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Uber’s First Self-Driving Fleet Arrives in Pittsburgh This Month

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Re: Uber’s First Self-Driving Fleet Arrives in Pittsburgh This Month

#31

Post by puranjay »

jayjay71 wrote: post #30
agumonkey wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you think about Ford announcement, IIUC they're skipping level 3 (semi auto autos) straight to level 4 (wheel-less).

Everybody wants to jump straight to 4, because 3 is actually dangerous and likely to cause deaths as people are lulled into a false sense of safety. The question is how long will it take? Some people say 2 years, some people say 20.

How much has the recent interest and investment in self-driving cars impacted this estimate? 5 years ago, I would have said that level 4 automation is 20 years away. With all these billions pouring in, I'd cut that projection in less than half.

I'm certain that I won't be driving a car ever in 2030

Re: Uber’s First Self-Driving Fleet Arrives in Pittsburgh This Month

#32

Post by rsfern »

tajen wrote: post #11
thearn4 wrote: post #3

Lots of hills, and will have plenty of ice and snow in a few months. It seems to me like a logical place to test the resilience of a self-driving system against some predictable corner cases.

I'm surprised by their technology: > The company has been creating extremely detailed maps that include not just roads and lane markings, but also buildings, potholes, parked cars, fire hydrants, traffic lights, trees, and anything else on Pittsburgh's streets. If one city requires that much work, they're not scalable. Even if we assume the LIDAR on every Uber car collects the new data, the car will trip sooner or la…

You have to start somewhere. In addition to bootstrapping the program in a few cities, they are probably using this data to improve their pothole detection systems. Pittsburgh's a great city for that sort of thing.

Re: Uber’s First Self-Driving Fleet Arrives in Pittsburgh This Month

#33

Post by happyslobro »

pythia__ wrote: post #17
sbarre wrote: post #7

I wonder how Uber drivers feel about working for a company that is actively trying to make them obsolete. Not passing judgement or anything, just kind of a strange thing to contemplate.. Uber kept saying they were disrupting the taxi industry by letting more people participate when really in the end they're trying to remove the people from the equation altogether.

People may yet make a comeback as a premium service since they can do things that self-driving cars can't like help a passenger carry bags.

You could stash a helpful little Asimo in the trunk. It would be like a trunkmonkey, except without the tire iron ;) But that could also be a far, dystopian-future option: agile I-Robot style bots that leaps out of the trunk to beat down anyone who tries to jack you when you stop to charge your battery.

I have a mental image of a slow, but patient Asimo trying to winch a wheelless Jeep back onto a dirt road, in a soaking wet tropical jungle, like that scene in Jurassic Park. Meanwhile, the occupants get eaten. Asimo has no event handler for that situation, and continues working patiently to get the car back on the road. He does not smell interesting to the raptors, who leave after their meal.

Re: Uber’s First Self-Driving Fleet Arrives in Pittsburgh This Month

#34

Post by rando444 »

theandrewbailey wrote: post #28

I saw one of these a month ago when I was biking around the North Shore (downtown Pittsburgh). Its cameras on top were far more conspicuous than the renders in the article, though. This article said it would pick people up downtown, but how far would they go to drop off? The golden triangle is mostly grid-based, but go elsewhere in the city and the road topology gets jacked up fast (like Boston), especially in the so…

Knowing Pittsburgh, the amount of road and bridge construction that goes on there would also concern me, not to mention the condition of the roads.

There's also a ton of roads that are extremely steep (multiple residential streets with an over 30% grade) which can be extremely dangerous in the winter.

It's an interesting choice of a city for this for sure.

Re: Uber’s First Self-Driving Fleet Arrives in Pittsburgh This Month

#35

Post by jayjay71 »

puranjay wrote: post #31
jayjay71 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everybody wants to jump straight to 4, because 3 is actually dangerous and likely to cause deaths as people are lulled into a false sense of safety. The question is how long will it take? Some people say 2 years, some people say 20.

How much has the recent interest and investment in self-driving cars impacted this estimate? 5 years ago, I would have said that level 4 automation is 20 years away. With all these billions pouring in, I'd cut that projection in less than half. I'm certain that I won't be driving a car ever in 2030

I think it actually doesn't make that much difference. The problem, I believe, is that people are used to rapid advances in software. Lots of small iterations can take you a long way, but sometimes you just reach a hurdle which requires a breakthrough. A fully self-driving car would need a huge breakthrough in perception (which most people categorize under AI) in order to work.

Computer vision actually started out in the 60's because how hard could it be to classify objects in images? Well, decades later and it's still a hugely unsolved problem.

