Boffins fool a self-driving car by putting mirrors on traffic cones
- Reference: 1758670166
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2025/09/23/selfdriving_car_fooled_with_mirrors/
- Source link:
A team of scientists from France and Germany [1]demonstrated the techniques in a university campus parking lot. They successfully made a car fitted with LIDAR, running the popular Autoware navigation code, to either fail to recognize and attempt to drive through an obstacle, or convince the car to brake unexpectedly to avoid an object that wasn't there.
LIDAR is used on most self-driving cars – Tesla is the exception – and uses laser pulses to measure the physical environment, but is known to struggle with reflective surfaces. Last year a team of eggheads managed to fool LIDAR with tinfoil and colored swatches.
[2]
Cone hidden in plain sight - Click to enlarge
The European researchers went one better with a technique they called an Object Removal Attack (ORA) which used mirrors of various sizes to cover a traffic cone. By adjusting the size and position of the mirrors used they could completely mask the obstacle to the LIDAR system, and speculated that the mirrors could obscure the car's line of sight.
The second attack, Object Addition Attack (OAA), used small mirror tiles to make the car detect an obstacle it needed to avoid. The car, under manual control for safety purposes, spotted the fake obstacle 20 meters away and avoided the fictitious problem.
[3]
No turning left - Click to enlarge
"We show that by exploiting the physics of specular reflection, an adversary can inject phantom obstacles or erase real ones using only inexpensive mirrors," the researchers wrote in a paper submitted to the journal Computers & Security.
"Experiments on a full AV platform, with commercial-grade LIDAR and the Autoware stack, demonstrate that these are practical threats capable of triggering critical safety failures, such as abrupt emergency braking and failure to yield."
[4]
The researchers tested the system in various scenarios, with the OAA scheme used to deter a car from making a legal turn in traffic by using a variety of mirror selections. Two mirrors produced a 65 percent success rate in convincing the car's software that a phantom object was in the way, and that rose to 74 percent when a grid of six mirrors was used, and the mirror's positioning could trigger an emergency stop – not what's needed in heavy traffic.
[5]Waymo plots Dallas robotaxi launch, stays ahead of Tesla in Texas turf war
[6]Tesla FSD ignores school bus lights and hits 'child' dummy in staged demo
[7]Florida jury throws huge fine at Tesla in Autopilot crash
[8]Nvidia hits the gas on autonomous vehicle software
Mirrors were even more effective at hiding objects in an ORA attack, as the authors found the reflective surfaces' positioning hid obstacles from cars regardless mirror angles.
The paper also describes defenses including thermal imaging, as solid objects usually have a signature. The authors warn adding thermal imaging to LIDAR "is not a panacea," particularly for small objects in high-temperature environments.
[9]
The research team also pointed out that they conducted tests at speeds well below those at which cars travel on freeways and therefore note the need for more testing, so we’re a while away from knowing if $100 of mirrors can threaten your next robo-cab ride. ®
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[1] https://arxiv.org/pdf/2509.17253
[2] https://regmedia.co.uk/2025/09/23/cone.jpg
[3] https://regmedia.co.uk/2025/09/23/false1.jpg
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2aNNs1XZYk7aibscQ-HgL0wAAAhY&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[5] https://www.theregister.com/2025/07/29/waymo_to_expand_dallas/
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2025/05/30/selfdriving_tesla_accident/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2025/08/01/florida_tesla_verdict/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2025/06/12/nvidia_autonomous_vehicle_platform/
[9] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aNNs1XZYk7aibscQ-HgL0wAAAhY&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[10] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Mirror, mirror ...
" Kinda obvious I would have thought, a mirror disrupts an optical system. I expect it would have similar effect on a human driver. "
When you ask yourself how does a human detect a mirror in the environment, the answer is fairly complicated. We are familiar with mirrors (specular reflection) and their properties through exposure † . Animals and people in societies lacking mirrors are often initially quite puzzled by these objects.
Fairly obvious that a much higher level of processing than a vehicles collision avoidance system us involved.
For automated driving to work the systems would require fairly detailed functional models of the driving environment to interpret the vehicle's sensors' input. Such models are going to be large and complex.
Current systems are much improvement on a dodgem car free·for·all (or a demolition derby.)
† and overexposure. I was quite surprised when I discovered that the phone's software mirror reverses the selfie camera's image on the phone's screen and embarrassed as I was "explaining" the exact opposite at the time.
Perty cool study
The EU mandates [1]intelligent speed assistance and advanced emergency-braking system in new vehicles (since 2022?) and with the rash of unexplained [2]phantom braking (freinages fantômes, freinages inopinés) that's resulted from these systems (reported by over 100 drivers, including crashes and death(s)), you've gotta wonder about the wisdom of that decision ...
The team of scientists that "demonstrated" (link in TFA) how simple mirrors can induce such false/sudden/unexpected emergency braking and/or evasive maneuver/swerving into an adjacent lane, with associated crashes (their Figs. 3,9,10) will hopefully help naive EU technocrats wake-up some and reconsider their blind faith to techno-hypenosis and related nonsenses, including the hogwash that the AImighty will save us (if we could be so lucky), imho!
[1] https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-room/20190410IPR37528/parliament-approves-eu-rules-requiring-life-saving-technologies-in-vehicles
[2] https://www.connexionfrance.com/practical/reports-of-phantom-braking-by-cars-on-french-roads-raise-safety-concerns/738593
Just Stop It
One side-effect of "phantom braking" by self-driving cars is that it might educate human drivers to keep their distance from the car in front.
Kinda obvious I would have thought, a mirror disrupts an optical system. I expect it would have similar effect on a human driver.