One of the biggest obstacles, figuratively speaking, facing self-driving cars is the ability to expect the unexpected, quickly identify potential problems, and respond in a well-informed way to achieve a safe outcome. One of the biggest obstacles, literally, facing self-driving cars is the giant Wile E. Coyote-style walls painted to look like a road to trick them into an accident.
Okay, the latter is unlikely to happen in the real world, but that didn’t stop former NASA engineer and current YouTuber Mark Robber from seeing how well self-driving cars stand up to the Looney Tunes test. In his latest video, titled “Can a self-driving car be fooled?” Robert competes two different autonomous car systems – Tesla’s autopilot, which operates on computer vision alone, and an unnamed system that uses light and range detection sensors – in a series of tests that culminate in an attempt to stop a car in its tracks using the same technique Wile E. Coyote tried to use to stop the Road Runner.
At the risk of spoiling the video for you, the Tesla leaves a cartoonishly large hole in the wall after the autopilot drives through it at about 40 miles per hour.
This is the third failure in six tests that Robert is conducting, including a series of experiments aimed at determining whether a self-driving car can hit a child if conditions are unfavorable enough. While Tesla’s autopilot manages to stop in front of a stationary dummy, a dummy that runs in front of it at the last second, and a dummy that is obscured by a blindingly bright light, the partially autonomous system sends a fake child straight through the bumper when it was hidden by fog and heavy rain. And while it’s unlikely that you’ll come across a photorealistic representation of the road in front of you painted on a wall, fog and rain seem to be fairly common obstacles.
In contrast, the LiDAR system succeeded every time. This shouldn’t be surprising, as the video is a low-key advertisement for LiDAR. It begins with Robert using a handheld LiDAR sensor to map the Space Mountain ride at Disneyland and includes a link to the LiDAR manufacturer, so you knew where this was going from the start.
But it’s worth paying attention to how effective the LiDAR system was in this video, as Tesla has publicly decided to abandon these sensors in favor of relying entirely on computer vision. The rationale for this decision varies depending on who you ask and when, but it usually boils down to LiDAR sensors being too expensive, requiring more data processing to use, and ultimately serving as a crutch that slows down the development of computer vision. Tesla CEO Elon Musk has gone so far as to call LiDAR a “stupid idea.”
This may be true, but it also doesn’t break through walls, so it’s worth weighing the pros and cons. It’s hard to imagine letting your car hit a child that could have been avoided with another technology on board and saying: “Well, at least it didn’t slow down the development of a technology that might not have ultimately led to what happened.”
Anyway, the video is a pleasure to watch, as is most of Robert’s work. And, judging by the responses to Robert’s tweet showing footage of the wall falling, it has turned Tesla supporters on Twitter into conspiracy theorists who believe Robert was bought by Big LiDAR and is trying to slander Tesla.
