[ruskinash]

https://futurism.com/the-byte/video-...-india-traffic

We're willing to bet that you've never seen anything quite as anxiety-inducing as a recent video shared by Indian startup Swaayatt Robots, showing an extremely adventurous self-driving SUV navigating the hectic streets of Bhopal, India.

The nation's streets are infamously chaotic, with basic rules of the road taking a backseat. In other words, they're not exactly ideal conditions for driverless vehicles, which already struggle to account for ever-changing built environments.

As US-based robotaxi companies have already found out, it's an extremely difficult task — and that's in a far more predictable environment where cars, at least generally speaking, stop at red lights and respect lane markings.

Swaayatt, however, isn't dissuaded. A video shared by the startup last month shows its sensor-laden vehicle "driving through an absolute chaos, on suburban unstructured roads in India," as the company put it in the caption.

"This is the most complex that it can get for an autonomous vehicle," Swaayatt CEO Sanjeev Sharma told IEEE Spectrum. "If you’re able to build here, this technology is universal."


Chaos Theory
The results speak for themselves. The vehicle lurches back and forth, almost mimicking the erratic movement of the other cars around it. With its hazard lights blinking, the white SUV isn't afraid to veer into the path of oncoming traffic, forcing other drivers to swerve around it.

To the company, that terrifying behavior is entirely intentional.

"There were no traffic rules to abide by on this road, other than to perform a left-sided avoidance," the company wrote in the caption of its video. "If the other obstacles follow the same, else the vehicle will have to change its plan in a stochastic manner, in several of the adversarial multi-agent negotiation settings encountered throughout the autonomous navigation."

To Swaayatt, it's a ruthless environment where every vehicle, driverless or otherwise, has to fend for itself.

"It can be seen throughout navigation that the incoming vehicles didn't allow any gaps for our autonomous vehicles, forcing it to negotiate passively-aggressively its own path through the chaos," the company wrote.

In short, is it an impressive feat of engineering — or a disaster waiting to happen? We'll let you decide.

https://youtu.be/cdJ1ETCC6fY?si=YuEnjDLDSHBxvs6I

[ninjatalli]

Not bad but I would deem this equivalent to a new driver learning to navigate the road on a busy road like the one showcased.

Key point to note, the video clearly has been sped up; it needs to be watched at 0.5x to understand the actual speed at which the vehicle is traveling and encountering traffic. This honestly is a bit too slow for even internal busy roads but understandable given the experiment. The actual speed is easily understood by considering the man walking by (at t=49s) and the cycle overtaking the jeep (at t=1:30s).

Quite dangerous to not put markings on the vehicle indicating this is a self-driven vehicle. Hazard lights are sufficient means to showcase this. Any vehicle coming in the opposite direction could have been hit/scrapped by; and due to no fault of theirs. Thankfully that hasn't happened but if they do such experiments again; a few decals or stickers on all sides would go a great way to inform other motorists on the road.

[extreme_torque]

I am not technical enough to judge whether this is technically impressive or not given there is no visualisation to show what the car is seeing or the agents on the road. But purely judging by its driving this horrendous, its too slow, drives in the middle of the road and the steering wheel inputs are too drastic and too quick. We dont know how it works with traffic control either such as traffic lights.

Its like one of those cheap robot vacuums without lidar or camera sensors who simply employ random navigation aka just navigate randomly until you run into something and then random navigate again.

[SmartCat]

Startup website: https://www.swaayattrobots.com/

Has received a $3 million funding
https://evreporter.com/swaayatt-robo...tech-in-india/

[AMG Power]

The vehicle capturing the video from the front is not seen anywhere.

Even if it were a drone it should have been spotted. Is there something I’m missing?

[ex-innova-guy]

Originally Posted by AMG Power

Is there something I’m missing?

That video is being shot by the pillion sitting in the opposite direction of travel on the bike, which is seen in front of the Bolero the whole time.

Originally Posted by SmartCat

Has received a $3 million funding
https://evreporter.com/swaayatt-robo...tech-in-india/

^ I doubt if the above video shooting method is the correct way of doing things, given how much funding it has received.

[Thyag]

Originally Posted by ruskinash

[url]https://futurism.com/the-byte/video-self-driving-car-navigating-india-traffic[/url

My 10 year old does great driving in GTA than this ! So much swerving here and there, also in this small road the vehicle always comes to the middle - which causes more swerves. Lot of work to do.

Just putting on hazard lights and involving these many people without their consent or information is stupidity to the core, Just forgot - this is India anything, anytime is possible

[Joe367]

It is quite impressive eventhough it is very slow (i dont know why they're uploading every video at 2X speeds). They claim to be using some kind of deep learning so it's not just a random collision avoidance system. They have said in the video description that they're having issues with level 4 autonomous driving, so it is a level 3 capable vehicle as of now?

