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Waymo now testing its self-driving cars on public roads with no one at the wheel

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Re: Waymo now testing its self-driving cars on public roads with no one at the wheel

#122
post #2

Waymo’s tech requires the area to be meticulously mapped correct? Is this why the test is limited to a small geography?

There's little external information about how map dependent their implementation is. They certainly have meticulous maps available in areas they operate, but it is easy to imagine other reasons for that. Like they could be using the map to separately process their sensor data, producing a reliable diff and evaluating the sensor only scene based on that.

Perhaps, late at night, some autonomous vehicles will drive unmapped areas at about 25MPH, gathering mapping data. You don't need much mapping data if you drive slow.

Re: Waymo now testing its self-driving cars on public roads with no one at the wheel

#123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They manage to climb in, they OD/go into arrest, cant climb out. What then? So the uber now has to either get a person or take that car to a hospital - how do they know to do such? So is uber running a massive call center that watches every driverless ride and monitors the situation? Are they monitoring if people get into a fight in the car? That actually happened to me, where I took an uber pool, and the two other r…

> So the uber now has to either get a person or take that car to a hospital - how do they know to do such? It does? Why? What if the person passed out in their own, manually driven car? Would you expect that car to automatically call an ambulance? Just because you theoretically could have some kind of elaborate system that detects when the user falls unconscious and carries them to the hospital, doesn't mean that's _…

They will have to handle the case where the passenger doesn't exit the vehicle somehow or another. But the fact that it is occurring in an automated vehicle shouldn't make anyone worse off.

Re: Waymo now testing its self-driving cars on public roads with no one at the wheel

#124

Does it pull over for police? And what about for police impersonators?

Yes and yes. https://medium.com/waymo/recognizing-the-sights-and-sounds-o... Though one can easily imagine a system designed to prevent the latter.

Preventing hijackings is more complicated than that though, since an autonomous vehicle will stop for anyone who gets in its way, not just police officers. The array of cameras, lidar sensors, etc each car comes with is probably a fairly decent deterrent against that threat already though.

Re: Waymo now testing its self-driving cars on public roads with no one at the wheel

#125
post #13

>>> "Waymo will be operating a fully autonomous ride hailing service without any humans at the wheel ... Waymo wants to broaden the geographic scope of its trial, starting with expansion in the near-term to cover the entire Phoenix metro area, which represents more acreage than the whole of the Greater London area, he noted" My family is mostly in Tempe / Mesa area (near Chandler, AZ) and during my last few visits I'…

>> The public will accept the perceived risks in driverless rides. This is what I am trying to highlight - what, specifically, are these risks that people need to be made aware of? So now, in addition to everything, there will come a day when a person is stranded some-place as the driverless car couldnt exactly find them, and the person had to call the call center to get help and guess what... calling the call center…

Replace your driverless car with the driverless metro in Copenhagen, where you're only likely to see a metro employee in the busiest stations at peak times.

Danish society hasn't yet collapsed. I think you're overstating the issues.

Re: Waymo now testing its self-driving cars on public roads with no one at the wheel

#126
post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thats not what I presumed the commenters to be saying: "driverless cars will have sensors and cameras that wil report anything back to the police" So, lets assume we turn on an amber-alert and activate all driverless car cameras and sensors to find license plate X... Sure that sounds great - but "just leave all driverless car sensors up all the time and track everything everywhere is what I hear in that comment. And…

Every ATM and many shop keepers, hospitals, hotels, etc., all have cameras. They may not automatically be turned over to police, but if something happens, the police will often just go and see if there are any surveillance cameras and ask their owners to give them the recordings. Most of the time, they will be happy to do so, since they generally don't like crime happening outside their places of business. So if you…

OK, so lets forgeet the hit-and-run scenario for a moment.

How fucking shitty are ATM cameras or shop cams? (Ive designed hospital systems, btw - and they have less cameras than you think)

I can tell you that I have never seen a conviction of any ATM robber/murderer in my life -- thats not to say that ATM cameras havent worked, its just that its not widely publicized.

but the UK is not the US (anymore) -- and while your UK surveillance network is massive by comparison, I am advocating against self driving cars becoming the next level of surveillance.

to your last point though, police body cam vid is an interesting thing;

They typically produce about 16GB a day - which then needs to get slurped off the device - stored locally, then transfered to [end-location] - now if we talk about CJIS Compliance - this basically means govcloud and it needs to be stored indefinitely (or per the municipalities policy, which usually is about 5 years+++)

but going through that data is the hard part... and the problem scales pretty quickly.

