Seems they’re an annoyance for autonomous-driving systems, too.
In almost every other country outside of Sweden, critics and observers raised their eyebrows ever so slightly when Volvo rolled out their ‘large animal detection’ systems that enable their cars to come to a halt when they notice moose or deer in their path. It makes sense in Sweden though, where a large number of motor accidents are caused by wildlife wandering into the road and getting caught in the headlights. It’s rarely an issue anywhere else, though.
Except on our soil. With 16,000 collisions with kangaroos recorded every year (statistic provided by the National Roads and Motorists Association), it’s also become a headache for carmakers as they progress to adopting more and more driving autonomy in their cars. That’s precisely the issue for Volvo, saying that their advanced driver assistance (ADAS) systems are being left confused by kangaroos.
Volvo Australia’s technical manager David Pickett told ABC News that part of the reason for the confusion is with the way kangaroos move. “First we have to start identifying the ‘roo,” Pickett said. “We identify what a human looks like by how a human walks, because it’s not only the one type of human. You’ve got short people, tall people, people wearing coats… the same applies to a ‘roo.”
Two years have passed since Volvo brought safety engineers here to study the issue, with work still ongoing. A particular sore point for engineers is when ‘roos are mid-flight, as the ADAS system cannot then figure out where exactly the animals are due to the system using the road as a reference point. “We’ve noticed that with the kangaroo being in mid-flight… when it’s in the air, it actually looks like it’s further away. Then it lands, and it looks closer.”
While this might seem like a relatively minor problem in the grand scheme of things, it’s actually a major hurdle as carmakers move further and further towards autonomous driving, as it’s crucial that issues like these are solved prior to the introduction and widespread utilisation of autonomous vehicles. Guess this might remain a bit of a stumbling block for a while, though.
