All the Things That Still Baffle Self-Driving Cars, Starting With Seagulls

Hyundai's autonomous fuel cell electric vehicle Nexo is driven through a tunnel near the Pyeongchang Olympic Stadium in South Korea.

Hyundai's autonomous fuel cell electric vehicle Nexo is driven through a tunnel near the Pyeongchang Olympic Stadium in South Korea. Jae C. Hong/AP

To watch a self-driving car park itself seems like magic. Pull back the curtain, it’s a lot messier. Cars mistake snowflakes for obstacles, lose lane markings, and miss cars on the side of the road.

Engineers are racing to make cars perform better than humans, with the aim of saving millions of lives each year. Human error is to blame for 94% of annual U.S. traffic fatalities, according to the U.S. National Center for Statistics and Analysis. Autonomous vehicles promise to prevent most of them. Even today’s off-the-shelf features, such as lane departure alerts (now widely available), could cut fatal crash rates by 86%, estimates the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS).

Yet we’re still a long way from ”self-driving,” despite marketing to the contrary. Driver-assist technologies capable of steering, braking and following traffic rules (with human oversight) are now entering the market, led by Tesla. Yet “it’s important to note that none of these vehicles is capable of driving safely on its own,” says David Zuby, IIHS chief research officer. “A production autonomous vehicle that can go anywhere, anytime isn’t available at your local car dealer and won’t be for quite some time.” IIHS tested five of the leading brands’ systems on track tests over hills and curves. While none crashed, almost all of them missed the mark multiple times by crossing or touching lane lines, or disengaging during driving.

That’s still impressive, and machine learning continues to revolutionize what’s possible. Uber and Alphabet’s Waymo are ferrying passengers in self-driving vehicles (with safety drivers) in cities from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to Phoenix, Arizona. Yet the first fully self-driving cars may come first to retirement homes, corporate campuses and private communities: controlled environments where computers can easily map their world. ”I challenge any car company to drive through a complex urban environment without a diver under any weather conditions,'” says of Ryan Chin, co-founder and CEO of Optimus Ride, which reportedly has a dozen or so campuses and communities ready to pilot its self-driving technology. “We’re not there yet as an industry. Even the best systems aren’t there yet.”

What fools today’s semi-autonomous cars? Raindrops and obstacles, and even masking tape and seagulls, all throw algorithms for a loop. Quartz assembled some of the most prominent challenges for self-driving cars below.

Altered stop signs

Computer science researchers subtly altered stop signs to see if minor alterations could confuse self-driving cameras, even if a human driver might miss the change. Fake graffiti caused algorithms to misidentify the stop sign as a speed limit sign two-thirds of the time, while applying random tape, called an “abstract art sticker attack” by the researchers, resulted in the miscategorization 100% of the time.” 

K. Eykholt, 2018

Falling snowflakes

Snowflakes and raindrops are notorious for scattering sensors’ signals. They can create the illusion that obstacles exist all the way around a vehicle. Algorithms are getting better at using lasers to paint a high-resolution 3D map of the environment to differentiate between H20 and solid objects, but winter remains one of self-driving cars’ biggest challenges. Snow blurs where computers perceived the road to start, and alter traction for tires. “In a lot of [cold and temperate] regions, it’s going to be a lot longer before we see autonomous vehicles than some people would like you to believe,” says Sam Abuelsamid of Navigant research. “You’re not going to have autonomous vehicles running around Toronto in the wintertime in 2020.” 

Seagulls

Birds, too, can confound computers. In Boston, NuTonomy had to reprogram its cars to disperse stubborn seagulls. ”For the local breed of unflappable seagulls—which can stop autonomous cars by simply standing on the street, unbothered by NuTonomy’s quiet electric cars—engineers programmed the machines to creep forward slightly to startle the birds,” reports Bloomberg. 

Foam

Researchers at the University of South Carolina disoriented a Tesla S by covering obstacles in sound-dampening foam so ultrasonic sensors did not detect them. Similarly, $40 worth of Arduino computers and an ultrasonic transducer (for generating sound waves) could trick a Tesla into avoiding a parking spot, or jam ultrasonic sensors to miss actual obstacles at close range. 

Exiting vehicles

Cars orient themselves using other cars. That’s fine at higher speeds on the highway, but may lead to an unexpected swerve as cars begin to follow another car onto off-ramps. “When a car is traveling too slow to track lane lines, active lane-keeping systems use the vehicle in front as a guide,” IIHS states. “If the lead vehicle exits, the trailing car might, too.” 

Hills

IIHS test drivers in the hills of Central Virginia found even advanced driver assistance systems could miss lane markings as vehicles crested hills. Without visibility ahead, cars swerved left and right to find the center of the lane, alarming drivers who were not warned to assume control of the vehicle.

