When your opponents do not play by the rules, you win. Glad to see Google is making some strides.
Alphabet's Self-Driving Cars to Get Their First Real Riders
301–310 of 411 posts
Re: Alphabet's Self-Driving Cars to Get Their First Real Riders
#302Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wonder this about autonomous cars in general from any company. They're cool tech and in Europe, they can really help solve several last leg problems and cut down on car ownership (I really don't think people should be able to own self driving cars. They really need airplane style maintenance for sensors and companies need to work together so all fleets have the latest safety and security updates). However I don't r…
Self driving cars solve the last mile problem. You get off a train close to your destination and a cheap self driving taxi finishes the journey. And you could replace the train with a self driving bus. It can carry multiple people efficiently for the majority of their journey. And unlike current buses or trains, it can automatically adapt it's route based on where the occupants want to go. The buses can cooperate wit…
Turn major streets into payroads that are free for self-driving vehicles. It becomes a small tax on drivers and will convince them to use self-driving vehicles to save money. Work with companies so that self-driving buses arrive more frequently but only follow specific routes - while self-driving cars arrive less frequently but can take you to anywhere you need to go. People who are more time-pressed will take the bus. This would require cooperation between competing businesses and the cities' government though. Or a government-allowed monopoly / made into a public utility.
The benefits would be:
1) Compounds traffic on minor roads, encouraging people to fund the city via payroad taxes or begin using self-driving vehicles to get away from the traffic, which is now worse, for "human drivers".
2) Gets human drivers away from self-driving vehicles on major roads, which should reduce accidents. Less accidents means less traffic and more throughput.
Note: I don't think this would be realistically implementable. The regulations alone would be a nightmare to try and get passed.
Re: Alphabet's Self-Driving Cars to Get Their First Real Riders
#303Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 sp…
There are a host of obvious reasons why even a "simple" human will beat an L4 car hands-down: * Lack of software bugs due to careless programming. * Millions of years of brain evolution allows adapting to unforeseen circumstances. * Vastly decreased likelihood of being tricked by vandals exploiting flaws in recognition algorithms. * Inability to be hacked en masse and driven into each other/houses/pedestrians. * Much…
the only relevant items here are arguments again mission critical software at large, not self-driving cars.
Re: Alphabet's Self-Driving Cars to Get Their First Real Riders
#304Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 sp…
Quick, what's the reaction time for Waymo's driverless cars? Support your answer with evidence. For extra credit: describe what the reaction time is for Waymo's driverless cars are during various points of the garbage collection cycle. People here have a tendency to imagine an idealized version of driverless cars and assume that actual driverless cars are the idealized versions of those cars, and then compare the ide…
>Quick, what's the reaction time for Waymo's driverless cars? Support your answer with evidence.
>For extra credit: describe what the reaction time is for Waymo's driverless cars are during various points of the garbage collection cycle.
Aight, I'm not familiar with Waymo's cars specifically, but with And yes, this isn't incredibly difficult.
For reference, in my experience, running 2 cameras and a low power lidar (along with associated outputs to hardware actuators and such) off of a 2013 (or maybe a 2011) macbook pro, the limiting factor was always the lidar's 15fps framerate.
Re: Alphabet's Self-Driving Cars to Get Their First Real Riders
#305Am 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 sp…
> "Humans can calculate arithmetic perfectly accurately, why do we need computers to do it for us?"
It's more like humans can think, why should we trust a computer with a task where unforeseen circumstances can arise?
Further, if I got the current state correctly, no self-driving car system so far works in rainy conditions.
Re: Alphabet's Self-Driving Cars to Get Their First Real Riders
#306Earlier quoted context omitted.
The correct answer to that is very simple, and very expensive: just make correct software. Such malware are only possible because the targeted system has vulnerabilities to begin with. One just has to ensure the absence of such vulnerabilities, possibly using machine checked proofs. One obvious approach is to properly isolate the driving software and sensors from external input.
