The Halting problem: Video analysis of self-driving cars in traffic

Barry Brown, Mathias Broth, Erik Vinkhuyzen

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingArticle in proceedingsResearchpeer-review

12 Citations (Scopus)
30 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

Using publicly uploaded videos of the Waymo and Tesla FSD self-driving cars, this paper documents how self-driving vehicles still struggle with some basics of road interaction. To drive safely self-driving cars need to interact in traffic with other road users. Yet traffic is a complex, long established social domain. We focus on one core element of road interaction: when road users yield for each other. Yielding - such as by slowing down for others in traffic - involves communication between different road users to decide who will 'go' and who will 'yield'. Videos of the Waymo and Tesla FSD self-driving cars show how these systems fail to both yield for others, as well as failing to go when yielded to. In discussion, we explore how these 'problems' illustrate both the complexity of designing for road interaction, but also how the space of physical machine/human social interactions more broadly can be designed for.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationCHI 2023 - Proceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
PublisherAssociation for Computing Machinery, Inc.
Publication date2023
Pages1-14
Article number12
ISBN (Electronic)9781450394215
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2023
Event2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI 2023 - Hamburg, Germany
Duration: 23 Apr 202328 Apr 2023

Conference

Conference2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI 2023
Country/TerritoryGermany
CityHamburg
Period23/04/202328/04/2023
SponsorACM SIGCHI, Apple, Bloomberg, Google, NSF, Siemens

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2023 ACM.

Cite this