[HN Gopher] Self-driving Waymo cars keep SF residents awake all ...
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Self-driving Waymo cars keep SF residents awake all night by
honking
Author : yabones
Score : 47 points
Date : 2024-08-13 19:55 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (arstechnica.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (arstechnica.com)
| dolleik wrote:
| If two self-driving cars want to flip each other off, maybe they
| should do it over radio waves?
| karmakaze wrote:
| They'll need public opinion to weigh in and break a tie.
|
| I was just thinking that the US now has a futuristic dystopian
| city, not just Japan in anime.
|
| It's a bit silly though, "how did we end up here?" in an
| Idiocracy way.
| shepardrtc wrote:
| Do the cars actually listen for the honks?
| RIMR wrote:
| I am sure they have some sort of honk detection, but I think
| the key issue here is that they don't recognize other Waymo
| cars, and honk at each other any time they get into a standoff,
| which is common in their parking lots.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| Pretty sure the honks are meant at human drivers. I guess what
| must be happening is that when navigating a parking lot and
| seeing another car that it thinks may be in its way or not
| aware of it, it honks to make its presence known.
|
| This is generally a good idea when interacting with human
| drivers and in the outside world where the probability of
| encountering another self-driving car in such a situation is
| extremely low. It only breaks in this specific edge-case where
| there's seemingly nothing but self-driving cars in the entire
| lot.
|
| It's actually quite a difficult problem to solve. The honk
| reflex is there for safety - if something that might be a car
| (based on limited/occluded camera & sensor data) you want to
| honk just in case, as early as possible. Waiting for the
| presumed car to get into better view so you can identify it is
| dangerous as it will delay the honk reaction to a time where it
| might be too late.
|
| The only way I see to solve that is that all the cars need to
| communicate and be aware of each other in 3D space, and then be
| able to predict their upcoming position in the visual/radar
| field very precisely, so that as soon as it comes into view you
| need to be able to confidently say that this is indeed another
| Waymo car and thus inhibit the (now unnecessary) honk reaction.
| This needs to be very precise as you wouldn't want to
| accidentally inhibit it in case a human driver (or just
| cyclist/pedestrian) also happens to be there and broadly
| matches the location/angle you expect your other Waymo car to
| be at.
| johntb86 wrote:
| From looking at a longer video, it seems like a car honks
| when the car in front of it backs up.
| Suppafly wrote:
| >The only way I see to solve that is that all the cars need
| to communicate and be aware of each other in 3D space, and
| then be able to predict their upcoming position in the
| visual/radar field very precisely, so that as soon as it
| comes into view you need to be able to confidently say that
| this is indeed another Waymo car and thus inhibit the (now
| unnecessary) honk reaction.
|
| I honestly can't believe that's not already part of the
| feature set.
| phs318u wrote:
| Sounds like something Douglas Adams would've dreamt up.
| theGnuMe wrote:
| It's in the guide already.
|
| A Cacophonic symphony:
|
| 42 the number of honks per minute amongst self driving cars.
|
| The AGI trained the self driving AI to recognize all sorts of
| objects and obstacles but not themselves. Perhaps to not be
| defeated by their reflection in the mirror. That old parable
| learnt from the tale oft repeated about a dog and the bone.
| Best to honk, defense in depth. geese honk in flight. Should
| work for cars too. Or perhaps the AGI generalized too far from
| the nursery rhyme: Hear a honk, there a honk, everywhere a honk
| honk... after all these AIs are multi modal.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| This is hilarious and I too would be furious if I lived there.
| But dear god isn't it also somewhat adorable if you allow
| yourself to anthropomorphise.
|
| (EDIT: They're the ducks from Rick & Morty [1].)
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZYyeNiGQJc
| teekert wrote:
| First YT video for me where I have to sign in because it may
| not be appropriate for my age...
| willio58 wrote:
| It's funny to think about how they've kind of figured out self-
| driving (something many said would be impossible for decades) but
| they haven't figured out parking in their own lots without the
| self-driving cars honking at each other.
|
| As a dev, I experience this sort of thing daily with bugs popping
| up. But I work on websites. It's just another ball game when
| we're talking about cars keeping people awake.
| reaperducer wrote:
| Original source: https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/san-
| francisco/san-fran...
| thedman9052 wrote:
| Hypothetically, if a situation like this were happening where
| self driving cars are causing a disruption in a particular area,
| could someone place traffic cones around the cars to prevent them
| from moving (and in the case in the article they'd presumably
| stop honking)?
| Terr_ wrote:
| This is a nice low-stakes example of how we can't expect
| automated driving to just be "like people but with better
| attention spans and reaction times and no risky stuff."
|
| There will be things that are alien to human expectations, novel
| problems, and differently shaped risk profiles.
|
| [Comment recycled from older submission]
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