Can A Simple Circle Of Salt Throw Off A Self-Driving Car? – TwistedSifter

At first it might have seemed as if self-driving cars were going to be an easy thing to make happen, but more than a few kinks are proving a bit hard to iron out. Now, artist James Bridle thinks we need to add “table salt” to the list. In 2017, he demonstrated how two rings of salt and an understanding of road markings could confuse a self-driving car to the point of totally shutting itself down. He called it Autonomous Trap 001, and created it by putting two rings of salt around the vehicle, one in broken strips and the other a block line – telling the care to go right and not to cross at the same time. Autonomous Trap 001 from stml on Vimeo. The experiment itself was not without challenges, according to Bridle. “I ran out of salt, and had to drive back to the nearest village to buy a few more kilos. Luckily, salt, unlike bandwidth and computational power, is a pretty cheap resource. Also, I should have pulled my trousers up for the video.” Nothing is perfect, I suppose. Elon Musk, who you may realize has some interest in self-driving vehicles, responded to the experiment
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