using AC, than the cost to aerodynamics of having a window (or 2) open while travelling at speed.
I welcome the day when cars simply become a means of transport.
Adding Politics to Engineering Decisions (Score:4, Insightful)
Are we really having a public, political, emotional discussion about the relative merits of ATE vs Validation testing? Come on, Slashdot, you're a bunch of engineers, right? Does the CA state legislature have ANYTHING of value to add to your FMEA? What about your production planning? Test plan? V&V protocols?
It's the height of hubris for outsiders (especially lawyers in the state legislature) to come in and dictate low-level engineering details. A responsible legislature (and public) would acknowledge that they have NOTHING of value to add to the discussion.
The only appropriate regulation is "make it X safe." Don't tell us engineers to get there, and we won't tell you lawyers how to snort coke of a hooker's tits.
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Wish I could mod parent "+1 Edgy"
If it wasn't so edgy, the suggestion to let the car companies decide for themselves would come off as ridiculous.
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If it wasn't so edgy, the suggestion to let the car companies decide for themselves would come off as ridiculous.
As long as they, and their insurance company, are willing to accept full liability, I don't see why not.
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You're OK with unsafe & unpredictable drivers on the road, as long as they're insured?
Re:Adding Politics to Engineering Decisions (Score:4, Insightful)
A regulatory "light hand" is appropriate here for a few reasons:
1. The current state of the art is, comparatively, extremely dangerous (even with attentive, good drivers).
2. Google (or the next few guys coming down the pipe) already have an extremely strong incentive to make their cars as safe as possible (speed of adoption, fear of future regulation).
3. OTA updates would resolve problem behaviors after only a few incidents.
Google is coming to the public with a (statistical) goldmine for human development. The cold skepticism they're getting is totally unwarranted and will do nothing but delay the enormous social and economic benefits that fully autonomous roads will bring.
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1. The current state of the art is, comparatively, extremely dangerous (even with attentive, good drivers).
One death per 60,000,000 miles (with inattentive, lousy American drivers) is 'extremely dangerous'?
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"comparatively"
This is (typically) the most dangerous thing people do all day.
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Compared to what? Russian roulette?
As far as I'm aware, no 'self-driving' car has driven anywhere near 60,000,000 miles.
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No, not compared to Russian Roulette, compared to the things typical people do in a typical day. Also, with cars, death isn't the only danger. Permanent injury, significant temporary injury, and massive property damage are also dangers.
Typical people live their entire lives without playing Russian Roulette even once.
I don't really know why this is hard. Most people don't do a lot of dangerous things in a day.
In fact, even in terms of death: 22% of people who die between the ages of 1 and 44 in the Unite
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3. OTA updates would resolve problem behaviors after only a few incidents
You would let your car be connected to the internet? 0_0
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Remember 2008?
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Maybe stupid people have the impression that government got in the way of the recovery because most of the pain occurred after 2008, when it was too late to prevent much of the damage, but that doesn't mean it isn't foolish to think government made it worse.
Where DO you get your information?
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Corporations have terrible safety records, it's laws, unions and standards that keep them in check, skepticism is warranted
Autonomous car accidents should be treated like aircraft accidents - thoroughly investigated and the conclusions used to further improve safety where possible and practical.
People keep talking about the past safety record of google cars, but google cars don't have a safety record, they are not a final product. The cars that have
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Come on, Slashdot, you're a bunch of engineers, right?
Wrong.
If by engineer you mean a licensed professional who stands by his work, and can be called to account for his failures.
It's the height of hubris for outsiders (especially lawyers in the state legislature) to come in and dictate low-level engineering details.
It also the height of hubris for the geek to allow Google to be the sole judge of its own work.
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It also the height of hubris for the geek to allow Google to be the sole judge of its own work.
Manufacturing in a regulated industry is a constant battle between operations an quality. Operations (with an eye toward revenue) tries to speed things up, Quality (with an eye toward recalls and audits) tries to slow things down. Both report through different paths to the CEO. The Geek in R&D will see his work checked over by a different department with a different set of metrics.
You can pick your exceptions, but the overwhelming result of this organizational method is safer and better products.
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Manufacturing in a regulated industry is a constant battle between operations an quality. Operations (with an eye toward revenue) tries to speed things up, Quality (with an eye toward recalls and audits) tries to slow things down. Both report through different paths to the CEO. The Geek in R&D will see his work checked over by a different department with a different set of metrics.
You can pick your exceptions, but the overwhelming result of this organizational method is safer and better products.
This is like an Ayn Rand novel from an engineer's point of view. Regulated industries act *nothing* like this. The people in power use that power to push out the cheapest crap that will make the most money, whether that's service or physical product. The people who assist in that activity gain the most favor in the company. The noble engineer you keep describing simply doesn't exist.
The difference between lightly regulated and heavily regulated industries is that the sociopaths in companies from heavil
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I have worked in a dozen industries with scores of companies. Your Pollyanna world where companies prioritize what's right instead of what's profitable just doesn't exist. To the extent that your medical device company produced quality components, it is bec
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You really think this is solely an engineering decision? I'm guessing this is just as much if not more a business decision. We could have real world testing which is expensive where unexpected quirks and flaws could be revealed or we could have simulations which are cheap and quite confined to whatever it is the scenario is testing. Everyone in suits would go with simulations, while engineers know that models are abstractions and simplifications of reality.
Don't get me wrong, I'm sure they do a ton of simul
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If you were running this I bet you would sign yourself up for an ATE-heavy 100%, a sample plan of trips around town, and an exhaustive DVT (verification in the lab and validation all over the country). You'd hit all the points on the FMEA and performance requirements doc, then throw some gonzo tests in there to add a little spice.
