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

Cruise is opening driverless cars to the public in San Francisco

getcruise.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

641–650 of 652 posts

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

#641

Post by glbeaty »

c0nsumer wrote: post #423
toomuchtodo wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tesla vehicles can detect and notify the driver of tires with low tread remaining. It's detected by a delta in rotation speed between other tires and the tire needing replacement. Seems like a software implementation is straightforward. https://driveteslacanada.ca/software-updates/your-tesla-can-...

That doesn't help with end of service life, it helps with uneven wear. If all the tires wear evenly this detection won't help.

It does if you have a GPS speed input. In the race car daq I use I can see speed differentials due to tire wear.

A typical 17" tire has a radius of 318 mm and 8 mm of tread. So a bald tire is 2.5% smaller than a new one.

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

#642

Post by glbeaty »

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.

3mm is about a third of total tread depth, and 1% of the tire's radius. Why wouldn't this be detectable? ABS sensors tend to have 48-tooth tone rings and there's no reason why you couldn't vastly increase this number if you wanted.

Longitudinal tire slip is caused by thrust in excess of the tire's grip, which is a function of slip speed among many other things. Grip peaks with a mild amount of slip, but slip isn't the norm outside of racing. Mild acceleration produces zero slip.

Lateral slip angle is a different story.

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

#643

Post by glbeaty »

XorNot wrote: post #487
phkahler wrote: post #481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The challenge I like to bring up is construction zones. How will cars cope when a road is unexpectedly under repair? Traffic is taking turns sharing the left shoulder with a flag man directing you? Some people I've talked to insist that an up to date map is "all that's needed" and that all such projects will need to be put in the system. Haha, a water main broke and they think people are going to update a database fo…

A decent chunk of this list can be handled by the car coming to a safe stop and signalling that it is unable to proceed and you need to navigate the situation. I suspect a lot of these could also be handled by that being a remote connection where a human is given the camera input and can indicate how the car should proceed (i.e. broken water main is a road obstruction that won't clear, and the obvious answer is a man…

Both Cruise and Waymo have remote operators who can direct the cars when they phone home.

Here's an example Vogt discusses a bit: https://youtu.be/sliYTyRpRB8?t=202

...of course this brings up many other problems, like network connectivity and inter-city transport, which the companies have as far as I know not commented on. IMO the sensible solution is obviously to just require passengers be able to take over if given plenty of warning, but for whatever reason Cruise isn't doing this.

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

#644

Post by glbeaty »

starioIC wrote: post #480
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…

From personal experiences I do not see how they are ready. They actively avoid the rules of the road and engage in dangerous driving actions because the car “sees” and obstacle or warning.for example when a car is double parked the self driving vehicles will swerve into the opposite lane, and in some cases almost hit another car, bike rider, or person. When at stop signs they will sit back and wait even thought it is…

How long ago did you see Cruise cars doing these things?

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

#645

Post by tgsovlerkhgsel »

snotrockets wrote: post #225
punnerud wrote: post #128

The next thing is a driverless car and a driverless bus “docking” at speed, so you can change vehicle without affecting your trip time. Economics will outcompete 50 self-driving cars going in the same direction for 30min when you could have one driverless-bus doing the same. If this transition is smooth and fast, think what this will do to traveling time, car prices and property prices. How far can you travel without…

We have public transit right now. All we need to do is to not stigmatize its users.

I live in a city in Europe with excellent public transit (not stigmatized, clean, used by everyone from the pauper to the millionaires, for some routes faster and more convenient than a car). Sometimes it still sucks due to the waiting and the "last mile" problem. A 10-15 min walk from the nearest transit stop to the actual destination, having to change, the waiting times and lack of flexibility (the bus may only be going once every 30 minutes) means I'm still taking an Uber for some trips.

Smaller vehicles going more frequently with fewer stops and more routes would make public transit a lot nicer.

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

#646

Post by rightbyte »

glbeaty wrote: post #642
rightbyte wrote: post #536

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

3mm is about a third of total tread depth, and 1% of the tire's radius. Why wouldn't this be detectable? ABS sensors tend to have 48-tooth tone rings and there's no reason why you couldn't vastly increase this number if you wanted. Longitudinal tire slip is caused by thrust in excess of the tire's grip, which is a function of slip speed among many other things. Grip peaks with a mild amount of slip, but slip isn't th…

The slip is only 0 when free rolling by definition of the rolling radius.

You also have the rolling radius depend on load (car mass) and tire pressure.

I don't say I know it is impossible, but it feels like there is way to much noise.

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

#647

Post by artifact_44 »

saiya-jin wrote: post #593
andy_ppp wrote: post #557

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've met quite a few people like her and I really don't believe they are sociopaths - they say things that sound real and even convince themselves of it but as soon as you start peeling back details they don't exist. It's like you are talking to a Turing machine and it's you failing the test. People on these forums never really speak to these people because we are already largely scientists and love empirical evidenc…

Roughly 1 in 20 folks on average out there is a sociopath (some quote from Jordan Peterson). It doesn't have to be full 110% on scheming world domination, but detectable (and obvious in daily life). I am not an expert on her or whole saga, but from my perspective many famous people show this trait. In business its almost mandatory to get/stay on top, it certainly gives one advantages compared to nice fair honest peop…

[dead]

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

#648

Post by kanwisher »

KerrAvon wrote: post #304
LegitShady wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Lex fridmans interview with George Hotz, hots talks about why he thinks radar AI is a non starter and predicted that even though Tesla was still adamant about using their radar, they would eventually realize they only needed cameras. Hotz is the founder of comma.ai which is doing open source (I think?) Company.

What were his reasons? Searching the web reveals lots of machismo and assorted hero worship, but no actual solid technical arguments. Nobody in the field seems to think a vision-only solution is practical, other than Tesla, who are also not providing solid technical arguments that I can find. This IEEE item seems to summarize the situation well. https://spectrum.ieee.org/tesla-places-big-bet-vision-only-s...

Hotz makes his own company making self driving using vision only https://comma.ai/

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

#649

Post by kranke155 »

saiya-jin wrote: post #593
andy_ppp wrote: post #557

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've met quite a few people like her and I really don't believe they are sociopaths - they say things that sound real and even convince themselves of it but as soon as you start peeling back details they don't exist. It's like you are talking to a Turing machine and it's you failing the test. People on these forums never really speak to these people because we are already largely scientists and love empirical evidenc…

Roughly 1 in 20 folks on average out there is a sociopath (some quote from Jordan Peterson). It doesn't have to be full 110% on scheming world domination, but detectable (and obvious in daily life). I am not an expert on her or whole saga, but from my perspective many famous people show this trait. In business its almost mandatory to get/stay on top, it certainly gives one advantages compared to nice fair honest peop…

Sociopaths are not uncommon as people think. They think sociopaths are “mad killers” but they’re just people who don’t feel remorse when ie lying and have little to no empathy. I’ve met mild sociopaths who were just bankers who would never even think about second order and third order effects of what they were doing. It’s not some kind of rare condition.

I heard the figure was 1 in 30 but 1 in 20 is close enough.

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

#650

Post by Ericson2314 »

marmshallow wrote: post #640
Ericson2314 wrote: post #595

I think I saw one of these at night with no humans inside . Drivers or passengers. Is that legal?

Yes, Cruise has obtained the relevant permits from the CA DMV. The only permit they're currently missing is the one that let's them charge customers for rides.

That is interesting, because presumably self-driving cars, like all cars, are more dangerous to pedestrians than (that or other) vehicle occupants.
Post reply on HN