Your thoughts on 'Driverless cars"

[hermes]

UGH. I have to wonder if anyone who thinks this is safe in any way actually understands ANYTHING about programming.

I'm a professional dev for my day job, so I'd say yes. And generally I agree with what you're saying. However we already have ( in the western world ) most of our critical infrastructure controlled & managed by computer, water, traffic management, planes, power ( inc. power generation ), our financial systems, pretty much all business on the planet, I could go on. Is it 'secure' no of course it's not, but the risk is managed.

Of course there is a risk, BMW recently had to announce a patch since in theory it was possible to destroy a car engine via smartphone. But by the same point there are huge known issues involving SCADA systems that run our power grid, nuclear power stations, and a bunch of other really scary stuff.

No it's not a minor issue, but it doesn't make or break the concept, if it did we would have much bigger problems on our hands. You don't have planes dropping out of the sky, or nuclear explosions, power outages, complete financial collapse etc as a regular occurrence due to hacking ( though yes it does happen, stuxnet being a prime example). Clearly managing this risk, ensuring that the proper systems and resources are in place is important, but it is possible to manage this risk. Far from the chaotic "wild west" which is often portrayed ( and I don't deny there is a consistent "arms race" in security dev on many, many levels ), it is currently possible to manage this.

Generally security considerations scale in importance. Sure heartbleed was an utter nightmare ( lots of lessons learned there! ), but you find as the importance/criticality of a system or information assets increases, as does the time,effort, resources & collaborative effort to keep it secure.

It comes down to this, Do I believe that driverless cars can be safe or not from a security standpoint? If I didn't I'd be living in a cabin in the woods, far away from flightpaths,roads,power stations, and pretty much anything that could kill me with a programming error ( including my bluetooth fridge... I know that thing hates me, I can tell)

Examples aside, I think you are underestimating the complexity of the problem. A driveless car has been at the aim of very smart people for generations. That should give you an idea of the kind of effort here. It is the holy grail of AI. A machine that can interact with the real world, in a highly dynamic, highly complex continuous environment, without all the relevant information available, with split seconds decision making (as scary as a failure of a water or power station is, the systems running them have perfect information of all relevant variables at all times and very limited options available that they can outperform a human doing it).

Forget Turing test. A software as complex as this would ace Turing test like it was a slow day.

We are going to make mistakes into this one. It is inevitable (there are bugs in Assassins Creed, and those are child's play compared to this)... the real question is, is the public willing to risk the mistakes until the system is reliable enough? And, as bad as humans are at driving, we are hundreds of times more competent than the most advanced software out there. It will be a long time before it gets to reliable enough, so, are people willing to risk being put into half a ton metal boxes at 50 km/h controlled by something that is about as competent as them?... As people here have said, most of the public would rather risk a human being accountable for that, that a faceless program that could be running in millions other cars.

 

[Lil devils x_v1legacy]

You've never seen hackers do things "for the lulz?" There isn't always a monetary incentive to hacking, some people just do things to see if they can. Those are also the scariest people, the kind who are loners, don't really have empathy, and think that they're too good to get caught.

As far as being able to cause accidents by sabotaging cars now, yeah sure, you could sabotage a car and make it crash, but could you sabotage hundreds or thousands? Absolutely not. You could however sabotage thousands of cars all at once if they're being operated by computers that are all networked together.

Do these people know right now that there are driverless planes? And get this, it has onboard MISSILES.

Seriously though why would anyone hack a car when you can use the exact same idea to hack a UAV, a vehicle actually equipped to cause huge collateral damage? Why is one possible but not the other? I feel like the UAV is far more dangerous.

Where was this uproar about UAV's? Why hasnt anyone hacked one yet if these genius sociopathic hackers are just waiting in the background to hurt 1000's of people. They have had UAV's to hack for yonks and never did it. Why do you think they didnt?

People brag about hacking these things all the time.
http://www.cnet.com/news/car-hacking-code-released-at-defcon/
http://www.cnn.com/2013/08/05/tech/mobile/five-hacks/

One of the earlier links in this thread had kids bragging about hacking cars and phones.
Ahh here it is:
"I hack cars, phones, GPS; I'll hack anything," he said. You might recall Bailey and Nick DePetrillo's Black Hat 2010 Carmen San Diego Project [PDF] [video]. At Black Hat 2011, Bailey presented "War Texting: Identifying and Interacting with Devices on the Telephone Network," [PDF] which told how he sent an SMS over the cell network to unlock a car and start the engine; basically he managed to steal a car with a text message.

http://www.networkworld.com/article/2222878/microsoft-subnet/defcon-kids--hacking-roller-coasters-and-the-power-grid-with-cell-phones.html

 

[BiscuitTrouser]

People brag about hacking these things all the time.
http://www.cnet.com/news/car-hacking-code-released-at-defcon/
http://www.cnn.com/2013/08/05/tech/mobile/five-hacks/

One of the earlier links in this thread had kids bragging about hacking cars and phones.

