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Tesla has a self-driving strategy other companies abandoned years ago

arstechnica.com

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Re: Tesla has a self-driving strategy other companies abandoned years ago

#161

Post by ec109685 »

pjkundert wrote: post #23
whttheuuu wrote: post #8

ITT: people who think they know better than the company that has been working on this stuff day in and day out for years lol.

... working on this stuff day and night ... —- in California . I’ve been driving for 40+ years, millions of km, 1/2 during winter. Now, Elon is a Saskatchewan boy, so he should know better. Perhaps he’s forgotten. Winter driving is at best 1/2 vision dependent, often much less. Many times, you have to actively ignore your vision (everything you see is “moving” sideways). Quite often, you’re modulating your throttle t…

This is silly. The car has a steering wheel. It won’t engage autopilot in a situation that it can’t handle. Just like waymo cars only drive in Phoenix.

Re: Tesla has a self-driving strategy other companies abandoned years ago

#162

Post by threeseed »

mikeash wrote: post #57
peeters wrote: post #32

I've always found that half the issue is with the name: Autopilot. On an airplane, autopilot means you can take your focus off of both the physical and mental act of moving the plane through the air, and if it needs you to intercede there is pretty much no emergency in which you wouldn't have a few seconds to react. In a car, Tesla's Autopilot simply doesn't give you that. If you are reading and your autopilot exits,…

A system with lane keeping and traffic-aware cruise control corresponds pretty well to a simple two or three-axis airplane autopilot that just holds heading and altitude.

Tesla makes cars not planes.

And they do so for the general public not just for pilots. And so it's appropriate that you use the general public definition of autopilot. Which is a fully automated, hands free system.

Re: Tesla has a self-driving strategy other companies abandoned years ago

#163

Post by scottlamb »

salty_biscuits wrote: post #148
est31 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For self-driving cars, what would that be? You can misuse a non-self driving car by speeding, giving you above-average chances of accidents. You can be old, giving you above average chances of being involved in accidents (per km driven). You can smoke, giving you above average chances of getting lung cancer. You can misuse a partially self driving car by somehow convincing it that you do follow the traffic while actu…

In the hands of a consumer, don't forget being diligent with maintenance, driving on unsealed roads, choosing to drive in poor conditions. There are probably a lot more. It is surprising how much some people abuse machines.

Waymo's "shipped product" is likely to be a fleet service in several cities, at least at first, so maintenance is their responsibility. Likewise, I'd imagine unsealed roads would be outside initial coverage areas.

(Note that while I work at Google, I don't have any particularly relevant inside knowledge. What I'm saying is consistent with their current pilot in Phoenix and public articles.)

Re: Tesla has a self-driving strategy other companies abandoned years ago

#164

Post by threeseed »

aeternus wrote: post #124
0815test wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've always found that half the issue is with the name: Autopilot. ...In a car, Tesla's system simply doesn't give you that [taking your focus off] Yes, exactly. It's a level-2 ADAS - it's about helping you deliver correct inputs to the car, not about autonomous driving in any real sense - regardless of how advanced it might be in a technical sense , or how well-behaving in a best-case scenario! More like the fly-b…

I think the issue is that most people have a misconception about autopilot in a plane due to movies. Real autopilots don't work like that, they are typically extremely simple and in many cases, mechanical PID loops. 99% of all autopilots have almost zero intelligence nor electronic sensors of any kind. Only the best of the best, like CAT3 autoland systems are anything close to what you see in the movies.

The term autopilot was first used in 1914.

Over a hundred years of the general public being educated about what that word means. So pretty sure it predates its use in movies.

Re: Tesla has a self-driving strategy other companies abandoned years ago

#165

Post by threeseed »

ufmace wrote: post #100
CPLX wrote: post #29

It's funny how much people have danced around all this, including this article, but what Musk has done with his statements on self-driving capabilities is called lying .

Lying seems to have a strong moral component in English that doesn't seem to be evident here. Most people would say that a proper "lie" involves intentionally trying to convince somebody of something that you know is not true, usually for personal gain. If Musk honestly believes that he can do it, then I guess it isn't technically a lie, even if most people who know the industry say he would have to be delusional to…

Musk benefits financially from deceiving the public.

So there is clear wilful intent combined with actual deceit. Sounds pretty clear cut to me.