The doubt I had is whether we have proper rules in place to certify autonomous vehicles
to be fit for testing on Public roads. I couldn't find anything from searching thr internet. In the video Swaayatt claims the testing was done under police supervision. More and more companies will be coming up with such technologies in future and we don't want them all to beta test their software on public roads and cause accidents.

[NikSin26]

I find it quite impressive that the vehicle is able navigate through such streets. It's not small feat by any means, especially if you look into what all can go wrong here. A narrow road without any markings is in itself a big problem if you consider from a computer vision point of view, with vehicles parked on the sides (half on the road itself) it is far more challenging than it looks.

Originally Posted by extreme_torque

But purely judging by its driving this horrendous, its too slow, drives in the middle of the road and the steering wheel inputs are too drastic and too quick. We dont know how it works with traffic control either such as traffic lights.

Its like one of those cheap robot vacuums without lidar or camera sensors who simply employ random navigation aka just navigate randomly until you run into something and then random navigate again.

Well, I kind of disagree with you on this, the driving is different than how a human would drive on the same path, but I won't say it's bad. It's a bit slow, but I'm really not sure any new driver would be much faster than this in a bolero. Steering inputs will be erratic as it is a motor turning the wheel, it will never be as smooth as a driver doing the same, yes, it can be made better for comfort but for initial phase, this looks more than good to me.
Regarding traffic control, if it can work on this road, I don't think I have any doubts for it working on well marked traffic controlled roads.

Good to see Indian startups coming into autonomous driving space. I was a firm believer that you can't get full autonomous driving to work in Indian conditions, but with recent advances in AI and computer vision, and videos such as this, I'm forced to change my views.

[NomadSK]

This is completely inasane. How authorities allow such tests/drives to be conducted in an uncontrolled environment. Who will bear the responsibility for the mishap ? Just speechless

[PreludeSH]

Well, good that it was able to navigate without getting into any issue. But I disagree with the statement that what works here will work anywhere. Hope you can choose the country you are driving in.

Some things are not to be done just to avoid and swerve and drive in the middle of the road all the time

[extreme_torque]

Originally Posted by NikSin26

Well, I kind of disagree with you on this, the driving is different than how a human would drive on the same path, but I won't say it's bad. It's a bit slow, but I'm really not sure any new driver would be much faster than this in a bolero. Steering inputs will be erratic as it is a motor turning the wheel, it will never be as smooth as a driver doing the same, yes, it can be made better for comfort but for initial phase, this looks more than good to me.

The video is actually sped up. As for erratic steering input, I would have assumed that an electric motor would be more dexterous than a human given the torque can be precisely controlled and the car should be doing forward path planning in anticipation of the curve in the road. All the car seems to be doing here is driving in the middle of the road (not on the left as it should) and reacting sharply to traffic as it comes too close. We cannot verify anythingas there is no visualisation to show what the car is seeing. They might as well be controlling the car via a playstation controller for all we know.

Originally Posted by NikSin26

Regarding traffic control, if it can work on this road, I don't think I have any doubts for it working on well marked traffic controlled roads.

The issue exactly is that the car is not working the road. Driving in the middle of the road, coming too close to other traffic before erratically applying heavy steering as if the control is either 0 or 1.

[Unstuck]

Should this not be tested first at ARAI or certified in a controlled environment. In case of a mishap by this vehicle, who is culpable?

Mimicking a terrifying behaviour is bad, to say the least.

[am1m]

Just going by the video, I think this is amazing tech. To even get to this level of automated driving must have been a very technical job. And frankly, this AI is driving far, far better than a lot of the drivers we see on our roads today!

But agree that these experiments need to be done under controlled conditions and environments first. But am assuming that the company would not have tried something like this before securing those? if they have published a video, they must assume that the authorities will be watching.

(Also the small possibility that this is a rigged demo for publicity, funding. Anything is possible with a tech startup!)

[exhaustpipe]

Call me a sceptic but @ 1.20, the car goes into the wrong lane (for oncoming traffic) to overtake a tractor that stopped in-front of it. This should not happen with an autonomously driven car. Felt more like what a toy car would do.

@ 1.53, and in most of the video, you'll see it driving in the middle of the road, only veers to its side when it detects an oncoming vehicle! I don't think their system can detect narrow unmarked road or lanes, nor can it detect unmarked ditches on the side. It did what it did by trying to stay in the middle of the road as much as it can unless it detects oncoming traffic.

Still a great feat from an Indian firm