Neither of them talk about UAV's. Why are UAV;s unhackable?

 

[hermes]

I don't know if anyone mentioned this or not but imagine the huge improvement on traffic it would make if all vehicles were automated? If they were all working on a system in which they were synced up with each other, it'd be a great way to alleviate congested areas.

What happens when the system gets a virus?

Why go the virus route?
What happens to pedestrians? What happens with stray animals? What about the possibility of a falling tree?

That is why it has only worked in controlled circuits or simulations, but we can't rule out the exterior world. Not in this problem... And interaction with the real world variables is the main issue behind this problem.

This is assuming they can even build better sensors, when the system itself can never be secure no matter how they resolve other issues, I do not see it as being a realistic option.

The sensors are not the problem. Nowadays there are cameras that could put our 20/20 eyes to shame, not including all the extra sensors (like satellite information, distances measuring by laser, internal engine information, APC, etc) available only to electronic systems.

The problem is the software. To put it simply, we are playing catch up with a lot of programs evolution and nature developed in the course of hundreds of millions of years. We are making progress, but we are decades away from any realistic projection.

 

[Lil devils x_v1legacy]

People brag about hacking these things all the time.
http://www.cnet.com/news/car-hacking-code-released-at-defcon/
http://www.cnn.com/2013/08/05/tech/mobile/five-hacks/

One of the earlier links in this thread had kids bragging about hacking cars and phones.

Neither of them talk about UAV's. Why are UAV;s unhackable?

They aren't why would anyone think they were?
They already have been hacked, and people have been complaining about those as well. I am not sure what you are going on about.

http://rt.com/usa/texas-professor-drone-hacking-249/
http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/12/17/drone.video.hacked/

Now even for their so called " hacker proof drones" they really are not " hacker proof" they are just "invulnerable to large classes of attack". That isn't actually hacker proof, as nothing really is " hacker proof" It is just better than what they had before. LOL

 

[BiscuitTrouser]

They aren't why would anyone think they were?
They already have been hacked, and people have been complaining about those as well. I am not sure what you are going on about.

http://rt.com/usa/texas-professor-drone-hacking-249/
http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/12/17/drone.video.hacked/

The sentiment seems to be that if cars were hackable people would commit atrocities with them, drive everyone into a wall, cut breaks ect, that this would be an inevitable consequence.

I ask that if we have pilotless flying missile launchers and THESE are hackable why isnt there mass terror and hysteria as the hackers do these things already with far more potent tools?

Hackers can already commit mass murder apparently, just turn a drone around and blow up cities. But they havnt, either UAV's cant be hacked by these back garden hackers or they dont want to commit domestic terrorism. Either way theres a demonstration that theres simply not been an abuse of drones to kill people by hacking them. Why would it be different for cars, arguably a far less efficient method?

Honest question, if you think there would be hacker car attacks why hasnt there been a hacker drone attack? Answer that one question tbh since thats the crux of it.

 

[Lil devils x_v1legacy]

They aren't why would anyone think they were?
They already have been hacked, and people have been complaining about those as well. I am not sure what you are going on about.

http://rt.com/usa/texas-professor-drone-hacking-249/
http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/12/17/drone.video.hacked/

The sentiment seems to be that if cars were hackable people would commit atrocities with them, drive everyone into a wall, cut breaks ect, that this would be an inevitable consequence.

I ask that if we have pilotless flying missile launchers and THESE are hackable why isnt there mass terror and hysteria as the hackers do these things already with far more potent tools?

It is a matter of availability. There are more cars then there are drones, and these cars are deployed at all times in every city. You are not talking about something that is of limited use, you are talking about what people rely on to get them to and from work, shopping, hospitals and every where else they go every day. BIG difference.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/29/drone-hacked-by-universit_n_1638100.html

THEY ARE HACKING CARS. Read the links above in the thread, however, you still have a driver currently. Since they have cars available for them to hack , they already do so, but luckily we still have drivers in control.

