back to article Q: How do you test future driverless car tech? A: Slurp a ton of real-world driving data

A group of council delivery drivers in East London are riding new £28,000 Land Rover Discovery Sport vehicles. A bit extravagant? Yes, deliberately so: these cars are testbeds for the Move UK autonomous car tech data-gathering project. Central to the project is gathering data on how autonomous cars will operate in the future. …

  1. frank ly

    Imagination

    "The six-strong Disco research fleet ..."

    I'm getting some strange mental images.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Imagination

      It's a cowboy, a fireman, a policeman, an American Indian, two shoreditch hipsters and a vinyl record deck listening to rose royce.

      1. Khaptain Silver badge

        Re: Imagination

        "It's a cowboy, a fireman, a policeman, an American Indian, two shoreditch hipsters and a vinyl record deck listening to rose royce"

        Alias : The Shoreditch Village People

        I can't think of many valid reasons for them not dressing up whilst they do their rounds, although they might want to remove their costumes when going for a pint later on....

    2. allthecoolshortnamesweretaken
  2. TRT Silver badge

    One wonders...

    If the type/make/model of vehicle being driven affects the fleshy driver's responses?

    I strongly suspect that some vehicles, like BMWs, already have a "brain defeat" device which activates with the ignition.

    The Chelsea Tractors tend to push forwards, safe in the knowledge that in any sort of a collision short of a bus or lorry, they are not going to come off worst.

    And if you're bombing it around The Wen in a micro-shoe box original BL Mini, you're going to drive very safely indeed, knowing that there's a four foot long steel shaft with a sharpened end pointed at your heart, and your seat belt anchors are probably best described as "decorative" by now.

  3. wolfetone Silver badge
    Coat

    "A group of council delivery drivers in East London are riding new £28,000 Land Rover Discovery Sport vehicles. "

    Notice how they haven't used BMW's or Audi's.

    The reason? They needed to be able to simulate the use of indicators.

  4. Jet Set Willy

    This is new?

    I had assumed this sort of thing has been happening for years.

    I hope there is a serious expansion of the type of roads they test. While it is certain that autonomous vehicles will be seen first in city/town environments, there are a lots of rural roads in the Western world, let alone elsewhere. Where I am in the Dorset/Somerset area just getting from one town to another involves travelling on roads that are (sparsely) signed at the national speed limit - 60mph in a car - but driving at that speed would be suicide. Not to mention that road markings, cat's-eyes, etc. are in many cases in poor repair, and in others simply non-existent.

    Scares the shit out of some city types when I give them lifts. For them it is inconceivable that the nearest train station is a 30 minute drive and the lines point north/south, not directly at London.

  5. druck Silver badge
    Thumb Down

    Unfortunately this system is going to capture some of the less desirable behaviours displayed on the road by people driving:-

    * Unnecessarily large SUV type vehicles

    * Rushing between delivery jobs and parking inappropriately

    * Driving vehicles they don't own or have to pay insurance on

    I'd rather see the trail carried out on vehicles the driver owns, pays for and cares about, doesn't involve blocking other people's driveways while making a delivery, and doesn't think traffic rules only apply when dealing with a vehicle bigger than theirs.

  6. Brewster's Angle Grinder Silver badge

    "This is an international race to get to that goal [of level 5 automation]. If we don’t get there, we’ll be importing it.”

    And if we do get there first, it will be bought up by foreigners and we'll still end up importing. Welcome to UK Plc, an open global economy; please make sure your self-driving car drives carefully.

    1. TRT Silver badge

      Damn, damn, damn, damn. Sorry!

      Forgot to set $side_of_road="left";

      Oops.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Damn, damn, damn, damn. Sorry!

        Human drivers get that wrong quite often. After successfully driving down to a rural village in Europe I left the hotel the next morning and drove for a couple of miles down rural roads before getting to a junction with a main road. The road markings looked weird and I realized this was because I was on the wrong side of the road since leaving the hotel. The "drive on right" switch in my brain had reset over night. I was talking to a friend about it yesterday. He had a similar experience on his second day driving in Europe. In his case he was greeted by a car coming the other way on the same side of the road, driven by some idiot flashing their lights madly. He soon realized that the "idiot" was not the person in the other car.

