Waymo and Tesla are nowhere near L4. Think anyone else is?
A plethora of videos on YouTube demonstrate clearly that Waymo nor Tesla are remotely close to L4 in the public domain. They struggle with benign scenarios, let alone many edge or crash cases. While Tesla and Elon Musk are the black sheep in this family, don’t think for a second the others are on high ground. Micro location, trucking ODDs etc, also require “safety driver” disengagements to avoid crashes. They cannot do so forever. While Waymo, the apparent industry bellwether, and others have a far better sensor system and safer incremental approach and will likely injure or kill less people than Tesla, they cannot avoid injuring or fatally injuring scores of people. The process literally requires it. Crash scenarios are just scenarios that need to be experienced over and over and learned by the system. While many will be avoided due to incremental development, many will not be, especially where they crash cannot be avoided. And then there is the issue of the “safety driver” having to wait so long to ensure the threads are tested they negate the ability to disengage safely. Thus, becoming Kamikaze drivers committing Hari-kari. The worse part of course is the injuries and deaths are not for the greater good. (For more signs of the industry’s collapse see my articles below.)
It is a myth that public shadow and safety driving can create a legitimate autonomous vehicle. And the lives the process takes are necessary and for the greater good. It is impossible to drive the trillion miles or spend $300B to stumble and restumble on all the scenarios necessary to complete the effort. The process also harms people for no reason. The first safety issue is handover. The time to regain proper situational awareness and do the right thing, especially in time critical scenarios. cannot be provided. Another dangerous area is learning accident scenarios. AV makers will have to run thousands of accident scenarios thousands of times to accomplish this. That will cause thousands of injuries and deaths. You could literally combine every AV maker on the planet, and they would still not overcome the time, cost and safety obstacles. The next issues is the use of gaming based simulation technology which has too many technical limitations to facilitate the creation of a legitimate real-world digital twin. The solution is to use DoD/Aerospace simulation technology, informed and validated by the real-world, and shift most of the autonomous system development and testing over to it.
As I have also been saying this can all be avoided.
More in my articles below. Including how to fix of this:
A new video, statement from a Waymo former Chief Safety Officer and a Mass Exodus show L4 is nowhere close
Autonomous Vehicle Industry’s Self-Inflicted and Avoidable Collapse — Ongoing Update
Autonomous Vehicle Industry’s Self-Inflicted and Avoidable Collapse — Ongoing Update
The Autonomous Vehicle Industry can be Saved by doing the Opposite of what is being done now
SAE Autonomous Vehicle Engineering Magazine — Simulation’s Next Generation (featuring Dactle)
· https://www.sae.org/news/2020/08/new-gen-av-simulation
My name is Michael DeKort — I am a former system engineer, engineering, and program manager for Lockheed Martin. I worked in Aerospace/DoD/FAA simulation, as the Software Engineering Manager for all of NORAD, as a PM on the Aegis Weapon System, as a C4ISR systems engineer for the DHS Deepwater program and the lead C4ISR engineer for the Counter-terrorism team at the US State Department. I am now CEO/CTO at Dactle.
Industry Participation — Air and Ground
- Founder SAE On-Road Autonomous Driving Simulation Task Force
- Member SAE ORAD Verification and Validation Task Force
- Member UNECE WP.29 SG2 Virtual Testing
- Stakeholder USDOT VOICES (Virtual Open Innovation Collaborative Environment for Safety)
- Member SAE G-34 / EUROCAE WG-114 Artificial Intelligence in Aviation
- Member CIVATAglobal — Civic Air Transport Association
- Stakeholder for UL4600 — Creating AV Safety Guidelines
- Member of the IEEE Artificial Intelligence & Autonomous Systems Policy Committee
- Presented the IEEE Barus Ethics Award for Post 9/11 DoD/DHS Whistleblowing Efforts
My company is Dactle
We are building an aerospace/DoD/FAA level D, full L4/5 simulation-based testing and AI system with an end-state scenario matrix to address several of the critical issues in the AV/OEM industry I mentioned in my articles below. This includes replacing 99.9% of public shadow and safety driving. As well as dealing with significant real-time, model fidelity and loading/scaling issues caused by using gaming engines and other architectures. (Issues Unity will confirm. We are now working together. We are also working with UAV companies). If not remedied these issues will lead to false confidence and performance differences between what the Plan believes will happen and what actually happens. If someone would like to see a demo or discuss this further please let me know.
