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I have formally accepted the CEO job at Cruise once again

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Re: I have formally accepted the CEO job at Cruise once again

#121

Post by hnburnsy »

martythemaniak wrote: post #38

You know, I think the Vision vs LIDAR is very narrow and won't be very relevant in the long-term. If you imagine the full robotaxi stack: cars, training, simulations, back testing, data sourcing, perception, driving decisions, etc, etc, the LIDAR vs Vision concerns only one small part of the stack. Critically, LIDAR still has to be trained in the same way cameras have to - it'll give you depth information, but you st…

I think that infrastructure changes and car2car communication, will also make LIDAR less necessary. Imagine if a stopped emergency vehicle could communicate to all cars, AV or not, to slow down, stop or stay out of certain lanes of traffic.

Re: I have formally accepted the CEO job at Cruise once again

#123

Post by faeyanpiraat »

paganel wrote: post #112
bluGill wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My problem with cameras is as a human I'm well aware there are things that I can't see and so i rely on faith. I've driven in dense fog trusting that nobody else would be stupid enough to do the same (fortunately taillights can be seen through fog, but not many other dangers that normally are not on the road, but if so they are dead). I often drive with sub in my eyes at dawn/dusk and trust that the road is clear. I…

> I often drive with sub in my eyes at dawn/dusk and trust that the road is clear Not sure how to say it, but try to never do that going forward, please, for your sake and for the sake of the others who share the same road with you. Yes, driving "blind" for one second, maybe two seconds (even though it's uncomfortable for me at this point) from time to time is not the end of the world, particularly if you're driving…

To make it more precise: You have to see the point where the end of your braking distance is.

This is still not 100% safe (especially in blind corners), but this is the minimum One should do.

Re: I have formally accepted the CEO job at Cruise once again

#124

Post by gibolt »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #58
wbl wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a word for engineers that program cars to break the law resulting in deaths, and one of the first law codes specifies the appropriate punishment. Tesla is not operating in a way any ethical engineer should tolerate.

GM, who owns Cruise, paid out claims for 124 deaths due to their ignition recall that they were aware of, did not disclose to regulators at the time, and had to forfeit $900 million to the United States government in 2014 [1]. Tesla's Autopilot has been attributed to 12 deaths [2]. Let they who is without engineering sin cast the first stone. Intent and risk appetite is a spectrum. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G…

When quoting those 12 deaths, don't forget that 1) Autopilot is a driver assist feature (like cruise control, driver is always in control and at fault) 2) The majority of those incidents had a driver under the influence

Re: I have formally accepted the CEO job at Cruise once again

#125

Post by Dylan16807 »

kelnos wrote: post #80
walrus01 wrote: post #26

From the last time that Cruise showed up on HN a while back, I recall I made a comment based on the photos of their test vehicles that they're clearly going all-in on LIDAR + RADAR + camera for feeding data into their autonomous onboard navigation computer. This is directly the opposite of what Tesla has mandated their engineers to do, which is to be 100% reliant upon camera systems only. Somebody at Cruise commented…

I do wonder if, deep down, Tesla's decision is rooted in aesthetics. The cars with all the crazy sensing equipment on them are ugly as sin. That really doesn't jive with Tesla's brand at all. A more charitable interpretation may be aerodynamics; making those worse would reduce the car's range. Both of those reasons are of course flimsy, if true: form cannot always come before function.

They can look cool if there's just a little styling effort around the sensors.

Naked cameras jutting out are no better.

Re: I have formally accepted the CEO job at Cruise once again

#126

Post by BoorishBears »

ghostedbycruise wrote: post #108
reTensor wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kyle Vogt was removed from the CEO position in late 2018 after Cruise failed to make progress toward a number of milestones. The milestones were outlined as part of the Cruise acquisition. Dan Ammann took over and made really substantial progress. Ammann is widely considered to be the reason Cruise is where it is today. His record of success was in sharp contrast to Vogt's consistent record of failure. Unfortunately,…

what is Cruise's hiring process like atm? I'm very interested in the AV space as a new grad and have worked on a relevant project with a real vehicle, but never heard back. Is MS the bare minimum required?

