More than meets the vision sensor

Waymo, the robotaxi company from Alphabet/Google, broke the first law of Asimov.

Way more interesting is to read how the robocompany describes the incident:

“The cyclist was occluded by the truck and quickly followed behind it, crossing into the Waymo vehicle’s path. When they became unoccluded, our vehicle applied heavy braking but was not able to avoid the collision,” Waymo said.
https://boingboing.net/2024/02/07/waymo-autonomous-car-hit-bicyclist.html

Let me emphasize that: “the cyclist crossed into the Waymo vehicle’s path“. That’s such an engineering thing to say. It’s your 2 tons metal box on wheels that does not have a small moving vehicle hidden by a larger one in its computation vision model. Your software calculates a trajectory to pass behind that truck. Oops, there was a cyclist there. But it’s the cyclist who crosses your path? How convenient.