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Alphabet's Self-Driving Cars to Get Their First Real Riders

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Re: Alphabet's Self-Driving Cars to Get Their First Real Riders

#241

Post by tempestn »

fucking_tragedy wrote: post #212
stevenh wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine ransomware infecting your car that gives you 30 minutes to pay or you'll be rammed into a tree at 90mph. I don't care about any contrived and well-funded narratives about how unthinking, unfeeling, driverless cars will somehow save lives. No thanks, I'd rather take my chances continuing to share roads with human drivers who are careful because they fear their own death just as much as I do.

Or the inability to drive your car because of an unpaid parking ticket.

Except that with a self-driving car you'll never get a parking ticket in the first place!

Re: Alphabet's Self-Driving Cars to Get Their First Real Riders

#242

Post by joshuamorton »

monkmartinez wrote: post #222
stdgy wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We've already seen price drops for the most expensive self-driving components. LIDARs, GPUs and storage have already fallen in cost, and the products aren't even on the market yet. There is every reason to believe these price drops will continue as more resources are put into scaling production and more companies enter the game of component design and production.

> There is every reason to believe these price drops will continue as more resources are put into scaling production and more companies enter the game of component design and production. Why? We literally never see that with top shelf products. This isn't an arduino solder job. This is going to be an integrated software and hardware package that will rival an aircraft autopilot/navigation. Please check you facts on t…

>Why? We literally never see that with top shelf products. This isn't an arduino solder job. This is going to be an integrated software and hardware package that will rival an aircraft autopilot/navigation. Please check you facts on the cost of these things.

Google claims that it dropped the price of lidar by a factor of 10x once it started producing them. That seems like a significant, factual, drop in cost.

Re: Alphabet's Self-Driving Cars to Get Their First Real Riders

#243

Post by maxerickson »

aianus wrote: post #236
maxerickson wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The system that killed people didn't represent a point of progress for their self driving tech. They decided to abandon the hardware package it was using. Their current implementation doesn't seem to be learning any higher level behaviors (there's a Youtube video of guy using it in a park where it repeatedly accelerates towards islands in the road and then flails off the road as it goes too fast around the island).

Using a billion miles of real world experience to decide that that technology was insufficient is, in fact, progress. It may have gone the other way. Remember, the primary sensor technology in 99.999% of cars out there is two front facing visual-light cameras pointing the same way on a swivel and couple of mirrors.

That's an awfully generous take on their decision and pretty dismissive of the squishy stuff located behind the the Mark I eyeball.

Re: Alphabet's Self-Driving Cars to Get Their First Real Riders

#244

Post by Strom »

stevenh wrote: post #205
jonmc12 wrote: post #146

Am I the only one feeling the press + big tech narrative of "driverless vehicles = safety" is way ahead of itself? OK, "driver error is blamed for 94% of crashes", but what is the validation strategy to show where driverless cars can quantifiably improve? In 2016, Philip Koopman of CMU discusses that there are non-trivial engineering challenges of achieving safety in NHTSA Level 4 vehicle automation: https://users.ec…

Imagine ransomware infecting your car that gives you 30 minutes to pay or you'll be rammed into a tree at 90mph. I don't care about any contrived and well-funded narratives about how unthinking, unfeeling, driverless cars will somehow save lives. No thanks, I'd rather take my chances continuing to share roads with human drivers who are careful because they fear their own death just as much as I do.

The ransomware scenario is serious, but merely opting out of a connected car yourself won't be enough. You can still get a text demanding payment or other cars on the road will ram into your manual.

As for sharing roads with others who fear death as much as I do. That's a wonderful idea, however in my case a pipe dream. I share the roads with people who have no problem speeding, driving under the influence or even refusing to use seatbelts.

Ultimately I'm more optimistic about solving the ransomware problem than I am about putting the fear of death into other humans.

Re: Alphabet's Self-Driving Cars to Get Their First Real Riders

#245

Post by mahyarm »

stevenh wrote: post #205
jonmc12 wrote: post #146

Am I the only one feeling the press + big tech narrative of "driverless vehicles = safety" is way ahead of itself? OK, "driver error is blamed for 94% of crashes", but what is the validation strategy to show where driverless cars can quantifiably improve? In 2016, Philip Koopman of CMU discusses that there are non-trivial engineering challenges of achieving safety in NHTSA Level 4 vehicle automation: https://users.ec…

Imagine ransomware infecting your car that gives you 30 minutes to pay or you'll be rammed into a tree at 90mph. I don't care about any contrived and well-funded narratives about how unthinking, unfeeling, driverless cars will somehow save lives. No thanks, I'd rather take my chances continuing to share roads with human drivers who are careful because they fear their own death just as much as I do.

That could happen today. No car manufacturer is going to admit it's possible, but I'm pretty sure it's there, lurking: Look at this remote shutoff for example. http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2009/10/onstar-gp...

