Helicopter Crashes While Filming Autonomous Audi 218
telomerewhythere writes "A helicopter commissioned by Audi to film its autonomous Audi TT climbing Pikes Peak crashed early this morning. Four people on board were hurt, the pilot seriously. It's a surreal story — a manned vehicle crashes while the one climbing a mountain driven only by computers and sensors carries on. Here's more on the autonomous Audi, a project undertaken with the help of Stanford University."
So the weak point in the system is...... (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, helicopters. Turns out they're complicated things to keep in the air. :)
http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=10/09/11/2150229 [slashdot.org]
Re: (Score:2)
Kind of makes me wonder if anyone is working on manned quadrocopters. Seems like they would be simpler to keep up, at a cost in footprint.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
If one has four rotors, wouldn't he use collective pitch on the individual rotors, rather than cyclic pitch or rpm change?
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, that's why car suspensions are made of a solid piece of steel, as opposed to swingarms, hydraulics, springs, pins etc. etc.
Solid lumps of stuff are always "safer". *facepalm*
Re: (Score:2)
Oh, the Irony.
Re: (Score:2)
I thought it was unpredictable winds around a mountain.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I thought it was unpredictable winds around a mountain
While the problem is related to air, it is not the movement of air but rather the lack of it. Pike's Peak tops out over 14,000 feet and the thin air makes a helicopter's responses much slower than at lower levels. If the pilot is having to track the moving car on the ground then his attention was divided, making the situation even more dangerous, so it's easy to understand how a crash could occur.
The opposite (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, it's the opposite. Thicker air dampens control responses, thin air amplifies them. It's a bit like walking in water versus walking in air. The surrounding medium helps cushion the movement. In thinner air, a helicopter slices more in banking and cyclic control feels looser. In any case, thin air is not the norm for most pilots and takes extra fine control.
There are also specific maneuvers related to flying NOE (nap of the earth) on varying terrain that could have caused the crash. A rapid ascent/descent at a low advance ratio could have induced a vortex ring state, a pushover might have produced an unexpectedly high rate of descent that the pilot couldn't handle. These accidents aren't simple, and there's much we don't know.
I am a rotorcraft engineer (and if this turns out to be one of my company's helicopters, I'll probably be working on this incident...).
Re:The opposite (Score:5, Informative)
Surreal? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
The helicopter crash itself isn't surreal -- the story is ("It's a surreal story...").
Re: (Score:2)
Hey now, it'surreal the pilot was seriously injured.
Re:Surreal? (Score:5, Funny)
Ceci n'est pas un helicoptere
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Correction: Un hélicoptère
Re: (Score:2)
Since when is a helicopter crash surreal?
You told me it was surreal!
...It was a pun.
A PUN?!?
No, no...not a pun...What's that thing that spells the same backwards as forwards?
A palindrome...?
Yeah, that's it!
Re: (Score:2)
Since when is a helicopter crash surreal?
When it's placed in a context where the one expected to succeed fails and the one expected to fail succeeds?
The summary was very short, why didn't you read it?
Re:Surreal? (Score:5, Funny)
Except it isn't. Having the riot police interview an elephant based on what the spoon told them with regards to the crash of a helicopter that decided to kill itself during a full moon afternoon because its turbo-girlfriend was dry humping a humvee; now that would be surreal.
This is just a story about a helicopter crash with a few coincidences. Absolutely nothing surreal.
Re: (Score:2)
funnilly enough it's almost ironic
Re: (Score:2)
Meanwhile, good AC comments get zero.
You got -1, surely meaning yours was a bad AC comment. How ironic.
Too soon (Score:3, Funny)
Damnit, I told Audi not to fit Kitt's microlock device [wikipedia.org] before the car was tested against the Three Laws [wikipedia.org].
Re: (Score:2)
So this thing will not only drive as stupidly as every other luxury car I see on the road (cutting people off wantanly in traffic, apparently busted turn signals, staying in lanes that end until the very last moment to cut in front of traffic, etc), but now it will also have Super Pursuit Mode? Who's genius idea was this, anyway?
