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Waymo’s Backseat Drivers: Confidential Data Reveals Self-Driving Taxi Hurdles

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Re: Waymo’s Backseat Drivers: Confidential Data Reveals Self-Driving Taxi Hurdles

#61

Post by whatshisface »

Judgmentality wrote: post #23
dumbfoundded wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Level 5 driving doesn't require AGI at all. It's an extremely narrow set of problems that have to be solved incredibly well. It mostly just comes down to creating an accurate 3d representation of the world from a bunch of sensors. You also have to correctly segment and label each object in that 3d representation. If you did those two things extremely well, the actual driving logic can be hardcoded. The problem is tha…

This is incorrect. The hardest part of developing a self-driving car is predicting the world around you in the immediate future. Knowing whether or not that object is a person is a lot easier than guessing whether or not that person is going to jump out in front of the car 1 second into the future. You have to know who is going to run stop signs, when cyclists are about to cut you off, when someone is about to back u…

I question the claim that you need to predict the immediate future. Human reaction times are pretty slow, to the point where when our feet hit a pedal in response to light that hit our eyes two seconds ago, something that is prediction for us could be reaction for a machine. A human has to live two seconds in the future because our appendages and lower faculties are lagging behind in the past.

Re: Waymo’s Backseat Drivers: Confidential Data Reveals Self-Driving Taxi Hurdles

#62

Post by wpietri »

Animats wrote: post #54

That's useful info. I wonder where they had trouble with erratic steering. One Cruise video shows that where driving is alongside parked cars on a narrow street and the parking is irregular. The self driving vehicle is trying to stay in its half of the street unless absolutely necessary. Waymo still has to use "safety drivers". So far, nobody seems to have full self driving without "safety drivers". Which makes it us…

Yeah, I think this is going to be a long one. Rodney Brooks, AI researcher and Roomba cofounder, says he doesn't expect a real robot taxi service before 2035: https://rodneybrooks.com/my-dated-predictions/

> When Waymo can get rid of the safety drivers [...] they're getting close to something useable.

I suspect that they can cheat this one a little. As long as they're in an area with good connectivity and the cars are smart enough to pull over if they don't get human guidance, I expect they'll move the backup drivers to a central location. Call it SAE level 3.5. It wouldn't be good enough to sell cars, but it would be workable for a ride service, and would allow them to undercut Uber, etc, quite handily.

Re: Waymo’s Backseat Drivers: Confidential Data Reveals Self-Driving Taxi Hurdles

#63

Post by ggggtez »

Animats wrote: post #54

That's useful info. I wonder where they had trouble with erratic steering. One Cruise video shows that where driving is alongside parked cars on a narrow street and the parking is irregular. The self driving vehicle is trying to stay in its half of the street unless absolutely necessary. Waymo still has to use "safety drivers". So far, nobody seems to have full self driving without "safety drivers". Which makes it us…

>Which makes it useless.

I dunno about that. Maybe it's not immediately valuable in terms of being cheaper than picking up an Uber, but there is still value in getting your sorta-working prototype on the road for data gathering. Your Uber drive isn't going to have a vehicle with dozens of sensors to help your ML bootstrap, that's for sure.

The value is in the data, not the immediate convenience.

Re: Waymo’s Backseat Drivers: Confidential Data Reveals Self-Driving Taxi Hurdles

#64

Post by DannyBee »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #59
ttul wrote: post #4

The slow progress is not an indictment of self driving. This is one of the toughest engineering challenges ever mounted by humanity.

My peeve is not the slow progress: My peeve with self-driving companies, Waymo and Tesla alike, is their constant misrepresentation of their capabilities and their timelines for the benefit of stock value and public opinion. The technology doesn't really work, and Google's marketing for the past five years has claimed regulations were the only thing holding them back.

citation? This feels like you swapped google for tesla (Elon literally said that, i can't find anything that says Google has said it)

Re: Waymo’s Backseat Drivers: Confidential Data Reveals Self-Driving Taxi Hurdles

#65

Post by zdragnar »

Animats wrote: post #54

That's useful info. I wonder where they had trouble with erratic steering. One Cruise video shows that where driving is alongside parked cars on a narrow street and the parking is irregular. The self driving vehicle is trying to stay in its half of the street unless absolutely necessary. Waymo still has to use "safety drivers". So far, nobody seems to have full self driving without "safety drivers". Which makes it us…

> So far, nobody seems to have full self driving without "safety drivers".

A common saying around here is that we have two seasons: winter and (road) construction.

