I know driverless cars can acknowledge humans, and stop, but what about small animals? Cats, squirrels, rabbits etc. And what about really quick animals (deer, antelope, and the like) darting in front of a car. For that matter, what about being surrounded by sheep? I have lived in the high country and have had the experience of sheep on all sides, and having to nudge my way out. No it doesn’t just happen in old comedies.
They’re not designed for that target market. Yet.
There’s no reason in principle they couldn’t be so programmed.
Any discussion of a particular prototype car’s capabilities today is pointless since they’re being changed and improved almost daily.
The higher end models in development use LIDAR sensors to scan for any objects in their path. LIDAR gives you a field of distance measurements. A large animal jumping in front of the vehicle would theoretically scan as a bunch of points that are elevated from the road surface, and the car algorithms will almost certainly see it as an obstacle.
On the other hand, driver’s ed states that when you see a sudden obstacle in your path (trash can, dog/cat/deer) you are not supposed to touch the wheel. (aka swerve). That can result in all kind of bad things, including rollovers, various kinds of nasty wrecks, etc. You are supposed to just apply the brakes and run over the obstacle. Not sure what you are supposed to do if a human jumps out in front of you…
You would expect the engineers designing autonomous cars to have similar reasoning. Some of the teams may feel they have better predictive modeling of what their car will do when they turn (unlike a human, their model can factor in all the variables including current traction) and they can simulate possible turns to avoid running over the obstacle without risking a rollover or crash.
Nevertheless, you can expect that in some circumstances (a small cat jumps out in front suddenly), the autonomous car will just apply the brakes and run over the obstacle.
I don’t know about small animals, but one of the major goals of the Volvo collision avoidance system is preventing or reducing the damage from wildlife strikes on rural highways, particularly the dreaded moose. I imagine similar technology would work its way into fully autonomous cars.
What about potholes? (Asked the Pennsylvanian)
What are… pot holes? (Asked the California geek who had tested the ever-lovin’ sheeyit out of his auto-drive car on new, wide, perfect California subdivision streets)
Or what about a plastic grocery bag flying by? Or a gust of leaves that could look like something larger? Will it know to just drive right through that?
I am sure the safest answer for a squirrel is to just drive on through. If your car slams on its brakes for a squirrel, it is much more likely that the (human driven) car behind it may slam into the back of your car and cause serious injury for everyone. But maybe if it is cat, some people will want their car to do all it can to avoid it since it may be someone’s pet. Can the car tell the difference between a large squirrel and a small cat?
Whatever is chosen by the car manufacturer, a bunch of people won’t be happy with it.
I am skeptical that driverless cars will be up to these types of situations anytime soon.
Yeah. Pennsylvania keeps the tire and wheel industry in business. 
It’ll know a lot better than humans do, because while a grocery bag or a gust of leaves can look like something dangerous to visible light, they’re completely different to sonar and radar.
And how sharply you can steer without turning over is the sort of thing that it’s really easy to program a computer to calculate, but really hard for a human to do on the fly.
Some of you may not like this, but a car that “cares” about the well-being of squirrels is a bad car (or anything coyote or smaller). In many cases it is unsafe to stop and also a low priority. A “courtesy brake” when it is safe may be possible but Google hasn’t prioritized it and the purpose is mostly to assuage the human passengers. Deer-detection systems are absolutely prudent but again the deers health isn’t the issue but that they can seriously mess up a car.
Yeah, right, says the person who regularly crosses the border and can tell the *exact *point I enter CA with my eyes closed by how rocky it gets. Like an incredibly quick transition. And I’ve been to places like Richmond et al. But I’ve never been to PA and now I’m picturing it as Mad Max.
I wish our roads were that good.
I’ve been to PA. I used to live over the border. I now life in California. We got you beat as far as potholes are concerned, and we don’t even have the excuse of snow and ice.
I assure you the guys in the Google Cars know all about pot holes. I believe the average Bay Area driver spends somewhere around $600 a year fixing damage from our bad roads.
Only if you pay for the optional ‘don’t plough into pedestrians’ package apparently.
I would also want my self driving car to be able to ask the car following behind if it still has room to stop if I brake for this small animal. If not then roadkill.
Some pedestrians would pay good money for a car that ploughs into their package. Ever see Crash (the one based on J.G. Ballard’s novel, not the “racism is bad” one)?
As long as I get to paint little silhouettes on my door for whatever it hits I’m cool with its decision-making.
I *knew *those stick figure families would finally find a good use. 