Folks, this is exactly what Tesla is avoiding when NOT doing sensor fusion, NOT relying on planning/control heuristics and NOT relying on HD maps.
Found a YT
video on this with first person details. The environment suggests the vehicles cameras and LiDar would have very easily 'seen' this pole and impact appears near head on with force (impact popped off the passenger side front facia and dented the pole as shown by the reporter). The road is straight, clearly marked and wide on a clear day. The pole is normal size and not obfuscated by any semantic scene data (like a brown wall behind it). Then, Waymo sent another vehicle to the exact same spot! Why? They should have known the first vehicle struck an object due camera, LiDar, wheel speed sensors and the accelerometer profile data. And based on that, should have kicked off an impact protocol and process that had a remote operator inspect the status of the vehicle and that operator would have easily seen the pole had been struck. But that isn't what happened. Would bet the camera identified the object and classified it as an obstacle, LiDar did the same and then somehow 'forgot' about it at the planning software layer and then controlled it into the obstacle. *And* the front bumper has a LiDar and the pole literally hit that LiDar! How was that LiDar data ignored? (guessing sensor fusion could allow even the most egregious and high confidence data from one sensor to be completely discounted when allowing heuristics to be a determining factor as there is simply no way an AI model would have allowed this data to be ignored). Troubling if their HD maps were 'missing' this pole and thus could have been the determining factor. More on that below...
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This suggests they do NOT have a way to detect, react and control for obstacles and impacts of this nature. Would they have been able to detect a person standing still on that street? And what if it had hit a human and they did NOT react with notifying medical assistance **AND** sent another car.
If I were on the Waymo team, I'd be extremely intent on understanding root cause of this incident.
I'd also think the city of Phoenix would want an immediate investigation for Waymo to turn over video and sensor data to understand how something like this happened.
(side point: Why not have AZ plates on this car? That seems weird)
And this might be the smoking gun as the poles are NOT shown in
Google maps, but their shadow *IS*
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