Bridges

Bridges are a black-box for autonomous cars, reports Electronic Component News. Because bridges lack many of the environmental cues present on roads, they can prevent sensors from keeping the vehicle on track. The magazine compared it to “walking a straight line from one end to the other in a massive room, and the lights go out when you’re halfway across. While you don’t see anything, you have a general idea of the direction to continue, but are very susceptible to getting thrown off-course.”

Tree shadows

Tesla’s Model 3 made “unnecessary or overly cautious” braking maneuvers 12 times in 180 miles. Seven of those times were where trees cast shadows on the road, while the rest involved oncoming vehicles in another lane or crossing the road far ahead. “The braking events we observed didn’t create unsafe conditions because the decelerations were mild and short enough that the vehicle didn’t slow too much,” IIHS says. “However, unnecessary braking could pose crash risks in heavy traffic, especially if it’s more forceful. … Plus, drivers who feel that their car brakes erratically may choose not to use adaptive cruise control and would miss out on any safety benefit from the system.”

X
This website uses cookies to enhance user experience and to analyze performance and traffic on our website. We also share information about your use of our site with our social media, advertising and analytics partners. Learn More / Do Not Sell My Personal Information
Accept Cookies
X
Cookie Preferences Cookie List

Do Not Sell My Personal Information

When you visit our website, we store cookies on your browser to collect information. The information collected might relate to you, your preferences or your device, and is mostly used to make the site work as you expect it to and to provide a more personalized web experience. However, you can choose not to allow certain types of cookies, which may impact your experience of the site and the services we are able to offer. Click on the different category headings to find out more and change our default settings according to your preference. You cannot opt-out of our First Party Strictly Necessary Cookies as they are deployed in order to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting the cookie banner and remembering your settings, to log into your account, to redirect you when you log out, etc.). For more information about the First and Third Party Cookies used please follow this link.

Allow All Cookies

Manage Consent Preferences

Strictly Necessary Cookies - Always Active

We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.

Sale of Personal Data, Targeting & Social Media Cookies

Under the California Consumer Privacy Act, you have the right to opt-out of the sale of your personal information to third parties. These cookies collect information for analytics and to personalize your experience with targeted ads. You may exercise your right to opt out of the sale of personal information by using this toggle switch. If you opt out we will not be able to offer you personalised ads and will not hand over your personal information to any third parties. Additionally, you may contact our legal department for further clarification about your rights as a California consumer by using this Exercise My Rights link

If you have enabled privacy controls on your browser (such as a plugin), we have to take that as a valid request to opt-out. Therefore we would not be able to track your activity through the web. This may affect our ability to personalize ads according to your preferences.

Targeting cookies may be set through our site by our advertising partners. They may be used by those companies to build a profile of your interests and show you relevant adverts on other sites. They do not store directly personal information, but are based on uniquely identifying your browser and internet device. If you do not allow these cookies, you will experience less targeted advertising.

Social media cookies are set by a range of social media services that we have added to the site to enable you to share our content with your friends and networks. They are capable of tracking your browser across other sites and building up a profile of your interests. This may impact the content and messages you see on other websites you visit. If you do not allow these cookies you may not be able to use or see these sharing tools.

If you want to opt out of all of our lead reports and lists, please submit a privacy request at our Do Not Sell page.

Save Settings
Cookie Preferences Cookie List

Cookie List

A cookie is a small piece of data (text file) that a website – when visited by a user – asks your browser to store on your device in order to remember information about you, such as your language preference or login information. Those cookies are set by us and called first-party cookies. We also use third-party cookies – which are cookies from a domain different than the domain of the website you are visiting – for our advertising and marketing efforts. More specifically, we use cookies and other tracking technologies for the following purposes:

Strictly Necessary Cookies

We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.

Functional Cookies

We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.

Performance Cookies

We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.

Sale of Personal Data

We also use cookies to personalize your experience on our websites, including by determining the most relevant content and advertisements to show you, and to monitor site traffic and performance, so that we may improve our websites and your experience. You may opt out of our use of such cookies (and the associated “sale” of your Personal Information) by using this toggle switch. You will still see some advertising, regardless of your selection. Because we do not track you across different devices, browsers and GEMG properties, your selection will take effect only on this browser, this device and this website.

Social Media Cookies

We also use cookies to personalize your experience on our websites, including by determining the most relevant content and advertisements to show you, and to monitor site traffic and performance, so that we may improve our websites and your experience. You may opt out of our use of such cookies (and the associated “sale” of your Personal Information) by using this toggle switch. You will still see some advertising, regardless of your selection. Because we do not track you across different devices, browsers and GEMG properties, your selection will take effect only on this browser, this device and this website.

Targeting Cookies

We also use cookies to personalize your experience on our websites, including by determining the most relevant content and advertisements to show you, and to monitor site traffic and performance, so that we may improve our websites and your experience. You may opt out of our use of such cookies (and the associated “sale” of your Personal Information) by using this toggle switch. You will still see some advertising, regardless of your selection. Because we do not track you across different devices, browsers and GEMG properties, your selection will take effect only on this browser, this device and this website.