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Driverless robotaxi fleet paralyzed for hours in San Francisco

thelastdriverlicenseholder.com

121–130 of 514 posts

Re: Driverless robotaxi fleet paralyzed for hours in San Francisco

#121
post #96

With all of the talk, usually around Teslas but I suppose it applies to all EVs, that I've seen over the years akin to, "Just imagine how safe driving will be when every vehicle is FSD and can talk to one another," I have to ask... shouldn't we anticipate seeing similar issues to this in that scenario? I mean yeah, there will be different manufacturers so it's not like every car in a city could come to a standstill.…

> "Just imagine how safe driving will be when every vehicle is FSD and can talk to one another," Some genius 10x'er forgets to carry the 1 or something, and all of a sudden an entire city full of cars all collide with pedestrians all at once.

And that will usher in the great Engineering licensing requirements for building high-risk software.

Re: Driverless robotaxi fleet paralyzed for hours in San Francisco

#122
I would expect the first driverless vehicles to be something like buses, metros, ferrys, etc. Something that always follow a predetermine route should have an easier time than a cab that must be able to drive basically anywhere. Still has to deal with unexpected things of course, the real world is chaotic, but AI manufacturers should try to limit the variables as much as they if they want to give a good showing to get more adoption.

Re: Driverless robotaxi fleet paralyzed for hours in San Francisco

#123
post #96

With all of the talk, usually around Teslas but I suppose it applies to all EVs, that I've seen over the years akin to, "Just imagine how safe driving will be when every vehicle is FSD and can talk to one another," I have to ask... shouldn't we anticipate seeing similar issues to this in that scenario? I mean yeah, there will be different manufacturers so it's not like every car in a city could come to a standstill.…

Given the list of things that could go horribly wrong with self driving vehicles, incidents like these are only a minor, harmless inconvenience.

The more immediate concern is self driving vehicles that are clearly not ready to be on public roads being allowed to test (or not being pulled off the roads).

Re: Driverless robotaxi fleet paralyzed for hours in San Francisco

#124
post #91

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.

The system as a whole used C, C++, Python, and some Java/JS-family stuff in the infrastructure backends. You can find a long tail of other languages scattered throughout the organization, like Go, Rust, Lisps, and Swift, etc. I wrote a fare-cost-calculator in Mathematica awhile ago, as an example.

As for storage systems, no idea. The stuff I know was all custom, but I was deep in the stack most of the time and don't do much with databases.

Re: Driverless robotaxi fleet paralyzed for hours in San Francisco

#125

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…

I'm curious if the vehicles also use an INS system ties to an IGS.

Re: Driverless robotaxi fleet paralyzed for hours in San Francisco

#126

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…

> From a customer's perspective, it isn't clear that a software taxi driver is in any way better than a human taxi driver

The taxi driver having 0% chance of raping or stealing you would be prominent a clear win.

Or really any of many many other issues you could have with an actual human person with a specific world view and social position interacting with you. Not even considering if you yourself have specific shortcommings (fear of social interactions etc.)

It wouldn't be fair to pit a perfect human against the self driving car, there are many other stuff to be consided outside of the sheer driving competence.

Re: Driverless robotaxi fleet paralyzed for hours in San Francisco

#127
post #75
post #54

Was there a referendum in SF on allowing this public beta of driverless cars to happen? Or was it decided by some “forward-thinking” officials? All seems premature if you ask me.

SF City County does not have authority to regulate self driving vehicles. Same issue with Uber, regulated by state.

[Parent didn’t say it but headline does] Taxis though?

Re: Driverless robotaxi fleet paralyzed for hours in San Francisco

#128
post #53
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could be but a much more likely cause is a software update that went bad. Likely the cloud rained on them.

I don’t update any software I work on without canaries and a slow (order of days) roll-out, you think the bug manifested for a big chunk of the fleet?

It seems odd they are bunched together in one spot. Maybe these were the canaries?

Re: Driverless robotaxi fleet paralyzed for hours in San Francisco

#129
Why Google is allowed to run a robotaxi service in megacity is beyond me. Google invades its users privacy and keeps users hostages for money. What can one expect from a company like Google when it runs a service in physical world? Something very harmful to humanity.

Re: Driverless robotaxi fleet paralyzed for hours in San Francisco

#130
post #96

With all of the talk, usually around Teslas but I suppose it applies to all EVs, that I've seen over the years akin to, "Just imagine how safe driving will be when every vehicle is FSD and can talk to one another," I have to ask... shouldn't we anticipate seeing similar issues to this in that scenario? I mean yeah, there will be different manufacturers so it's not like every car in a city could come to a standstill.…

I’m personally little concern about some horrible mistake resulting in a GTA negative friction carmageddon… either through a bug or hacking

https://youtu.be/ifTIuA8Dq58

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