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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

#151

Post by dzhiurgis »

gniv wrote: post #2

The link at the bottom of that article is pointing to another Medium post with details of the launch: https://medium.com/waymo/riding-with-waymo-one-today-9ac8164... Notably, "At the start, Waymo-trained drivers will be riding along to supervise our vehicles for riders’ comfort and convenience." Edit: Re-reading my comment, it sounds negative, so I want to acknowledge that I think this is a big deal. No matter how "s…

They are not even taking new customers either. They are just going to start charging existing 400 users.

That's the only difference of this "launch".

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

#152

Post by Skunkleton »

notatoad wrote: post #129

I'm confused as to what they're actually launching here. If i'm reading correctly, their existing service which was branded as an "early rider" program has been renamed to "waymo one", but the service hasn't actually changed at all and is still limited to the same region and to existing users of the early rider program?

Maybe they will start charging money?

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

#153

Post by zjaffee »

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…

The real question about self driving cars though and safety isn't about how much practice these vehicles have, but when they get in an accident, are people inside them still safe. If the computer gets screwed up in an accident, could it end up accelerating randomly all over the place, pull itself to the side of the road and do a safety check of the people inside.

It's also very possible that there is a safer design for a car than having people sit right in front of huge glass panels.

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

#154

Post by cromwellian »

lern_too_spel wrote: post #111
frutiger wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The exact paragraph you quoted says “a year or more”.

That paragraph is not in the article or anything Waymo has said.

It's just my speculation, if after a year of a huge number of successfully completed rides without incident, they'll obviously be more confidence in the system.

My point is, the responsible thing for self driving companies to do is maintain safety drivers until confidence increases.

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

#155

Post by tokyodude »

a-wu wrote: post #84

I can’t wait for wheelchair accessible vehicles to be equipped with this technology. It looks like they’re using Chrysler Pacificas which already have wheelchair ramp conversions from VMI and Braun. Since the self driving equipment seems to be on the top of the vehicle, it seems trivial to mount it on a converted Pacifica. As a quadriplegic who doesn’t drive (yet), the possibilities with this excite me greatly.

I'm sure others are working on this as well but Panasonic recently had an exposition in Tokyo and one of the things they showed was a self driving vehicle platform. The vehicle was basically just a base. The motors, wheels, battery. It about as high as the wheels only. Then, depending on what the customer orders there were different tops that could be snapped on. A camper top, a cargo carrying top, a food stand top, a passenger top, a billboard top, ...

https://response.jp/article/2018/10/31/315608.html

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

#156

Post by mr_toad »

Judgmentality wrote: post #85
njarboe wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

About the speed of a sprinting human, unsurprisingly.

The average human cannot sprint that fast. I'd peg the average person sprinting closer to half that (obviously there's a lot of variance, but I think only the top 1% of athletes could run 30 kph even for 5 seconds). For a frame of reference, try to run at the top speed of a treadmill (most max out at 15 mph, and most people can't go that fast - at least not at the gym).

The fastest athletes can max out at nearly 45 kph when given a running start.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Footspeed

But I’m not sure that the average human could even run 100m these days.

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

#157

Post by V99 »

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #128
creato wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It looks like they’re using Chrysler Pacificas which already have wheelchair ramp conversions from VMI and Braun. How common is this for other makes/models? If it is rare, I wonder if it influenced Google's choice of vehicle?

Rear entry is probably going to have physical fitment issues depending on the amount of space in the chassis to work with. Minivans are pretty homogeneous now (it's not the late 80s anymore) so this isn't really an issue but I bet there's a model or two out there that are simply a no-go because some component that can't practically be relocated is in the way. Side entry is going to be able to fit a wider range of veh…

The electronics for the self-driving are apparently in the trunk (the cars have a sticker on the back that says rear storage is not available) so a rear entry is not likely to happen.

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

#158

Post by gpm »

zaroth wrote: post #135

I’m surprised to see, after what happened to Uber — the failure of their safety driver to stay engaged enough to stop the car before striking a pedestrian — that a safety driver who will be mostly disengaged from the driving experience is still thought to add an appropriate safety margin?

Waymo has been driving without safety drivers for awhile though, so it appears not to really be a safety margin thing at this point.

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

#159

Post by tigershark »

anonymousCar wrote: post #112
ehsankia wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the only way to know how well it's doing is for it to get enough "interesting" miles, and then compare the success rate of those miles to similar human-driven miles. Right now Waymo is past 8 million miles driven. Miles driven is a better and normalized metric, with comparable real world statistics, unlike time.

Waymo is past 8 million miles total, how many miles on the latest version of the software? Certainly there are new features that are there in the last half than the first half? I think miles count is a bad metric and if it wasn't, Tesla would be the front runner.

It’s past 10 million miles and it’s driving more than 500k mi per month. If the last version of the software was in August that it’s more than 2 million miles by now. The miles per month figure will only increase.

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

#160

Post by a-wu »

gwbas1c wrote: post #144
a-wu wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In terms of minivans, most American makes and models have conversions from at least one of the conversion manufacturers. Braun even has a converted Ford Explorer. The one issue I can see is that Waymo is using Pacifica Hybrids which can't be converted because the floor of converted vans is lowered ~12-14 inches which gets in the way of the batteries. But I can't imagine it would hurt to use a handful of gas-powered v…

The batteries are under the second row. This is where the 2nd row seats fold into the floor in a conventional Pacifica.

Interesting. I think the lowered floor in a conversion still removes that space as there isn't a 2nd row of seats in a converted van.
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