        1. Baldrickk

          Re: Damn, damn, damn, damn. Sorry!

          Did this in the UK two years ago - And I'm English, born, bred, and have driven here all my (driving) life.

          In this case, it was pulling out of a two-lane one way street into another street that was two-way (but the junction was structured as a bend, with a spur coming off it, which was the smaller continuation of the two way street).

          Cue two vehicles going head to head, and a hurried switch to the correct side of the road.

          1. TRT Silver badge

            Re: Damn, damn, damn, damn. Sorry!

            The design of some junctions is so poor that these mistakes happen. If it can fool a human, one wonders how an AI will cope.

            1. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              Re: Damn, damn, damn, damn. Sorry!

              UK. A car came round the corner from the high street mini-roundabout in the left hand lane - passed a pedestrian island - and then moved over into the right hand lane as if it was a one-way street. He reached the T junction with another roundabout without anything coming the other way.

              He was then out of my view - so not sure how things proceeded on that next road. Hopefully entering that mini-roundabout in patently the wrong lane might have alerted him - unless he was habituated to continental driving.

              I pondered the road configurations and signs for a while trying to work out how he had made that decision. The only thing that made sense was that a parallel small service road before the mini-roundabout had a "No Entry" sign. He might have thought that was the return section of a one-way system - even though that would have been on the wrong side for the UK.

        2. Khaptain Silver badge

          Re: Damn, damn, damn, damn. Sorry!

          The easy way to remember, as long as you are driving a car which has been kitted out for the country your are in, is to simply remember that the driver side is always the middle of the road and never the edge... At least that's how I do it on the rare occasion that I visit GB.

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  7. tiggity Silver badge

    Self driving car

    I'm waiting with anticipation to see how well it copes with very narrow twisty, hilly roads with chance of slow horse (& rider obv) or cyclist often around the next blind bend where (as jet set willy mentioned) posted speed limits have no relation to safe driving speed.

    Not to mention how it will cope with single track roads with passing places

    Not to mention all the odd scenarious where you "communicate" with other vehicle users to see who does what (e.g. the fun of complex junctions when the traffic lights fail, narrow rods with lots of parked car so essentially "single" track and you negotiate with other vehicles who pops in and out of the gaps between parked cars)

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Self driving car

      Once we get self driving cars I think at first they'll only handle certain situations, and pull over and expect a person to take over when they reach something like a one lane road until they're properly programmed to handle them. There will be a long gap between the first cars able to drive completely autonomously for long distances, and cars able to do so on all roads under all conditions. We don't need to wait until every corner case across the planet is solved before deploying them.

      I'd be happy with a self driving car that could only handle expressways and left me to drive everything else - I'd take it on a 1000 mile trip instead of flying since I could sleep overnight and arrive much more relaxed than after cramped quarters in two flights (since I live by a smaller airport that only has direct flights to about a dozen places) and dealing with airports and TSA groping.

      So long as they always drive at a speed such such that they can stop quickly enough to avoid collision with the horse or cyclist around a bend, that shouldn't be an issue. It isn't like they'll be tearing around blind corners at the speed limit in every case, they can be programmed to set their speed so the stopping distance matches how far ahead they can "see".

      The 'communication' thing may be solved some human-resembling graphics on the windshield waving other drivers on at four way stops or failed traffic lights. Two self driving vehicles meeting there wouldn't need that since they could communicate in other ways, but it would still be useful to any human drivers or pedestrians also present.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        "The 'communication' thing may be solved some human-resembling graphics on the windshield waving other drivers on at four way stops or failed traffic lights."

        The Goodies managed to do this many years ago, with three hand signals mounted on the bonnet of their car. As I recall they were "turn right", "turn left" and "turn nasty".

      2. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

        Re: Self driving car

        "We don't need to wait until every corner case across the planet is solved before deploying them."

        Corner cases are the accident opportunities. What you're saying is that we don't need to wait until they can avoid accidents.

