Advanced Driving Hub

Email the Driven consortium and ask. They plan to have AVs toddling up the M40 in the future.

Triquet wrote:What will happen when an AV is trying to merge onto a motorway with Lane 1 full of bloody minded humans? Will it do the stop-at-the-end-of-the-slip-road thing? Will it ever be able to get onto the motorway?

Three questions:
1. What would a recent L test pass driver do?
2. What would an IAM test pass driver do?
3. What would an off-site IAM examiner do?

IIRC it's a give way line where the slip meets the main drag, so Q4:
What does the Highway Code suggest a driver should do? Here you are:

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Joining the motorway. When you join the motorway you will normally approach it from a road on the left (a slip road) or from an adjoining motorway. You should give priority to traffic already on the motorway

So why should an AV do anything different?

Strangely Brown wrote:I read an article the other day detailing how the LiDAR on a particular new model of AV (I cannot remember which) would be able to "see"... wait for it... 200m ahead of the car and that this breakthrough was almost three times the standard "vision" of other AVs. Now, I know that many (most?) meatbag drivers out there don't look any further ahead than the car in front or, in the absence of one, the end of the bonnet, but come on, if all they can do is drive re-actively within a radius of less than 80m then how the hell are they ever going to be able to cope.

Braking distance at 70mph is 75m. Let's assume the computer can think faster than a person. Does it /need/ to see more than that? (or maybe double that, if you want to allow for oncoming traffic on a single track road).

Was talking to a research group at a major OEM this week in silicon valley and got to talking about sensor failures etc. The researchers view was that so long as you had enough system left to stamp on the brakes as hard as possible, and maybe trigger the hazard lights, that's enough of a "fail-safe" capability.

FWIW, I agree about the lack of distance vision - whenever I've seen example footage from systems showing how good the CV is at recognising objects, I always think it's not looking very far ahead. But if you don't worry about smoothness, does it actually /need/ to to be safe?

I understand, and even agree, however reluctantly, that all the AV /needs/ to be is "safe". Perhaps it is just a form of frustration that the endless hype is all around "self-driving" cars and how we are all going to be able to just summon our carriage, get in it and it will take us wherever we want to go. If the bloody things cannot even "see" more than 80m ahead then they are forever going to be constrained to total re-activity within a very localised environment. No planning, no anticipation, nothing that most people here would actually call driving. As I have said previously that is not entirely unlike the vast majority of the driving public with whom we already interact so, perhaps, I should look on the bright side that many of those may ultimately be replaced with the simple automatons that appear to the current reality of AVs.

My biggest pet hate amongst "other drivers" is those that clearly and obviously do not /think/. Those that do not look any further ahead than the next car (or end of bonnet) and drive entirely reactively. Unfortunately, the reality of AVs, as I see it, is that manufacturers are producing nothing more than electronic versions of the worst of the driving public.

Progress?

Triquet wrote:What will happen when an AV is trying to merge onto a motorway with Lane 1 full of bloody minded humans? Will it do the stop-at-the-end-of-the-slip-road thing? Will it ever be able to get onto the motorway?

It will have to be adapted to local rules and customs; in many countries it is not expected that vehicles will move out of lane 1 to accommodate those wanting to join and the practice may be again the rules of the road. In other countries, it is becoming almost expected that they do. It is a local custom.
I wonder how the technology would adapt to even crossing from one borderless European country to another in which driving customs (not necessarily rules) are different.
I'm assuming, rather hoping, there will be an OFF button somewhere

Strangely Brown wrote: Unfortunately, the reality of AVs, as I see it, is that manufacturers are producing nothing more than electronic versions of the worst of the driving public.

Well, quite. Or at least the average member of the public. My problem with a lot of them is that they are basing ML decisions on data acquired from lots of very average drivers. I want my autonomous car to drive like Andy Morrison.

sussex2 wrote:I'm assuming, rather hoping, there will be an OFF button somewhere

Google for levels of autonomous vehicles. L5 won't have any controls, 'off' will be for when it's in for maintenance

jont- wrote:

Strangely Brown wrote: Unfortunately, the reality of AVs, as I see it, is that manufacturers are producing nothing more than electronic versions of the worst of the driving public.

Well, quite. Or at least the average member of the public. My problem with a lot of them is that they are basing ML decisions on data acquired from lots of very average drivers. I want my autonomous car to drive like Andy Morrison.

If it's possible to write that style into rules, then it may well be possible - in time - to achieve that.

Horse wrote:

sussex2 wrote:I'm assuming, rather hoping, there will be an OFF button somewhere

Google for levels of autonomous vehicles. L5 won't have any controls, 'off' will be for when it's in for maintenance

There'll have to be some way for other road users to recognise when a vehicle is not in auto mode.

L5 vehicles will only ever be autonomous.

Looking at 'now', is there any external indication of adaptive cruise control, auto braking, self park, etc.?