Blind spots have surfaced in the rush to self-driving vehicles. WJR reports on an obvious solution— but it may be too expensive.
Since an Uber self-driving car hit and killed an Arizona woman in March, researchers have been working on giving autonomous vehicles better night vision. The problem– avoiding people who wander into the street in darkness. Self-driving vehicles can more easily avoid crashing into a tree or a fire hydrant than a person, because the person may be moving.
The answer has been in the hands of the military for years: heat-seeking thermal imagery. It can double the range of vision at night.
But it has another problem: a thermal sensing unit would currently cost about 5-thousand dollars per vehicle, so far unacceptable for the industry which is trying to hold down the cost of new technology, while trying to fill the night vision gap.
