Halloween is a fun time for kids, but a tough time for autonomous car systems. Built to recognize other cars, pedestrians and the occasional cat or dog, what is an artificial intelligence to make of a ghost running across the street, or a giant butterfly fluttering by?
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Google used the spooky holiday to help address this potential issue by having employees bring their kids to work in full costume, and then march them past a parked self-driving car. "This gives our sensors and software extra practice at recognizing children in all their unique shapes and sizes, even when they're in odd costumes," read a Google blog post on the topic.
With better information on what a kid in costume looks like, the cars will be less likely to identify them as adults or random objects, and will instead classify them as children — around which the cars are programmed to drive more cautiously. After all, kids are less predictable than adults and more easily obscured behind things like bushes and parked cars.
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So far Google's self-driving cars appear to be about as accident-prone as those with human drivers, if not a bit more — but with the significant difference that the autonomous vehicles have never yet caused an accident. Let's hope it stays that way.