Although some doubt that even having a driver will help with the current vulnerabilities.
http://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2013-08-09/article/41312?headline=On-the-Strange-Death-br-of-Michael-Hastings-br-Was-the-Reporter-Car-Hacked-or-Bombed---By-Gar-Smith
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/24/michael-hastings-car-hacked_n_3492339.html

 

[Jesterscup]

UGH. I have to wonder if anyone who thinks this is safe in any way actually understands ANYTHING about programming.

snip

Examples aside, I think you are underestimating the complexity of the problem. A driverless car has been at the aim of very smart people for generations. That should give you an idea of the kind of effort here. It is the holy grail of AI. A machine that can interact with the real world, in a highly dynamic, highly complex continuous environment, without all the relevant information available, with split seconds decision making (as scary as a failure of a water or power station is, the systems running them have perfect information of all relevant variables at all times and very limited options available that they can outperform a human doing it).

I don't disagree with this, it's a huge problem, and we don't have the systems to deal with it properly yet[\i].Tech issues aside we are not going to wake up one day with driverless cars, what is far more likely to happen is that driver assists will increase over time, to the point where actually relinquishing control to the vehicle will be a minor point. There is already talk of vehicles which will automatically brake when a dangerous situation is detected, over time as the public accepts more and more of these assists, then public acceptance of driverless cars will become more palatable. sure the tech to safely have a driverless car on the roads is still a little off ( I'm not foolish enough to give a timescale), but if asked 10 years ago, we'd have thought they were farther off than they seem today.

You don't need to know all the variables of a system, but you do need to know enough, in our financial systems there is huge uncertainty, and generally that is a risk that is managed, a properly equipped driverless car can have far more information available to it than a human doing the driving. and there are simply loads of really really neat solutions to a lot of the problems. currently the biggie ( and yeah it is a biggie!), is the detection of unexpected objects on non-motorways ( children, animals, bikes etc ad nauseum ) but practical demonstrations of networked autonomous vehicles on motorways were first demonstrated a decade ago. Sure it's speculation, but it's not inconceivable. I could go into detail about specialist systems, object recognition systems & networked threat mapping as excellent examples of solutions to problems that seemed insurmountable only a few years ago.

@Lil Devils : I'm not disagreeing with you at all, there are aspects of our cyber security that are really REALLY scary, we could have nuclear explosions, planes dropping out the sky, cars blowing up, our entire economic system collapsing. With a backdrop of all that ( and with a car that can already be hacked and blown up ), I'm really not fussed if my car is slightly more autonomous, it's already at risk. You know that in a year or so's time, every single new car in Europe will be required to have a sim card and a dedicated network connection as standard, among other things it'll be able to automatically dial emergency services if it detects a crash. Imagine what a malicious agent could do with that.... the only way to not be worried about your car getting hacked is to either not drive, or have an old car.

 

[BiscuitTrouser]

It is a matter of availability. There are more cars then there are drones, and these cars are deployed at all times in every city. You are not talking about something that is of limited use, you are talking about what people rely on to get them to and from work, shopping, hospitals and every where else they go every day. BIG difference.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/29/drone-hacked-by-universit_n_1638100.html

THEY ARE HACKING CARS. Read the links above in the thread, however, you still have a driver currently. Since they have cars available for them to hack , they already do so, but luckily we still have drivers in control.

Although some doubt that even having a driver will help with the current vulnerabilities.
http://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2013-08-09/article/41312?headline=On-the-Strange-Death-br-of-Michael-Hastings-br-Was-the-Reporter-Car-Hacked-or-Bombed---By-Gar-Smith
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/24/michael-hastings-car-hacked_n_3492339.html

I dont doubt they are hacking cars, i just wonder if these people, apparently willing to cause death and trauma with their hacking, are too lazy to go down to the nearest military base and hijack a drone.

Sure its not massively easy, but we are discussing murderers, are they so lazy that they cant be assed to use a missile drone and would rather use a car? Are domestic terrorists so common but at the same time so incapable of actively looking for tools? You make a totally fair point and I agree with you, im just sorta confused by the attitudes of these hypothetical murderers.

 

[hermes]

They aren't why would anyone think they were?
They already have been hacked, and people have been complaining about those as well. I am not sure what you are going on about.

http://rt.com/usa/texas-professor-drone-hacking-249/
http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/12/17/drone.video.hacked/

The sentiment seems to be that if cars were hackable people would commit atrocities with them, drive everyone into a wall, cut breaks ect, that this would be an inevitable consequence.