Re: (Score:2)
Perhaps more importantly, you'll always get there quicker if you run up to the end and then merge. You'll feel like an asshole if you do it, but you'll feel like a chump if you don't.
Re: (Score:2)
Where I live, it's actually required by law...
Where is that? It's a sensible policy... the most efficient way of using two lanes is to use both lanes equally, and merge alternately at the point where one lane ends, rather than mostly all queueing up in one lane and having people merge sporadically all up and down the length of it.
But of course if some people are already queuing, it does seem a tad unfair to blast past them in the other lane, then have to force your way in at the end of it. It only really works if everyone's using both lanes.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Before jumping to conclusions.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Flying @ 14,000' elevation aint easy for a helicopter, and it gets *windy* up there at the top of Pikes Peak. Until the NTSB completes the investigation, any comments about what happened and whose fault it is would be pointless.
Re:Before jumping to conclusions.... (Score:5, Funny)
Irrelevant. The helicopter was given a pep-talk before take-off. Neither the confidence nor this determination of the helicopter were factors in the crash, and its endurance was second to none, as it has a lusty wife.
Re: (Score:2)
what?!
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Pep talk Didn't work for the Boeing A160 either (Score:2)
The Boeing A160 [suasnews.com] was taking a trip to Belize before crashing into the rainforest.
That hummingbird has goals for 2,500-mile (4,000 km) range, _24-hour endurance_, and 30,000 ft (9,100 m) altitudes.
But then perhaps its objective was to sip nectar from a rare jungle flower -- IE don't name your UAVs hummingbird for the fun of it.
Point of view of the car (Score:2)
It's not like the conditions for the car [youtube.com] were any easier.
Re: (Score:2)
Why pointless? It could give hours of fun and much feeling of self-importance to loads of /. readers. I think that's reason enough.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm not big on the whole "pilot error" thing. Too often it just amounts to blaming somebody for the inevitable.
Take 200 of the best truck drivers on the planet. Keep them awake for 48 hours straight. Then set them behind the wheels of big trucks at 2AM and tell them to cover a distance of 800 miles at an average speed of 50MPH or greater.
I can pretty-much guarantee that there will be an accident. Will it be the result of human error - well, sure. However, humans are just another kind of machine. If yo
Re:Before jumping to conclusions.... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not big on the whole "pilot error" thing. Too often it just amounts to blaming somebody for the inevitable.
You have a choice on whether you will put yourself in that situation. That makes it not inevitable by definition.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh, sure: you can choose to take the risk and do it, or refuse to do it, get fired and be unable to find a new job because you got a reputation for not doing risky jobs. Given the permanent high unemployment caused by modern technology making more and more jobs redundant, you've better be prepared to live in abject poverty the rest of your life.
Damned if you do, damned if you don't.
Re: (Score:2)
GPS? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:GPS? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:GPS? (Score:5, Insightful)
As opposed to suing the manufacturer(s) and/or driver(s) like everyone already does for most car accidents?
The old saw about "We'll never have autonomous cars, because the manufacturers will be sued out of existence after the first crash" is pure nonsense. We already have an enormous amount of computer control in cars, and people are already suing the manufacturers, e.g. Toyota, claiming that those systems malfunctioned after a crash. Toyota is still in business, and the costs of those suits are just folded into the manufacturing costs, as always.
In the U.S. alone, human drivers account for 40,000 fatalities, millions of injuries, and $250B in costs due to auto accidents every year. It would take a pretty unreliable computer system to even get within an order of magnitude of what we do to each other through inattentive or drunken driving. Maybe Microsoft could manage it, but it would be a reach even for them. :-)
When the first autonomous cars hit the road around 2020, what everyone is going to see is the exact opposite - accident rates and costs will plummet. When that happens, auto insurance rates will be adjusted accordingly for autonomous vehicles, and soon you'll find that manual driving is not only expensive, but even illegal in many areas.
