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Comment by sandworm101

14 hours ago

Lane follow? Does it have lane discovery? There was snow on my commute this morning. 4-land highway was basically follow the leader. Pick some line where you think there is the most traction and stick with it. I have yet to see footage of an autodrive system in such a situation.

What's hilarious to me is that this scenario is framed as such an impossibly difficult thing for self-driving technology to accomplish. Detecting a car in front of you, and maneuvering left or right is doable without even using advanced models, nevermind the fact that we have them now. The other supposedly impossible feat is for the self-driving car to create a lane when there's been so much snow that the lines and thus lanes aren't visible. Given high quality sensor data, does it really seem that impossibly hard for the computer, which is already competently driving on the road in practice, in SF and Phoenix and LA; it seems impossibly hard for that computer to take the full width of the remaining road, divide in two, assuming it's a bidirectional road, and then create as much lanes + safety margin as can (safely) exist, and then pick one? Proof is in the pudding and all, so here's a 4 year old video showing that comma.ai's capable of that, in the sunny winter but snowy road condition in that video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0oCCn96N2ys

  • No cars to follow. No lane markings. Just a sheet of white with ditches on both side. Worse yet, no prior practice. Where you know the lanes are means little when the other cars are not respecting them. (As if lanes matter as nobody wants to drive that close together.) It isnt impossible but certainly a far more difficult problem than navigating an LA suburb.

Nobody is claiming that this will work in that situation, but there are thousands of much more common situations where it does work and makes driving more safe and enjoyable.