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Driverless Hype Collides with Merciless Reality

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Re: Driverless Hype Collides with Merciless Reality

#351

Post by kart23 »

hnburnsy wrote: post #88

While I am still waiting for my Tesla Model 3 SR, I browse the Tesla forums and find it amusing (or maybe just sad) that Tesla is charging $5000+ for Full Self Driving (FSD). Owners are paying for the future possibility that the car will be "conducting trips with no action required by the person in the driver’s seat" [per Tesla Model 3 ordering page]. I think some Tesla owners are even expecting that their car will g…

Ha! I can just see the teenagers blocking the car, covering cameras with paint, and leaving an empty Tesla in the middle of a busy intersection for the cops to deal with. Pranks for the future generations are going to be really interesting.

Re: Driverless Hype Collides with Merciless Reality

#352

Post by ehsankia »

jimmy1 wrote: post #152
Animats wrote: post #71

Driverless cars are coming along just fine. Waymo is making steady progress. The sensors are getting better. The problem comes from all those "fake it til you make it" startups, Uber and Tesla being the worst. Both have killed people. This is mostly about sensors and geometry. Machine learning has a role, but only in target identification. That's how Waymo does it. The fake it til you make it crowd had the fantasy th…

> Driverless cars are coming along just fine. I am curious why you believe this to be the case? Driverless cars have yet to even come close to being workable in adverse conditions, to my knowledge, please correct me if I am wrong. > This is mostly about sensors and geometry. And mostly about the limitations of sensors, and the limitation of available algorithms to overcome geometry. A algorithm a driverless car uses…

Waymo already works in light rain, and they've been testing in snow.

https://www.engadget.com/2018/05/08/waymo-snow-navigation/

Also, the lack of support for harder environment isn't because they're impossible, but rather because they are focusing on getting it perfect in normal environments before expanding. The person said they are "coming along fine", not that they are done.

Re: Driverless Hype Collides with Merciless Reality

#353

Post by Consultant32452 »

logifail wrote: post #321
Consultant32452 wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is that we allow teen drivers on the road with the expectation and understanding that they will improve over several years. Why would we not expect to have to make the same concession for AI?

If a human drives sufficiently poorly they will eventually lose their right to drive on public roads for a time. Could this/should this also apply for autonomous vehicles? If so, how?

Sure. I'm open to suggestions, but I'll offer financial liability for damages as an opening bid.

Re: Driverless Hype Collides with Merciless Reality

#354

Post by ehsankia »

wpietri wrote: post #349
majewsky wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a look at his predictions re: self-driving cars. He clearly invested quite a lot of thought went into these because he makes a lot of subtle distinctions. However, one of his predictions (probably the one that you're referring to) is this: > A driverless "taxi" service in a major US city with arbitrary pick and drop off locations, even in a restricted geographical area. > Not Earlier Than 2032 This is odd becau…

I think his note clarifies it pretty well: "This is what Uber, Lyft, and conventional taxi services can do today." What I've seen about Waymo (and maybe I've missed something) is very hazy. And it's not out yet. I'll be very surprised if they go from "operating in secret" to "completely competitive with Lyft" in one jump. My guess is that there will be significant limitations for whatever their first release is.

Waymo is available right now, and has been for almost a year, to normal non-employee citizens, in Phoenix, albeit behind a private invite system. And as mentioned above, it'll become an open beta by 2019. Also, most of the limitation at this point has to do with regulation, they'd be in many more places if not for that.

That is much much closer than 2035.

Re: Driverless Hype Collides with Merciless Reality

#355

Post by ehsankia »

dboreham wrote: post #185

Driverless vehicles are "the new fusion power". Always "about 10 years in the future". >Driverless cars are coming along just fine. Even if this were true it doesn't mean humans will be fine with them being deployed. We had working driverless trains 20+ years ago yet almost none are deployed today (AND we have plenty of human-caused fatal train crashes that might be a good reason to want driverless trains).

Except Waymo is being used by real people in Phoenix right now, albeit on an invite only system. They've said they'll go public by next year, and expand to other cities afterwards. Most of what is blocking them is regulation. I'd predict that by 2025, they will be in at least 10 major cities, regulation willing.

Re: Driverless Hype Collides with Merciless Reality

#356

Post by Consultant32452 »

kart23 wrote: post #348
Consultant32452 wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is that we allow teen drivers on the road with the expectation and understanding that they will improve over several years. Why would we not expect to have to make the same concession for AI?

