Mobileye Autonomous Car Fails in Demo

EETimes Junko Yoshida publishes an explanation of Mobileye self-driving car demo where the car passes a junction on red light:

"The public AV demo in Jerusalem inadvertently allowed a local TV station’s video camera to capture Mobileye’s car running a red light. (Fast-forward the video to 4:28 for said scene.)

According to Mobileye, the incident was not a software bug in the car. Instead, it was triggered by electromagnetic interference (EMI) between a wireless camera used by the TV crew and the traffic light’s wireless transponder. Mobileye had equipped the traffic light with a wireless transponder — for extra safety — on the route that the AV was scheduled to drive in the demo. As a result, crossed signals from the two wireless sources befuddled the car. The AV actually slowed down at the sight of a red light, but then zipped on through."

On a similar theme, NTSB publishes a preliminary analysis of Uber self-driving car crash that killed a women in Arizona in March 2018:

“According to data obtained from the self-driving system, the system first registered radar and LIDAR observations of the pedestrian about 6 seconds before impact, when the vehicle was traveling at 43 mph. As the vehicle and pedestrian paths converged, the self-driving system software classified the pedestrian as an unknown object, as a vehicle, and then as a bicycle with varying expectations of future travel path. At 1.3 seconds before impact, the self-driving system determined that an emergency braking maneuver was needed to mitigate a collision. According to Uber, emergency braking maneuvers are not enabled while the vehicle is under computer control, to reduce the potential for erratic vehicle behavior. The vehicle operator is relied on to intervene and take action. The system is not designed to alert the operator.”