Self-driving buses

[bungeejumper]

Look out Scotland. To quote the BBC's somewhat infelicitous phrase, "autonomous buses will hit the road from May." https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland- ... e-65175447

Well, sort of autonomous. The buses will carry a "safety driver" behind the wheel, plus a conductor "bus captain" to attend to ticketing and customer needs. Okay, that's twice the human crew complement of our local buses, but heck, I suppose you have to start somewhere?

The new buses will only drive on certain designated roads, which I suppose is reassuring. The same was true of the other experimental bus at Inverness, which I assume is still going if it's managed to navigate its way out of the car park by now? https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland- ... s-63158295

Seriously, either it'll work, or it'll kill the bus queue and then all bets will be off. I do hope they make a go of it. But it isn't ready for Bristol yet, and nor is Bristol ready for it.

BJ

[didds]

The new buses will only drive on certain designated roads, which I suppose is reassuring.
BJ

or is until somebody digs the road up and there is a diversion...


didds

[swill453]

The new buses will only drive on certain designated roads, which I suppose is reassuring.
BJ

or is until somebody digs the road up and there is a diversion...

Then they will simply not run. There is no alternative.

They're "autonomous" to level 4, i.e. not really.

They're not even electric buses, they're diesel.

Scott.

[servodude]

The new buses will only drive on certain designated roads, which I suppose is reassuring.
BJ

or is until somebody digs the road up and there is a diversion...


didds

yeah but plenty of the world copes with trams (or indeed trolleybusses) which have the same issue

[Lootman]

Well, sort of autonomous. The buses will carry a "safety driver" behind the wheel, plus a conductor "bus captain" to attend to ticketing and customer needs. Okay, that's twice the human crew complement of our local buses, but heck, I suppose you have to start somewhere?

No need for a "safety driver". A teddy bear will do:

https://www.reddit.com/r/sanfrancisco/c ... o_ride_to/

[BobbyD]

or is until somebody digs the road up and there is a diversion...

Then they will simply not run. There is no alternative.

They're "autonomous" to level 4, i.e. not really.

They're not even electric buses, they're diesel.

Scott.

Level 4 is fully autonomous, within specific criteria, with no requirement to have a human monitoring or ready to take control. You could send it out completely devoid of occupants. Whose driving the bus? The bus is driving the bus. It's autonomous.

The only autonomouser level is Level 5, which is "same as level 4, but feature can drive anywhere in all conditions,"*, which made sense when developing a theoretical framework, but makes less sense when you actually think about real world deployment. There is no such thing as a driving system which can drive everywhere in all conditions, atleast not safely. Makes more sense to think of Level 4 as a spectrum.


* https://www.sae.org/blog/sae-j3016-update

[mc2fool]

Level 4 is fully autonomous, within specific criteria, with no requirement to have a human monitoring or ready to take control. You could send it out completely devoid of occupants. Whose driving the bus? The bus is driving the bus. It's autonomous.

The only autonomouser level is Level 5, which is "same as level 4, but feature can drive anywhere in all conditions,"*, which made sense when developing a theoretical framework, but makes less sense when you actually think about real world deployment. There is no such thing as a driving system which can drive everywhere in all conditions, atleast not safely. Makes more sense to think of Level 4 as a spectrum.

* https://www.sae.org/blog/sae-j3016-update

As I understand it "anywhere in all conditions" means without constraints like geofencing and/or being limited to specific speed zones and the like, which is what level 4 refers to, whereas levels 5's "anywhere in all conditions" means "be able to go anywhere and do anything that an experienced human driver can do", rather than attempting the impossible!

This page gives a bit more details on the SAE definitions: https://www.synopsys.com/automotive/autonomous-driving-levels.html

[BobbyD]

Level 4 is fully autonomous, within specific criteria, with no requirement to have a human monitoring or ready to take control. You could send it out completely devoid of occupants. Whose driving the bus? The bus is driving the bus. It's autonomous.