        A data collection exercise like this won't learn much about accident avoidance most of the time. On the rare occasions when the driver avoids or fails to avoid an accident there is an opportunity to learn but how general will the learning be? Unless it occurs at an accident black-spot it'll probably be a unique set of circumstances - and if it is at a black-spot it would be better fed back into a redesign of the relevant bit of road.

        1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

          Re: Self driving car

          "Corner cases are the accident opportunities. What you're saying is that we don't need to wait until they can avoid accidents."

          I think the received wisdom on the matter is that if self-driving cars are better than human drivers, then that's good enough. Accidents and injuries reduced, not necessarily eliminated and then the software can incorporate the edge cases as they are identified.

          1. Alan Brown Silver badge

            Re: Self driving car

            The vast majority of "corner cases" aren't, and most crashes aren't accidents.

            When you look at crashes there are usually at least 2, usually 4 contributing factors and almost always a case of one or both drivers making massive errors. (You can tell when behind some cars that they're going to crash, because of the way they're driven)

            People:

            Don't pay attention to what's around them.

            Drive too fast for the conditions

            Follow too closely

            Get distracted when there are multiple hazards - things like focussing on the wobbly cyclist and missing the pedestrian walking onto a crossing.

            Miss seeing small cues (like small feet moving in the visible gap under a car parked at the side of the road, or the fact that if a ball rolls onto the road, a child will invariably follow)

            In all liklihood 99% of the scenarios that people keep saying that "robot cars can't handle" will never occur, because the system spotted something amiss and is already braking or stopped whilst a human would be trying to figure out what's going on.

            As for "people standing in front of robot cars" to hijack them, pushing slowly past is still an option.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Self driving car

      Twisty hilly roads you say? .... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFwIlflmk2Y

      It shows that basic driving is not an issue, and it is all the thing you mentioned are what makes it self hard.

      Mind you that was back in 2010 so perhaps they have spent the last 7 years working on the cyclist and horse problems, hoping Moore's law is going to help them out.

      As for the single track and complex junctions ... tricky. I once took the bus from Sorento to Amalfi in Italy on a bank holiday. Basically it's a white knuckle ride with numerous hairpin bends where the back of the bus hangs over the precipice, steep narrow roads and parked cars. The bus driver took it in his stride driving at great speed indicating with a single finger to oncoming vehicles whether to stop and pull in or squeeze past. He was in complete control and cool as a cucumber. I however wasn't as the driver did the most of journey driving one handed with a phone held to his ear.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Self driving car

      'Not to mention all the odd scenarious where you "communicate" with other vehicle users to see who does what '

      Google already had to deal with his due to them being in the land of the "four-way stop". Seem to remember this was specifically covered in an exhibit at the Computer History Museum where their cars would detect such situations and nudge forwards and see if anyone else moved. They could, of course, revert back to ethernet rules and simply detect a collision, back-off and retry after a randomized delay!

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Self driving car

        "Google already had to deal with his due to them being in the land of the "four-way stop"

        The problem with those multiway "stops" is the contention case of who arrived first and stopped. IIRC if there are queues of cars you are supposed to rotate the permission round one car at a time.

        A UK mini-roundabout is a similar problem except there is no obligatory stop - basically you always give way if there is anyone to your right - even if they are not actually on the roundabout.

        In France it used to be that you gave way to any car entering the roundabout - resulting in potential grid lock under busy conditions. Like their "give way to traffic joining from a side road" (Priorité à droite) - there were probably signs changing the priority for a particular stretch.

        1. Commswonk

          Re: Self driving car

          From the article: As part of the data-slurping system, each Disco also runs a separate driverless car software suite that responds appropriately to the car’s sensor inputs. Although its outputs are disconnected, they are logged: analysts can then compare the software’s responses to real-world stimuli to what the driver himself actually did.

          That's all well and good, but there is an important bit of information missing; in fact there is a whole list of important bits missing.

