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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

#221

Post by lsllc »

tjohns wrote: post #79
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...

NOAA doesn't list any meaningful geomagnetic storms right now: https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/communities/space-weather-enthusia... But that aside, I'd really hope that these cars are using professional WAAS-capable GPS receivers. Short of a major X-class flare which knocks out the WAAS geostationary satellites, the entire point of the system is to correct for these kinds of disturbances to the GPS signals.

I just read about a sunspot that recently doubled in size [0] and maybe launched a CME in our direction -- we don't really know due to a power outage at Stanford University that took the SDO offline [1], anyway food for thought, maybe it's coincidence.

[0] https://scitechdaily.com/auroras-incoming-giant-sunspot-has-...

[1] https://interestingengineering.com/a-huge-solar-eruption

Re: Driverless robotaxi fleet paralyzed for hours in San Francisco

#222

Post by cultofmetatron »

nradov wrote: post #171
cultofmetatron wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

we only have bags full of groceries because zoning prohibits grocery stores being near where people live in most place. So you need a car and since its a pain, you migt as well stock up on as much as you can while you're at it. If it were, you'd probably just go on a 10 minute walk and pickup enough for two days of food.

That's fine for young childless people. For families with multiple children it's a huge hassle to have to have to shop like that. Growing kids eat a lot. And when you buy heavy items like watermelon or milk or whole frozen chickens it's just not easy to carry. Much easier to drive a big car to a big box store and stock up on everything needed for a week.

plenty of people with young children in Europe and latin Americs manage to do just fine this way from what I've seen.

Re: Driverless robotaxi fleet paralyzed for hours in San Francisco

#223

Post by asdff »

nradov wrote: post #171
cultofmetatron wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

we only have bags full of groceries because zoning prohibits grocery stores being near where people live in most place. So you need a car and since its a pain, you migt as well stock up on as much as you can while you're at it. If it were, you'd probably just go on a 10 minute walk and pickup enough for two days of food.

That's fine for young childless people. For families with multiple children it's a huge hassle to have to have to shop like that. Growing kids eat a lot. And when you buy heavy items like watermelon or milk or whole frozen chickens it's just not easy to carry. Much easier to drive a big car to a big box store and stock up on everything needed for a week.

You don't have to carry it, you can get one of those grocery carts. I see people bring them on my bus full of groceries.

Re: Driverless robotaxi fleet paralyzed for hours in San Francisco

#224

Post by oconnor663 »

jjulius wrote: 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.…

Of course it's a cause for concern. It's a perfectly reasonable concern. It's just about certain that early fleets will have big outages for dumb reasons, just like major websites do. The question will be how frequent those are, how dangerous they are, and how effective the mitigations will be as everything matures.

As with many of things related to self-driving cars, the target doesn't have to be "perfection" so much as "better than people on average". Human drivers do dumb things in large groups all the time, like highway pileups in bad weather, or rubbernecking traffic jams. I don't think all the humans on earth ever stopped driving at the same time, though, so...that'll be a first :p

Re: Driverless robotaxi fleet paralyzed for hours in San Francisco

#225

Post by asdff »

robbrown451 wrote: post #204
jen20 wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And are you expecting me to carry bags of groceries on the train? How's that work? What exactly do you think people without cars do, or people who live in London? Or New York City? It works perfectly fine. Or you get can groceries delivered pretty easily and cheaply.

Sure. I mean, you can. I live in San Francisco and as often as not, walk to the grocery store. But it's a pain carrying bags around. Not everyone in the world is going to be ok with that when they are used to just packing a bunch of bags in a car. It's ridiculously unrealistic to think that everyone... including the elderly, etc ... will be happy to just use a train that might be a many block walk on each end. Yes yo…

I see the elderly in LA carry groceries on the bus all the time. They use a grocery cart. Solves the problem.

Re: Driverless robotaxi fleet paralyzed for hours in San Francisco

#226

Post by yupper32 »

bee_rider wrote: post #203
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...

It couldn't possibly be GPS, right? Networks are unreliable, the cars must be able to reach a safe state if the network drops out. They appear to have stopped in the road. If these cars can't safely navigate their way to the side of the road using local sensors, they are wildly, hilariously unsuited for autonomous operation. > at least a dozen autonomous Chevrolet Bolts from GM Cruise Automation were spotted blocking…

> If these cars can't safely navigate their way to the side of the road using local sensors, they are wildly, hilariously unsuited for autonomous operation.

You are a lot more confident than me that this isn't the case.

Re: Driverless robotaxi fleet paralyzed for hours in San Francisco

#227

Post by seoaeu »

dbcurtis wrote: post #218
al_borland wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd be curious on the statistics related to new under-developed FSD software vs a new teenage driver. The only way for either of these things to get better is through real-world experience.

Actually, autonomous driving stacks can get better doing millions of miles in simulation. The teen, not so much.

Target practice on pedestrians and stationary objects? Just because self driving software can get better from simulation doesn’t mean it will

Re: Driverless robotaxi fleet paralyzed for hours in San Francisco

#228

Post by HHC-Hunter »

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #172
mh- wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EDIT: the following is incorrect per a reply below. Will leave the original comment below. --- That was going to be my hypothesis. GPS resolution can be reduced in a conflict area. I'll defer to someone with actual knowledge to add more info. :)

I believe the government promised not to ever reduce GPS resolution some 15 years ago, and new satellites supposedly do not even have the ability to do so.

Oh my sweet summer child.

Re: Driverless robotaxi fleet paralyzed for hours in San Francisco

#229

Post by jfim »

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.

C and C++ are used pretty extensively in the embedded world. For a lot of safety critical stuff though, typically a safer subset of those languages are used, such as MISRA C and MISRA C++, alongside static checkers and validated toolchains.

Re: Driverless robotaxi fleet paralyzed for hours in San Francisco

#230

Post by asdff »

macintux wrote: post #201
astrange wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing you want is micromobility (ebikes and scooters). A car isn't a good way to get groceries, it's a money pit that makes you out of shape while also being entirely capable of killing you or someone else's children. It's designed for the highway and not good for anything slower than that.

There’s a significant percentage of the population for whom ebikes and scooters are an impossibility, but who can still drive or be driven.

And for how many of their trips do they actually need a two tonne automobile instead of e.g. an electric rickshaw or golf cart? Sure not everyone can walk, not everyone can bike, but its still insane to think that for every trip most humans take, 95% of the energy consumed is going to just moving the vehicle around versus you.
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