h/t Greg

The machine, not smart enough to do the actual difficult job of converting these sophisticated image types to each other, found a way to cheat that humans are bad at detecting.

The tiny robots fell to the ground across the square, but continued to change colour as they crashed.

A “catalogue of errors”.

h/t Colonista

Whoa.

Our tests also exposed the infallibility myth that surrounds computers and automated vehicles. Driving the same car toward the same target at the same speed multiple times often produces different results. Sometimes the car executes a perfectly timed last-ditch panic stop. Other times it brakes late, or less forcefully, or even periodically fails to do anything at all. In our stationary-vehicle test, the Impreza’s first run at 50 mph resulted in the hardest hit of the day, punting the inflatable target at 30 mph. It was only on the second attempt that the Subaru’s EyeSight system impressively trimmed the speed to just 12 mph before the collision.

Minor glitches.

I’m in the UK. My software update (2018.21.9) completed this morning. 2018 Model S 100D.

 

On an ‘A’ road drive today in dry, clear weather using Autopilot on a stretch of straight, clear, flat well marked road at 40mph the car suddenly and for no apparent reason tried to swerve off the road sharply, I had to grab the wheel (my hands always rest lightly on the wheel while AP is engaged) quickly to get the car back on track. This happened twice 45 minutes apart in similar conditions.

 

There was no break in the white lines and no apparent reason for it to do this.

CBC: Tesla in autopilot mode…

I won’t quote the rest because that would spoil the ending.

The National Transportation Safety Board has released its preliminary report on the fatal March crash of an Uber self-driving car in Tempe, Arizona. It paints a damning picture of Uber’s self-driving technology.

 

The report confirms that the sensors on the vehicle worked as expected, spotting pedestrian Elaine Herzberg about six seconds prior to impact, which should have given it enough time to stop given the car’s 43mph speed.

 

The problem was that Uber’s software became confused, according to the NTSB. “As the vehicle and pedestrian paths converged, the self-driving system software classified the pedestrian as an unknown object, as a vehicle, and then as a bicycle with varying expectations of future travel path,” the report says.

 

Things got worse from there.

h/t rd

Up, up, and away!

The only thing going for the hot air balloon is that it is, in a very practical sense, the only full autonomous vehicle in actual use around the world.

 

This is in sharp contrast to the fantasy world the motor industry wants us to believe exists, one in which autonomous vehicles are constantly whizzing up and down the street in a well-ordered, tidy, clean and in no way dystopian future-present (dative-perfect).

 

Yet another heap of well-meaning nonsense has been slid off a shovel onto my shoes this week, as if to remind me that self-driving cars are a real thing even though they are quite obviously not. It was funny at first but the pretence has now accelerated from fantasy to insanity, on its way overtaking even the most hopelessly idiotic claims that have been trundling along the tech vapourware fast lanes in sixth gear for decades already, such as the ‘paperless office’, ‘intuitive scripting language’ and ‘self-serve checkout’ – you know, the ones that require a frantic member of staff, sometimes two, running from machine to machine to help you persuade the fuckers to work.

h/t Sean

It’s your life. Be a passenger.

Whence comes this rush to robot cars? Did the public demand it? Or have our betters in the tech industry and in the bowels of the bureaucracy taken it upon themselves to correct our lamentable human failings and, in the name of “safety,” shove these vehicles down our throats?

AP;

“The victim did not come out of nowhere. She’s moving on a dark road, but it’s an open road, so Lidar (laser) and radar should have detected and classified her” as a human, said Bryant Walker Smith, a University of South Carolina law professor who studies autonomous vehicles.
Smith said the video may not show the complete picture, but “this is strongly suggestive of multiple failures of Uber and its system, its automated system, and its safety driver.”