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Waymo One: The next step on our self-driving journey

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Re: Waymo One: The next step on our self-driving journey

#71

Post by dsfyu404ed »

forgot-my-pw wrote: post #58
11thEarlOfMar wrote: post #5

I know this is a heated debate, but it's interesting to see the divergent approaches that are being taken to achieve self driving. In one corner, it's lidar-based, equipping vehicles produced by other companies, organically and incrementally growing the navigation technology. In the other, it's video-based with now 100s of thousands of vehicles feeding data to a massive neural net. Each has very well thought-out argu…

In 2004-2007, DARPA had a few self driving contests in the desert. The documentary was an entertaining watch. IIRC, most of the cars didn't even make it to the end. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Grand_Challenge_(2004) https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/darpa/ Would be fun to get another test with current technology to see how far we've come. Though self driving cars nowadays are more focused on safety, not speed.

Off road racing has come a long way since 2004. Go watch some old King of the Hammers races from the early 2000s and watch some from recent years.

Even if the AI goes off coarse it's going to be a lot harder to get into a in situations where "just point in the direction you want to go and pin the throttle" is not an acceptable solution in 2018 compared to 2004. The 2018 vehicle will be able to just ignore things that the 2004 vehicle had to actually navigate around.

We also have cars that are almost fully drive by wire in stock form which frees up a ton of resources for software and testing.

Basically in 2018 the vehicle side of things is a trivially solved problem and even with a "dumb" 2004 level AI at the wheel half the field won't DNF from mechanical failure

Re: Waymo One: The next step on our self-driving journey

#72

Post by jacobmoe »

rsync wrote: post #59
cromwellian wrote: post #47

Keeping the safety drivers in the beginning, scaling up, and getting a year or more worth of actual real world use, before slowly scaling back the drivers is what I'd call a very responsible choice. IMHO, to do less would be reckless showboating that could do unimaginable damage to the AV industry, as well as end up endangering lives. In the tech industry, we don't like to wait, we like moving fast, taking risks, shi…

"Keeping the safety drivers in the beginning, scaling up, and getting a year or more worth of actual real world use, before slowly scaling back the drivers is what I'd call a very responsible choice." A whole year! Truly sage-like wisdom from the MoveFastBreakThings generation of technical development. It is simultaneously comical, exasperating and sad to watch this tragedy unfold. We will slowly build our own, moder…

You have it exactly backwards. You will _know_ what the vehicle will do because it will be programmed to do it. Meanwhile, that other vehicle could do anything because the driver might be texting, might have fallen asleep, might be in a fit of rage.

Driving is an absurdly dangerous thing to do. We don't tolerate that level of risk in almost anything else in life. It just so happens that getting around at 60mph is so useful that we accept the risk. As soon as we have an alternative to human drivers, it will seem insane to keep risking as many lives as currently do on the highways.

Re: Waymo One: The next step on our self-driving journey

#73

Post by anticensor »

beamatronic wrote: post #70
c2h5oh wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More like "critical update is being installed" signaled by the car hitting the breaks hard until full stop in the middle of a highway.

You would be sailing along at highway speeds and the steering would stop responding for a few minutes.

I also thought of that, but it is a very dangerous failure mode for a car.

EDIT: -silly \r\n +dangerous

Re: Waymo One: The next step on our self-driving journey

#74

Post by asdkhadsj »

brianbreslin wrote: post #64

I hope they roll this out in Miami soon. Miami has some of the laxest AV regulations in the country. Also would happily pay to not drive in this mess every day.

As excited as I am for self driving, it makes me sad that I get car/motion sick. I can't exploit self driving to do laptop work, reading, gaming, etc without getting sick - all I can do is sleep basically lol.

It will be bittersweet in a self driving car realizing that since I don't have to pay attention, I can do so much more with my time!.. and then promptly stare out the window for an hour.

Re: Waymo One: The next step on our self-driving journey

#75

Post by njarboe »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #53
TomMarius wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume we're talking about city driving. I'm not sure about the USA, but being in Europe, the average speed my car says I go is 28.5 km/h. Do you think we could not solve traffic for 10 years if we slowed cars down to 30 km/h? With assumption being that a city-wide driverless system would easily 'swim' through the city without encountering red lights or slowdowns due to unpredictiveness of other drivers. We could e…

I'm a big fan of Sweden's Project Zero, one leg of which is setting and enforcing a speed limit of 30 km/h on any road or street without fully separated pedestrian & cycle infrastructure. I don't know if self-driving will help accomplish this everywhere, but I'd be ecstatic if it did. > We could even tolerate a little bit more errors because accidents would not be harmful too much. instead of "harmful too much" you c…

About the speed of a sprinting human, unsurprisingly.

