Researchers warn robot cars can be crashed with tinfoil and paint daubed on cardboard

Researchers demonstrated a proof-of-concept attack against Baidu Apollo autonomous-vehicle multi-sensor fusion that uses easily fabricated adversarial objects (smooth metal surfaces and colored patches) — potentially deployed by drones or disguised on another vehicle — to deflect mmWave radar, manipulate camera pixels, and confuse LiDAR returns, effectively hiding a target vehicle from perception systems. The work shows multi-modality perception can be jointly defeated, posing a physical safety risk to AV operations, though the report describes experiments and theory rather than active real-world exploitation.