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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

#211

Post by danielweber »

Retric wrote: post #53
jayjay71 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The maps Google uses for their self-driving cars, as I understand it, require constant maintenance. Also just the amount of data is huge. If this weren't the case, surely they would have driven in many other places by now? I would actually love for someone who works at Google to chime in here. It'd be great to find out their system is more robust than I think it is.

I think they could do it every week, compared to the value of completely self driving cars. Especially if they get say UPS to add sensors to their trucks. The post office does something similar every single day.

Every self-driving car on the road is automatically remapping everything. Any discrepancies, like a new pothole or a disappearing tree, can be reported to the mothership for resolution and pushing out to all the other cars in the area.

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

#212

Post by jrussino »

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…

This is not the former, this a step in the R&D process that is working toward the latter (and can act as PR in the meantime).

I expect that "supervised by humans in the driver's seat" here means "the car is fully self-driving, but we're still doing development and testing and we don't trust it enough yet". You can test these things on private roads, but eventually you need to get them out into the real world and collect data, figure out where the failure points are, etc.

But for sure they're building a fully-autonomous no-driver-needed car, and it's not ready yet so someone has to be there to take over when it fails.

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

#213

Post by sib »

bsilvereagle wrote: post #73
stenius wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes this stop sign a challenge?

In most places, when you merge onto a highway you have a ramp of decent length with a yield sign. You are able to get up to speed and merge safely. In this particular spot, the end of your on-ramp has a stop sign. So, you're sitting at a dead stop with 65+ mph traffic 10 ft in front of you. Things get even more complicated since you're merging into an exit ramp. You have approximately 1/4 mile of road to merge into t…

Sadly, in Seattle, most drivers drive as though there is a stop sign at the end of every Interstate on-ramp. Not sure what causes this behavior.

For a bit of humor: http://scottberkun.com/2011/help-me-teach-seattle-how-to-dri...

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

#214

Post by Animats »

speleding wrote: post #84
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…

We don't need to jump to completely driverless right away, there is a convenient intermediate step: The passenger can be the passive driver, and the car would drive to the pickup location empty. As soon as regulation allows, that step already gets you the major benefit of not having to "pay for the other dude in the car".

I once proposed that for airport rental cars - you'd call for a rental car, and it would self-drive, slowly, from the rental yard to the terminal. Then the renter takes over driving. At return, the driver gets out at the terminal, pushes the "done with rental" button, and the car drives itself, slowly, back to the rental yard.

Major destinations with big parking lots could be on the system. Convention centers, sports stadiums, major hotels. Again, the driver gets out at a convenient unloading point and the car drives and parks itself.

All autonomous driving would be around 15-20mph. At that speed, slamming on the brakes is an adequate solution to almost all problems.

But airport security was too touchy an issue a decade ago. What if one of the self-driving cars had a bomb in it? Might be worth another look now.

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

#215

Post by DamnYuppie »

Animats wrote: post #214
speleding wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don't need to jump to completely driverless right away, there is a convenient intermediate step: The passenger can be the passive driver, and the car would drive to the pickup location empty. As soon as regulation allows, that step already gets you the major benefit of not having to "pay for the other dude in the car".

I once proposed that for airport rental cars - you'd call for a rental car, and it would self-drive, slowly, from the rental yard to the terminal. Then the renter takes over driving. At return, the driver gets out at the terminal, pushes the "done with rental" button, and the car drives itself, slowly, back to the rental yard. Major destinations with big parking lots could be on the system. Convention centers, sports…

As a frequent travel I will say that this is brilliant!

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

#216

Post by Animats »

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.

NHTSA Level 3 ("Limited Self-Driving: Vehicles at this level of automation enable the driver to cede full control of all safety-critical functions under certain traffic or environmental conditions and in those conditions to rely heavily on the vehicle to monitor for changes in those conditions requiring transition back to driver control. The driver is expected to be available for occasional control, but with sufficiently comfortable transition time. The Google car is an example of limited self-driving automation.") is OK. That means that the self-driving system can recognize situations it can't handle (snow, potholes, crowds in streets) and come to a safe stop if the driver doesn't take over.

It's Level 2 ("adaptive cruise control in combination with lane centering") that's the problem. Therein lies the deadly valley - good enough that the driver can tune out, but not good enough to handle trouble. That's where Tesla is. Level 2 with strongly enforced hands-on-wheel seems to be OK, but don't let the driver take their hands off for long periods.

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

#217

Post by nradov »

munificent wrote: post #166
davidiach wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm also skeptical that we will reach the point where cars will not need a driver at all in the near future. I might be wrong but it seems to me you need something close to AGI to have a fully autonomous car. And with current approaches to self driving cars you need lots of data, sensors, fast and reliable internet connection, accurate maps and so forth, all of which are not at the level needed to have autonomy on al…

> I might be wrong but it seems to me you need something close to AGI to have a fully autonomous car. Consider that we used to let horses do most of the steering and low-level control of our road-based vehicles.

We're still pretty far from being able to produce an AGI that even has the learning ability and self-preservation instincts of a horse.

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

#218

Post by n72 »

794CD01 wrote: post #130
n72 wrote: post #110

I wonder how this will affect crime. With a driverless car, if someone wanted to hold you up, all they have to do is walk in front of the car, which will then obediently stop.

As opposed to human-driven cars, which keep going and run you over?

If I'm in a shady neighborhood and a drunk or threatening guy or whatever starts meandering towards me, if I'm driving I have the power to turn/drive around him/accelerate or whatever. If I'm sitting in the backseat of a driverless car, I don't have that option.

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

#219

Post by Idontagree »

jrussino wrote: post #212
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…

This is not the former, this a step in the R&D process that is working toward the latter (and can act as PR in the meantime). I expect that "supervised by humans in the driver's seat" here means "the car is fully self-driving, but we're still doing development and testing and we don't trust it enough yet". You can test these things on private roads, but eventually you need to get them out into the real world and coll…

It's exactly the former, not sure why you say it isn't since you went on to explain the former and say that's what the car does.

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

#220

Post by mentat »

fiveoak wrote: post #210
user5994461 wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't be surprised if driverless cars were way more secure for pedestrians and cyclists. It's really difficult to keep track of pedestrians and cyclists when driving, whereas a driverless car has 360° nightvision.

Eventually, it might be. However just because the car has better sensors doesn't mean it will react better than a human would with less information.

No, but it also doesn't mean it won't react better. Are you presenting an argument here?
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