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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

#131

Post by mlonkibjuyhv »

masonic wrote: post #126
Nokinside wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remote operators solve these issue. Once you have autonomous cars that driving safely, but can't manage complex situations like you describe, you delegate those for remote pilots that are allowed to operate car in slow speeds. You need 5G network coverage with mission-critical features (mcMTC) to archieve that. BLER 10^-6 and E2E latency Taxi fleet of 10,000 vehicles might need only 100-200 remote operators to manage…

fleet of 10,000 vehicles might need only 100-200 remote operators It won't scale in a predictable way. Let's say there's a major event in NYC (natural disaster or unnatural). You may suddenly need 700 operators at the same time just to deal with NYC and environs.

Yeah... Used to work for a small start-up that had a product to basically automate a switchboard used for elderly care. It was fun when the need for manual operation suddenly came around. Didn't have the manpower, nor the actual switchboard.

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

#132

Post by TulliusCicero »

calcifer wrote: post #112
jessriedel wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That phrase is just thrown in there to stoke the reader and create a story out of nothing. It indicates a lack of journalistic integrity.

> It indicates a lack of journalistic integrity. Or, the author is suggesting that public resources should be used for public, not private benefit?

How is this any different from taxis, truckers, etc.?

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

#133

Post by TeMPOraL »

nishantvyas wrote: post #74
falcor84 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

Correct. It’s amazing, how much forgiving we can be for human errors ( accidents every year) but absolutely not for machine/autonomous vehicles, even when, statistically speaking, machines may make better decision much faster(or at-least no worse than human judgement)... I guess feeling/perception of being in control is more important to us... Other interesting observation I find in every autonomous vehicle discussio…

> I’ll be really happy and relaxed if my car can mostly (70-80%) drive it self to daily commute or next trip to LA;

There's a caveat here that this 70-80% must be contiguous and the car must be superhuman-level reliable in that segment. Otherwise, the "additional pair of eyes and hands" significantly increase the danger. If your car suddenly decides that it can't handle something and asks you to take over in the last second, you won't be able to handle it either.

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

#134

Post by paganel »

dumbfoundded wrote: post #18
paxys wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All great achievements, but none of these is in the same ballpark of difficulty as creating a general artificial intelligence (which is pretty much what self driving cars need to achieve true level 5 autonomy).

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…

> 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 does require AGI, at least if you're planning to drive on most of the world's roads, and not only on some "pampered" streets in the middle of the desert or on heavily-regulated and very well maintained streets like in Norway or Switzerland.

As a human a I have a quite "accurate 3d representation of the world" but even so, many times I'm left dumb-founded by what the people driving on the same streets as me are doing. And even if you do manage to replace all those other people with self-driven cars, how do you account of cows ending up in the middle of an interstate road (it happened to me at least once), with wrong street markings or no street markings at all or with drunken bicyclists whom you can't see at night?

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

#135

Post by lrem »

agent008t wrote: post #122
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…

Note that all of your examples had working prototypes; it just took 20 years to make them affordable/scale them (along with some incremental improvements). With self-driving cars we have no such prototype and I would not expect one in the next 20 years. Unless we are talking about driving on specially equipped roads/lanes or in some special situations, where we might see them much sooner.

The DARPA challenge mentioned was for providing a fully working prototype, all these years ago. And not a highway, but through an unmapped obstacle course.

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

#136

Post by agent008t »

lrem wrote: post #135
agent008t wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note that all of your examples had working prototypes; it just took 20 years to make them affordable/scale them (along with some incremental improvements). With self-driving cars we have no such prototype and I would not expect one in the next 20 years. Unless we are talking about driving on specially equipped roads/lanes or in some special situations, where we might see them much sooner.

The DARPA challenge mentioned was for providing a fully working prototype, all these years ago. And not a highway, but through an unmapped obstacle course.

It was a very different problem from driving on public roads.

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

#137

Post by pnutjam »

jrockway wrote: post #120
calcifer wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It indicates a lack of journalistic integrity. Or, the author is suggesting that public resources should be used for public, not private benefit?

How is someone driving to work in their private vehicle public benefit? The roads are for driving on, nothing more, nothing less.

Not true, the roads are for the use and benefit of citizens.

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

#138

Post by vasilipupkin »

masonic wrote: post #126
Nokinside wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remote operators solve these issue. Once you have autonomous cars that driving safely, but can't manage complex situations like you describe, you delegate those for remote pilots that are allowed to operate car in slow speeds. You need 5G network coverage with mission-critical features (mcMTC) to archieve that. BLER 10^-6 and E2E latency Taxi fleet of 10,000 vehicles might need only 100-200 remote operators to manage…

fleet of 10,000 vehicles might need only 100-200 remote operators It won't scale in a predictable way. Let's say there's a major event in NYC (natural disaster or unnatural). You may suddenly need 700 operators at the same time just to deal with NYC and environs.

Let’s say there is an event in NYC. Within milliseconds of the event, all the robot cars can be notified and their human drivers can take over, only the cars immediately in the vicinity of the event need robot operators. It’s not straightforward, but it can be done.

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

#139

Post by pnutjam »

falcor84 wrote: post #69
zdragnar wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Jam rf signals, modify ir cues, etc...

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

#140

Post by navigatesol »

jessriedel wrote: post #98
dmix wrote: post #95

> The data provide the most detailed view yet of the passenger experience inside vehicles from Waymo, which doesn’t disclose the information even though it uses public roads as its testing grounds. Why would it riding on public roads matter when it's about what happens inside a private vehicle during a high-value R&D experiment? They got permission from Arizona to run the tests and it will likely benefit Arizona's ec…

That phrase is just thrown in there to stoke the reader and create a story out of nothing. It indicates a lack of journalistic integrity.

>It indicates a lack of journalistic integrity.

It's tiring reading commentators say things like this. Saying a professional journalist lacks "journalistic integrity" is bold. Why don't you step up and make this argument directly to the author, rather than being snide and posting it on a forum he will never read?

Here's his Twitter; have at it:

https://twitter.com/amir

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