Because they are companies that sell a product to consumers, who expect that this will keep them safe on the road. We need to hold them to a much higher standard than a teenager.

I feel like this position is too risk averse. Fear of a few hundred AI driver deaths will result in hundreds of thousands more human driver deaths.

Re: Driverless Hype Collides with Merciless Reality

#357

Post by mantas »

xnx wrote: post #324
neumann wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, you are right about humans as a species, but oh god, not as drivers. As a cyclist commuter, pass/get passed by a lot of cars and see a lot of irregular/irrational behavior. Everytime there is a change in the traffic rules along my route (detour, construction, closed lane, new signalling) you will get a pretty high rate of people who either ignore the change, panic and drive recklessly, or panic and come to a…

Agree. It's a fun game to think up edge cases that would challenge a self-driving car. On average these cars will far outperform human drivers. I see human drivers blow through stop signs every day completely unaware that they did so.

Didn't Uber car did exactly that? Perfect robot would outperform average human. Sure. Average robot to average human? That's much more interesting...

Re: Driverless Hype Collides with Merciless Reality

#358

Post by joe_the_user »

ehsankia wrote: post #352
jimmy1 wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Driverless cars are coming along just fine. I am curious why you believe this to be the case? Driverless cars have yet to even come close to being workable in adverse conditions, to my knowledge, please correct me if I am wrong. > This is mostly about sensors and geometry. And mostly about the limitations of sensors, and the limitation of available algorithms to overcome geometry. A algorithm a driverless car uses…

Waymo already works in light rain, and they've been testing in snow. https://www.engadget.com/2018/05/08/waymo-snow-navigation/ Also, the lack of support for harder environment isn't because they're impossible, but rather because they are focusing on getting it perfect in normal environments before expanding. The person said they are "coming along fine", not that they are done.

Also, the lack of support for harder environment isn't because they're impossible, but rather because they are focusing on getting it perfect in normal environments before expanding.

I beg to differ.

I claim that adverse environments are very hard, even pathological problems and placid driving in well laid out suburban road with generally well behaved drivers are merely hard problems.

The thing is that an engineering team working on a problem like self-driving in adverse conditions is always going to be making some progress. The main question is whether they are going to make the kind of progress that justifies the hefty expenses involved.

Re: Driverless Hype Collides with Merciless Reality

#359

Post by joe_the_user »

Fricken wrote: post #212
linuxftw wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Great strides have been made in using machine learning to filter out obscurants such as snow. Perception for autonomous vehicles is effectively a solved problem. Great strides is not 'perfected' and I don't think perception for autonomous vehicles is a solved problem whatsoever. What is a driverless car to do if it slides out of position on the road and is now facing the wrong direction? Does it have the ability to…

The two key aspects of an autonomous OS are perception and planning. Being able to "see" well enough during a flurry is a perception problem. Knowing whether to maneuver out of it or call for help after spinning out is a planning problem. There are many planning problems left to address and master before autonomous vehicles are ready for widespread adoption. Some planning problems are unique to specific intersections…

Is "Market and Castro team" going to stay in existence indefinitely as the city of San Francisco modifies this intersection into the next century?

Will similar team exist for weird intersections in the middle of nowhere as well?

Will all these teams solve the problem of all the truck drivers rendered unemployed by "self-driving" vehicles?

Will all America's vehicles just wind-up instead being driven by tech support using joy sticks when the whole system goes south?

Re: Driverless Hype Collides with Merciless Reality

#360

Post by ahyattdev »

alistairSH wrote: post #171
SlowRobotAhead wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taipei... yes, absolutely. That was a great experience and easy to use. NYC... altright, better than 15 years ago but still not great at all. Not as good as Germany or DC. Tokyo... lol, no! While clean and efficient, it’s a joke that you have different rail stations owned by different companies, different cards that may work on each other but probably not. The ticket machines are almost all cash only. And instruction…

Not as good as Germany or DC. Did you just claim DC public transit is good? Wow. Coherent bus lines are few and far between. Light rail is non-existent. And the Metro is falling apart at the seems... Prone to excessive delays. Entire lines are brought down for extended periods to perform decades of deferred maintenance. There's no ring routes - to get from Dulles to Rockville, you have to go all the way downtown and…

A ring route from Bethesda to Largo is under construction and it's called the Purple Line. Metrorail could be better and has it's own shortcomings but it is one of the best in the US and far from nonexistent.
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