Re: Tesla has a self-driving strategy other companies abandoned years ago

#166

Post by FireBeyond »

gok wrote: post #143
Animats wrote: post #49

Waymo keeps plugging away. Each year, for the last few years, the number of miles between disconnects they report to the CA DMV has doubled. Three more doublings, and that number will be bigger than average miles between accidents for human drivers. Then they can ship a product. Nobody else is even close. This problem is slowly being solved, by normal engineering practices. The "fake it til you make it" players are b…

Please stop fixating on those California disengagements. They mean approximately nothing. They are unregulated, voluntarily reported incidents. A low number could mean that safety drivers are acting irresponsibly, or that the vehicles are only being used on public roads in known-safe circumstances. I strongly suspect that the quest for a low disengagement number is what got that woman in Arizona killed by Uber. These…

> These reports really should be sealed from the public.

Yeah, the public has no right to know what vehicles on public roads are capable (or incapable of).

And we wouldn't want pesky innocent deaths to impede with Uber's ability to "bring self driving to market"...

Re: Tesla has a self-driving strategy other companies abandoned years ago

#167

Post by linkregister »

gok wrote: post #143
Animats wrote: post #49

Waymo keeps plugging away. Each year, for the last few years, the number of miles between disconnects they report to the CA DMV has doubled. Three more doublings, and that number will be bigger than average miles between accidents for human drivers. Then they can ship a product. Nobody else is even close. This problem is slowly being solved, by normal engineering practices. The "fake it til you make it" players are b…

Please stop fixating on those California disengagements. They mean approximately nothing. They are unregulated, voluntarily reported incidents. A low number could mean that safety drivers are acting irresponsibly, or that the vehicles are only being used on public roads in known-safe circumstances. I strongly suspect that the quest for a low disengagement number is what got that woman in Arizona killed by Uber. These…

Really? I'm pretty sure it was irresponsible staffing and unsafe software: Uber reduced their drivers from two to one per vehicle. That driver was watching a cell phone video and not watching the road, but Uber should have known that was a risk and taken action to mitigate it.

The Uber self-driving program was trying to move too fast, before the software was ready. That and the operations failure made it inevitable that someone was going to be killed.

Re: Tesla has a self-driving strategy other companies abandoned years ago

#168

Post by paulddraper »

est31 wrote: post #97
perl4ever wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Three more doublings, and that number will be bigger than average miles between accidents for human drivers. Then they can ship a product." I am skeptical of that, because I expect that even if disconnects are ultra-rare overall, and the testing is representative of normal usage, there will be enough people that frequently use the technology in ways far off on the tail of the distribution that for them, disconnects…

For self-driving cars, what would that be? You can misuse a non-self driving car by speeding, giving you above-average chances of accidents. You can be old, giving you above average chances of being involved in accidents (per km driven). You can smoke, giving you above average chances of getting lung cancer. You can misuse a partially self driving car by somehow convincing it that you do follow the traffic while actu…

> Unless some roads are more susceptible to accidents than others

By chance do you happen to live somewhere without icy roads?

Re: Tesla has a self-driving strategy other companies abandoned years ago

#169

Post by gok »

FireBeyond wrote: post #166
gok wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please stop fixating on those California disengagements. They mean approximately nothing. They are unregulated, voluntarily reported incidents. A low number could mean that safety drivers are acting irresponsibly, or that the vehicles are only being used on public roads in known-safe circumstances. I strongly suspect that the quest for a low disengagement number is what got that woman in Arizona killed by Uber. These…

> These reports really should be sealed from the public. Yeah, the public has no right to know what vehicles on public roads are capable (or incapable of). And we wouldn't want pesky innocent deaths to impede with Uber's ability to "bring self driving to market"...

The public has a right to know how unaided AVs on public roads operate. The "number of disengagements" of prototypes reported by corporate research programs has no relation to this.

Re: Tesla has a self-driving strategy other companies abandoned years ago

#170

Post by ksherlock »

Robotbeat wrote: post #130
lutorm wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Planes already have a problem with GPS outages or military jamming exercises. Imagine if all cars within a 100 mile radius all of a sudden would stop working.

...that's why you develop systems designed to bring them to a safe stop (in addition, stable IMUs can assist for several seconds, plenty of time to come to a safe stop). That should be standard on all autonomous systems, TBH. And BTW, there are 4 GNSS systems, each run by a different country/entity. The odds of them all failing at the same time is very small.

GPS is (negatively) affected by atmospheric variability. Are the other 3 systems immune from it?
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