I ask that if we have pilotless flying missile launchers and THESE are hackable why isnt there mass terror and hysteria as the hackers do these things already with far more potent tools?

Hackers can already commit mass murder apparently, just turn a drone around and blow up cities. But they havnt, either UAV's cant be hacked by these back garden hackers or they dont want to commit domestic terrorism. Either way theres a demonstration that theres simply not been an abuse of drones to kill people by hacking them. Why would it be different for cars, arguably a far less efficient method?

Honest question, if you think there would be hacker car attacks why hasnt there been a hacker drone attack? Answer that one question tbh since thats the crux of it.

Let me answer your question with another question: Where are the specifications of the hardware and software used to control military grade UAVs? Where can someone get functioning military grade UAVs to tinker with?

Cars are more vulnerable because they are available to the civilian population. Military UAV are available only through military channels, so, unless the military has at its disposal teams of hackers working in hacking enemy UAV (and they wouldn't disclose if they do), the idea of a rogue hacker being able to hack one through a phone belongs to the Watch Dogs realm of possibilities.

 

[BiscuitTrouser]

Let me answer your question with another question: Where are the specifications of the hardware and software used to control military grade UAVs? Where can someone get functioning military grade UAVs to tinker with?

Cars are more vulnerable because they are available to the civilian population. Military UAV are available only through military channels, so, unless the military has at its disposal teams of hackers working in hacking enemy UAV (and they wouldn't disclose if they do), the idea of a rogue hacker being able to hack one through a phone belongs to the Watch Dogs realm of possibilities.

Thats a very fair question and i accept thats a pretty damn good reason.

 

[Lil devils x_v1legacy]

UGH. I have to wonder if anyone who thinks this is safe in any way actually understands ANYTHING about programming.

snip

Examples aside, I think you are underestimating the complexity of the problem. A driverless car has been at the aim of very smart people for generations. That should give you an idea of the kind of effort here. It is the holy grail of AI. A machine that can interact with the real world, in a highly dynamic, highly complex continuous environment, without all the relevant information available, with split seconds decision making (as scary as a failure of a water or power station is, the systems running them have perfect information of all relevant variables at all times and very limited options available that they can outperform a human doing it).

I don't disagree with this, it's a huge problem, and we don't have the systems to deal with it properly yet[\i].Tech issues aside we are not going to wake up one day with driverless cars, what is far more likely to happen is that driver assists will increase over time, to the point where actually relinquishing control to the vehicle will be a minor point. There is already talk of vehicles which will automatically brake when a dangerous situation is detected, over time as the public accepts more and more of these assists, then public acceptance of driverless cars will become more palatable. sure the tech to safely have a driverless car on the roads is still a little off ( I'm not foolish enough to give a timescale), but if asked 10 years ago, we'd have thought they were farther off than they seem today.

You don't need to know all the variables of a system, but you do need to know enough, in our financial systems there is huge uncertainty, and generally that is a risk that is managed, a properly equipped driverless car can have far more information available to it than a human doing the driving. and there are simply loads of really really neat solutions to a lot of the problems. currently the biggie ( and yeah it is a biggie!), is the detection of unexpected objects on non-motorways ( children, animals, bikes etc ad nauseum ) but practical demonstrations of networked autonomous vehicles on motorways were first demonstrated a decade ago. Sure it's speculation, but it's not inconceivable. I could go into detail about specialist systems, object recognition systems & networked threat mapping as excellent examples of solutions to problems that seemed insurmountable only a few years ago.

@Lil Devils : I'm not disagreeing with you at all, there are aspects of our cyber security that are really REALLY scary, we could have nuclear explosions, planes dropping out the sky, cars blowing up, our entire economic system collapsing. With a backdrop of all that ( and with a car that can already be hacked and blown up ), I'm really not fussed if my car is slightly more autonomous, it's already at risk. You know that in a year or so's time, every single new car in Europe will be required to have a sim card and a dedicated network connection as standard, among other things it'll be able to automatically dial emergency services if it detects a crash. Imagine what a malicious agent could do with that.... the only way to not be worried about your car getting hacked is to either not drive, or have an old car.

Or you could have a custom car, as I do.