Just do a wiki on "how many police by city in the us"

So look at these numbers:

   ```New York, New York	42.3	36,228	60.0	51,399

   Chicago, Illinois	43.9	11,954	48.2	13,135

   Los Angeles, California	24.6	9,850	31.7	12,692

   Philadelphia, Pennsylvania	40.2	6,313	50.9	7,995
   
   Houston, Texas	22.2	5,182	28.4	6,632

   Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia	55.1	3,753	63.9	4,352

   Las Vegas Metropolitan Police, Nevada	20.9	3,326	30.5	4,855
Dallas, Texas 24.8 3,279 29.0 3,829```

So imagine, 16GB x 36,228 X 5-years of data.... and you want me to search back and find SELECT* from BCD WHERE OFFICER==X AND DATE==Y etc....

ALSO! Guess what - we know how many police in LV were on cams - So at 16GB a DAY PER officer we have 3,326 body cams from AXON collecting ~16GB a day - so from the vegas shooting there is alone we have 5.3TB of bodycam data to potentially be processed... reduce by 30% for off duties at the time, then reduce by another 30% to assume that they all didnt respond, then reduce by another 10% for those that werent wearing them... etc etc... so basically we should have around 1TB from that day alone in body cam footage...

Re: Waymo now testing its self-driving cars on public roads with no one at the wheel

#127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what rights are you worried about? commcerial vehicles operate on our highways all the time. corporations are also tax payers in the US

If the driver of a commercial road vehicle makes a mistake which causes a serious accident or behaves in a way deemed reckless or inattentive, they can go to jail. Similarly, I was under the impression that the humans who took over Waymo vehicles according to very conservative engagement protocols (and according to Waymo's calculations prevented several accidents) had responsibility for the road vehicle Who goes to j…

Whats your deal with putting people in jail, and why would you assume no on will be punished if something goes wrong?

Obviously there will be repercussions for accidents, but we don't know what they are or how it will play out.

Re: Waymo now testing its self-driving cars on public roads with no one at the wheel

#128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They manage to climb in, they OD/go into arrest, cant climb out. What then? So the uber now has to either get a person or take that car to a hospital - how do they know to do such? So is uber running a massive call center that watches every driverless ride and monitors the situation? Are they monitoring if people get into a fight in the car? That actually happened to me, where I took an uber pool, and the two other r…

These aren't hard questions in the long term though. Non responsive passenger->follow protocol that emergency services prefers (or even legally requires). Fist fight->stop car, inform passengers that car won't transport them further. Rape->turn over recordings of vehicle interior to police. I suppose for the last one you have to take it as a given that they are making such recordings (probably on a rolling basis), bu…

> Rape->turn over recordings of vehicle interior to police.

Well, Uber may have some difficulty complying, but I'm sure their competitors will be fine.

Re: Waymo now testing its self-driving cars on public roads with no one at the wheel

#129
Excited about the technology and expected this news eventually, but in less of a "Bam, we did it" and more of a "Coming Dec 2017... look for new autonomous vehicles, they'll be bright orange with flashing lights".

Following-up on the "How is this legal" question below, can anyone comment on:

1. For the 'autonomous engineers/technologists':

a) Is the technology mature enough that it can be utilized without an on-board driver such that public isn't at risk?

b) Does the sensor system provide the remote "monitor" have enough situational awareness?

c) What happens if whatever up-link that the vehicle is connected to disconnects? (for example: They're using Comcast)

2. For the 'lawyers':

a) Who's responsible if someone gets hurt or the vehicle breaks a law?

b) Is an Executive Order from the Governor the ideal channel for introducing the technology to the public (versus legislative action)? [I know subjective but curious]

3. For the 'marketers':

a) Any examples of technologies prematurely introduced that had negative impact on their growth or contributed to their demise?

Note: I realize some of these are subjective but thought would make for some great discussion.

Re: Waymo now testing its self-driving cars on public roads with no one at the wheel

#130
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And it can even see and understand the hand gestures (e.g. turn signs) of cyclists.

It's the cyclists that don't do hand gestures that are the problem. Which is - where I live - the vast majority of them.

I bet it's still safer for the cyclists than the average human-driven car, though.
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