Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco

blog.waymo.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

351–360 of 691 posts

Re: Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco

#351

Post by sologoub »

VelkaMorava wrote: post #197
hammock wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>“All rides in the program will have an autonomous specialist on board for now” This tells me that we’re still a long way Did you expect something different? I can't really see a boardroom writing a roadmap that goes straight from test rides (no passengers) with a backup driver onboard to actual rides with passengers - no backup driver onboard with no in-between steps.

I wonder where "a country road with no lanes which barely fits 1.5 car in winter in the Czech republic" is on your scale... Something like this, just imagine the snowdrifts around it https://www.google.com/maps/@49.080269,16.4569252,3a,75y,307...

That’s just stunningly beautiful - Czech countryside is something else!

I’d gladly buy a self-driving car that require some additional input on such a road and had additional aids to spot oncoming traffic I can’t see behind the tractor that’s a few hundred meters forward of the spot linked to. It would still be safer.

To really make things work, we need cars to be able to negotiate the way humans do on the right of way, etc. There is a lot of non-verbal (and when that fails, very verbal) communication while driving. Currently, cars can’t communicate with each other and the pedestrians, which limits possibilities a lot.

Re: Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco

#352

Post by diegocg »

minhazm wrote: post #218
sschueller wrote: post #123

If Google can't do it with its massive resources and sensors don't ever expect a Tesla to perform better than this. It's time for Elon to pay the piper and refund all users who were hoodwinked into purchasing FSD. Especially people who's cars are nearing end of life.

Google took a completely different approach and relies heavily on pre-mapped environments. Tesla has several orders of magnitude more vehicles, more data, and a more diverse set of data given their cars are in many different countries. It's not implausible to think that Tesla could arrive at FSD faster than Google.

The idea that data will somehow magically translate into FSD is laughable. It relies in the delusion that we just need to train neural networks with the proper data and then we all can go to sleep.

There are many issues with Tesla's autopilot that are completely unrelated to the amount of data they have, and they will not be fixed with more data, and having more data will not make it easier to fix it. At this point, I would argue that the discussion about who owns more millions of miles of data is completely irrelevant.

Re: Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco

#353

Post by boc »

VelkaMorava wrote: post #197
hammock wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>“All rides in the program will have an autonomous specialist on board for now” This tells me that we’re still a long way Did you expect something different? I can't really see a boardroom writing a roadmap that goes straight from test rides (no passengers) with a backup driver onboard to actual rides with passengers - no backup driver onboard with no in-between steps.

I wonder where "a country road with no lanes which barely fits 1.5 car in winter in the Czech republic" is on your scale... Something like this, just imagine the snowdrifts around it https://www.google.com/maps/@49.080269,16.4569252,3a,75y,307...

Believe it or not there are tons of two-way roads like that just 30 minutes from Silicon Valley that self-driving cars could practice on. Here's an example: https://goo.gl/maps/1CVb7Mpiwv1VL2sd7

Re: Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco

#354

Post by pitaj »

paxys wrote: post #308
nradov wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SF is hardly a nightmare to drive. Try Boston during a winter storm.

I think people vastly overestimate the challenges of weather conditions for self driving. With modern car tech (traction monitoring, ability to redirect torque to a specific tire, ABS, radar) an automated car is going to have an easier time navigating snow/ice/rain than a human driver. The real challenges when navigating city streets are the human ones – delivery vehicles blocking lanes, municipal worker fixing a man…

How well do sensors and vision systems handle winter conditions like snow and lack of lane markers?

Re: Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco

#355

Post by staticassertion »

minhazm wrote: post #218
sschueller wrote: post #123

If Google can't do it with its massive resources and sensors don't ever expect a Tesla to perform better than this. It's time for Elon to pay the piper and refund all users who were hoodwinked into purchasing FSD. Especially people who's cars are nearing end of life.

Google took a completely different approach and relies heavily on pre-mapped environments. Tesla has several orders of magnitude more vehicles, more data, and a more diverse set of data given their cars are in many different countries. It's not implausible to think that Tesla could arrive at FSD faster than Google.

I can't really see how Tesla would have more data than Google, who have been mapping the entire world for decades.

Re: Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco

#356

Post by diegocg »

ElFitz wrote: post #338
sschueller wrote: post #123

If Google can't do it with its massive resources and sensors don't ever expect a Tesla to perform better than this. It's time for Elon to pay the piper and refund all users who were hoodwinked into purchasing FSD. Especially people who's cars are nearing end of life.

While I do get your point and have my own doubts, I fail to see how this is a fair argument: > If Google can't do it with its massive resources The companies behind the SLS had and have an enormous amount of resources. Yet, they have failed to even launch it. Arianespace has a huge amount of resources and experience too. Yet, when asked, they said landing a rocket couldn’t be done. Then, back-pedalling, that it was p…

The problem with your comparison is that the company that is "the spacex of FSD" is Waymo. And even them can not get FSD right.

Re: Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco

#357

Post by fragmede »

dahfizz wrote: post #325
RhysU wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My mother thinks nothing of driving on deserted roads in significant unplowed snow. She gets nervous on a dry, Texas highway at rush hour.