 

[Lil devils x_v1legacy]

It is a matter of availability. There are more cars then there are drones, and these cars are deployed at all times in every city. You are not talking about something that is of limited use, you are talking about what people rely on to get them to and from work, shopping, hospitals and every where else they go every day. BIG difference.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/29/drone-hacked-by-universit_n_1638100.html

THEY ARE HACKING CARS. Read the links above in the thread, however, you still have a driver currently. Since they have cars available for them to hack , they already do so, but luckily we still have drivers in control.

Although some doubt that even having a driver will help with the current vulnerabilities.
http://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2013-08-09/article/41312?headline=On-the-Strange-Death-br-of-Michael-Hastings-br-Was-the-Reporter-Car-Hacked-or-Bombed---By-Gar-Smith
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/24/michael-hastings-car-hacked_n_3492339.html

I dont doubt they are hacking cars, i just wonder if these people, apparently willing to cause death and trauma with their hacking, are too lazy to go down to the nearest military base and hijack a drone.

Sure its not massively easy, but we are discussing murderers, are they so lazy that they cant be assed to use a missile drone and would rather use a car? Are domestic terrorists so common but at the same time so incapable of actively looking for tools? You make a totally fair point and I agree with you, im just sorta confused by the attitudes of these hypothetical murderers.

It isn't even a matter of intent when it is most likely a 13 year old kid. We are discussing kids, teenagers who are bored and experimenting with life. They do not think about what can happen, they just think about " Can I do this?" This is due to how their brain forms during these years. The people most likely to do these things are the same ones who are most likely to hack into games and schools and bank computers.. They hack into what is around them simply because " They can". Oh.. The things I remember me and my friends doing during those years...

http://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/sep/05/teenage-brain-behaviour-prefrontal-cortex

 

[hermes]

UGH. I have to wonder if anyone who thinks this is safe in any way actually understands ANYTHING about programming.

snip

Examples aside, I think you are underestimating the complexity of the problem. A driverless car has been at the aim of very smart people for generations. That should give you an idea of the kind of effort here. It is the holy grail of AI. A machine that can interact with the real world, in a highly dynamic, highly complex continuous environment, without all the relevant information available, with split seconds decision making (as scary as a failure of a water or power station is, the systems running them have perfect information of all relevant variables at all times and very limited options available that they can outperform a human doing it).

I don't disagree with this, it's a huge problem, and we don't have the systems to deal with it properly yet[\i].Tech issues aside we are not going to wake up one day with driverless cars, what is far more likely to happen is that driver assists will increase over time, to the point where actually relinquishing control to the vehicle will be a minor point. There is already talk of vehicles which will automatically brake when a dangerous situation is detected, over time as the public accepts more and more of these assists, then public acceptance of driverless cars will become more palatable. sure the tech to safely have a driverless car on the roads is still a little off ( I'm not foolish enough to give a timescale), but if asked 10 years ago, we'd have thought they were farther off than they seem today.

You don't need to know all the variables of a system, but you do need to know enough, in our financial systems there is huge uncertainty, and generally that is a risk that is managed, a properly equipped driverless car can have far more information available to it than a human doing the driving. and there are simply loads of really really neat solutions to a lot of the problems. currently the biggie ( and yeah it is a biggie!), is the detection of unexpected objects on non-motorways ( children, animals, bikes etc ad nauseum ) but practical demonstrations of networked autonomous vehicles on motorways were first demonstrated a decade ago. Sure it's speculation, but it's not inconceivable. I could go into detail about specialist systems, object recognition systems & networked threat mapping as excellent examples of solutions to problems that seemed insurmountable only a few years ago...

Ok, that does sound a lot more likely than the picture the OP painted. That picture included a BBC note that seems to imply legislation was in place to allow 100% driveless cars (like the ones from Google) in the roads of UK in the near future.

The problems with driveless cars is not on the sensors, but the "thought process" behind it. Its called "Moravec's paradox"... Nowadays, a PC hooked to a camera can detect unexpected objects on the street, but ask them what they are and the most likely answer (after some processing) will be "a round object out of place". Ask a person and the immediate answer it will be "a basket ball"... Those thought processes that allowed our ancestors to distinguish a tree branch from a hunting lion are the kind of things our brain is extremely efficient at doing, and the kind of things a PC is not... we are able to do that for an entire room with just a glimpse. And those kind of split-second decision making and pattern recognition are fundamental to driving.