The only autonomouser level is Level 5, which is "same as level 4, but feature can drive anywhere in all conditions,"*, which made sense when developing a theoretical framework, but makes less sense when you actually think about real world deployment. There is no such thing as a driving system which can drive everywhere in all conditions, atleast not safely. Makes more sense to think of Level 4 as a spectrum.

* https://www.sae.org/blog/sae-j3016-update

As I understand it "anywhere in all conditions" means without constraints like geofencing and/or being limited to specific speed zones and the like, which is what level 4 refers to, whereas levels 5's "anywhere in all conditions" means "be able to go anywhere and do anything that an experienced human driver can do", rather than attempting the impossible!

This page gives a bit more details on the SAE definitions: https://www.synopsys.com/automotive/autonomous-driving-levels.html

Well the wording doesn't help. Everywhere? OK, a city restriction is obviously a geofence, but do they really mean 'Everywhere'? Everywhere within the UK? Well that's a geofence. Everywhere in Europe? ...still a geofence. They surely don't mean everywhere everywhere, if for no other reason than because it would be illegal to operate it in many jurisdictions. What they obviously meant was on any road type. The car is supposed to be functionally capable of replacing a human driver in all reasonable situations and as a developmental goal that's how it came across, but off paper it's not a great definition.

...and calibrating the system so that a hypothesised 'experienced driver' is 100% is also unnecessarily curtailing the scale. You'll end up with systems which scrape a level 5, and with level 5 systems which can drive safely in conditions/situations where human drivers can't. We've outgrown the SAE levels.

It's a very useful scale on paper, but now we actually have systems to apply the ratings to I think it's time to move from water resistant/water proof to an IP rating system. This car is autonomous under these conditions. If you can genuinely leave that box blank then more power to you, and you lose nothing from a more granular rating system which would go some way to avoiding comments like:

They're "autonomous" to level 4, i.e. not really.

[mc2fool]

As I understand it "anywhere in all conditions" means without constraints like geofencing and/or being limited to specific speed zones and the like, which is what level 4 refers to, whereas levels 5's "anywhere in all conditions" means "be able to go anywhere and do anything that an experienced human driver can do", rather than attempting the impossible!

This page gives a bit more details on the SAE definitions: https://www.synopsys.com/automotive/autonomous-driving-levels.html

Well the wording doesn't help. Everywhere? OK, a city restriction is obviously a geofence, but do they really mean 'Everywhere'? Everywhere within the UK? Well that's a geofence. Everywhere in Europe? ...still a geofence. They surely don't mean everywhere everywhere, if for no other reason than because it would be illegal to operate it in many jurisdictions. What they obviously meant was on any road type. The car is supposed to be functionally capable of replacing a human driver in all reasonable situations and as a developmental goal that's how it came across, but off paper it's not a great definition.

Yes, it's obvious what is meant so why the pointless nit picking? That page is a user-friendly description of the levels, not a legal contract. If you want to get anal about it then see https://wiki.unece.org/download/attachments/128418539/SAE%20J3016_202104.pdf (PDF download)

[BobbyD]

Well the wording doesn't help. Everywhere? OK, a city restriction is obviously a geofence, but do they really mean 'Everywhere'? Everywhere within the UK? Well that's a geofence. Everywhere in Europe? ...still a geofence. They surely don't mean everywhere everywhere, if for no other reason than because it would be illegal to operate it in many jurisdictions. What they obviously meant was on any road type. The car is supposed to be functionally capable of replacing a human driver in all reasonable situations and as a developmental goal that's how it came across, but off paper it's not a great definition.

Yes, it's obvious what is meant so why the pointless nit picking? That page is a user-friendly description of the levels, not a legal contract. If you want to get anal about it then see https://wiki.unece.org/download/attachments/128418539/SAE%20J3016_202104.pdf (PDF download)

Because the lack of clarity leads to comments like

They're "autonomous" to level 4, i.e. not really.

which would suggest that it isn't universally obvious what is meant.

All I'm suggesting is more clarity as theoretical designations become practical matters.