In municipalities that allow driverless car testing, the experience of dodging cars at crosswalks may be a familiar one. But in London, where such experiences are not as readily available, some Brits have turned the experience into a game. The game, called How (Not) To Get Hit By A Self-Driving Car, involves crossing a mocked-up crosswalk without being detected by a person-sensing camera. The goal is to demonstrate that if you can successfully make it to the other side without detection, you could also avoid being detected by an autonomous vehicle.
The creators of the game are working to make it more challenging in order to give players a more realistic experience. They are hoping that the game will allow self-driving car systems to become smarter and safer. Players who beat the AI can choose to have their anonymized footage deleted or retained by the game’s makers, who are seeking research institutions to share the dataset with in the hope it will be used to train self-driving cars.
The creators admit that they don’t know if any self-driving firms are actually using the same methods of pedestrian detection, but believe the data could still prove useful. The methods that defeat How (Not) To Get Hit By A Self-Driving Car could be reproduced by AV companies to incorporate into their own data sets, or at the very least, the video could provide some entertainment for engineers.