Human beings have no business driving. I know this statement bothers a lot of people, but the statistics bear it out. I, for one, will gladly hand over my keys the day I can buy an autonomous vehicle, and never think twice about it. Driving is a chore 99% of the time, and one that I'd be just as happy to turn over to a computerized device as any other chore.
Re: (Score:2)
It would take a pretty unreliable computer system to even get within an order of magnitude of what we do to each other through inattentive or drunken driving.
Since when has logic ever stopped people from suing large corporations for things that aren't their fault? If anything, the drop in car crashes will cause them to seem less "normal", and people will be even more trigger-happy with the lawyers.
Re: (Score:2)
what sickens me is that your comment rings true.
Duh! (Score:3, Funny)
[...] and people are already suing the manufacturers, e.g. Toyota, claiming that those systems malfunctioned after a crash.
Well, obviously the systems are gonna stop working if you crash the car!
Insurance costs (Score:4, Interesting)
Assuming the autonomous systems actually work most of the time car insurance providers could make a bundle offering discount rates for the feature (only slightly of course, they are evil), and then gradually raising the rates for the lack of the feature. So eventually we won't be able to afford to drive manual vehicles. At least I can read my kindle on the way to work.
Re:GPS? (Score:5, Interesting)
Human beings have no business driving. I know this statement bothers a lot of people, but the statistics bear it out. I, for one, will gladly hand over my keys the day I can buy an autonomous vehicle, and never think twice about it. Driving is a chore 99% of the time, and one that I'd be just as happy to turn over to a computerized device as any other chore.
Human beings have no business being alive either. I think statistics will bear that one out too. Look, I recognize that there are plenty of activities, even plenty of transportation activities that don't require me to be in control. For example, we routinely travel by means that have someone or something else doing the driving (passenger trains, airlines, etc). And these means of travel are usually (at least in the developed world) safer than if I were driving myself. But driving is "do it yourself" mobility. In exchange for a somewhat elevated chance of injury and death, you gain a great deal of freedom.
Second, driving engages me. It is often fun to drive a car.
Ultimately, safety is not the key point of driving or for that matter, it isn't always a chore. Else we never would have left the house in the first place. And an autonomous system won't be able to cover all those needs that formerly used a human driver.
Re: (Score:2)
Do your pleasure driving on courses designed for the purpose,and you'll have the fun of driving without any of the danger to others.
Re: (Score:2)
But most driving is a chore.
That's true especially traffic jam driving. But there's a difference between choosing to have an automated system drive you on occasion and being required to have an automated system drive you.
Re:GPS? (Score:4, Funny)
You want statistics? There seems to be overwhelming evidence that close to 100% of the cars that cause an accident are driven by humans!
Re: (Score:2)
Humans are better drivers? In what way? Faster reaction time? Better route optimization? Accident avoidance? Lol.
If you could switch every driver with a computer right now, you would double the throughput of roads in every city in the world. With probably one tenth or less accidents.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
"Now, if a robot drives a car, he has two options: Follow the law, cause a traffic jam behind himself"
Provided all other cars were robotical, how could this happen? A traffic jam creates when vehicles reaching a point are faster than vehicles at that point. Provided our car is respecting security distance from a car that was at top legal speed, it would go at top legal speed as well as those after it. No traffic jam is possible. And with regards to speed change and wave effect since robots would have fa
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Provided all other cars were robotical, how could this happen?
The leprechauns riding bicycles and fairies riding unicorns would still get in the way.
Seriously, getting 'all the other cars robotical' is a fairy tale.
1) The roads are literally full of cars 2 - 10 years old, with cars up to 100 years old still rolling around. There is absolutely no way you can mandate a 'switch-over' date from human to robotic... any plan would -have- to be gradual which would give you at least a decade or more of robotic cars
Re: (Score:2)
I'm curious about the $100,000 GPS system. They sell GPS add-ons for $70. So what kind of GPS costs $100,000? Military, I suppose.
Even if they could make the GPS more cheaply, wouldn't this imply that they expect the very accurate military-grade GPS service to be available to consumers in future? Galileo was abandoned, wasn't it?