Robotics can be broken into 3 main categories: perception, planning, and controls. Perception is always the weak point. Robots just cannot see and understand their environments like people can. When you put a robot in a dynamic environment, they fail spectacularly. To give some idea of this, look at videos of robots falling down at the DARPA Robotics Challenge - and keep in mind those were made by teams of top roboticists with millions of dollars in a highly constrained environment (it's hard to say that obstacle course was "real").

I really, really doubt it's going to happen in a few years. I would love to be wrong though.

Re: Uber’s First Self-Driving Fleet Arrives in Pittsburgh This Month

#36

Post by Retric »

jayjay71 wrote: post #25
tajen wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm surprised by their technology: > The company has been creating extremely detailed maps that include not just roads and lane markings, but also buildings, potholes, parked cars, fire hydrants, traffic lights, trees, and anything else on Pittsburgh's streets. If one city requires that much work, they're not scalable. Even if we assume the LIDAR on every Uber car collects the new data, the car will trip sooner or la…

This is the way Google does it as well, and in my opinion is a fundamental architectural failure. There's a reason after several years Google still has tested in so few locations. Delphi has a more robust system (in theory), but the accuracy isn't quite as good. To the best of my knowledge Ford is also taking a different approach which doesn't depend on super-detailed maps to operate. The technology to compare the su…

You could drive down every road in the US for under 10 million dollars. So as long as you can keep them updated I don't think highly detailed maps are a problem. Especially if this is supposed to be a backup for GPS.

Re: Uber’s First Self-Driving Fleet Arrives in Pittsburgh This Month

#37

Post by uptown »

semi-extrinsic wrote: post #22
uptown wrote: post #18

Are self-driving cars legal in the United States by law, or just due to the absence of law? Seems like vehicular traffic has always had fairly tight regulations around their operation, but I'm stunned by the speed at which cars that drive themselves are hitting the road. Sure, we've had cruise-control, and cars have been adding things like auto-braking and lane-assist. Have they just taken that feature-creep further…

Wikipedia covers the legal aspects reasonably well, with a map of state laws. "In 2016, 7 states (Nevada, California, Florida, Michigan, Hawaii, Washington, and Tennessee), along with the District of Columbia, have enacted laws for autonomous vehicles." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomous_car#Legislation

So basically just spending cash lobbying politicians. Thanks for the link.

http://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/autos-dri...

Re: Uber’s First Self-Driving Fleet Arrives in Pittsburgh This Month

#38

Post by argonaut »

jayjay71 wrote: post #25
tajen wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm surprised by their technology: > The company has been creating extremely detailed maps that include not just roads and lane markings, but also buildings, potholes, parked cars, fire hydrants, traffic lights, trees, and anything else on Pittsburgh's streets. If one city requires that much work, they're not scalable. Even if we assume the LIDAR on every Uber car collects the new data, the car will trip sooner or la…

This is the way Google does it as well, and in my opinion is a fundamental architectural failure. There's a reason after several years Google still has tested in so few locations. Delphi has a more robust system (in theory), but the accuracy isn't quite as good. To the best of my knowledge Ford is also taking a different approach which doesn't depend on super-detailed maps to operate. The technology to compare the su…

"Fundamental architectural failure" is a very bold claim to make given that absolutely no other approaches have worked as well as Google's for urban driving.

Re: Uber’s First Self-Driving Fleet Arrives in Pittsburgh This Month

#39

Post by icebraining »

pythia__ wrote: post #17
sbarre wrote: post #7

I wonder how Uber drivers feel about working for a company that is actively trying to make them obsolete. Not passing judgement or anything, just kind of a strange thing to contemplate.. Uber kept saying they were disrupting the taxi industry by letting more people participate when really in the end they're trying to remove the people from the equation altogether.

People may yet make a comeback as a premium service since they can do things that self-driving cars can't like help a passenger carry bags.

Nah, you'll just select that option and your car will come with a folded Budgee[1] that can self-deploy to help you.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1Zs96vFbuU

Re: Uber’s First Self-Driving Fleet Arrives in Pittsburgh This Month

#40

Post by dannypgh »

agumonkey wrote: post #21
nkoren wrote: post #15

Ubiquitous comment, as a person within the industry: there's a big difference between cars that have a hands-free driving mode, and cars that do not have a driver. The latter will be an absolute game-changer; the former can yield some marginal gains in safety and congestion, but does not really shatter any paradigms. This is the former. The latter will certainly happen eventually, but is orders of magnitude more chal…

What do you think about Ford announcement, IIUC they're skipping level 3 (semi auto autos) straight to level 4 (wheel-less).

Tell me more about these cars with no wheels.
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