As car makers are jumping on the self-driving bandwagon, Volvo is no stranger. Whilst testing in Australia, the team found an interesting issue, their software is confused with kangaroos as reported by ABC News.
“We’ve noticed with the kangaroo being in mid-flight … when it’s in the air it actually looks like it’s further away, then it lands and it looks closer,” Volvo Australia’s technical manager David Pickett told ABC News.
The problem isn’t as simple as that as well. A kangaroo sitting by the side of the road compared to that in the middle of the road has a different structure in the eyes of the software thus confusing it. If any of you have driven in Australia, you would know that kangaroos are one of the most commons causes of roadkills.
This proves to be an interesting problem as different regions of the world would have various types of animals crossing roads and running across highways. Software detection of these type of animals would then set apart how intelligent these self-driving cars will be.
Before they can roll out self-driving car technology in Australia, I guess they better sort the issues of kangaroos first.
