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Uber’s Self-Driving Cars Were Struggling Before Arizona Crash

nytimes.com

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Re: Uber’s Self-Driving Cars Were Struggling Before Arizona Crash

#171

Post by jimmaswell »

rgbrenner wrote: post #109
spaceribs wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I do feel like I've been had after that and a few other videos, so thank you for that. My point though, is that I don't want self driving cars to defeat simulations or tests, I want self driving cars that can react to real driving conditions.

But how else do you imagine scenarios like these are tested? Normally there aren't a lot of people willing to jump randomly out in front of cars to test their reaction.

I imagine just rolling some objects across the road or some self-riding bicycles should be enough.

Re: Uber’s Self-Driving Cars Were Struggling Before Arizona Crash

#172

Post by kalleboo »

danso wrote: post #80
fabian2k wrote: post #19

> Waymo, formerly the self-driving car project of Google, said that in tests on roads in California last year, its cars went an average of nearly 5,600 miles before the driver had to take control from the computer to steer out of trouble. As of March, Uber was struggling to meet its target of 13 miles per “intervention” in Arizona There can certainly be arguments about whether the kind of miles driven are equivalent…

> As of March, Uber was struggling to meet its target of 13 miles per “intervention” in Arizona To be fair, Uber is not necessarily acting badly -- especially since AZ doesn't appear to care either way -- having the safety driver is ostensibly supposed to make the AV at least as safe as if it were a regular human-driven car. I hope during the investigation we find out whether Uber made it clear to its human drivers t…

The article says that Uber instructed their drivers to hover their hands over the wheel in order to be able to take over at a moments notice. But they also supplied an iPad app to report issues, that some safety drivers used while in motion (others were cited as using it at red lights)

Re: Uber’s Self-Driving Cars Were Struggling Before Arizona Crash

#173

Post by random4369 »

inverse_pi wrote: post #149
fabian2k wrote: post #19

> Waymo, formerly the self-driving car project of Google, said that in tests on roads in California last year, its cars went an average of nearly 5,600 miles before the driver had to take control from the computer to steer out of trouble. As of March, Uber was struggling to meet its target of 13 miles per “intervention” in Arizona There can certainly be arguments about whether the kind of miles driven are equivalent…

In science, when there's a two orders of magnitude difference, it's more indicative of distribution mismatch between the test sets. The logarithmic property of the learning curve suggests that, unless one approach is a completely random walk, two learning algorithms after a period of training must converge to their maximum capacity. As a scientist, I'm refused to be clouded by my prior judgement of the companies behi…

What are you smoking?

Re: Uber’s Self-Driving Cars Were Struggling Before Arizona Crash

#174

Post by jaytaylor »

castle-bravo wrote: post #91
bnj wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of curiosity, is anyone aware whether it might serve some use to do tests like this virtually? Drive a car around to gather a mass of raw sensor readings on a busy street, and then feed those readings to test cars as inputs? I guess that description doesn't make much sense, but it would be interesting to develop a virtual testing environment for testing the algorithm package even though that doesn't address hardw…

I think that's what NVIDIA tried to do with their BB8 test car [0]. I don't know what came of that. [0] https://youtu.be/LVBBKppAaV4

That's super cool!

Looks like Nvidia has turned it into a self-driving car on chip, due for release later in 2018:

https://www.engadget.com/2017/10/10/nvidia-introduces-a-comp...

Re: Uber’s Self-Driving Cars Were Struggling Before Arizona Crash

#175

Post by stevenwoo »

googlemike wrote: post #7
danso wrote: post #4

> As of March, Uber was struggling to meet its target of 13 miles per “intervention” in Arizona For reference’s sake, here are the disengagement ratios for the companies who operate in California, which requires such disclosures: https://www.google.com/amp/s/thelastdriverlicenseholder.com/... Waymo averaged more than 5,000 miles per disengagement, fwiw. Though as the link mentions, the definition of “disengagement” c…

Something to note - a mile is a mile here. I can buy an off the shelf tesla and have it do laps on my neighborhood street until the cows come home, this is not the same kind of mile as downtown SF in peak traffic.

Also, from the videos I've watched on Youtube, Tesla autopilot will refuse to take over under a lot of conditions .

Re: Uber’s Self-Driving Cars Were Struggling Before Arizona Crash

#176

Post by Rarebox »

fabian2k wrote: post #19

> Waymo, formerly the self-driving car project of Google, said that in tests on roads in California last year, its cars went an average of nearly 5,600 miles before the driver had to take control from the computer to steer out of trouble. As of March, Uber was struggling to meet its target of 13 miles per “intervention” in Arizona There can certainly be arguments about whether the kind of miles driven are equivalent…

Also note: The number of miles per intervention isn't a metric of AI driving skill, but of how safe the company is being to other road users.

Re: Uber’s Self-Driving Cars Were Struggling Before Arizona Crash

#177

Post by UncleEntity »

TillE wrote: post #113
UncleEntity wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, except for the other drivers on the road. Horribly horrible drivers here.

It's a cliche that everyone thinks this about their own particular area, but it's true that people in different areas (sometimes within the same state) drive badly in very different ways . Just another factor that SDVs will have to test.

Yep, the rub is that this time of year we get people from all over bringing their "drive badly in very different ways" with them which makes for some interesting interactions on the roadways.

Summertime, not so bad -- nobody willingly comes to Phoenix when it's 117° except the conventioneers who don't have a lot of money to burn and get a discounted rate on hotels and the convention centers.

Re: Uber’s Self-Driving Cars Were Struggling Before Arizona Crash

#178

Post by stickfigure »

simmanian wrote: post #96
spaceribs wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds expensive, unnecessary and would result in creating systems that were built to defeat a test, not reality. Most current human drivers wouldn't be able to pass a test with the conditions that resulted in the fatal crash.

This is simply not true. The dashcam footage released by Tempe police does not depict the driving conditions at the site of the accident accurately at all. Check out [1] for the actual driving conditions at night. I'm not usually the one to talk about conspiracy, but Tempe police had no legal responsibility to release the footage since the investigation is still ongoing. Couple this with the statement released by the…

I know this is going to sound uncharitable and I acknowledge that any death is tragic but...

This person carelessly crossed a busy road at night! The victim practically did commit suicide. She could have just as easily been killed by a human-driving car, just like thousands of pedestrians do every year. Why are we so quick to try to blame the car? At least the car was in the right place.

Re: Uber’s Self-Driving Cars Were Struggling Before Arizona Crash

#179

Post by [deleted] »

hunter23 wrote: post #63

This is how I would deal with it if I was a regulator: * Revoke Uber's license to operate - While they might not be found at fault, they have shown gross negligence by having an operator that doesn't observe the road, computer vision that can't sense a pedestrian crossing several lanes even when their LIDAR manufacturer says they could, and an algorithm which encouraged the car to speed 3 mph over the limit when it w…

[deleted]

Re: Uber’s Self-Driving Cars Were Struggling Before Arizona Crash

#180

Post by TeMPOraL »

cozzyd wrote: post #88
ojbyrne wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After nearly getting hit by a car while on a crosswalk in broad daylight today, I don't think "polar opposite" is correct. I actually made eye contact with the driver, and expected her to slow down (I was right in the middle of the street). Instead she sped up to get through the crosswalk ahead of me.

Instead of cars driven by assholes, we have to worry about cars programmed by assholes.

And given that a single asshole can drive only one car at a time, but can program a million cars, and given this is Uber we're talking about, I'm worried too.
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