Construction zones have pretty much every obstacle to automated driving you can think of:

* painted lanes that don't correlate to the temporary lanes marked by cones

* lanes that don't correspond to pre-programmed maps / gps

* irregular and unpredictable vehicle and pedestrian entrances and exits (construction workers and trucks)

* Areas where traffic is reduced to a single lane for both directions, and must take turns coordinated by humans with signs at each end of the lane

* speed limits marked by temporary signs

* rough, temporary transitions between pavement and gravel

Unless we can somehow get every state to compel every road construction company and every autonomous vehicle maker to use a single communication protocol, implement it at every construction site (so autonomous cars are made aware of these dangers) it's not going to happen.

Oh, and said protocol has to be hack-proof so trouble-makers can't start convincing cars that they're in the middle of a construction zone and force them out of their lanes on normal roads.

It's conceivable that the coordinated effort could happen, but I'm not going to hold my breath (due to the sheer increase in cost to the government) nor will I trust that said protocol will have fail-proof security.

Re: Waymo’s Backseat Drivers: Confidential Data Reveals Self-Driving Taxi Hurdles

#66

Post by rammy1234 »

why autonomous cars get so much attention ? Why they are always on news , why they always trend. Apparently for a common man why we are excited when we should be skeptical and more careful. so anything other than excited.

But for some reason these driverless cars do get most attention.

Re: Waymo’s Backseat Drivers: Confidential Data Reveals Self-Driving Taxi Hurdles

#68

Post by PhasmaFelis »

wpietri wrote: post #62
Animats wrote: post #54

That's useful info. I wonder where they had trouble with erratic steering. One Cruise video shows that where driving is alongside parked cars on a narrow street and the parking is irregular. The self driving vehicle is trying to stay in its half of the street unless absolutely necessary. Waymo still has to use "safety drivers". So far, nobody seems to have full self driving without "safety drivers". Which makes it us…

Yeah, I think this is going to be a long one. Rodney Brooks, AI researcher and Roomba cofounder, says he doesn't expect a real robot taxi service before 2035: https://rodneybrooks.com/my-dated-predictions/ > When Waymo can get rid of the safety drivers [...] they're getting close to something useable. I suspect that they can cheat this one a little. As long as they're in an area with good connectivity and the cars ar…

I dunno, it's hard to imagine any safe way to drive a car in traffic via cell. I don't see how you could get all-round vision with acceptable resolution, frame rate, and latency. VR might solve the viewing angle, at least, but would greatly magnify the effect of frame rate/latency drops. You don't want your driver getting VR-sick five minutes in.

And that's leaving aside reliability. A 99.9% solid connection is not nearly good enough.

Re: Waymo’s Backseat Drivers: Confidential Data Reveals Self-Driving Taxi Hurdles

#69

Post by falcor84 »

zdragnar wrote: post #65
Animats wrote: post #54

That's useful info. I wonder where they had trouble with erratic steering. One Cruise video shows that where driving is alongside parked cars on a narrow street and the parking is irregular. The self driving vehicle is trying to stay in its half of the street unless absolutely necessary. Waymo still has to use "safety drivers". So far, nobody seems to have full self driving without "safety drivers". Which makes it us…

> So far, nobody seems to have full self driving without "safety drivers". A common saying around here is that we have two seasons: winter and (road) construction. Construction zones have pretty much every obstacle to automated driving you can think of: * painted lanes that don't correlate to the temporary lanes marked by cones * lanes that don't correspond to pre-programmed maps / gps * irregular and unpredictable v…

>Oh, and said protocol has to be hack-proof so trouble-makers can't start convincing cars that they're in the middle of a construction zone and force them out of their lanes on normal roads.

Why would it be easier for trouble-makers to fool autonomous cars? As a human driver, I'd be fooled by pretty much any road marking or guy in an orange vest.

Re: Waymo’s Backseat Drivers: Confidential Data Reveals Self-Driving Taxi Hurdles

#70

Post by falcor84 »

scarmig wrote: post #45
avocado4 wrote: post #19

10500 rides, 70% are rated 5 stars (perfect). 10% increase from last year.

5 stars isn't perfect. 5 stars is "there's nothing so bad that I want to take the time to complain about it." Waymo employees, who are encouraged to be especially tough, give reviews that are 47% negative. That's likely closer to the metric for perfect. We don't get perfection from human drivers either, of course. Though part of the promise of Waymo is much better performance than humans, which it apparently isn't cl…

If I were "encouraged to be especially tough", I can promise you that the taxis I ride in would get a much worse score than 47% negative.
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