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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

#281

Post by sangnoir »

jacquesm wrote: post #258
strin wrote: post #171

Levels of driving automation is an ill-defined concept. For example, L4 is defined as "mind-off". According to Wikipedia, "the driver may safely go to sleep or leave the driver's seat. Self driving is supported only in limited areas (geofenced) or under special circumstances, like traffic jams. Outside of these areas or circumstances, the vehicle must be able to safely abort the trip, i.e. park the car, if the driver…

> the driver may safely go to sleep or leave the driver's seat That's going to be hard to do while you are wearing a seatbelt and I don't see seatbelt laws rescinded just because a vehicle is self driving until car accidents are exceedingly rare.

That's because the current seats and belts are not designed for comfortable sleeping. This can change if the vehicle has L4 autonomy - the interior can be redesigned to from the ground-up to accommodate sleeping. Airplanes seats have set the precedence of having seat-belts whilst allowing for sleep.

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

#283

Post by jacquesm »

sangnoir wrote: post #281
jacquesm wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the driver may safely go to sleep or leave the driver's seat That's going to be hard to do while you are wearing a seatbelt and I don't see seatbelt laws rescinded just because a vehicle is self driving until car accidents are exceedingly rare.

That's because the current seats and belts are not designed for comfortable sleeping. This can change if the vehicle has L4 autonomy - the interior can be redesigned to from the ground-up to accommodate sleeping. Airplanes seats have set the precedence of having seat-belts whilst allowing for sleep.

Airplane seatbelts are only mandatory during take-off and landing as well as turbulence. It will be a very long time before any kind of driving is as safe as commercial air travel.

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

#284

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

Jyaif wrote: post #212
3pt14159 wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One question I can't seem to find a good answer for is this: Why doesn't the self-driving tech hand off control to a remote driver if the internet connection is good enough and there is enough warning? Even with a couple seconds notice a primed human could take the wheel and do the right thing when the sensors aren't making sense.

There's no good reason; it's likely what they'll do.

Never will happen. Latency is a law of nature. 60mph === 8.8 ft / 100ms. Near misses and close calls with unexpected objects can't afford the additional delay of a radio round trip that may or may not be working to make safety critical decisions. All situational awareness has to be handled on board for immediate response when needed.

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

#285

Post by andrewtbham »

sangnoir wrote: post #268
jedrek wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I agree that it's impossible to make predictions, your example is a massive edge case.

I don't think it's an edge case: If an operator redesigns the interior of their fleet with large, comfortable reclining seats, long distance travel by road will become much more competitive with business-/first-class air travel. Boarding at my house and being dropped off at my destination and sleeping all the way (or working if you're a telecommuter, or watching movies) is quite appealing to me - the lack of TSA and/…

Yeh things will change... you sorta already see stuff like this in Asia where drivers are common... people have vans with offices in the back and work while their driver takes them to places.

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

#286

Post by organsnyder »

jvolkman wrote: post #206
organsnyder wrote: post #109

I own the same model of vehicle as Waymo is using (2017 Pacifica PHEV). It's cool to see how little they've had to visibly modify the car (apart from the sensors)—the interior looks 100% stock, other than the row of buttons on the ceiling. Given the level-1 autonomous features in the vehicle (self-parking, etc.), all of the integrations are probably done over CAN-bus, with no additional hardware required (again, apar…

I think there's more than that. The safety report they released recently indicates the vehicles also have redundant power systems, redundant braking systems, redundant steering systems, etc. I doubt that the stock configurations require as much redundancy.

Ah, that could be. Though could that be talking about redundant processing (i.e. two dependent algorithms making the same decision) rather than duplicate hardware?

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

#287

Post by sangnoir »

jacquesm wrote: post #283
sangnoir wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's because the current seats and belts are not designed for comfortable sleeping. This can change if the vehicle has L4 autonomy - the interior can be redesigned to from the ground-up to accommodate sleeping. Airplanes seats have set the precedence of having seat-belts whilst allowing for sleep.

Airplane seatbelts are only mandatory during take-off and landing as well as turbulence. It will be a very long time before any kind of driving is as safe as commercial air travel.

I wasn't talking about the laws, I was referring to the comfort baked into the design: I have slept while flying with my seat-belt on; it's not uncomfortable.

While not legally mandated, most airlines encourage people to keep their seat-belts on during cruise - this is good advice that I take to heart because turbulence is unpredictable; sudden loss of elevation are known to happen.

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

#288

Post by asteli »

rwmj wrote: post #121

Throws money at screen Having said that I do love seeing these wide, straight American roads and wonder how well this will do on the tiny (often single track) winding country roads around here.

staying on the road isn't the hard part. all that can be mapped, even in areas with poor road markings.

dealing with other road users and abusers is far harder

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

#289

Post by njarboe »

Animats wrote: post #116
edshiro wrote: post #68

If Waymo's tech is years ahead of the competition (say 18-24 months ahead minimum) then I think a lot of the self-driving companies and car manufacturers in the US will be having cold sweats. This may not be a winner-take-all market (I don't know honestly...) but I see this lead up enabling Waymo to capture significant market share in the US in regions where laws towards autonomous vehicles are friendly. One way the…

Waymo does seem to be ahead technically. They've been working on the hard cases for years, while the other guys are still struggling. They are trying hard to get good situational awareness. One of the few neutral measures we have are CA DMV's disconnect and accident reports, and in those, Waymo has been consistently ahead. Waymo is hooked up with FCA (Fiat-Chrysler Automobiles), of all things. Uber is "fake it 'til y…

I think FCA had not yet started to build an automatic driving team in house, so pairing up with Waymo would make sense and Waymo could push for a deal it thought worth making. Maybe Waymo got a non-exclusive deal, where other companies might have wanted some exclusive period with Waymo tech in their cars. Similar to what happens with cell phones.

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

#290

Post by FreakyT »

notahacker wrote: post #280
sangnoir wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's an edge case: If an operator redesigns the interior of their fleet with large, comfortable reclining seats, long distance travel by road will become much more competitive with business-/first-class air travel. Boarding at my house and being dropped off at my destination and sleeping all the way (or working if you're a telecommuter, or watching movies) is quite appealing to me - the lack of TSA and/…

I've been on long distance buses with large, comfortable reclining seats and convenient pickup/dropoff points for 8 hour plus journeys more than most sane people I assure you it's not the human driver which means that most people strongly prefer other methods of transport.

I feel like a car has greater potential for comfort than even a "comfortable" reclining bus seat.

For example, right now the idea of a folding bed in a car isn't something you'll ever see as an option, since it would only really appeal to people trying to live in their cars, which probably don't overlap much with the "people who buy fancy cars with fancy extras" market segment. However, in a future where a car can auto-drive you on a long-distance trip, why not offer an actual bed mode in the car as a purchasable option?

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