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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

#561

Post by CoryG89 »

newsclues wrote: post #486
paxys wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

If a pedestrian slips in deep snow while crossing a street and is no longer visible because the snow obstructs them, does the car see a clear path and kill someone or not?

Does a human see a clear path and kill someone or not?

Re: Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco

#562

Post by arsome »

mike_d wrote: post #515
arsome wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I've seen of Tesla's solution at least - even busy city centers and complex parking lots are very difficulty for present day autonomous driving technologies. The understanding level necessary just isn't there. These things are excellent - undeniably better than humans at the boring stuff, highway driving, even major roads. They can rightfully claim massive mileage with high safety levels in those circumstan…

That is like trying to judge modern supercomputing by your experinces with a 6 year old Dell desktop. Waymo drove 29,944.69 miles between "disengagements" last year. That is an average California driver needing to touch the wheel once every 2.3 years. Tesla by comparison is classed as a SAE Level 2 driver assist system and isn't even required to report metrics to the state. While they sell it to consumers as self-dri…

"disengagements" is a disingenuous statistic - that'd be like a human driver just giving up and getting out of the car.

What you want is "interventions". Additionally, look at where those miles were driven. Most of them are some of the most simplistic road driving scenarios possible.

Re: Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco

#563

Post by mchusma »

pbreit wrote: post #89
espadrine wrote: post #47

Waymo is currently the only SAE Level 4[0] self-driving car in use, right? The wheel must not be used. Even though it is limited to two cities. Their technology seems an order of magnitude above the rest, although factoring in its cost could make it look worse. (Can it turn a profit, when including the development costs?) Tesla FSD is at best SAE level 3 (can need human fallback), and at worst level 2 (needs constant…

Most of the commercial value is achieved at Level 4. I'm curious what all the folks who claimed this was decades away are thinking?

I think almost no commercial value is at 4. I'm fact, it could be negative value. Because you need the expense of a "digital driver" and the expense of a human driver.

It's basically level 5 or bust.

Re: Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco

#564

Post by sandworm101 »

atourgates wrote: post #560
VelkaMorava wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

I live in north-central Idaho. 10 minutes from 2 state-universities, but in an otherwise relatively rural part of the county with a 1/4 mile long, somewhat steep driveway. Every year, I'm amazed at how quickly our personal "veneer of civilization" collapses in the snow. The prior owners of our home would just keep their kids home from school, and work from home an average of "about a week every winter." We're a littl…

Northern Canada here. We have all been down that road. I had a rental once that wouldn't let me backup as the sensor was frozen over. I doubt AI will ever handle winter situations without help.

Re: Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco

#565

Post by dnhz »

marwatk wrote: post #435
pitaj wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I suspect it will know where the lane markings are better than human drivers. They are mapped ahead of time and the car can likely localize itself via other landmarks to determine where they are without being able to see them. The harder part is driving like a human and detecting that a path has been made in the middle of two lanes in heavy snow and not obeying the lines at all.

The first idea seems like it would require a lot a lot of data stored in the car. Is it feasible? And even so, to be that dependent on matching up with existing pre-mapped data suggests a system that would be quite slow to roll out across a country.

Re: Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco

#566

Post by dnhz »

joebob42 wrote: post #442
reaperducer wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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) Both are low-hanging fruit. When it can navigate a snow-covered road at night while it's still snowing, get back to me.

But the bar to be better than a human in this case is also wickedly low. I basically can't do this. If it was absolutely necessary I would go out there and drive like 5 mph and be terrified the whole time, but otherwise I would just treat whatever I needed to drive to in a snowstorm at night as temporarily inaccessible. I have lived in places where it snowed in winter before.

But the use case is not the middle of the night but perhaps during evening rush hour where it gets dark after 5 PM in the winter, and a storm began in the afternoon.

Re: Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco

#567

Post by morei »

CarelessExpert wrote: post #507
paxys wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> I think people vastly overestimate the challenges of weather conditions for self driving. This remark makes me wonder if you've ever lived in an area that actually experiences winter. Around here, dead of winter, there are no lines visible on the streets. Heck, after a good snow storm the lanes are basically a function of group consensus.

This is a situation where automation has the advantage. With detailed position information and detailed maps, the fact that the lines on the street can't be seen is irrelevant. The car didn't need them anyway.

(noting that Waymo requires full detail maps to be able to drive an area, including all signage).

Re: Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco

#568

Post by 01100011 »

6gvONxR4sf7o wrote: post #430
blamazon wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People have been saying “HN is turning into Reddit” for over ten years. There’s a bit of an Easter egg at the bottom of the HN guidelines about it: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I don't know. I've been here for nearly a decade (I switch accounts every once in a while), and in the last six months or so, it sure feels like somethings different. Specifically, I'm noticing more joke replies that aren't downvoted. Maybe I'm just getting old.

I said the same thing a year or two ago. There's probably some truth to it, but overall it's probably just selective bias.

I became a HN regular because I saw some insightful comments backed by quality moderation. I was escaping the dumpster fire of reddit so it seemed like paradise by comparison. Over time, my usage of HN grew, and I became more exposed to the reddit-like mentality that pops up on certain topics or at certain times(i.e. weekends).

I think the quality of HN varies depending on where the more serious users are in their development schedules. It would be an interesting thing to analyze I suppose.

Re: Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco

#569

Post by babyshake »

sandworm101 wrote: post #554
tuatoru wrote: post #522

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The acid test will be (4) Board members use product on their children.

Followed by (5) board members claiming legal bills for child custody disputes after caught leaving kids unsupervised in the custody of a 3000lb robot.

Arguably all modern vehicles are incredibly heavy robots. AVs are just supposed to be better robots.

Re: Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco

#570

Post by sgrove »

michaelt wrote: post #532
njarboe wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People at Tesla and other autonomous driving companies, of course are aware and worry about such situations. If you have a few hours and want to see many of the technologies and methods that Tesla is using to solve them, check out Tesla's recent "AI day" presentation. Tesla is quite cool about openly discussing the problems they have solved, problems they still have, and how they are trying to solve them. An incomple…

> People at Tesla and other autonomous driving companies, of course are aware and worry about such situations. Yeah, a Tesla couldn't possibly drive into a stationary, clearly visible fire engine or concrete barrier, on a dry day, in direct sunlight.

Neither could a human, I'm sure.

At least, I never would...

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