Or is this "GPS" actually much more than a GPS -- something more like an aircraft tracking computer?
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Probably they were using something like that. Something along the lines of an inertial measurement unit (IMU) or similar navigational computer. These things usually combine GPS tracking with a precision gyroscope. They can pretty much fly a plane all by themselves, and the military uses them in land-based vehicles, such as autonomous or semi-autonomous tanks. That they could be used to drive a car is not sur
Re:GPS? (Score:5, Informative)
Your $70 GPS addon is way too inaccurate for the kind of autonomous navigation they're trying to achieve. I mean, your standard SiRFstar III claims 2.5 meters of accuracy 50% of the time (a sigma of 3.7 m). That means you can't even be sure whether you're actually on the road, never mind what lane you're in. And that's only in a clear-sky situation. Once you're in a downtown "Urban Canyon" where you hardly pick up any GPS satellites anymore or get wrong readings due to multipath propagation, good luck. Your standard GPS SatNav simply always assumes you're on the road. That won't do for an autonomous vehicle.
You'll need something closer to this high-speed INS+GPS [oxts.com], the better models of which can be accurate in the decimeter range (assuming careful calibration). The ones I know about are all in the US$50,000 and above price range.
Re: (Score:2)
I think using some cameras (infrared or visible light) and computer vision algorithms is way more reliable than GPS for determining whether you're still on the road and which lane you're in.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
I'd safely assume that the editors were just using the term "GPS" in the way that it is now commonly used by nontechnical people: as a general short for "technomagical gadget that tells cars'n'stuff where to go". They would probably call it a "GPS" even if it wasn't using satellite navigation at all (which it sure does, as the technoligy is just too useful to ignore)
Re: (Score:2)
I'm curious about the $100,000 GPS system. They sell GPS add-ons for $70. So what kind of GPS costs $100,000? Military, I suppose.
1. A part of the error on GPS is due to things like radio signals slowing down as they travel through the ionosphere. If you set up a GPS base station at a known location, you can take GPS measurements, work out the errors due to the ionosphere (and similar things), transmit that to the receiver on the car, and subtract the errors there. Within a few kilometres of the base station lots of the errors will be common - so a lot of errors are eliminated. (if you don't want to operate your own base station, ther
Re: (Score:2)
As mentioned in TFA, they hope to create "autonomous driving systems that will one day be integrated into all vehicles as a safety measure". That being the case, I think they still have a long way to go since they have fitted a $100.000 GPS system for guidance.
A "long way to go"? That's the understatement of at least the year. Did you catch this quote from TFA? "If we can design a car that can autonomously go up Pikes Peak, we can design a car that can take over when a driver falls asleep," Kirstin Talvala, one of the students working on Shelley, told the AFP. Wow, no you can't. For one thing, you don't have to deal with other cars when you're making an exhibition run up Pikes. That was a stunningly stupid thing to say, Kirstin.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
That depends on what you mean by "taking over". If someone falls asleep or has a heart attack while driving, "taking over" can just mean bringing the vehicle to a controlled stop in a safe location and turning on the hazards. In that particular situation, there also won't be much room for suing anyone if something goes wrong -- because had the vehicle not done anything, the situation w
Re: (Score:2)
Also, while you may not have to deal with oncoming traffic running up Pikes, you have to have a damn robust and fast perception system that is able to react to its environment quickly and safely ("oh, pothole on the right, better avoid that")
Potholes don't move. Dealing with moving obstacles is literally orders of magnitude more difficult than dodging potholes.
Re: (Score:2)
I don't think you have a very good grasp on the workings of the "sue them all" legal system.
Re: (Score:2)
Did you catch this quote from TFA? "If we can design a car that can autonomously go up Pikes Peak, we can design a car that can take over when a driver falls asleep," Kirstin Talvala, one of the students working on Shelley, told the AFP. Wow, no you can't. For one thing, you don't have to deal with other cars when you're making an exhibition run up Pikes. That was a stunningly stupid thing to say, Kirstin.
