Cruise is opening driverless cars to the public in San Francisco • Hacker News Board

Re: Cruise is opening driverless cars to the public in San Francisco

#581

Post by chasd00 » Wed, Feb 02, 2022, 2:06 PM UTC

walrus01 wrote: post #399

ladon86 wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but all of those quotes are by Elon Musk…

True. I actually replied to the entirely wrong comment, should have been one up... I have a great deal more confidence in truly revolutionary things that have been factually delivered by SpaceX (such as 100+ re-uses of a rocket first stage now), and I question how much of that is really due to Musk at all. Maybe Musk as a figurehead. I wonder if all of the Elon fanboys know that much of what's been accomplished at Sp…

To me, Musk's real gift is finding the right people and convincing them to work for him at the right time.

Re: Cruise is opening driverless cars to the public in San Francisco

#582

Post by top_sigrid » Wed, Feb 02, 2022, 2:08 PM UTC

jfoster wrote: post #510

catillac wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can someone explain whether there is a principled reason to not use all the sensors available and choose just cameras?

Think along the lines of: 1. What is necessary vs sufficient. 2. Processing power. 3. Power consumption. 4. Hardware cost. (even if may have decreased now, the cost of initiating the programme years ago) 5. Training cost / volume of data. The approach that Tesla is using balances all these things. I can't fully explain why it's so controversial, but I suspect this topic attracts folks from autonomous startups who are…

As long as Teslas regularly crash into stationary objects because they have no depth sensing system and rely only on camera images, I wouldn't call the perception part of the problem solved.

Re: Cruise is opening driverless cars to the public in San Francisco

#583

Post by darepublic » Wed, Feb 02, 2022, 2:12 PM UTC

femto wrote: post #210

kvogt wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cruise CEO here. Our strategy has been to solve the challenges needed to operate driverless robotaxis on a well-equipped vehicle, then aggressively drive the cost down. Many OEMs are doing this in reverse order. They're trying to squeeze orders of magnitude of performance gains out of really low-cost hardware. Today it's unclear what strategy will win. In a few years our next generation of low-cost compute and sensin…

What’s your view on whether self-driving cars should automatically be 100% liable for any accidents? I ask this in the context of machines being governed by classical deterministic physics, so there is an argument that there is no such thing as an accident involving a self-driving car: only a design flaw. This is a genuine question, as I can see that companies with self-driving systems that work, and who do serious f…

When you say accidents you mean where the robo car erred? Asking because ofc it's possible to get into an accident where you are not at fault and I think this would also be true of robocar

Re: Cruise is opening driverless cars to the public in San Francisco

#584

Post by mvhvv » Wed, Feb 02, 2022, 2:12 PM UTC

wutbrodo wrote: post #458

ummonk wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the appropriate point of comparison though? All human drivers? Sober human drivers? Sober cautious human drivers? Sober cautious human drivers with driver assistance technology (e.g. auto-braking and blind spot warning, or potentially even more sophisticated LiDAR tech)?

I don't think this question is even meaningfully-defined. There is no "the" point of comparison. The relevant point of comparison is whatever ride it's displacing. The rideshare explosion has already had a measurable effect on drunk-driving deaths; to the extent that a theoretical lower-cost AV will make rideshare even more accessible, then its effect on drunk-driving reduction absolutely makes non-sober drivers a re…

Is it reasonable to assume AV will be lower-cost than rideshare? The key thing that makes Uber more affordable than a taxi is that vehicle purchase/maintenance/depreciation/liability are all externalised.

In a full-self-driving situation you no longer have to pay your driver, but you do have to pay for all of the above. With the inevitably higher standards of maintenance required for AV fleet vehicles I can't really imagine it being cheaper than it currently is.

Sure the sensor/cv/vision tech will get cheaper, but machines still wear down.

Re: Cruise is opening driverless cars to the public in San Francisco

#585

Post by simion314 » Wed, Feb 02, 2022, 2:28 PM UTC

virgilp wrote: post #545

simion314 wrote: post #507

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>the credit for creating two wildly successful companies From reading comments in other similar threads I seen the argument that Elon did not created Tesla, so maybe would be more honest to rephrase your "created" wording, I am wondering how many people know that Elon did not created Tesla so he is assigned the role just because of his big social media presence.

he didn't create it but can definitely be credited for its success... Tesla that he bought was a failing company. Do you really, really think that Musk is just a "big social media presence"? Why doesn't Trump or any of the Kardashians achieve similar feats?

Let me be super short

1 if you know Elon did not created Tesla then why would you use the word "created" and not be precise, even if you don't like the truth about Tesla creation you can avoid spreading falsehood and having people correcting you and the others you misinform

2 if you were wrong and thought Tesla was created by Elon, then who is at fault, Elon, Elon fanboys, the Illuminati

> Why doesn't Trump or any of the Kardashians achieve similar feats? they probably don't care about cars and space, one dude in your list managed to accomplish a big thing, he got elected by a large number of people

There are people that accomplished big things and we don't know their names or faces because they are not media stars, think at people that saved lot of lives by inventing medical procedures, or the ones that promoted introduction of safety belts in cars, or the ones that proved some chemicals are dangerous and we stop using them. \ In comparison Elon bought got his hands on an existing car company and used public money and a lot of PR to increase it's value. The timing is not a coincidence, only at this moment the batteries and climate change allinged to make it possible and remember there were electic cars before Elon appeared on the scene.