Networked autonomous vehicles cop-out of most of the problem because of one reason: they drive in a heavily controlled environment, which assumes everything there is controlled by the same system. Many don't even have obstacles unless they are programmed into. A real life application would have to run in an extremely dynamic, extremely continuous environment, where many (if not all) the other relevant objects can not be preloaded, networked, communicated with or even trust...

 

[Jesterscup]

snip

snip

I wouldn't make assumptions about who the hackers 'are' or 'why', they can be anything from a script kiddy, a disgruntled worker, organised electronic crime syndicates ( gotta love the Russians, man they do the most awesome electronic financial crimes), a commercially employed corporate espionage crew ( these really exist! ), to state sponsored teams. we've seen with lulzsec what the script kiddies can do, and from stuxnet what nations can do... it really is across the board. Why is just as complicated, from because you can, to money, fame, power, terrorism ( stuxnet can easily be classed as an act of either war or terrorism depending on how you view it).

 

[Killclaw Kilrathi]

It will make driving much safer, until it doesn't. There will inevitably be a flaw, something overlooked. We are imperfect creatures constantly trying to create perfect systems. When we find the flaw, when it manifests in the driver-less cars, it will kill a lot of people in a short period of time until we fix it. Then we'll be safe again until the next crisis. Overall, the cars will make driving safer than walking in the park. We'll just have to worry about the next big bug causing the occasional cluster of fatalities. Otherwise, fantastic.

Good point, there is always the possibility of design flaws. I would argue though that the current system is much more dangerous. A system designed by flawed humans in which "driver" behaviour is coded, tested and re-tested may yield an unexpected bug in a very unique situation in one or more car models, but that's still miles better than putting the flawed humans behind the wheels themselves for every single car journey. An error by a developer in the first model will likely be found and fixed before it becomes a problem, but every single error in the second model could cause a fatal situation. The latter also has a lot more humans, so a lot more potential for errors.

 

[Lil devils x_v1legacy]

snip

snip

I wouldn't make assumptions about who the hackers 'are' or 'why', they can be anything from a script kiddy, a disgruntled worker, organised electronic crime syndicates ( gotta love the Russians, man they do the most awesome electronic financial crimes), a commercially employed corporate espionage crew ( these really exist! ), to state sponsored teams. we've seen with lulzsec what the script kiddies can do, and from stuxnet what nations can do... it really is across the board. Why is just as complicated, from because you can, to money, fame, power, terrorism ( stuxnet can easily be classed as an act of either war or terrorism depending on how you view it).

I am talking about the hackers I know. I grew up with hackers that now work for our government and THIS is what they did as kids. MY best friend had the FBI come to his house at the age of 13 due to him hacking a bank and luckily instead of jailing him he received a scholarship to MIT and works for the Department of defense. This is not making an assumption, did you read the defcon kids article above? I could not even begin to tell you the number of kids I have known in games that were keylogging others and making bots. Of course there are MANY other hackers out there, but to assume that they all have malicious intentions is not even the case much of the time when they are just kids doing what kids do.

 

[Lil devils x_v1legacy]

It will make driving much safer, until it doesn't. There will inevitably be a flaw, something overlooked. We are imperfect creatures constantly trying to create perfect systems. When we find the flaw, when it manifests in the driver-less cars, it will kill a lot of people in a short period of time until we fix it. Then we'll be safe again until the next crisis. Overall, the cars will make driving safer than walking in the park. We'll just have to worry about the next big bug causing the occasional cluster of fatalities. Otherwise, fantastic.

Good point, there is always the possibility of design flaws. I would argue though that the current system is much more dangerous. A system designed by flawed humans in which "driver" behaviour is coded, tested and re-tested may yield an unexpected bug in a very unique situation in one or more car models, but that's still miles better than putting the flawed humans behind the wheels themselves for every single car journey. An error by a developer in the first model will likely be found and fixed before it becomes a problem, but every single error in the second model could cause a fatal situation. The latter also has a lot more humans, so a lot more potential for errors.

The difference with the current system though and an integrated system where the cars work together is they are all separate now using separate technology and if one car or manufacturer has a defect, it only takes those vehicles out of action, not all of them. In a system where they are forced to work together, you create a whole new level of vulnerability as that would affect ALL the cars in the system and not just one here or there. One error could cause ALL the cars to fail vs one error causing limited number to fail.