Yeah, that seems perfectly rational. There is nothing to hit on a deserted highway. Driving in traffic, on the other hand, is more stressful and has worse downsides.

> significant unplowed snow

Spinning out on a deserted highway and hitting a snowbank and getting trapped in your car kills a large number of people every year. Even with smartphones, calls for help can't always be responded to in time, resulting in death. (Have an emergency kit in your car if you live above the snow line!)

Driving in city traffic can be quite harrowing, but hitting another car at 20-30 mph isn't usually fatal. (Wear your seatbelts!)

The point that GP post was trying to make is that humans have different preferences, and what seems dangerous to one doesn't (and possibly isn't) dangerous to another. Humans are also notoriously bad at judging danger, eg some people feel threatened by the idea of wearing of papers masks.

Re: Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco

#358

Post by lhorie »

kenjackson wrote: post #268
lhorie wrote: post #102

I'm curious how Waymo deals with the human aspects of cab hailing. With a human driver, you can say "hey looks like traffic is bad between where the car currently is and the pick up spot, can I meet you at X instead and save us both 10 minutes?" To "good morning dear, do you think you could help me load my bag in the trunk" All the way up to completely degenerate scenarios like "my friend was drunk and tried to take…

There are a different problems with no-driver, not necessarily worse problems. For example, some problems with drivers that don't exist, or exist to a lesser extent with no-driver: 1. How much should I tip? 2. The driver tried to rape me. 3. The driver seems drunk/high, and is driving horribly. 4. The driver didn't pick me up because, pick your reason: I'm black, had a bunch of kids, etc... 5. My friend was drunk and…

Yeah, definitely goes both ways, and I can foresee many anecdotes about how not having to deal w/ a driver is nicer in some way or another. Hence why I said I'm curious about human-factor issues. I don't believe there's precedents anywhere for what to expect once the tech rolls out at scale, so it's going to be interesting to see what kinds of operational issues they end up running into.

Re: Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco

#359

Post by LeifCarrotson »

VelkaMorava wrote: post #197
hammock wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>“All rides in the program will have an autonomous specialist on board for now” This tells me that we’re still a long way Did you expect something different? I can't really see a boardroom writing a roadmap that goes straight from test rides (no passengers) with a backup driver onboard to actual rides with passengers - no backup driver onboard with no in-between steps.

I wonder where "a country road with no lanes which barely fits 1.5 car in winter in the Czech republic" is on your scale... Something like this, just imagine the snowdrifts around it https://www.google.com/maps/@49.080269,16.4569252,3a,75y,307...

Autonomous driving systems are set at various levels of autonomy.

Level 0 is no automation, level 1 is just a dumb cruise control, level 2 is radar adaptive cruise control plus lane keeping (which is where most production systems like Tesla Autopilot and GM Supercruise are currently at). Level 2 still requires full human supervision, if you engaged it on the road above it would either fail to engage or you'd crash and it would be your fault. Level 3 is the same plus an ability to handle some common driving tasks, like changing lanes to pass a slower vehicle.

Level 4 is where it gets really interesting, because it's supposed to handle everything involved in navigating from Point A to Point B. It's supposed to stop itself in the event of encountering something it can't handle, so you could theoretically take a nap while it drove.

However, an important limitation is that Level 4 autonomy is geofenced, it's only allowed in certain areas on certain roads. Also, it can disable itself in certain conditions like construction or weather that inhibit visibility. Waymo vehicles like these are ostensibly level 4, if you tell them to drive through a back road in the snow they'll simply refuse to do so. It's only useful in reasonably good conditions in a few big cities.

Level 5 is considered to be Point A to Point B, for any two navigable points, in any conditions that the vehicle can traverse. You could build a Level 5 vehicle without a driver's seat, much less an alert driver. I kind of think this will require something much closer to artificial general intelligence; level 4 is just really difficult conventional programming.

Re: Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco

#360

Post by seanmcdirmid »

sandworm101 wrote: post #235
hammock wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>“All rides in the program will have an autonomous specialist on board for now” This tells me that we’re still a long way Did you expect something different? I can't really see a boardroom writing a roadmap that goes straight from test rides (no passengers) with a backup driver onboard to actual rides with passengers - no backup driver onboard with no in-between steps.

Middle steps: (1) Board members use product to travel to board meetings. (2) Board members use product as replacement for personal vehicles. (3) Board members demand pay increases. Back in 1999 the Chinese government announced that airline execs would be airborne at the changeover as reassurance that aircraft were safe from Y2K. Like or hate them, the incentive logic was sound. https://www.wired.com/1999/01/y2k-in-ch…

> Middle steps: (1) Board members use product to travel to board meetings. (2) Board members use product as replacement for personal vehicles. (3) Board members demand pay increases.

How do you know board members aren't already using Waymo product heavily? It still doesn't mean they can go straight from board members using Waymo without backup drivers to arbitrary customers using Waymo without backup drivers.

Post reply on HN