Self-driving cars struggle to cope with bad U.S. roads
Self-driving cars struggle to cope with bad U.S. roads:
report
By Ethan Baron March 31, 2016 at 10:32 AM
Welcome to our world, robots – we have trouble driving on
crappy roads, too.
Sadly, we humans cannot give ourselves a handful of
souped-up extra eyeballs and a few additional ears so we can better deal with
badly maintained roadway infrastructure that makes driving harder and more
dangerous. Fortunately, the self-driving cars that will eventually be carrying
all of us around can have their sensory powers boosted with the robot
equivalents of more and better eyes and ears.
And it’s a good thing, too: America’s roads and roadway
signage are in such terrible shape that even the makers of automated cars are
complaining that their vehicles with standard sensor set-ups can’t navigate
properly, and in at least one case, would refuse to drive.
“It can’t find the lane markings!” Lex Kerssemakers, the
Dutch CEO of Volvo North America, said while in a balky Volvo semi-autonomous
car at the Los Angeles Auto Show, according to Reuters. “You need to paint the
bloody roads here!”
Here in the Bay Area, drivers feel Kerssemakers’ pain. A
2011 report on the region’s roads by the American Society of Civil Engineers
gave them a D+, and anyone who hits the road with regularity here knows that
not much has changed in the past five years, other than an increase in traffic.
Self-driving cars use cameras, radar and lasers —
collectively known as sensors — as their eyes and ears, with the surroundings
data processed via artificial intelligence software. Industry executives told
Reuters that hard-to-see road markings and uneven signage on U.S. roads were
forcing their companies to add more sophisticated sensors to their autonomous
vehicles. “If the lane fades, all hell breaks loose,” Carnegie Mellon
University research scientist Christoph Mertz told Reuters. “But cars have to
handle these weird circumstances and have three different ways of doing things
in case one fails.”
The U.S. Transportation Department estimated last year
that 65 percent of U.S. roads, and 68 percent of California roads, were in
“poor” or “mediocre” condition. To handle those many weird circumstances that
come up on deficient roadways, makers of self-driving cars “are incorporating
multiple sensors, maps and data into their cars, all of which adds cost,” the
Reuters article said.
Boston Consulting Group has estimated that robot-car manufacturers
will have to spend more than $1 billion over the next decade in research
investment for even more sophisticated autonomous features, according to
Reuters.
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