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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

#341

Post by planb »

rob_c wrote: post #326
sleepychu wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you have to give up point to point, of course the overall throughput is better but the individual experience is (perceived) worse. This is why I love the idea of "public luxury" make sitting on a train or a bus nicer than sitting in a brand new mercedes.

Quoted post unavailable.

Harsh reply for a perfectly valid argument. I'm all for pushing public transport, but in most places of the world it is still more convenient to drive a car for 20 minutes than to walk 5 minutes, jump in a bus for 5 minutes, wait for 10 minutes at a station, jump in a train for 15 minutes, walk 5 minutes, even if you have to drive yourself. And remember we were talking about self-driving cars here.

Re: Driverless robotaxi fleet paralyzed for hours in San Francisco

#342

Post by octoberfranklin »

Smerity wrote: post #57

I saw a version of this myself at Geary and Mason around midnight on June 20th[1]. That it happened again but at a larger scale ten days later is deeply concerning. Given I had no clue what state the vehicles were in, and that they'd start moving without indication, it felt pretty damn worrying. [1]: https://twitter.com/Smerity/status/1539144641206882304

> I had no clue what state the vehicles were in

"Murderbot mode". Or rather, transitioning into it. But they got stuck, which is why you're still alive.

Re: Driverless robotaxi fleet paralyzed for hours in San Francisco

#343

Post by inglor_cz »

gambiting wrote: post #280
oconnor663 wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 muc…

>>the target doesn't have to be "perfection" so much as "better than people on average". You see, I completely disagree with this assumption. They should be perfect or they shouldn't be allowed on the road at all. You wouldn't accept a bread slicer that sometimes erroneously slices off your fingers, as long as it does so less frequently than people slice their own fingers on average, would you?

I am a pretty bad, easily distracted driver and it is actually one of the reasons why I stopped driving.

I would definitely use a robotaxi system that drives better than an average person. I already take taxis driven by someone else, which means that I take some risks anyway.

Re: Driverless robotaxi fleet paralyzed for hours in San Francisco

#344

Post by atoav »

sleepychu wrote: post #318
bjoli wrote: post #316

The promises of self driving cars have always seemed weird to me. Sure, I would love to have a world where all cars are self driving. The security benefits seem large. But decreasing congestion? We already know how to do that, and in many ways it seems like a safer bet than some kind of technogy with large problems and even larger unknowns; public transport. Cheap, well developed, reliable public transport will beat…

But you have to give up point to point, of course the overall throughput is better but the individual experience is (perceived) worse. This is why I love the idea of "public luxury" make sitting on a train or a bus nicer than sitting in a brand new mercedes.

Easy: If you have shitty public transport you are gonna have a shitty experience in it. If you have a well funded, well planned and embeded public transport system, you will have a good time.

But this costs more than just money — it costs space. And if you are doing it right it also costs you road space (busses and streetcars only make sense of they have their own uninterrupted lanes for the most part).

Re: Driverless robotaxi fleet paralyzed for hours in San Francisco

#345

Post by atoav »

planb wrote: post #341
rob_c wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

Harsh reply for a perfectly valid argument. I'm all for pushing public transport, but in most places of the world it is still more convenient to drive a car for 20 minutes than to walk 5 minutes, jump in a bus for 5 minutes, wait for 10 minutes at a station, jump in a train for 15 minutes, walk 5 minutes, even if you have to drive yourself. And remember we were talking about self-driving cars here.

Where I live the subway is typically faster than the car because of congestion and parking place search. And the bicycle is faster than the subway, because it goes the direct way.

Re: Driverless robotaxi fleet paralyzed for hours in San Francisco

#346

Post by lozenge »

lolc wrote: post #323
booi wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think they would. There's at least 3 fully operational GPS alternatives, there's no reason to have this capability anymore. Some receivers will combine all of these systems.

All these systems are rigged to jam and spoof at the push of a button I expect.

They are owned by: China, Russia, India, Europe and Japan.

Re: Driverless robotaxi fleet paralyzed for hours in San Francisco

#347

Post by benj111 »

valdiorn wrote: post #338
CTDOCodebases wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could it be GPS spoofing that is causing this then?

Malice, incompetence, all that jazz...

Still. I would expect some kind of sanity check so that they aren't stopping in the middle of the road.

If local sensors tell you the road is blocked, fine. But if remote data tells you one thing, and local sensors tell you something else, the fail safe should be pulling over to the side of the road.

Re: Driverless robotaxi fleet paralyzed for hours in San Francisco

#348

Post by dasv »

mellavora wrote: post #315
jrockway wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not really seeing anything weird with GNSS. I have a continuously-operating receiver that writes its location into a database every second; I did a query over the last 30 days and there is no abnormal deviation in position. (My receiver is in a terrible location that can only see a tiny sliver of the sky, and is single-band, so I expect about a +/- 50cm deviation without RTK correction and that's what I'm seeing.…

> my non expert opinion Yes, clearly given the detail in your post, you are "not an expert". Thanks for being on HN and making this site great.

There is a lot of depth to GNSS! I could do what jrockway did on the grandparent comment and I would not define myself either as anything near an expert on the field.

Re: Driverless robotaxi fleet paralyzed for hours in San Francisco

#349

Post by l33tman »

henryteeare wrote: post #332
_flux wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dead reckoning works surprisingly well at least in Teslas, of which the precision can be seen when they move around in underground facilities and finally resurface: the car pops up pretty close to the entry point. In any case, aren't all self-driving vehicles equipped with lidars and work in pre-mapped regions? I would 100% expect they are able to just use those maps with lidar to precisely geolocate themselves, prob…

> aren't all self-driving vehicles equipped with lidars I believe Tesla has made a lot of noise about not using lidar.[0] [0]: https://venturebeat.com/2021/07/03/tesla-ai-chief-explains-w...

In this context Tesla is not an example of a self-driving car I think, what was discussed was robo-taxis and I think all of them have lidar
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