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Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco

blog.waymo.com

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Re: Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco

#51

Post by morpheos137 »

gfodor wrote: post #27

Kind of interesting to consider how this adjusts priors on these outcomes: - Self driving is not possible - Self driving is not possible anytime soon - Self driving is possible, but requires LIDAR - Self driving is possible, and can be done with normal cameras I've engaged with a lot of people who presume self-driving reduces onto AGI, therefore it will not be achieved anytime soon if ever. I wonder which of their as…

Most important one you missed:

Given sufficient qualitative and quantitative investment self driving may be technologically feasible at some point in the future but not price competitive with human driving.

Self driving proponents seem to assume the tech is free. Just keeping sub meter scale 3d street maps up to date has a massive cost.

Re: Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco

#52

Post by STRiDEX »

jeffbee wrote: post #3

Last week Waymo said they are driving 100,000 miles per week in San Francisco. That figure is just bonkers. SF MTA only operates about 450,000 miles per week, and that was before COVID-19 shut them down. When one is on the streets of San Francisco does a Waymo Jaguar just drive by every couple of minutes? I honestly haven't been over there in a few months.

I'm in glen park neighborhood of sf, it's the suburbs basically. I see them anytime I walk outside, but I don't think I keep track of which company I see driving by. It could be waymo, cruise, etc.

Re: Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco

#56

Post by genericone »

specktr wrote: post #28
taylorlapeyre wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see them in my neighborhood at least twice a day. They don't bother me, to be honest. Just like any other car.

They’re also in my neighborhood - I generally see one every time I do an errand. They tend to drive 5-10 mph under the rest of traffic which can be frustrating. They also tend to be slow when making lane changes and turns to the point where it holds up other vehicles.

5-10mph under while within the city limits, on streets where things pop out at you all the time, sounds really nice actually. It's one of the things that happen all the time that drivers ignore the possibility of.

Re: Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco

#57

Post by zachberger »

dilippkumar wrote: post #24

> We can’t wait to hear from more San Franciscans as they experience the Waymo Driver themselves. Beginning later today, San Franciscans can sign up for the Trusted Tester program and help us shape the future of mobility in this city. Just download the Waymo One app to get involved. Anyone else got this to work? I only see a message that says "It looks like you're not in our service area..."

"beginning later today"

Re: Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco

#58

Post by aix1 »

poopypoopington wrote: post #11

I'll never forget I almost got murdered terminator style by a Cruise while riding my bicycle around SF... hopefully they figured that out.

> I almost got murdered terminator style by a Cruise while riding my bicycle around SF... hopefully they figured that out.

I had to google "Cruise". To save others a moment or two, Cruise is a self-driving startup unrelated to Alphabet. In the quoted sentence, "they" != "Waymo" (I wasn't sure).

Re: Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco

#59

Post by MontyCarloHall »

“All rides in the program will have an autonomous specialist on board for now”

This tells me that we’re still a long way from full level 4 (and certainly level 5) autonomy in a busy city like San Francisco. The edge cases requiring immediate human attention are still too frequent for the human safety driver to be remote, as is the case in Phoenix.

Also, just a reminder that Waymo in Phoenix is nowhere close to being level 5, since it is still heavily geofences and requires those remote safety monitors. I still think that true level 5 (i.e. ability to drive autonomously everywhere with zero human oversight with a safety record equivalent to the median human driver) requires AGI. Would love to be proven wrong!

Re: Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco

#60

Post by jeffbee »

bluGill wrote: post #38
ra7 wrote: post #19

It's fantastic to see Waymo's progress. SF is a real nightmare to drive. If they can nail it there, that's 2/2 for busy, urban street driving (SF) and "boring" suburban driving (Chandler, AZ). They've been quietly very confident of their tech, but this is a real test. Tangentially, I've also noticed that Waymo has picked up pace ever since the recent leadership changes. They are publishing more blog posts, offering m…

It may not scale to rural areas though. There are some roads were you don't need to look at the road in front of your: it is there and nothing else is. Instead you need to watch the ditches in a wide area around because that is where wildlife will jump out of in front of you.

The superiority of a blended computer vision system for this task, over a human performance, is almost impossible to overstate. The computer is not going to overlook even one deer.
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