Re: Cruise is opening driverless cars to the public in San Francisco

#586

Post by bluGill » Wed, Feb 02, 2022, 2:40 PM UTC

wutbrodo wrote: post #440

GeorgeTirebiter wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An extremely wise set of decisions. I also see no reason, a priori, to 'blind' a vehicle to certain spectra of EM emissions; nor to accept that only passive sensing (cameras) can be used, when Active Sensing (probing, if you will) that Radar and LiDAR use is clearly giving the control computers more information about Reality (tm). By using all (or almost all) available Active and Passive sensing technologies, fused w…

> I also see no reason, a priori, to 'blind' a vehicle to certain spectra of EM emissions The reason is simple: cost. The goal isn't to build a proof-of-concept safe AV, it's to build one that meets the safety bar _and_ is as cost-effective as possible, in a reasonable timeframe. I happen to agree with the target-then-scale approach, but I also agree with Kyle that it's not a given that this is approach is definitely…

Sure, but we already know that humans are not very good drivers (car accidents are #1 or #2 causes of death for age groups between 5 and 50). If you can do better than humans with more input, then that is compelling reason to use more input even if you can do just as good with a cheaper system.

Re: Cruise is opening driverless cars to the public in San Francisco

#587

Post by bluGill » Wed, Feb 02, 2022, 2:49 PM UTC

rightbyte wrote: post #536

toomuchtodo wrote: post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was editing my comment while you were commenting (removed service life, as software won’t detect dry rot or other defects undetectable from wheel speed measurements). Assuming tires wear evenly, you could still detect the change in rotation speed over time due to tread wear.

You can detect 3mm radius decrease? I would say no. Remember that wheel slip depends on surface properties.

I think you can. Remember you have a lot of time to work with. The car already knows when wheels are slipping to discard that data. You just pick a time when you are going straight on a nice somewhat flat dry surface going a consistent speed and measure then, cars do that all the time even on curvy mountain roads you will find plenty of such stretches and you only need to measure every few hours.

Re: Cruise is opening driverless cars to the public in San Francisco

#588

Post by bluGill » Wed, Feb 02, 2022, 2:53 PM UTC

honkdaddy wrote: post #313

potatolicious wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed - I think the "but can it drive in a whiteout blizzard" question is best redirected to: "can a human?" I suspect there are operating conditions the AVs won't solve acceptably - some of those conditions IMO are also conditions where we should not accept a human to solve acceptably. In general I feel we have a lackadaisical culture around driving that encourages/excuses unsafe behavior, and is overoptimistic abo…

I grew up in a part of Ontario where total whiteouts can happen fairly frequently on both major highways leading in and out of my small town. It is in fact possible to drive dozens of km in near or total whiteout conditions simply by the hazard lights of the car ahead of you. You very frequently will see lines of cars km long, all going I don't think vision-based FSV will ever reliably handle winter conditions like t…

The reason all that works is people drive to what they expect. In such conditions you might hit a human standing on the road, no human would be there in the first place, only other cars with flashing lights. As such so long as you stay in the correct lane for your direction of travel and go slow you don't need to see because there is no real danger most of the time. Most of the time...

Re: Cruise is opening driverless cars to the public in San Francisco

#589

Post by phkahler » Wed, Feb 02, 2022, 3:03 PM UTC

XorNot wrote: post #563

moss2 wrote: post #538

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's hope the only passenger has a driver's license and isn't drunk or having a medical emergency.

In both those cases they wouldn't be able to drive anyway, and the result is not more dangerous or worse then the alternative.

>> In both those cases they wouldn't be able to drive anyway...

Well that's not even a robo-taxi then.

Re: Cruise is opening driverless cars to the public in San Francisco

#590

Post by ptha » Wed, Feb 02, 2022, 3:07 PM UTC

simion314 wrote: post #507

dustintrex wrote: post #467

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure there are lots of other people out there who could run today's SpaceX as a space cargo trucking company. But Elon deserves the credit for creating two wildly successful companies that revolutionized their respective industries, both in the face of hugely entrenched competitors in highly regulated markets that hadn't seen successful new players in decades, and both as a side effect of his actual goal of getti…

>the credit for creating two wildly successful companies From reading comments in other similar threads I seen the argument that Elon did not created Tesla, so maybe would be more honest to rephrase your "created" wording, I am wondering how many people know that Elon did not created Tesla so he is assigned the role just because of his big social media presence.

Apparently Tesla was: founded (as Tesla Motors) on July 1, 2003 by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning in San Carlos, California.

It gets a bit more complicated however: Ian Wright was the third employee, joining a few months later. The three went looking for venture capital funding in January 2004 and connected with Elon Musk, who contributed US$6.5 million of the initial (Series A) US$7.5 million round of investment in February 2004 and became chairman of the board of directors. Musk then appointed Eberhard as the CEO. J.B. Straubel joined in May 2004 as the fifth employee. A lawsuit settlement agreed to by Eberhard and Tesla in September 2009 allows all five (Eberhard, Tarpenning, Wright, Musk and Straubel) to call themselves co-founders.

So I guess it depends on your definition of "created".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Tesla,_Inc.#The_beg...