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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

#311

Post by aetherson »

weaksauce wrote: post #287
aetherson wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> we could imagine putting enough sensors on the vehicle that it truly has 360 degree awareness and visibility. But we do see real cars in the real world that have surprising blindspots. Not sure I see the point you are making... all cars have blind spots with drivers now. Human drivers are always blind to the spots they are not looking at the moment anyway. I can imagine cars being much safer than they are now.

I can imagine this too!

But when you look at how you imagine driverless cars to be, you might want to temper your imagination with how driverless cars actually behave, such as the Tesla running into a trailer because it was too high off the ground for its ultrasound sensors to detect.

http://www.theverge.com/2016/5/11/11656496/tesla-model-s-aut...

(Note that this is not the famous case of the Tesla being unable to detect a white semi against a bright sky, it's a low speed no-injuries collision).

Obviously, Tesla is not the be-all and end-all of driverless cars. But when you're dealing with sensors combined with AI where each is in many ways less capable than the human eye, with different failure modes, it gets expensive and difficult to design really good fields of vision.

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

#312

Post by greglindahl »

Animats wrote: post #194
MarkMc wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually I think Waymo is too cautious. Tesla has thousands of customers effectively acting as test drivers for their autonomous software, which allows them to collect data at a much faster rate and discover more 'edge cases' than with a more cautious test environment. 33,000 people die each year on US roads and self driving cars offer the chance to dramatically reduce that figure over time. The more aggressively we…

Tesla no longer sells cars with automatic driving capability. The hardware is there on newly shipping cars (although the sensor suite is weak) but it's not active. There's a lawsuit.[1] It's unlikely that Tesla gets much useful data from vehicles. To debug a vision system, they'd need the camera data from all the cameras, and that's too big to upload over the cell phone data link. [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/bro…

This is a gross misrepresentation of what's happening with AP2. AP2 is not up to feature parity with AP1, but it's not true that "it's not active".

This article summarizes the latest AP2 software release: https://electrek.co/2017/03/30/tesla-autopilot-2-0-camera-8-...

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

#313

Post by ThrowawayR2 »

c22 wrote: post #280
loup-vaillant wrote: post #215

Earlier 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…

It's not as if embedded systems work the same way as the jumbled mess of technology that web servers use. It's perfectly possible to firewall off core system functions into a separate network and separate individual processors for each function. Existing vehicles today have already a strict hardware firewall between the CAN bus[1] and the IVI[2] system to prevent bugs in the more vulnerable and less strictly designed IVI software from sending data that disrupts safety-critical systems.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAN_bus

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In-car_entertainment

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

#314

Post by argonaut »

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.

It's not progress if the market leader, Google, already knew (or at least decided) that approach was wrong.

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

#315

Post by kwhitefoot »

Pigo wrote: post #53

After seeing the movie Logan, I was curious if the movie was taking a jab at the autonomous vehicle trend by portraying them as a danger to ma & pa drivers on the highway. It showed a crowded highway full of shipping containers pushing a truck hauling horses off the road. It seems the message was not that the technology can't be courteous, but that once it's accepted, corporations will abuse the roads to help their b…

Of course it is valid. I doubt that any major company will countenance literally forcing people off the road but they will probably lobby have the law do it for them.

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

#316

Post by ThrowawayR2 »

TheGRS wrote: post #128
djsumdog wrote: post #94

Earlier 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…

Haven't really thought about the safety and maintenance part of this before. If people own their self-driving cars I suppose there's also a chance they can opt-out of software updates, which would potentially be very dangerous. I do believe that the autonomous car future will have room for owned vehicles, but at this stage I don't think any of us really know how it will shake out.

> If people own their self-driving cars I suppose there's also a chance they can opt-out of software updates, which would potentially be very dangerous.

Auto insurance companies would probably have a clause saying that their policy is void if the vehicle isn't updated within X days of the software update becoming available and that would be the end of that.

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

#317

Post by sangnoir »

loup-vaillant wrote: post #215
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.

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.

> The correct answer to that is very simple, and very expensive: just make correct software

Correct software can be compromised via the update process, or social engineering. It's necessary, but not sufficient to ensure integrity.

A cheaper, correct option would be a mechanical lever/breaker labelled "manual override" for licensed drivers or "emergency stop" like they have on every industrial robot or heavy machinery since the 60's. Sometimes the answer to a software problem isn't more/better software.

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

#318

Post by Noos »

smlacy wrote: post #250
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 sp…

The problem though is that humans can adapt, and the AI in general can't. A go AI can play Go perfectly, but if a player overturns a board, it can do nothing to right this situation and resume playing. It's just following a list made for it, albeit a fairly substantial list.

The worry is this, the cars will not fail like a human will. It may even be dangerous The car may not even be able to move in certain situations (like another car blocking them in front either purposefully or accidentally). Or it may not be able to even see certain conditions a human could.

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

#319

Post by sushirain »

Animats wrote: post #296
sushirain wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I couldn't find a reference to this:"Tesla no longer sells cars with automatic driving capability." Can you point to one?

Search Google for "Tesla disables autopilot".

Thanks. I found that when they transitioned to Hardware2/AP2 they cut out most autopilot functionality, and since then have been gradually releasing updates that bring back that functionality.

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

#320

Post by iandanforth »

Noos wrote: post #318
smlacy wrote: post #250

Earlier 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…

The problem though is that humans can adapt, and the AI in general can't. A go AI can play Go perfectly, but if a player overturns a board, it can do nothing to right this situation and resume playing. It's just following a list made for it, albeit a fairly substantial list. The worry is this, the cars will not fail like a human will. It may even be dangerous The car may not even be able to move in certain situations…

This. When these systems fail they will fail in surprising and inhuman ways. The accidents will appear to average people as easily avoidable which will give the impression of low quality engineering. e.g. Who doesn't slow down when a semi crosses their path on the highway?
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