At first it might have seemed as if self-driving cars were going to be an easy thing to make happen, but more than a few kinks are proving a bit hard to iron out.
Now, artist James Bridle thinks we need to add “table salt” to the list.
In 2017, he demonstrated how two rings of salt and an understanding of road markings could confuse a self-driving car to the point of totally shutting itself down.
He called it Autonomous Trap 001, and created it by putting two rings of salt around the vehicle, one in broken strips and the other a block line – telling the care to go right and not to cross at the same time.
Autonomous Trap 001 from stml on Vimeo.
The experiment itself was not without challenges, according to Bridle.
“I ran out of salt, and had to drive back to the nearest village to buy a few more kilos.
Luckily, salt, unlike bandwidth and computational power, is a pretty cheap resource.
Also, I should have pulled my trousers up for the video.”
Nothing is perfect, I suppose.
Elon Musk, who you may realize has some interest in self-driving vehicles, responded to the experiment on Twitter.
Probably will trap a Tesla with the production Autopilot build, but won’t work with FSD. Using a ring of cones would stop FSD though.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 18, 2021
“Probably will trap a Tesla with the production Autopilot build, but won’t work with Full Self-Driving Capabilities. Using a ring of cones would stop FSD though.”
Add the indecision to a long list of issues, which include cars not spotting darker skin tones as well as lighter ones, the self-driving option going haywire while on a busy road, and cars not recognizing shorter persons (like children) as people, and it may be longer than we figured before they’re a common sight on the road.
Or maybe we’ll decide that putting googly eyes on the cars like they did in Japan is the way to go.
“If the car is not looking at the pedestrian, this implies that the car does not recognize the pedestrian. Thus, pedestrians can judge that they should not cross the street, thereby avoiding potential traffic accidents.”
It’s a brave new world, friends, and you’d better be ready to look out for yourself.
So don’t go out without your salt.