Re: Waymo One: The next step on our self-driving journey

#76

Post by s3r3nity »

rsync wrote: post #59
cromwellian wrote: post #47

Keeping the safety drivers in the beginning, scaling up, and getting a year or more worth of actual real world use, before slowly scaling back the drivers is what I'd call a very responsible choice. IMHO, to do less would be reckless showboating that could do unimaginable damage to the AV industry, as well as end up endangering lives. In the tech industry, we don't like to wait, we like moving fast, taking risks, shi…

"Keeping the safety drivers in the beginning, scaling up, and getting a year or more worth of actual real world use, before slowly scaling back the drivers is what I'd call a very responsible choice." A whole year! Truly sage-like wisdom from the MoveFastBreakThings generation of technical development. It is simultaneously comical, exasperating and sad to watch this tragedy unfold. We will slowly build our own, moder…

>But in this near (and short lived) future, that other vehicle could do anything.

It's not like we don't have this problem today: the other vehicle could be drunk driver, tired, on the phone, texting, fixing their GPS, tending the baby in the back, etc.

As a newer motorcycle rider in the past few years, I am even more ready for automated systems to augment human ability when it comes to driving to address problems of distraction, poor reflexes, among other things - and honestly would feel safer driving next to a self-driving Tesla than next to someone coming home from work on the highway, with only 4 hours of sleep, powered by their 5th cup of coffee, etc. etc.

Re: Waymo One: The next step on our self-driving journey

#77

Post by scarejunba »

jacobmoe wrote: post #72
rsync wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Keeping the safety drivers in the beginning, scaling up, and getting a year or more worth of actual real world use, before slowly scaling back the drivers is what I'd call a very responsible choice." A whole year! Truly sage-like wisdom from the MoveFastBreakThings generation of technical development. It is simultaneously comical, exasperating and sad to watch this tragedy unfold. We will slowly build our own, moder…

You have it exactly backwards. You will _know_ what the vehicle will do because it will be programmed to do it. Meanwhile, that other vehicle could do anything because the driver might be texting, might have fallen asleep, might be in a fit of rage. Driving is an absurdly dangerous thing to do. We don't tolerate that level of risk in almost anything else in life. It just so happens that getting around at 60mph is so…

I'm damned if I can say what my own models will do. Can't really tell what the other guy's stuff will.

But to be honest, I'm so excited by this.

Re: Waymo One: The next step on our self-driving journey

#78

Post by bgentry »

rsync wrote: post #59
cromwellian wrote: post #47

Keeping the safety drivers in the beginning, scaling up, and getting a year or more worth of actual real world use, before slowly scaling back the drivers is what I'd call a very responsible choice. IMHO, to do less would be reckless showboating that could do unimaginable damage to the AV industry, as well as end up endangering lives. In the tech industry, we don't like to wait, we like moving fast, taking risks, shi…

"Keeping the safety drivers in the beginning, scaling up, and getting a year or more worth of actual real world use, before slowly scaling back the drivers is what I'd call a very responsible choice." A whole year! Truly sage-like wisdom from the MoveFastBreakThings generation of technical development. It is simultaneously comical, exasperating and sad to watch this tragedy unfold. We will slowly build our own, moder…

That’s funny, a month ago my car was totaled by a guy who fell asleep and blew through a red light. That happened at a right angle but only at 30mph. Since then I’ve been concerned at every intersection about what the other cars will do.

I’m not sure how much of it can be blamed on cell phone use, but I swear that human drivers have been getting substantially worse over the last few years (at least in the Bay Area). It seems like every single week I avoid a major accident from somebody doing something stupid or not paying attention. And I don’t even drive that much!

So while Waymo continues improving, it appears that the bar for them to be better than human drivers also keeps getting lowered.

Re: Waymo One: The next step on our self-driving journey

#79

Post by asdkhadsj »

11thEarlOfMar wrote: post #5

I know this is a heated debate, but it's interesting to see the divergent approaches that are being taken to achieve self driving. In one corner, it's lidar-based, equipping vehicles produced by other companies, organically and incrementally growing the navigation technology. In the other, it's video-based with now 100s of thousands of vehicles feeding data to a massive neural net. Each has very well thought-out argu…

In your two camps, I'd be curious to see why someone would specifically choose just video based?

Ie, I'd expect (as a layman) neural nets to be able to consume many different data types. Why limit to just one? I wonder what is better about just video, rather than video+lidar+audio+x+y.

Hell, one of the most neat things to me was how Teslas can scan multiple cars ahead to know of non-visible traffic blockages/etc. Using just video seems like a step backwards. Though, if it can produce better AI, I suppose it's still forwards.

Re: Waymo One: The next step on our self-driving journey

#80

Post by DontGiveTwoFlux »

asdkhadsj wrote: post #74
brianbreslin wrote: post #64

I hope they roll this out in Miami soon. Miami has some of the laxest AV regulations in the country. Also would happily pay to not drive in this mess every day.

As excited as I am for self driving, it makes me sad that I get car/motion sick. I can't exploit self driving to do laptop work, reading, gaming, etc without getting sick - all I can do is sleep basically lol. It will be bittersweet in a self driving car realizing that since I don't have to pay attention, I can do so much more with my time!.. and then promptly stare out the window for an hour.

Try audiobooks or podcasts! Listen with a soundtrack. You won’t regret it.
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