This was not a sensor failure, the Waymo detected the pole but had assigned a low damage score to the object and proceeded into it because the pole was within the driveable space and not separated by a hard curb or something along those lines.
Here’s the recall report:
Thanks, I hadn't read it. However, I think this is the only truth we can be assured of:
"Description of the Safety Risk : Insufficient ability to avoid pole or pole-like permanent objects
within the drivable surface may result in an increased risk of a collision."
Their Defect explanation is the answer a software PM would say - quite Boolean in word choices. My follow up to that deflection would be to ask the obvious: "Why would you hit a pole even if you could see it?" The real answer is again, wait for it... Sensor Con-Fusion (but only if we also consider the maps as sensor data input).
Facts:
1. Lidar saw the pole (no physical reason it would miss it).
2. Cameras saw the pole (no reason they would not).
3. Drivable space was beyond the pole. (Vision or Maps incorrectly concluded it's a useable road surface).
4. The pole did not move.
So what happened at #3? Actually, I think it's worse in that the maps won over 2 types of vision systems combined. I don't think this was sensor Fusion in the usual sense. But if we look at Map data as sensor input, that's where the "fusion" broke down (meaning that various sources of info are not aligning so a decision is needed).
My next question... What if I were to place a 5M diameter steel ball in the road. Write code to detect a steel ball? What if a brown man stood still? Maps cannot rule the day, it's crazy what happened.
Recalling AIDriver showed us when FSD found a better route than what the maps said. (His Tesla turned left at the light vs the map saying a right then a U-turn. So his Nav didn't make sense, but the car figured it out.)
OK, enough said, sorry for dragging this down an FSD rathole but it's fairly critical to understand for obvious investment reasons. I seriously don't know if any of my input is helping. But for me, this is THE hinge factor. I don't just base this off Elon's religious Lidar comments, I understand motion sensors more than most and how the compass can lie to the gyro's at anytime. Even that sensor fusion is complex but SpaceX clearly figured it out.
So sensor fusion is necessary to some degree of overlap, but there's got to be only one Ego, no schizophrenia.