 

[Jesterscup]

The problems with driveless cars is not on the sensors, but the "thought process" behind it. Its called "Moravec's paradox"... Nowadays, a PC hooked to a camera can detect unexpected objects on the street, but ask them what they are and the most likely answer (after some processing) will be "a round object out of place". Ask a person and the immediate answer it will be "a basket ball"... Those thought processes that allowed our ancestors to distinguish a tree branch from a hunting lion are the kind of things our brain is extremely efficient at doing, and the kind of things a PC is not... we are able to do that for an entire room with just a glimpse. And those kind of split-second decision making and pattern recognition are fundamental to driving.

You are quite right, and this is THE big issue with autonomous cars. But you'd be surprised with what you can do in a split second, you've already got the objects size, speed and direction, and from that alone you've solved a huge subset of situations. yeah a few years ago this was near insurmountable, then the kinect came out, and we now can tell the outline of an object fairly easily.

A fallen tree blocking the road does not need to be differentiated from a stopped truck, just known that it's big, not moving and blocking the way. If we assume that these cars are networked and sharing sensor data, your car in theory can know enough about a huge bunch of objects in it's potential future, without sensor data of it's own. Take a cyclist ( or person on horse, it's pretty easy to make the assumption that it counts as a vehicle, it's big enough, and moving in a certain reasonably predictable way, again you don't need to know it's a bike ( motor or pedal ) or horse, you just need to know what potential actions/reactions should be considered.

Now the trickier part of this is detecting ( for example, there are others) a child/pet/ball from each other. How would the car behave differently in these situations. But lets look backwards, this is going to help some.

if ball = can I stop/react safely ( considering the other vehicles nearby)
if pet = considering the potential size, can I stop/react safely ( considering the potential impact to the passengers then to other vehicles nearby, then to the animal) -
if child = can I stop/react safely ( considering the safety of the child and potential impact to the passengers, then to other vehicles nearby)

it actually helps that the actual reactions in any situation are kinda limited ( and 'mostly' decided rather easily too ), we know the other vehicles nearby, and the state of our vehicle, and the potential options available, the question is in fact how to we prioritise our potential reactions. Ball and pet kinda fold into each other, and into a 'is it big enough" category. when it comes to humans ( particularly children ) it gets trickier, because our priorities change. Yet as soon as there is the chance of impact we've only got a small pool of possible actions,
A. Do I need to act ( change cars current velocity or direction)?
B. Can I react safely ( without any collisions, & within safe stopping/reacting parameters - this is helped with nearby networked vehicles too)?
C. what are the potential collision options ( obv. a list here..... basically what else if B has no valid results)?

So yeah, still big, but suddenly from our a huge mass of data and options we get down to "how big is it" and what can we do, sure sometimes it'll be a ball, but is it a beach ball or a bowling ball? but so much has been eliminated for what needs to be worked out. Once we start looking at it this way, we can already program autonomous cars that are safer ( in theory, still years of work though ).

I'm not saying this isn't a huge issue, but there is some really nice stuff being worked on, and I know the above is an oversimplification. But it's a pretty good example about how something incredibly complex the way we do it in the human brain, can be simplified down, often in really surprising ways. you'd be surprised how the release of the kinect changed things, before it edge sensing of objects was thought to be decades away, and yet it's solution had been sitting there awaiting being applied for years. Now we can make accurate decisions from a limited pool of actions, based on knowledge that we do have, and can gather quickly and process easily.
child-ball-pet is an issue ( actually THE big one ), because it's a case where the system CANNOT be wrong, car doesn't need to know if is bike or is horse, because we can confidently state that its a "big thing in road", but car does need to know what "small thing near/in road" is as the result changes the cars potential reaction.

Yeah we are not there yet, but personally I'm pretty optimistic that we are kinda far along.

Disclaimer - I don't actually think that we'll use a system that detects the shape can determines 'what a thing is' you're more likely to get 'fixed shape (ball) this size, estimated momentum, estimated mass, chance of damage on contact. for a ball, and for humans/animals "irregular object, probably squishy", living things are so brilliantly random we can easily guess that something is alive if it's shape/speed change and are irregular . So not fully determining what something is, just enough to make a good choice out of a limited pot.

 

[Lil devils x_v1legacy]

The problems with driveless cars is not on the sensors, but the "thought process" behind it. Its called "Moravec's paradox"... Nowadays, a PC hooked to a camera can detect unexpected objects on the street, but ask them what they are and the most likely answer (after some processing) will be "a round object out of place". Ask a person and the immediate answer it will be "a basket ball"... Those thought processes that allowed our ancestors to distinguish a tree branch from a hunting lion are the kind of things our brain is extremely efficient at doing, and the kind of things a PC is not... we are able to do that for an entire room with just a glimpse. And those kind of split-second decision making and pattern recognition are fundamental to driving.

