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Text Messages Between Travis Kalanick and Anthony Levandowski

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Re: Text Messages Between Travis Kalanick and Anthony Levandowski

#61

Post by ariwilson »

tim333 wrote: post #47
sanguy wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Multiple images can be used to compute a 3D point cloud. This is computer vision stuff around for many years. The challenge is this is a passive sensor in that the cameras count on light illuminating the scene. So at night; in bright light (that causes images to blow out); shadows; etc; you can have voids. If a person is in that void bad things can happen. But cameras now cost under a $1 each in volume (thanks smartp…

Incidentally, Musk's take: "The whole road system is meant to be navigated with passive optical or cameras and so once you solve camera vision then autonomy is solved if you don't solve vision it's not solved so that that's why our focus is so heavily on having a vision neural net that's very effective for road conditions." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gv7qL1mcxcw&feature=youtu.be...

Why would you want to limit yourself to passive cameras and make your life harder? This is like limiting yourself to flapping bird wings to make airplanes.

Re: Text Messages Between Travis Kalanick and Anthony Levandowski

#62

Post by Tushon »

austinprete wrote: post #46
josh2600 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you seen the video? It's way more jacked up than what you're implying: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pzzQ42D9Srw Watch that and tell me that it's reasonable or caused by a short yellow...

I saw his reply as adding "too short of yellow to red time" to the list of "not paying attention" and "being an asshole" for human reasons to run red lights. I'm not sure why you're attacking him for a claim he didn't appear to make.

I don't think this was an attack; rather, an example furthering the case of "too short".

Re: Text Messages Between Travis Kalanick and Anthony Levandowski

#63

Post by revelation »

aeontech wrote: post #51
revelation wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given there is no further context in the messages released I humbly submit that this "explanation" provided by the unbiased source at Uber is full and utter bullshit Like, they are standing there taping other people running red lights? And Kalanick cares how, exactly? No, this is them taping their own cars running red lights. Which is a very likely scenario since they are 1) testing on a small subset of streets and 2…

No, if their car is not running any lights under normal circumstances, but has ran it even once at a particular intersection, you bet I will send my engineers there with some cameras to tape the intersection so we can analyze it and see what is happening. If the intersection is poorly designed/timed, why would it be implausible to happen to catch human drivers make the same mistake?

Because it obviously isn't either of that. Did you watch the video?

Re: Text Messages Between Travis Kalanick and Anthony Levandowski

#66

Post by NoodleIncident »

gruturo wrote: post #31
b4ux1t3 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know that you were just doing a tl;dr and not necessarily trying to start a discussion about it, but wow, that seems kinda stupid to be coming out of someone who is ostensibly fairly intelligent. A 3D point cloud is great, but with the raw computing power we have these days, image processing should be pretty reliable, at least until LIDAR becomes more. . .well, reliable and affordable. Doesn't the HoloLens just use…

> A 3D point cloud is great, but with the raw computing power we have these days, image processing should be pretty reliable In theory? Yes. In practice? That's how the first autopilot fatality happened. The image processing confused the white side of a semi truck with the sky.

I thought that that was (also?) a problem with the radar, where it bounced under the truck and thought the road was clear.

Re: Text Messages Between Travis Kalanick and Anthony Levandowski

#67

Post by studentrob »

NoodleIncident wrote: post #66
gruturo wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A 3D point cloud is great, but with the raw computing power we have these days, image processing should be pretty reliable In theory? Yes. In practice? That's how the first autopilot fatality happened. The image processing confused the white side of a semi truck with the sky.

I thought that that was (also?) a problem with the radar, where it bounced under the truck and thought the road was clear.

> I thought that that was (also?) a problem with the radar, where it bounced under the truck and thought the road was clear.

Ultimately this was driver error, since he wasn't paying attention and didn't break.

As for why autopilot did not engage the breaks, you could blame any of the forward facing sensors since they all failed to see the truck.

If the vehicle had windshield-height radar, or a better vision system, perhaps the system would work.

The problem with the radar was it couldn't see the object at that height.

The vision system confused the trailer for an overhead road sign.

