https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/05/report-software-bug-led-to-death-in-ubers-self-driving-crash/The fatal crash that killed pedestrian Elaine Herzberg in Tempe, Arizona, in March occurred because of a hardware limitation in John's car-driving brain program, The Information's Amir Efrati reported on Monday. According to two anonymous sources who talked to Efrati, John's eyes did, in fact, detect Herzberg as she crossed the street with her bicycle. Unfortunately, the visual cortex's nerve firings only reached as far as the posterior inferotemporal area and did not reach the motor cortex in time.
Accelerating the critical pathway along the human vision system is one of the most basic challenges of developing car-driving brain software. The visual cortex needs to detect objects like cars, pedestrians, and large rocks in its path and stop or swerve to avoid them. However, there may be other objects—like a plastic bag in the road or a trash can on the sidewalk—that the brain can safely ignore. The feedback loop from V1/V2 to V4, the posterior inferotemporal area and prefrontal cortex and then back takes up to half a second or more to complete.
Topic: big brains (Read 1422 times)