I would say that's sufficient and you acted prudently, and engineers with production experience would say the same. Things would turn out just fine UNLESS some idiot decided to tur
Re:Adding Politics to Engineering Decisions (Score:5, Insightful)
The real story is an unbroken 50-year streak of improvements in safety driven and executed by engineers. A series of recalls is nothing compared to the 60% decline in traffic deaths brought about by new safety technology and it's rapid adoption. Driverless cars are a new safety technology. Let's adopt them already!
Would 2014 America hold up seat belt installation for ten years just to make sure they are totally, exactly, 100% safe?
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Would 2014 America hold up seat belt installation for ten years just to make sure they are totally, exactly, 100% safe?
Really, you're don't see the difference in added risk between (a computer taking over sole responsibility for the control of a 2500-pound, 65-mile-an-hour car, in all possible traffic conditions), and (adding a strip of reinforced fabric to the cockpit)?
When was the last time your seat belt stopped working due to a buffer overrun? Contrariwise, when was the last time your home computer did something wrong or unexpected?
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Is there some particular quality of an "automated driving system" that will make it signficantly more reliable than a home computer? I'm sure the auto manufacturers will try their best to avoid bugs, but then again Apple and Microsoft also try their best.
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Would 2014 America hold up seat belt installation for ten years just to make sure they are totally, exactly, 100% safe?
No, of course not. Don't be silly.
They vendors will sue the shit out of each other for fabric pattern infringement and rounded buckle corners, and hold the whole mess up in patent litigation for 15 years.
C'mon man, this is 2014. And Slashdot. Get with the program.
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Gov't won't mandate this type of car anytime soon. For the time being, it's up to consumers to adopt and the gov't to get out of the way.
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Standards are probably the best thing to come out of regulation. I would love it if those standards were written after anyone knew what the heck the new industry was going to look like! It would be like the 1910 CA legislature mandating turn-crank starters because that solution made the best sense at the time.
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I would like a crank starter on my car as an addition to the electric starter of course. In some cases the battery is too weak to start the engine, but has enough power to operate the ignition, fuel cutoff valves and the field coil of the alternator. Sure, the car can then be push started, but that requires at least one other person and the car to not be at the bottom of a hill (it's difficult to push a car uphill). I could then crank start the car. It does not look lie adding the crank would have cost the
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Sure, the car can then be push started, but that requires at least one other person
I know a cheap bastard that would only park his car on a hill. Want to know why?
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So that he didn't need to discharge the battery while starting the car? Useful if you are going short distances and the battery is not recharged before the next stop.
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Wouldn't it start at lower RPM though? If so, just increase the gear ratio.between crank and engine.
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I bet Google has plenty of skeptical safety guys there just like you. And I bet they're under a lot of pressure from the suits to prevent incidents in the field.
So far there have been zero problems, but that didn't stop them from setting up a regulatory framework. Guessing the problems of an entirely new technology and mandating rules for an entire industry is the kind of hubris that can hold up widespread adoption by 10 years.
who writes the simulator? (Score:2)
Let's see if...
Google writes the software for the car
Google writes (or pays someone else to write) the simulator
Google runs the test
Google reports the results
Seems like with simulations we would be somehow implicitly trusting google that their simulator sufficiently models reality vs only modeling what the self driving software expected...
Although simulation has its place to improve testability during training and development, how does this test against reality? The reason to test against reality is genera
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Car Analogy (Score:4, Funny)
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Can I pay for Google car with my simulated money? (Score:2)
Can I miss Google spokeswoman Katelin Jabbari?
Ooops! (Score:4, Funny)
Found a bug in physics.c, those cars we mass produced last year will spontaneously explode after 367 days of exposure to an atmosphere containing oxygen, or when white lines are painted rather than vinyl, or when attempting a corner of a prime number of degrees when speeding on a cambered road.
Why wasn't this spotted sooner?
Because we hadn't expected to need chemistry or non-Euclidian geometry in a physics engine.
Simulate this... (Score:2)
Bit-flip error in specific hardware triggered by the 2022.3.5 version driving in Death valley for over 6.5 hours.
TFA is Pointless (Score:2)
The article is pointless. Okay, Google is trying to replace the current "controlled" road test with a simulator. The article goes on to say how wonderful simulators are. So what? It says *nothing* about the current regulations. What are they intended to test? Are they done once per model? For every firmware revision? Every individual vehicle? Are they meant to be fully exhaustive or are they more on the order of the driving test a person must take to get a license? Without knowing what the current tests
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A test track may break the bank for a start-up with a great new algorithm
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Re:I'm confused (Score:4, Insightful)
Simulations don't account for faults in the design or manufacturing.
You don't have to test every car to find faults in the design. You only have to test one.
Faults in manufacturing are not unique to self-driving-cars. So why should only SDCs require testing of every car?
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I presume that the simulation programmers are US-based and will create scenarios of American traffic conditions. For real-world testing, just put a few of these vehicles in a downtown Jakarta rush-hour and see how many survive. Here we've got every motoring madness know to man - and then some. I'll be first in the queue to buy any driverless car that can get from north to south Jakarta unscathed.
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...going to be just fine running over raccoons and cats, but larger animals like moose and squirrels are a different matter.
Don't worry, they'll never manage to run over that pesky moose and squirrel.
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On slashdot, there was an article that linked to a video of google engineers describing how their system works. IIRC, they preprogrammed responses to a bunch of situations (like avoiding a bicycle on the side of the road), using heuristics to detect when/where/which situation was occuring. In contrast, humans are in a constant state of intuitive heuristics. While they take longer to react, they're aware of possible consequences long before a computer can be, which puts them way ahead of electronic idiot
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or random things that happen on the roads. Ice slicks, debris, that truck with the steel bar that's about to bounce off and land in front of you, etc..