I have no degree and got to an onsite with Cruise before cancelling for another role

Ironically I ended up canceling in large part because of the CEO spat.. it gave me some uncertainty about if they were committed to L5. Especially vs serving as GM's L3 supplier while paying L5 lip service indefinitely (and never going public)

Re: I have formally accepted the CEO job at Cruise once again

#127

Post by Dylan16807 »

madamelic wrote: post #97
kelnos wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do wonder if, deep down, Tesla's decision is rooted in aesthetics. The cars with all the crazy sensing equipment on them are ugly as sin. That really doesn't jive with Tesla's brand at all. A more charitable interpretation may be aerodynamics; making those worse would reduce the car's range. Both of those reasons are of course flimsy, if true: form cannot always come before function.

> I do wonder if, deep down, Tesla's decision is rooted in aesthetics. I've always read it as Tesla trying to do a paradigm leap. It seems everyone in self-driving knows you can do it pretty well with a huge variety of sensors, but what if you got extremely good at only camera-based then added in the new sensors. Basically, if you can establish that the very worst case works, you can add in more sensors to go beyond…

You don't have to remove sensors to write code that way.

And what if the best answer is being extremely good at lidar-only and then adding in cameras on top.

Re: I have formally accepted the CEO job at Cruise once again

#128

Post by jliptzin »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #31
walrus01 wrote: post #26

From the last time that Cruise showed up on HN a while back, I recall I made a comment based on the photos of their test vehicles that they're clearly going all-in on LIDAR + RADAR + camera for feeding data into their autonomous onboard navigation computer. This is directly the opposite of what Tesla has mandated their engineers to do, which is to be 100% reliant upon camera systems only. Somebody at Cruise commented…

I would not take Elon and Tesla at face value. While they are currently going all in on cameras, I wouldn't put it past them to 180 and decide "turns out we need new hardware, and we're going to eat the cost considering our revenue and market cap." They recently filed to test new millimeter wave radar equipment operating at 60GHz [1], so I wouldn't say they're married to vision only if it turns out vision only isn't…

Yea, it’s possible they are going all-in on vision only right now because LIDAR is just too expensive right now to roll out to their fleet. If they get it to work without LIDAR, then that’s great. But it’s possible they’re building out a system that can quickly pivot to LIDAR if necessary and when LIDAR costs come down to make it economically feasible as well.

Re: I have formally accepted the CEO job at Cruise once again

#129

Post by rcxdude »

shrubble wrote: post #28

I have a great deal of skepticism concerning fully-autonomous cars, TBH. There are just too many corner cases around weather and sensing, etc., not to mention insurance and other regulatory hurdles. Personally, the idea of "a wire in the road" by which I mean something like cats-eyes in the road but with RFID tags placed every 40 feet, or some other common means maintained by the DOT that all cars can use to sense wh…

It's not neglected, it's just it's basically step zero. Figuring out where the car is in the road is so far down the list of problems a self-driving car needs to solve that if you can't solve it without external aid there's no hope whatsoever you're going to solve the rest of it (like where everything else on the road is and what it's going to do next, unless your plan is everyone who goes out for a walk needs to wear a transponder and indicate as well). What automonous car companies want from the DOT is clearer signage and road markings, and as an added bonus, this also makes human drivers safer as well (but it's not sexy tech, so it tends not to happen).

Re: I have formally accepted the CEO job at Cruise once again

#130

Post by waffle_maniac »

onethought wrote: post #115
waffle_maniac wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm still excited about the LIDAR possibilities but vision alone has done a remarkable job. Not for Tesla. So many interventions. So many situations where the car actively tries to kill the driver and pedestrians.

But it's not finished. Have you asked Cruise testers how many interventions they have had to do in equivalent drives as Tesla FSD Beta? It's strange to me that Tesla who are building this in the open are criticised for being dishonest. Meanwhile ALL the competitors are closed door private development and some how we should trust them more? In an industry that is known for deceitful behaviour.

> Last year, Waymo logged 29,945 autonomous miles between reported disengagements.

https://twitter.com/TaylorOgan/status/1458169984987942913

> Cruise drove 41,719 miles in autonomous mode per disengagement.

> Waymo drove 2.36 million miles autonomously with one accident that was the vehicle's fault.

https://twitter.com/TaylorOgan/status/1495801454111727616

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