Well, it's a necessary first step. A student working on a cool project like that, you can forgive a little optimism. Once you've got the thing driving along an empty road on it's own, it's not so very hard to imagine it negotiating traffic too.
Re: (Score:2)
Then actually yes the system is aware of parallel vehicles and can avoid such collisions.
That's fantastic! But either way the quote is retarded. One problem has significant bearing on the other, but they have substantial non-overlapping problem domains. Perhaps it made more sense in context, but any time you speak to a reporter you have to consider how every sentence will appear out of context...
Surreal (Score:2, Informative)
No, it's just a clever PR stunt by machines from the future.
Something smells fishy... (Score:2, Informative)
Condolences (Score:4, Insightful)
As a fellow helicopter pilot, I'm happy the pilot and three film-crew members survived.
My condolences to the family and friends of a brand-new (to Air-Cam) Bell 212HP Helicopter.
The world is now smaller by one less helicopter :(
E
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Correction... while the color scheme looks like their new Bell 212HP... it appears that this is actually an Aerospatiale Astar 355 ("Twinstar") dual turboshaft operated AS350 series aircraft.
E
Re: (Score:2)
Stop It! You're turning me on with all that dirty Helicopter talk!
Ah That Sucks (Score:2)
too bad for the crew (Score:2, Interesting)
but still I want to see the existing footage now. The teaser clip is pretty cool. Apparently this is not about getting up Pike's Peak but getting up fast. If there are ethical issues showing the helicopter footage at least show the footage from the cars onboard camera that surely exists.
This is so much more exciting than the stupid soccer bots with their Robocup.
The one thing they ARE keeping under wraps (Score:4, Interesting)
...is that the car called to report the accident.
Ironically... (Score:5, Interesting)
That thing has some sort of bad omen surrounding it. Everything mechanical around it, including itself, seems to break or crash! I'm amazed nobody has been killed yet, especially with the helo going down on the side of the mountain (that usually ends very badly, so my props go to the pilot for keeping everyone alive).
Physics is a bitch (Score:2, Informative)
The elevation at the crash site: 13,800ft
Service ceiling of the helicopter 11,150ft
The data is taken from Eurocopter AS355F2, the crashed one was a AS355F1.
Re:Physics is a bitch (Score:4, Informative)
The actual "Service Ceiling" of any aircraft is dependent on the local "Density Altitude" and not the physical elevation of the ground. Depending on the temperature, humidity and other factors, the density altitude of a particular location can be several thousand feet under or above the actual local elevation. The pilot would take that information into account to determine how high they can safely fly the aircraft.
Bill
Re:Physics is a bitch (Score:4, Informative)
At any point after 8am, the temperature profile looks to be quite a bit above standard atmosphere, meaning density altitudes were higher than pressure altitudes. Barring some unusual atmospheric conditions the density altitude at around 10,000 feet was probably closer to 12,000-14,000 depending on how high the temperature got at the time of the accident. The pilot underestimating the quickly rising temperature may have even been a factor.
If 11,000 feet is in fact the correct value for the service ceiling of the aircraft, I would say this situation was caused by the decision to fly a heavily loaded aircraft outside of its performance envelope.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Of course, these weather stations all measure temperature at the ground, most around 6000 ft. So let's look at this another way.
What about a driver's license? (Score:2)
Will each individual autonomous car be required to take a driver's test, or will the FCC or DMV or whoever grant USA driving status to autonomous systems as part of their approval process?
And after 21 years, will the car then be eligible to drink and vote (18 years to vote) and borrow money?
Vids (Score:2)
All helicopter crew released from hospital (Score:5, Informative)
The helicopter crew is out of hospital. [jalopnik.com] All four of them.
treacherous winds frequent on high peaks (Score:2)
Re:Uber-silly (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, they will, but the roads might need a few upgrades. As soon as it can be proven that a car can drive better than a person when the person is trying their best to drive safely, cars will be favoured, since we know people sometimes deliberately drive wrecklessly.
