ROBOTS, WINTER DON’T MIX
Snowbanks a big obstacle for self-driving cars
Self-driving car companies are pouring millions of dollars into developing top-of-the-line autonomous vehicles, but obstacles — including snowbanks in Boston — still need to be overcome.
“The cities that are smart about it will think about it throughout,” said Ryan Chin, chief executive of Optimus Ride. “It is in part our responsibility to engage with the right folks to make sure our systems work but also in part educate them.”
In a quarterly report recently sent to Boston officials, Optimus Ride suggested the city may want to rethink how it clears snow from the roads.
“When there is a lot of snow, it is natural for snowbanks to accumulate. However when snowbanks accumulate immediately next to road curbs, snow masses displace the vehicle’s turning radius,” the company said. “Given their reflectivity, snowy curbs often make the vehicle believe it doesn’t have enough room to turn, though that may not be the case.”
Chin said small things like making sure lane markers are consistently repainted will be crucial for vehicles powered by sensors and cameras to guide them.
William Messner, a professor at Tufts University, said improving and updating infrastructure to handle self-driving cars would not be a revolutionary move.
“We didn’t just put cars on the roads to take over where horses were. We paved the roads, we put lines on the road, all kinds of stuff that municipalities did to accommodate this new technology,” Messner said. “There may be similar kinds of infrastructure improvements or changes that would facilitate the use of these technologies.”
Messner said smart streetlights that communicate with autonomous vehicles and markers barely visible to humans but clear as day to selfdriving cars are likely in the future, but simple changes could be incredibly effective.
“There are some opportunities for infrastructure improvements that will improve the safety of everybody,” he said.
Kris Carter, co-chair of Boston’s Office of New Urban Mechanics, said the city is trying to start considering self-driving cars as it plans and designs streets in the future. One easyto-implement change could be finding a better way to delineate construction in the road. Instead of an orange cone on its own, for example, road work could be cordoned off by reflective rope or tape.
“When we think about infrastructure for autonomous vehicles, it’s not about technology, it’s also about street design and maintenance,” Carter said.
Snow and construction zones are often listed as the chief obstacles that Optimus Ride and nuTonomy, the other company testing self-driving cars in Boston, list in their quarterly reports.
Still, there are unexpected obstacles. Soon after it began testing last year, nuTonomy had to recalibrate its software because the cars mistook seagulls flying across the roadway for other vehicles and stopped to avoid a crash.
Optimus Ride and nuTonomy have combined for more than 1,000 miles on Boston roads — without any accidents — and are routinely taken over by safety drivers when the cars encounter situations the companies know cannot be navigated safely in self-driving mode.