Remember Me Fondly: Cornell Gives Self-Driving Cars Memories

Unlike humans, cars using artificial neural networks have no memory of the past — despite how many times prior they’ve driven down a particular road. Now, Cornell researchers have produced three recent papers on the ability of autonomous vehicles to use past travels to “learn the way” to familiar destinations. Watch this video to learn more.

“The fundamental question is, can we learn from repeated traversals?” said senior author Kilian Weinberger , professor of computer science in Cornell Bowers CIS. “For example, a car may mistake a weirdly shaped tree for a pedestrian the first time its laser scanner perceives it from a distance, but once it is close enough, the object category will become clear. So the second time you drive past the very same tree, even in fog or snow, you would hope that the car has now learned to recognize it correctly.”