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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

#131

Post by millcoo »

rayiner wrote: post #81
cgearhart wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They definitely use the maps. In order to accurately localize the car, a detailed map can be used as part of the likelihood function for location to answer "how likely is it that the vehicle is at position (x,y) given the most recent measurements?" If you don't have an accurate map, it's very difficult to come up with a likelihood function that is accurate enough to keep the car in its own lane.

The car can't follow the lane markings?

Most residential streets in Pittsburgh, as in a great deal of the rest of the world, do not have lane markings, though many are two-way and have parked cars on one or both sides of the road. Pittsburgh provides an additional difficulty, that many of these roads are too narrow for what is asked of them.

Here's a typical example, rather on the roomy side: https://www.google.com/maps/@40.4435279,-79.8936687,3a,75y,9...

One of the tricks of driving in an older city with on-street parking is weaving in and out of unused spots to make way for oncoming vehicles that have no means to move over themselves—or won't, for fear of clipping a side-view mirror, or because they can't bring themselves to care about how little space they've left for others. Sometimes you have to stop and wait for one car to make its way through a tight stretch before going through yourself, rather like pulling up to a one-lane bridge that has been generated at runtime.

The trouble is that the lanes have to be imagined with respect to the current conditions, bearing in mind what other drivers are likely to expect of you; knowledge of the road is not enough.

This is a social problem as well as a technical one, and I will be interested to see the solutions.

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

#132

Post by Qworg »

Retric wrote: post #36
jayjay71 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How did you get to this number? I'm familiar with a few "map the world" efforts, and this seems an order of magnitude too small. I'd love to hear about a breakthrough.

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

#133

Post by fixermark »

nkoren wrote: post #112
losteverything wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"As a person within the industry" has there been any talk about the paths driverless will take? New roadways? Attendant-less roadways? Change in existing designation of highways? How to accomodate 10-20 people (vehicles won't look like they do now)? I envision future photos-videos of driver and driver less "vehicles" at a busy intersection just like horses and early cars.

These are the right questions to be asking! Yes, there has been some talk -- but not remotely enough. At present, the vast majority of work in the vehicle-automation space is being done by, well, vehicle people. The assumption is that driverless vehicles will slot into the existing infrastructure with minimal modification. There's a fair amount of consideration being given to vehicle-to-infrastructure communications…

One big challenge there is that infrastructure is expensive; replacing it moreso. To use an analogy, it's a lot cheaper to replace trains in a rail fleet than to replace track (the per-unit cost might be lower, but the logistical cost of downing a track network to switch it out can be significant, especially in last-mile areas or bottlenecks).

Horseless carriages drive on roads that were minimally modified from what the horses used (in some parts of Pittsburgh, for example, they never swapped out the Belgian block).

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

#134

Post by Qworg »

argonaut wrote: post #38
jayjay71 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There's a serious problem at the heart of "throw a bunch of data at it" strategy - driving has an extremely long tail that's relatively fat. You can hit the "average case" relatively quickly (you can assume that Google's done that for the SoCal environment), but being able to extend that dataset to other, less likely scenarios, like "heavy downpour in SF" or "freak snowstorm" or "sudden construction due to water main break" is really hard.

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

#135

Post by fixermark »

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.

Personally, I hope I can say at the end of my career that I made myself obsolete. ;)

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

#136

Post by tcoppi »

gambiting wrote: post #116
tcoppi wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you used Google Voice in the past ~year? I have a standard american accent so I might be the best case scenario for it but I haven't seen it miss a word I've said anytime I can remember in a year or two. I mostly use it in the car to reply and send texts, works even with the radio and ventilation on. I've used an Amazon Echo and that is right 99% of the time too. Now, interpreting the words I say is a different…

Well, the thing is, English is not the only language in the world. Google's voice recognition in my native language, Polish, is absolutely abysmal.

I feel like that is more a product of the fact that the effort put into most other languages is greatly lower at this point relative to English, rather than English is particularly easy or other languages are particularly hard. It will all come in time.

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

#137

Post by wehadfun »

mdasen wrote: post #86

Uber has to work on self-driving technology, but in a certain way doesn't self-driving technology seem like something that will eliminate Uber's market advantage? Right now, Uber is the go-to choice in most areas because of network effects. They have the most drivers because they have the most users. They have the most users because they have the most drivers. In a world of self-driving vehicles, anyone with capital…

Uber will probably attempt to make it hard for new players to get in by setting up government barriers. Or by owning all the patents on the tech.

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

#138

Post by sbarre »

794CD01 wrote: post #115
efuquen wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the car would drive to the pickup location empty. It would seem full driverless with nobody in the car is the big deal here. It doesn't really matter is someone will be behind the wheel later, you already had the thing driving around with no human to intervene in case it does something crazy. Don't see how that's an intermediary step.

A car driving around with no human inside poses less risk to human life than a car driving around with a human inside who is unable to control the car.

You are clearly not a pedestrian or cyclist in a major city.

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

#139

Post by [deleted] »

raphaelj wrote: post #65
bogomipz wrote: post #46

Can anyone comment on the connection between Uber a company based in S.F. and Pittsburgh? Does this have to with proximity to CMU? Something else?

Maybe more open regulations, smaller city (they seem to be mapping all the streets) or better road-markings. Or a combination of these three.

[deleted]

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

#140

Post by gmisra »

> "Supervised by humans in the drivers seat"

Ah, borrowing from the Musk marketing playbook, just say "self-driving" often enough, and enough uninformed people who have never seen contemporary luxury assisted-driving features will be impressed. Calling out Autopilot as "souped-up cruise control" is a nice touch.

> For now, Uber’s test cars travel with safety drivers, as common sense and the law dictate. These professionally trained engineers sit with their fingertips on the wheel, ready to take control if the car encounters an unexpected obstacle. A co-pilot, in the front passenger seat, takes notes on a laptop.

That doesn't seem very scalable. How many cars are in this so-called "fleet"?

Is there anybody working on autonomous vehicle tech that believes there's any substance here, or is it just adverjournalism?

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