          There is no apparent way of determining why the human driver's decision making process resulted in the action he/she took being different to what the software would have done. Is it going to be assumed that the human was wrong, possibly correctly if the result was some sort of impact. Because "why did he/she do that" cannot be determined (not obviously anyway) there is no way for the software to learn anything; it can only respond the way someone in a lab somewhere told it to respond.

          And in any given scenario that way might be wrong.

          1. This post has been deleted by its author

    4. This post has been deleted by its author

      1. Jonathan Richards 1

        Re: Self driving car

        For a four-way roundabout with an acute turn back as the first exit, satnav should say "At the roundabout, take the fifth exit to Watling Street, REPEAT *fifth* exit, count 'em, meatsack".

  8. Tubz Silver badge

    Yuk insurance companies, no doubt gagging to see how much they can rip-off drivers in the future !

    1. Mark 85

      I too wondered at that. If the cars are self-driving, who pays for the insurance? Do we insure the car or the driver? Or if they work flawlessly (or for some value of "flawless") is there need for insurance?

      1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

        "Or if they work flawlessly (or for some value of "flawless") is there need for insurance?"

        Insurance against hackers?

    2. Alan Brown Silver badge

      "insurance companies"

      Will still exist. Whilst there will be indemnity for the car's driving, there's all the other things that you need to insure against, like vandalism, hit and run drivers (who will exist for a while and might increase when meatsack premiums start skyrocketing) and weather events dropping a tree on your car(*), etc, or smashing every window with hail.

      (*) Yes, there is liability on the tree owner for this, but it's still easier to do this via your own insurer.

      What will happen is consolidation in the industry.

      What will _ALSO_ happen is that once self-driving vehicles become common, anyone wanting to manually drive will face far stricter conditions for operating and for getting a license in the first place. Between that and steep premium hikes for meatsack drivers, once these cars hit the road in production numbers they'll take over rapidly.

      30 years ago the thought of a personal mobile phone for the average person or high powered computer was laughable and now we have both in the same device. In 30 years or less, there won't be many manually driven cars left - and 400 million people worldwide will be doing a different kind of job.

  9. John Dawson

    Tesla's advantage

    An interesting experiment - Tesla have been doing much of this for several years with a fleet now approaching 200K cars - any that are equipped with autopilot HW. Every car has an always on 3G/4G connection back to the mothership. Of course what they are doing with all that data is the big question.

  10. Jtom

    Reading a lot of comments, and I could add quite a few scenarios of my own, driving often takes an analysis of the overall situation to make the right decision. That's going to be tough to program. There is a truck stopped in the road. Do I stop behind it, or go around? See the writing on the truck and lowered tailgate? It's a landscaper stopped to get equipment out; go around. There's a vehicle stopping, going forward a hundred feet, then stopping again; USPS is painted on the vehicle. A mail delivery truck, go around. There is another truck stopped. A school bus is stopped on the other side of the street letting children off. Stop until the bus pulls away, it's the law. There are dozens of situations like this, and you will encounter them on most every trip you make in suburbia where I am.

    Good luck developing autonomous vehicles for anything but tightly controlled areas.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Human drivers routinely make a decision to stop behind or go around a stationary vehicle. With the exception of a school bus (which is covered by a specific law in the US and not in the UK) the decision we make is based on the vehicle being stopped due to some road condition rather than the class of vehicle. It makes little difference if is a mail van, a UPS delivery van or one of the multitude of other delivery or ubiquitous white builders van is stopping in an inconvenient place. We don't decide do go around it just because its a delivery vehicle. We decide if it is in a position where it could proceed but for some reason (delivery/broken down/lost/badly parked/using the phone/heart attack etc.) it is stopped. Except for the unique school bus law mentioned above once we have determined that is is deliberately stopped in a situation where it could proceed we don't really care what it is or why it is stopped. Because we don't need to care our decision tree here collapses from a myriad of different situations you are alluding to into something much more manageable. We do however rate the obstruction as a "risk" and apply a higher level of risk in some situations e.g. a stopped ice cream van where you will be extra vigilant driving past it looking out for children stepping into the road. An autonomous vehicle doesn't need this last step as much as we do. It is always vigilant.

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