You are quite right, and this is THE big issue with autonomous cars. But you'd be surprised with what you can do in a split second, you've already got the objects size, speed and direction, and from that alone you've solved a huge subset of situations. yeah a few years ago this was near insurmountable, then the kinect came out, and we now can tell the outline of an object fairly easily.

A fallen tree blocking the road does not need to be differentiated from a stopped truck, just known that it's big, not moving and blocking the way. If we assume that these cars are networked and sharing sensor data, your car in theory can know enough about a huge bunch of objects in it's potential future, without sensor data of it's own. Take a cyclist ( or person on horse, it's pretty easy to make the assumption that it counts as a vehicle, it's big enough, and moving in a certain reasonably predictable way, again you don't need to know it's a bike ( motor or pedal ) or horse, you just need to know what potential actions/reactions should be considered.

Now the trickier part of this is detecting ( for example, there are others) a child/pet/ball from each other. How would the car behave differently in these situations. But lets look backwards, this is going to help some.

if ball = can I stop/react safely ( considering the other vehicles nearby)
if pet = considering the potential size, can I stop/react safely ( considering the potential impact to the passengers then to other vehicles nearby, then to the animal) -
if child = can I stop/react safely ( considering the safety of the child and potential impact to the passengers, then to other vehicles nearby)

it actually helps that the actual reactions in any situation are kinda limited ( and 'mostly' decided rather easily too ), we know the other vehicles nearby, and the state of our vehicle, and the potential options available, the question is in fact how to we prioritise our potential reactions. Ball and pet kinda fold into each other, and into a 'is it big enough" category. when it comes to humans ( particularly children ) it gets trickier, because our priorities change. Yet as soon as there is the chance of impact we've only got a small pool of possible actions,
A. Do I need to act ( change cars current velocity or direction)?
B. Can I react safely ( without any collisions, & within safe stopping/reacting parameters - this is helped with nearby networked vehicles too)?
C. what are the potential collision options ( obv. a list here..... basically what else if B has no valid results)?

So yeah, still big, but suddenly from our a huge mass of data and options we get down to "how big is it" and what can we do, sure sometimes it'll be a ball, but is it a beach ball or a bowling ball? but so much has been eliminated for what needs to be worked out. Once we start looking at it this way, we can already program autonomous cars that are safer ( in theory, still years of work though ).

I'm not saying this isn't a huge issue, but there is some really nice stuff being worked on, and I know the above is an oversimplification. But it's a pretty good example about how something incredibly complex the way we do it in the human brain, can be simplified down, often in really surprising ways. you'd be surprised how the release of the kinect changed things, before it edge sensing of objects was thought to be decades away, and yet it's solution had been sitting there awaiting being applied for years. Now we can make accurate decisions from a limited pool of actions, based on knowledge that we do have, and can gather quickly and process easily.
child-ball-pet is an issue ( actually THE big one ), because it's a case where the system CANNOT be wrong, car doesn't need to know if is bike or is horse, because we can confidently state that its a "big thing in road", but car does need to know what "small thing near/in road" is as the result changes the cars potential reaction.

Yeah we are not there yet, but personally I'm pretty optimistic that we are kinda far along.

Disclaimer - I don't actually think that we'll use a system that detects the shape can determines 'what a thing is' you're more likely to get 'fixed shape (ball) this size, estimated momentum, estimated mass, chance of damage on contact. for a ball, and for humans/animals "irregular object, probably squishy", living things are so brilliantly random we can easily guess that something is alive if it's shape/speed change and are irregular . So not fully determining what something is, just enough to make a good choice out of a limited pot.

In addition, when we are discussing object detection and identification systems and making split second decisions, you have to account for the human decision of whether to sacrifice yourself, your car and other objects to save the life of the child in the street. This actually happened on the street near mine, they chose to hit the car in the driveway and the front of the house over hitting the child on the street. They chose to hit much larger and more dangerous objects to save the life of a toddler on a tricycle. No one besides the driver was injured and due to this decision both the driver and child are alive today.

I am not sure this will ever be possible with our current systems even if they do improve object detection and identification as they lack the human emotion and ability to self sacrifice in order to save others.