Unfortunately one of the upgrades will probably mean no unpredictable human drivers allowed on the same roads.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
And this is "unfortunate" why, exactly?
Re:Uber-silly (Score:5, Funny)
As soon as it can be proven that a car can drive better than a person when the person is trying their best to drive safely, cars will be favoured, since we know people sometimes deliberately drive wrecklessly.
The problem is not with the people who actually try to drive wrecklessly -- it is with the rest of them, the ones who drive recklessly....
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
...since we know people sometimes deliberately drive wrecklessly.
I think wreckless driving is desirable. Reckless driving.on the other hand tends to result in wrecks.
Re: (Score:2)
"Oh, they will, but the roads might need a few upgrades."
Likely to cost so much more than the lives saved as to not be worth it.
Want safe(r) transit? Build railways (including tracked trolley systems) everywhere practical.
Re: (Score:2)
I think the 40000+ annual casualties that occur mostly because of drunk drivers, sleepy drivers and distracted drivers (all human faults) are a much bigger problem than the situations you describe. Besides, I don't think the majority of actual drivers ever actually carry out the kind of thought processes you describe in (1) and (2).
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
I think you're over-estimating the attention that many people pay to what's going on. For some drivers, your above list would be more like (1) Oh crap, I can't find the track I want on my iPod. (2) Just got to text my BF. (3) How does my hair look in the mirror? (4) Whoops, almost hit that cyclist when I pulled out without looking - better wind down my window and call him a dick.
I think the research into these autonomous systems will never lead to entirely self-driving cars, but instead will lead to driver-
Re: (Score:2)
1) If you give all cars proper following distance, that shouldn't matter so much. But either way, just have the computer give more space to any car without the same system installed. I'd assume they can communicate somehow. Failing that, it could probably analyze driving patterns pretty quickly to tell who is driving somewhat erratically.
2) A computer can recognize people, it probably won't have much trouble recognizing small people. If there is a human by the side of the road, go x% slower. If it's a human
Re: (Score:2)
all the operations you describe sound perfect for a computer to perform. input some data coming from the sensors, output a decision. what's so hard about it? even a human brain can do it
Re:Uber-silly (Score:5, Interesting)
Never say never. It's just a matter of time. Even if some situations are hard to automate, a large percentage of all driving hours (freeway driving, I would think) could be automated much more easily.
The motivation to reclaim driving time is huge. People spend / waste a fantastic amount of time driving. I couldn't find global figures, but apparently Americans spend over 100 hours [about.com] per year commuting (not driving in total - just commuting); the total driving figure in Israel is 577 hours per year [jpost.com]; and about 40% of mothers in the US spend over 2 hours per day [askpatty.com] driving. Then there are truck drivers and delivery workers whose annual total must be closer to a couple thousand hours per year (i.e. basically their whole life).
Dishwashing machines are very popular, and how much time do they actually save, 20 minutes per day? I can't think of anything the average person more, that could be automated as easily, as driving.
Re: (Score:2)
The first phase btw has already occurred, cruise control. And we have the first level as well, ladar based brakes control to avoid crashes (far more rare than cruise control but its out there). As well automatic transmissions are obviously commonplace.
Next we could get the next phase, automated freeway driving. You enter a freeway, your car detects this, takes control (for safety) and asks where you are going, hit a button for work or w/e.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
"Several times a day you make some complex judgement while driving, a judgement that will always be beyond the ability of a computer."
You mean like in chess?
"I don't think your ambulatory computers will ever be clever enough to figure out those situations."
And I thing you are already not clever enough to judge that.
Re: (Score:2, Redundant)
I don't think your ambulatory computers will ever be clever enough to figure out those situations.
That has been said about literally Everything that computers can do today. Every last thing.
Computers will never be able to play games against humans and win.
Computers will never be able to see and recognize objects like humans.
Computers will never be able to speak like a human.
Computers will never be able to read human writing.
Computers will never be able to do this or that function nor control this or that c
Re: (Score:2)
that stopped being funny about 2 months after the song came out. :p
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
There would probably be no crash in that case, so, all would survive.