After the incident, I remember some people reporting more breaking occurring on highways underneath overhead signage. That made me think the fix they put in place was to raise the threshold for what is considered an overhead sign. That is, they chose to err on the side of assuming the sign is an object ahead.

That may have been a temporary fix. I'm only speculating based on driver reports that appeared in /r/teslamotors a month or two after the crash was reported.

I don't know whether Tesla ever gave an official statement about how they fixed that issue. Tesla wasn't found to be at fault so they probably didn't have to. Also, the whole system is constantly under development.

Re: Text Messages Between Travis Kalanick and Anthony Levandowski

#68

Post by ramdomize »

studentrob wrote: post #67
NoodleIncident wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought that that was (also?) a problem with the radar, where it bounced under the truck and thought the road was clear.

> I thought that that was (also?) a problem with the radar, where it bounced under the truck and thought the road was clear. Ultimately this was driver error, since he wasn't paying attention and didn't break. As for why autopilot did not engage the breaks, you could blame any of the forward facing sensors since they all failed to see the truck. If the vehicle had windshield-height radar, or a better vision system, p…

Part of the fix was to use radar: https://www.tesla.com/blog/upgrading-autopilot-seeing-world-...

Re: Text Messages Between Travis Kalanick and Anthony Levandowski

#69

Post by curun1r »

sah2ed wrote: post #26
zitterbewegung wrote: post #9

Reading their exchanges its more interesting than just finding stuff about the court case. Specifically how these insiders think about their competitors. Such as how they think that Elon is the biggest competitor and how they wanted to partner with Google.

I guess that's because of Tesla's advantage in vertical integration -- they control the entire stack unlike Waymo or Uber who have to retrofit their gear into specific car models. Tesla's tech is generally considered weaker but Musk could still catch up and overtake by playing the "worse is better" card.

They might also realize just how important the combination of electric and self-driving is in terms of $/mi. Both lower the cost substantially, but together things start to get really cheap. When you add in the cost of a driver, internal combustion is still roughly competitive. Once you remove that cost, electric will be significantly cheaper. Tesla's investment into battery production could be difficult for Uber's suppliers to overcome.

The end game in Uber's VC-money-burning present state is an eventual future where self-driving vehicles drive the cost down to where Uber makes a profit from the same fares we pay now. But if Tesla prices their service near their own cost, Uber could get to its own self-driving service and be forced to choose between pricing their service higher than Tesla or continuing to take a loss on each ride.

Tesla also has a huge PR advantage. Competitors need to be able to capture the attention of riders as well as offering self-driving vehicles. Given how easy it is for Musk to get press, he might have the best chance of doing that without having to pay for it in the same way that Uber has had to pay.

Re: Text Messages Between Travis Kalanick and Anthony Levandowski

#70

Post by jfim »

sanguy wrote: post #24
loceng wrote: post #8

"Uber Saw Tesla as a Huge Competitor While Uber followed Google’s cars closely, it was Tesla and Elon Musk that the duo discussed most frequently. 9/14/2016 Levandowski: Tesla crash in January … implies Elon is lying about millions of miles without incident. We should have LDP on Tesla just to catch all the crashes that are going on. 9/22/2016: We’ve got to start calling Elon on his shit. I'm not on social media but…

Multiple images can be used to compute a 3D point cloud. This is computer vision stuff around for many years. The challenge is this is a passive sensor in that the cameras count on light illuminating the scene. So at night; in bright light (that causes images to blow out); shadows; etc; you can have voids. If a person is in that void bad things can happen. But cameras now cost under a $1 each in volume (thanks smartp…

> Multiple images can be used to compute a 3D point cloud. [...] Add a GPU enabled system to process (it's quite compute heavy) and you are set.

It requires enough information ("features") in the images to compute a stereo pair. Flat patches of color have no features and as such, cannot be correlated between cameras. In such a case, you have a spot with no depth information.

This is exactly why you want to have other sensors, and saying that "oh humans have two eyes and they do fine" doesn't really cut it. Humans can say "hey this flat patch of color is a sign and signs are not dangerous" or "hey this flat patch of color is a really clean semi truck, and crashing into trucks is bad" but computers aren't that smart.

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