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+--- Thread: Laser hack of self-driving cars can ‘delete’ pedestrians (/thread-13131.html)
Laser hack of self-driving cars can ‘delete’ pedestrians - C C - Nov 2, 2022
https://cosmosmagazine.com/technology/laser-hack-lidar-self-driving-cars-delete-pedestrians/
INTRO: Although a city filled with entirely self-driving cars is still in the realm of science fiction, more and more cars are coming with ‘self-driving’ features so it’s a little alarming to learn that there are ways to use lasers to mess with the technology the cars use to detect its surroundings.
In a study uploaded to arXiv by a team of researchers in the US and Japan, researchers were able to trick the ‘victim vehicle’ (their words not ours) into not seeing a pedestrian or other object in its way.
Most self-driving cars use LIDAR to be able to ‘see’ around them by sending out a laser light and then recording the reflection from objects in the area. The time it takes for the light to reflect back gives the system information about how far away the object is.
This new ‘hack’ or spoof works because a perfectly timed laser shined onto a LIDAR system can create a blind spot large enough to hide an object like a pedestrian... (MORE - details)
RE: Laser hack of self-driving cars can ‘delete’ pedestrians - Kornee - Nov 2, 2022
A 'nice' example of my (and many other's) concerns expressed here:
https://www.scivillage.com/thread-12714-post-53889.html#pid53889
Sure one can hope all such exploits will be anticipated and once and for all solved by the time self-driving becomes commonplace.
It's not paralleled elsewhere as we all know. Where there's a will - to screw with people's lives - there is unfortunately always a way.