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Driverless robotaxi fleet paralyzed for hours in San Francisco

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Re: Driverless robotaxi fleet paralyzed for hours in San Francisco

#111

Post by eklitzke »

azth wrote: post #91
AlotOfReading wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Background: I formerly worked at Cruise and specifically wrote large parts of the GNSS data pipeline. I would be surprised if that were the cause. Fine localization should be able to resolve without GNSS input (with caveats) and there are specific tested requirements to be able to tolerate a certain number of minutes of outage even in the absence of LIDAR before position accuracy degrades beyond acceptable limits. It…

What was the stack used to write such a system? Was it a lot of C++? And what storage systems did they use? Sounds pretty cool.

I don't know about the GNSS pipeline specifically but I used to work at Cruise, and most things at Cruise are written in C++ (although there's a smattering of Python for data/ML code that runs offboard).

Re: Driverless robotaxi fleet paralyzed for hours in San Francisco

#112

Post by AlotOfReading »

13of40 wrote: post #78
AlotOfReading wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone in the autonomous driving industry, maybe I can contribute a different perspective. I totally agree that better designed cities would be superior. When I took the initiative to participate in my local government, I was screamed and cursed at for the most trivial improvements imaginable, like a shared bike lane on a few miles of a particularly dangerous street. Multiply that by the opposition to actual impr…

Not totally on topic, but what's your take on being able to roll out autonomous vehicles in places with more "fluid" driving habits? I've driven in some crazy environments in the past, but I just came back from a very large country (let's call it an eighth of the world's population) where I can't imagine renting a car and driving there because of the near complete disregard they have for official traffic rules. Obvio…

Depends on what you mean and what you think driver behavior will be like. "Able to avoid hitting other things in a dense environment, but may not make forward progress" is fairly straightforward from the current state-of-the-art (though not necessarily easy!).

There's a reasonable argument to be made that making forward progress while remaining safe when intelligent agents are willing to play chicken requires a good theory of mind, but I can't formalize it. It's "just a hunch", but that seems like a Hard Problem to me and not necessarily something we'll completely solve soon. There's been work along these lines with statistical/ML methods, but my personal suspicion is that existing work would quickly fall apart in a truly hostile environment.

There's also the discussion around navigating non-roads, potholes, and other infrastructural issues that the industry hasn't solved yet. I don't think these are insurmountable, just difficult engineering issues.

Re: Driverless robotaxi fleet paralyzed for hours in San Francisco

#113

Post by R0b0t1 »

KyeRussell wrote: post #64
basicplus2 wrote: post #60

It would be more efficient and safer to have wires buried beneath roads which show correct positioning and transmit info regarding which road it is, direction etc in case of gps position errors or failures

Self-driving becomes orders of magnitude easier when you start making these sorts of changes to road infrastructure, yes. The conceit that needs to be made is that it isn’t going to happen

His suggestion is reasonably cheap, however. The sawing machines already exist for embedding the car sense wires at traffic lights. Reusing traffic lights (where there will be power and may be a telephone or other connection) could work for this.

Re: Driverless robotaxi fleet paralyzed for hours in San Francisco

#114

Post by azov »

37ef_ced3 wrote: post #92

From a customer's perspective, it isn't clear that a software taxi driver is in any way better than a human taxi driver, particularly with (human) driver assist preventing collisions and all the other warnings provided by a modern car. In both cases someone else is driving for the customer. With a human driver (plus driver assist braking and collision warnings) you have the most flexible, sophisticated intelligence o…

> The robotaxi can only compete on price because that's its only advantage.

With robotaxi you get a driver that:

  - never gets tired
  - never gets distracted
  - never gets drunk
  - never gets upset
  - never falls asleep 
  - has reaction time in milliseconds
  - ...
Of course it has tons of problems of its own, but it's not like price is the only advantage over human driver.

Re: Driverless robotaxi fleet paralyzed for hours in San Francisco

#115

Post by bmicraft »

jerlam wrote: post #45

There is currently some kind of geomagnetic storm which is causing a lot of GPS tracks to be offset over the past few days. It's all over the running/cycling forums. Could be related, here's an example: https://old.reddit.com/r/Garmin/comments/vo17e2/the_magnetic...

People in that thread are reporting a problem with gps + glonass while galileo on the same frequency as gps is fine.

Re: Driverless robotaxi fleet paralyzed for hours in San Francisco

#117

Post by charcircuit »

Barrin92 wrote: post #107
charcircuit wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If you want fully automated, efficient transport this technology already exists, it's train and subway systems You still need cars for going from point A to the train station and from the other train station to point B.

I'm in my 30s and I don't have a drivers license. You don't need a car at all in any city that's built around public transportation. I've lived in Tokyo for many years, the greater metropolitan area has something like 38 million people, and I think a majority of households does not own a car in the prefecture. God gave us two legs, they work wonders between train stations.

Not everyone lives in a city. I don't want to spend hours walking to the nearest equivalent of a konbini and back.

Re: Driverless robotaxi fleet paralyzed for hours in San Francisco

#118

Post by sroussey »

bko wrote: post #34
xyst wrote: post #10

all of this time and money wasted on driverless cars has been a complete failure. companies and cities should be investing their time into improving public transportation and designing our cities to be more walkable and make alternate modes of transportation more feasible. the US culture of using a car for everyday transportation is fucking insane, wasteful, and contributes to the rising cost of living across the US…

> $80 Billion Has Been Spent on Self-Driving Cars With Nothing to Show for It. [0] That's a lot of money sure, but what could that get you if it was spent on infrastructure? That couldn't even pay for a 500 mile high speed rail from LA to San Fransisco which is now going to cost at least $110 billion [1]. [0] https://www.treehugger.com/praise-dumb-transportation-self-d... [1] https://www.constructiondive.com/news/cal…

And how, exactly, do the investors get like 5x their money back in less than 10 years?

Re: Driverless robotaxi fleet paralyzed for hours in San Francisco

#119

Post by aqfamnzc »

bmicraft wrote: post #115
jerlam wrote: post #45

There is currently some kind of geomagnetic storm which is causing a lot of GPS tracks to be offset over the past few days. It's all over the running/cycling forums. Could be related, here's an example: https://old.reddit.com/r/Garmin/comments/vo17e2/the_magnetic...

People in that thread are reporting a problem with gps + glonass while galileo on the same frequency as gps is fine.

Could it be using a different protocol or CRC system that's more resistant to that type of issue perhaps? There must be some difference, otherwise it would just be more GPS, right?

Re: Driverless robotaxi fleet paralyzed for hours in San Francisco

#120

Post by aqfamnzc »

AlotOfReading wrote: post #5
CTDOCodebases wrote: post #2

Could this just be a simple case of GPS jamming?

Background: I formerly worked at Cruise and specifically wrote large parts of the GNSS data pipeline. I would be surprised if that were the cause. Fine localization should be able to resolve without GNSS input (with caveats) and there are specific tested requirements to be able to tolerate a certain number of minutes of outage even in the absence of LIDAR before position accuracy degrades beyond acceptable limits. It…

For fine localization, are they using dead reckoning with steering angle and vehicle speed instead of GNSS?
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