Waymo's big self-drive car report • Hacker News Board

Re: Waymo's big self-drive car report

#41

Post by MrQuincle » Sun, Oct 15, 2017, 2:02 PM UTC

tdb7893 wrote: post #32

MrQuincle wrote: post #20

How will people react? I think it's too early. + Jealous cap drivers, truck drivers, neighbors can easily put some chewing gum or paint on one or a few sensors. The system will be too brittle to cope with that, so all the time your/the sweet self-driving car doesn't even want to start. + Joyriding and pranks. Put your silly little brother or the dog who you've to babysit in the car. Bye bye! + Criminality. Just put y…

Most of these things with self driving cars already apply to normal cars. Also with self driving cars having tons if sensors and Internet connectivity you should have a good scan of whoever messes with one and quick police response if anything goes wrong. For stuff like bogus insurance claims they could just add a few internal sensors in the car or something to make sure a real person is in there. None of these probl…

To argue that the legal context is exactly the same for self-driving cars as for normal cars seems unjustified.

I'm not arguing that it is insurmountable. I'm just saying that it's too early. Most of these things have not been worked out, which seems unnecessary.

Re: Waymo's big self-drive car report

#42

Post by usrusr » Sun, Oct 15, 2017, 2:36 PM UTC

tehlike wrote: post #18

visarga wrote: post #14

> Passengers cannot select a destination outside of our approved geography, and our software will not create a route that travels outside of a geo-fenced area If all our movements will be subject to continuous monitoring and approval, then SDC's won't be anything better than taxis or planes.

monitoring is one thing, but this particular line seems to me like a safety measure. If you haven't trained in a particular geography, initially, you might want to be a bit more cautious. disclaimer: google employee, but no knowledge of waymo things.

Part of me admires their sober approach to safety, but another part is extremely skeptical of the implied reliance on mapping. Reality changes all the time, so your technology should better be able to deal with outdated models. But if it can, shouldn't it be able to cope with an absent model just as well? If it does need a pre-made model of reality, I am not convinced of its ability to deal with unexpected change. In sports climbing terms (hope I use them correctly, not being one): how bad is the car at onsighting a road that it needs beta so desperately to flash it?

Maybe their "onsight" capability is just very slow and the first Waymo to meet a change has to onsight it at hardly more than roomba speed (or worse: mturk?), sharing the knowledge ("beta") with the Waymos that come later, but then you still have to reliably detect that your model is outdated while driving regular speed while all false positives would considerably harm the relationship with other road users.

Re: Waymo's big self-drive car report

#43

Post by cs2818 » Sun, Oct 15, 2017, 2:40 PM UTC

whyenot wrote: post #12

Animats wrote: post #10

Link to actual report.[1] (When you're posting a link to something important, post the link to the real document, not some pundit blithering about it. Yes, you may have to do some digging to find it when the pundit outlet doesn't provide a link.) There's not much new here if you've been following what Waymo is doing. Chris Urmson's SXSW talk from 2016 [2] covered most of this material in more detail. This is more of…

OP linked to a news article that presented a pretty good summary of the report along with some additional context. It was not "some pundit blithering about it." I don't think there is anything wrong with linking to a news article like this that is published by a reputable news source such as Ars Technica. Not everyone is going to have the time to read a 43 page report, especially if it's not clear why they should be…

It would be nice if Ars Technica would provide a link to their source material (unless I'm just missing it).

I don't understand why so many news sources skip out on providing references.

Re: Waymo's big self-drive car report

#44

Post by KKKKkkkk1 » Sun, Oct 15, 2017, 3:16 PM UTC

nopinsight wrote: post #3

Waymo's car safety systems engineered in from the ground up bode well for their reputation and also distinguish their system from other vehicles with self-driving "tacked-on". The latest statistics suggest that Waymo's car requires about an order of magnitude fewer interventions from safety drivers. If these systems are a key reason for that or will further boost their safety records, it will be a long while before c…

What does it mean to "tack-on" self driving? Did Waymo engineer their physical vehicle differently from other companies in some way that helps self driving? I don't think they ever claimed this.

Re: Waymo's big self-drive car report

#45

Post by kyrra » Sun, Oct 15, 2017, 3:16 PM UTC

zaphar wrote: post #40

majestik wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s a big difference between running a project like this in “R&D mode” vs “full on production mode” and I mean that from every angle: hardware, software, operations, legal, etc. So I’m skeptical on a 2018 delivery. Call me cynical but this looks more like Google gave Waymo a deadline and now they’re trying to ship a MVP to keep the funds coming.

Google doesn't do deadlines. They also don't announce until it's ready. It's deeply ingrained in their culture. They dabbled with a deadline a couple times and the results were a disaster. I know technically waymo is a different company but it incubated in Google itself. My experience with how Google operates runs counter to your experience. This is all anecdotal on both of our parts of course but I wouldn't bet agai…

Sadly we do deadlines now, depending on the product. Before Google got into the world of hardware, that may have been true. But consumer hardware requires deadlines to be successful.

Re: Waymo's big self-drive car report

#46

Post by tehlike » Sun, Oct 15, 2017, 6:18 PM UTC

usrusr wrote: post #42

tehlike wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

monitoring is one thing, but this particular line seems to me like a safety measure. If you haven't trained in a particular geography, initially, you might want to be a bit more cautious. disclaimer: google employee, but no knowledge of waymo things.

Part of me admires their sober approach to safety, but another part is extremely skeptical of the implied reliance on mapping. Reality changes all the time, so your technology should better be able to deal with outdated models. But if it can, shouldn't it be able to cope with an absent model just as well? If it does need a pre-made model of reality, I am not convinced of its ability to deal with unexpected change. In…

I think it is a cautious approach. Mapping is one aspect, but there will always vehicles and pedestrians that the vehicle has to plan for.

This reminds me darpa grand challanhe and urban challenge difference. The cars that were built for the desert wouldnt work great in an urban environment.

Over time these restrictions will surely go away.

Re: Waymo's big self-drive car report

#47

Post by Animats » Sun, Oct 15, 2017, 6:50 PM UTC

cs2818 wrote: post #43

whyenot wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OP linked to a news article that presented a pretty good summary of the report along with some additional context. It was not "some pundit blithering about it." I don't think there is anything wrong with linking to a news article like this that is published by a reputable news source such as Ars Technica. Not everyone is going to have the time to read a 43 page report, especially if it's not clear why they should be…

It would be nice if Ars Technica would provide a link to their source material (unless I'm just missing it). I don't understand why so many news sources skip out on providing references.

To make web sites "sticky", so people don't go elsewhere.

That doesn't apply to YC, so when posting here, please give the link to the original source. Sometimes it's necessary to dig through three levels of blog to get to the source. (This seems to be especially true of articles about battery chemistry and surface chemistry ("nanotechnology").)