Re: Alphabet's Self-Driving Cars to Get Their First Real Riders

#246

Post by cromwellian »

maxerickson wrote: post #154
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would argue Waymo is way behind everyone else, but the fundamental point is that companies like Tesla and Comma.ai and most of the car companies have a totally different approach than Google. Namely, that Google relies heavily on their mapping services to make their cars work. This makes a lot of sense for Google, because of self-driving cars require their mapping data, there's a big new market for them. The maps t…

Google was detecting bicyclists making hand signals 4 years ago. I don't think they are as map dependent as you are arguing. There is also the possibility that having a detailed map accelerates progress (better automatic scoring of sensor based modeling systems).

The waymo cars have more sensor data and do more local computation than anything out there. Instead of saying Waymo relies on map data, I'd say they have a defense-in-depth solution that integrates a multitude of different sensors and databases.

Do you want a system that only works on forward facing vision? Or only lidar? Or only gps and road databases? Or only machine learning? We know all of these have holes and blind spots, and a safe system wood have redundancy.

I think the actual distance between Waymo and those that evolved from lane keeping is far bigger than people realize and the biggest danger is people shipping MVPs that kill someone or run into a school playground, if that happens, congress will ban these cars or regulate so heavily that progress will be slowed.

Re: Alphabet's Self-Driving Cars to Get Their First Real Riders

#247

Post by tempestn »

ghaff wrote: post #224
monkmartinez wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We still have $5000 personal computers in the '10s! Hell a new MacBook Pro with everything and some upgrades is $3499 to $4299... very few people can truly afford that.

The late Bill Machrone coined Machrone's Law which stated that "the computer you want always costs $5,000." This hasn't really been true for 5-10 years. You can build a $5K computer but you have to really push it. But saying that the figure is still at least $2,500-$3,000 is probably fair.

Sure, but you can also build a perfectly serviceable computer for < $1000. Even $500 would (obviously) get you something far, far superior to that 90s machine.

Re: Alphabet's Self-Driving Cars to Get Their First Real Riders

#248

Post by randyrand »

brianwawok wrote: post #44
Shivetya wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I prefer to state is as, more freedom to live where you want and how you want. still find it odd people complain about commute times by car when by rail/bus can be just as bad in many places. while many choose to live outside of cities many are forced to because of bad city planning, regulations, and other government practices, which only served to protect vested business and political interest. still I say though, y…

> still find it odd people complain about commute times by car when by rail/bus can be just as bad in many places. I find both just as bad. I had a 1 hour commute by train in Chicago. Was terribad. Cannot even imagine the 90 or 120 minute commute guys.

I also had an hour commute by train in Chicago. I loved it.

Re: Alphabet's Self-Driving Cars to Get Their First Real Riders

#249

Post by doczoidberg »

yellow_viper wrote: post #219
monkmartinez wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No you are not! HN seems to think the same way, and it is one of the worst cases of rose colored glasses I have ever witnessed. What about the cost? Who is going to be able to afford this? Also, what about people that rely on a vehicle for work? Retrofit $75K work trucks with another $75K in self driving gizmos? Find me a practical plumber, carpenter, A/C, lock smith, self-employed guy/gal that will sign up for that!…

People won't buy self-driving cars (well some will, but not the majority). These cars will be running 24/7 in a ride-sharing service.

Sure people will buy self-driving cars. People want to own things for themself. If a car has a higher value with this feature even more people want to have a car. Consumers don't think economically.

Re: Alphabet's Self-Driving Cars to Get Their First Real Riders

#250

Post by smlacy »

jonmc12 wrote: post #146

Am I the only one feeling the press + big tech narrative of "driverless vehicles = safety" is way ahead of itself? OK, "driver error is blamed for 94% of crashes", but what is the validation strategy to show where driverless cars can quantifiably improve? In 2016, Philip Koopman of CMU discusses that there are non-trivial engineering challenges of achieving safety in NHTSA Level 4 vehicle automation: https://users.ec…

Your argument is about the same as "Humans can calculate arithmetic perfectly accurately, why do we need computers to do it for us?"

There are a host of obvious reasons why even a "simple" L4 car will beat a human hands down:

* Reaction time.

* 360 awareness / visibility.

* Lack of exaggerated "Human Reflex" to surprising events (i.e. swerving violently to avoid a dog, and hitting other vehicles)

* Keeping perfect space around the vehicle for safe stopping at all times. (don't tailgate, don't get rear-ended)

* Assuming a LIDAR-based system, virtually no difference in day vs. night vision. No "sun in your eyes" or "road glare".

* No fatigue related accidents.

* No DUI and related prescription drug accidents.

* No distraction-based accidents. (kids, cellphone, food)

* No "road rage" based accidents.

I could go on, but this should drive the point home pretty clearly, IMHO.

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