Why can't it detect a static object on the same path?
I thought Subaru has a system that can do that.. At least according to the commercials it detects when a car in front of the car in front of you has stopped or slowed.
This is different from what happened in the tesla case. What happened here is that the vehicle in front of the car was moving and in view of the tesla's radar sensor obstructing the view of the firetruck. That car then moved and now a stationary object was suddenly in front of the car. From the Tesl's view point, an object just magically appeared somewhere in front of the car.
I'm not familiar with radar systems, but I imagine in this scenario the system isn't precise enough to know that this stationary object that suddenly appeared isn't an overhead sign or some other similar object that pops into the field of view of the radar system. It probably has something to do with radar not being extremely directional, constantly having stationary things pop up due to reflections and various objects in the periphery, having a limited sampling rate, and needing to do a filtering or other sorts of magic to make sure there aren't constant false alarms etc. I can see how cruising along at 50mph, the system doesn't have enough time to figure all this out and stop (e.g. not enough samples or there being a noise floor on stationary object data). It appears the correct way to solve this is with 3d lidar systems combined with sort of of mapping technology, but those are still too expensive/difficult to put into every day vehicles.
I said "the car in front of the car in front of you". That car is not visible either since the car in front of you is blocking it. Subaru has commercials indicating this scenario is addressed as far as I can tell.
It does detect static objects on the same path, but >99% of the environment is static objects. From the article:
>Radar knows the speed of any object it sees, and is also simple, cheap, robust, and easy to build into a front bumper. But it also detects lots of things a car rolling down the highway needn't worry about, like overhead highway signs, loose hubcaps, or speed limit signs. So engineers make a choice, telling the car to ignore these things and keep its eyes on the other cars on the road: They program the system to focus on the stuff that's moving.
Yes, subaru eyesight can detect stationary objects and apply the brakes. However they say that a full stop is likely (but not guaranteed) up to about 30 mph. They aren't clear on exactly what the likely result is at 65mph, but some braking to help mitigate the collision seems likely. Which is exactly what happened with the Tesla.
The Subaru system absolutely does handle this case. It uses visual cameras which watch the road ahead (just like your eyes) so they see what you see and react to objects/obstructions like you'd expect.
I'd had my Subaru slow due to a vehicle bumper sitting in the lane (from a crash that happened shortly before).
This is different from what happened in the tesla case. What happened here is that the vehicle in front of the car was moving and in view of the tesla's radar sensor obstructing the view of the firetruck. That car then moved and now a stationary object was suddenly in front of the car. From the Tesl's view point, an object just magically appeared somewhere in front of the car.
I'm not familiar with radar systems, but I imagine in this scenario the system isn't precise enough to know that this stationary object that suddenly appeared isn't an overhead sign or some other similar object that pops into the field of view of the radar system. It probably has something to do with radar not being extremely directional, constantly having stationary things pop up due to reflections and various objects in the periphery, having a limited sampling rate, and needing to do a filtering or other sorts of magic to make sure there aren't constant false alarms etc. I can see how cruising along at 50mph, the system doesn't have enough time to figure all this out and stop (e.g. not enough samples or there being a noise floor on stationary object data). It appears the correct way to solve this is with 3d lidar systems combined with sort of of mapping technology, but those are still too expensive/difficult to put into every day vehicles.