Yeah, let's just ask the engineers who are solving one of the toughest robotics problems ever to rewrite the entire house of cards that is their technology stack without any vulnerabilities . Of course even machine checked proofs will have trouble finding vulnerabilities that creep in during the specifications stage or exist in the realm of hardware. How do you isolate your sensors from external input and expect to d…
> Yeah, let's just ask the engineers who are solving one of the toughest robotics problems ever to rewrite the entire house of cards that is their technology stack without any vulnerabilities.
I did say "very expensive". But yes, if we're serious about correctness, safety, and security, I don't see any other choice. We should scrap the crap and spend the $billions necessary to rebuild it right.
Ideally. We don't really need to go that far. Isolation is possible and not that hard, see Qmail: http://hillside.net/plop/2004/papers/mhafiz1/PLoP2004_mhafiz...
> Of course even machine checked proofs will have trouble finding vulnerabilities that creep in during the specifications stage or exist in the realm of hardware.
I'm no hardware specialist, but you can still prove the correctness of the design of such and such hardware. The actual chips can still fail the specifications, but that's easier to test once you know the design itself is correct.
Also, specifications themselves can be checked. Only the high-level properties must ultimately be decided and reviewed by hand. Not that they won't be complicated or numerous, but that's still much smaller and easier to deal with than the entire implementation.
> How do you isolate your sensors from external input and expect to do anything?
I wasn't talking about the normal sensor input, which of course can be tricked the same way human sensory input can (for instance with a big flash or something). I was thinking about sensor command, such as which way they should be oriented or something. Though I expect most sensors will have no such input, and will only output to the system.
Re: Alphabet's Self-Driving Cars to Get Their First Real Riders
#307Earlier quoted context omitted.
Imagine it's April 2018 and Waymo releases this statement: "In the past year our autonomous cars have driven a total of 50 million miles in real-world conditions. Over that period there were 4 collisions, plus an estimated 12 which would have occurred if our trained staff in the drivers seat had not intervened. Insurance analysts estimate that if human drivers had driven under similar conditions there would have been…
That depends on the nature of the collisions. Are those 4 fatal accidents vs 51 fender benders? The devil is in the details, not the executive summary.
For purposes of the thought experiment, assume the distribution of severity is roughly the same between the two.
Re: Alphabet's Self-Driving Cars to Get Their First Real Riders
#308Earlier 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.
The correct answer to that is very simple, and very expensive: just make correct software. Such malware are only possible because the targeted system has vulnerabilities to begin with. One just has to ensure the absence of such vulnerabilities, possibly using machine checked proofs. One obvious approach is to properly isolate the driving software and sensors from external input.
There are no perfectly safe computers... even when air-gapped, they can get compromised. But one problem with modern cars is that they are connected whether you like it or not.
Re: Alphabet's Self-Driving Cars to Get Their First Real Riders
#309Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 sp…
> "Humans can calculate arithmetic perfectly accurately, why do we need computers to do it for us?" It's more like humans can think, why should we trust a computer with a task where unforeseen circumstances can arise? Further, if I got the current state correctly, no self-driving car system so far works in rainy conditions.
Re: Alphabet's Self-Driving Cars to Get Their First Real Riders
#310Earlier quoted context omitted.
More importantly, while you are at work, it pick ups other riders. Which is why people won't need to buy these cars.
If I bought my own car, I dont want it picking up random people. Then its just public transport, vomit and all, funded by me.
Even if vomit isn't a common occurrence, there's wear and tear and empty soda cans and it means you can't leave stuff in your car.
The broader issue is that, if this sort of thing were to become commonplace someday, why wouldn't it just become a race to the bottom where your income/mile =~ operating costs per mile. (Or, even more likely as with Uber today for many people, operating costs per mile as calculated by a lot of people who don't really understand their full operating costs.)
Maybe fewer people will buy cars and more will use robo-taxis. But loaning out your car to compete against fleet operations does not sound like it would ever be a good deal.