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Driverless robotaxi fleet paralyzed for hours in San Francisco

thelastdriverlicenseholder.com

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Re: Driverless robotaxi fleet paralyzed for hours in San Francisco

#191

Post by Gigachad »

AlotOfReading wrote: post #124
azth wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>The system as a whole used C, C++

It all makes sense now. Astounding its legal to use C/++ in a safety critical situation.

Re: Driverless robotaxi fleet paralyzed for hours in San Francisco

#192

Post by KennyBlanken »

pj_mukh wrote: post #83
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...

Highly doubt they'd be using GPS for anything more than putting them in the right neighborhood. Edit: Looks like someone ex-Cruise confirmed this ITT

That's not what the comment said. They said the system can tolerate degradation / loss of GPS data for periods of time, in certain circumstances:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31940167

> 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.

Re: Driverless robotaxi fleet paralyzed for hours in San Francisco

#193

Post by Gigachad »

LeoPanthera wrote: post #95
bigiain wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except for when Tesla find out you've bought it 2nd hand, and revoke the FSD... (Or, you know, when you get into a Twitter shitslinging match with Elon...)

It's so tiresome that this (mostly false) story keeps coming up. The short version of the truth: The original owner did not buy AP. AP was enabled because of a bug. The dealer listed it as having AP included because, at the time, it was enabled. When ownership was transferred, the glitch was corrected, and AP was removed. The new owner bitched very loudly to the press, and Tesla restored AP to the car, for free, even…

From the users perspective, they purchased a car advertised with a feature. They could see it functioning. An over the air update removed the feature that they had "purchased" and tested. Yeah, I'd be mad as well.

Good that Tesla resolved the problem but there is reason to be mad about a company retroactively removing features from a product.

Re: Driverless robotaxi fleet paralyzed for hours in San Francisco

#194

Post by Gigachad »

stakkur wrote: post #178

Everyone wanted autonomous cars, forgetting that the cost was their own autonomy.

The cost is propping up the clearly broken car centric transport model. Autonomous trains are massively simpler and more reliable. With massively lower risks of harm.

Re: Driverless robotaxi fleet paralyzed for hours in San Francisco

#195

Post by Gigachad »

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…

The problem is much more widespread than just self driving cars. The US follows the model of making driving as predictable and event free as possible. Which results in people driving as fast as possible while paying the least attention. When someone does something unpredictable in the usually predicable environment, it results in death.

While its quite proven that slow, chaotic, and unpredictable environments are so much safer. Notice how walking through an all directions intersection crossing is incredibly chaotic, and yet no one collides with anyone else, or even when they do, it results in basically no harm.

Re: Driverless robotaxi fleet paralyzed for hours in San Francisco

#196

Post by kortilla »

thescriptkiddie wrote: post #61
mrshadowgoose wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Public transportation could take the form of government-owned fleets of self-driving electric cars :) I love going directly from point A to B in a private space and I'm not ashamed to admit it. This provides value to my life in the form of comfort and convenience, factors that are so frequently waved away as irrelevant by anyone screaming "car culture". However, it's admittedly obscene that for this privledge, my veh…

> Public transportation could take the form of government-owned fleets of self-driving electric cars It absolutely could not, here simply is not enough space for all those cars. A heavy rail metro line can carry up to 60 thousand passengers per hour per direction, which is the equivalent of a 30 lane highway.

> A heavy rail metro line can carry up to 60 thousand passengers per hour per direction, which is the equivalent of a 30 lane highway.

Where did this stat come from? Caltrain fits about 650 and couldn’t possibly run once per 45 seconds to achieve that.

Re: Driverless robotaxi fleet paralyzed for hours in San Francisco

#197

Post by syntheweave »

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…

If I can hire a robotaxi, I never need to own a vehicle larger than what I need to commute; I can just fill up a rented vehicle with whatever cargo I'm hauling, let the taxi chauffeur the kids to school, etc.

Today's auto fleets are idle 95% of the time, because everyone overspecs capacity for the worst case. Marginal level 4 self-driving is sufficient to disrupt this. The savings in being able to downsize personal vehicles and hand off logistics to a third party are huge for individuals and also improve land use - hunting for parking space disappears, and every parking lot can subsequently downsize too.

Re: Driverless robotaxi fleet paralyzed for hours in San Francisco

#198

Post by mertd »

mbil wrote: post #174
paulpauper wrote: post #109

It's amazing how driverless taxies are a reality now . It shows how there is progress being made as much as there is talk about stagnation.

I rode in one recently. It was pretty smooth. An interesting thing: the car slowed to a stop in the middle of the street, and I couldn't immediately tell why. There was a row of parked cars on the roadside, and a person was walking around one of them to open her trunk. I guess the car was able to spot her in the dark and opted to pause. So we were stopped there. The woman threw her hands up as if to say, "whatcha loo…

This encounter is very on brand for San Francisco.

Re: Driverless robotaxi fleet paralyzed for hours in San Francisco

#199

Post by apstats »

ErikVandeWater wrote: post #48
apstats wrote: post #8

People may get annoyed at cruise for this, but imo it’s still not as bad as the constant blocking of bike lanes and stopping in the middle of the road by human ride share drivers.

Serious question: Do the police know how to ticket a robotaxi?

I assume that traffic violations like this are handled differently than those with a human driver given the permitting and reporting required for the self driving companies operating in SF. That said it’s SF so who knows…

Re: Driverless robotaxi fleet paralyzed for hours in San Francisco

#200

Post by AlotOfReading »

Gigachad wrote: post #191
AlotOfReading wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>The system as a whole used C, C++ It all makes sense now. Astounding its legal to use C/++ in a safety critical situation.

Yep, I somewhat agree. The C mostly comes from Linux [1]. For the rest, "there are reasons".

[1] https://ossna2020.sched.com/event/c3QN/there-is-no-store-for...

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