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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

#351

Post by phh »

OptionX wrote: post #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 ge…

Well this is already ongoing. In France:

We already have automated (no staff in train) metros (Paris' 14, Paris' 1, soon Paris' 4, Paris' Orlyval, Rennes' a/b just for the ones I've used)

I remember there was a prototype bus (12 person size ~) at La Défense - with a staff always on board, and I see that now there is "EZ10" in Toulouse, but I remember seeing also other lines as well. I'm pretty confident there are many all across the world.

Re: Driverless robotaxi fleet paralyzed for hours in San Francisco

#352

Post by elpescado »

Flankk wrote: post #294
carlmr wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It could be a middle ground kind of thing. The cars have to trust something . For position you have GPS + some interpolation based on your movement sensors + some buildings/streets and maps (also unreliable since construction etc changes a lot, a lot of buildings and intersections look the same, etc). Computers are very far away from understanding where they are from context alone. Hell most humans don't know where t…

Obviously there is no failsafe that pulls the car over, otherwise you would see that the cars had pulled over. This might be annoying on city streets but imagine if it were on the highway. An almost guaranteed 50 car pileup. If history is any guide, this will actually happen in the next few years and be followed by a lawsuit and regulation.

That's assuming that there's a space to pull over, which is often not the case on city streets. Especially, when every AV wants to pull over.

Re: Driverless robotaxi fleet paralyzed for hours in San Francisco

#353

Post by dasv »

zaarn wrote: post #285
mh- wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, that is what my (perhaps outdated?) understanding was.

What is said is the current capabilities. All other GNS systems have the same capabilities (though European GNS Galileo has some more modern features and the Soviet one is a bit of a shitshow)

This submission is worrying me a bit, my company's product depends on GPS+GLONASS with RTK assistance at high latitudes for high accuracy high frequency positioning.

The NTRIP RTK services we use just provides assistance for GPS+GLONASS, no Galileo or BeiDou. GLONASS is crucial because the satellite orbits are more visible at high latitudes providing better reception. Still, RTK should help cope with this problem but I might have to check last week's collections.

Re: Driverless robotaxi fleet paralyzed for hours in San Francisco

#354

Post by atoav »

LtWorf wrote: post #317
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 it's not nearly as profitable…

Profitable. For whom?

For the municipiality a 6 lane street vs a two lane street with public transport and bicycle lanes can make the difference between neverending debt and prosperity. Places with good public transport and bicycle infrastructure and denser mixed use pay more tax revenue. Spread out urban sprawls and suburbs give the municipiality a lot of street surface to maintain, for very little tax revenue in return.

A good introduction on that part is the strong towns playlist by the youtube channel Not Just Bikes: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=y_SXXTBypIg

Re: Driverless robotaxi fleet paralyzed for hours in San Francisco

#355

Post by ls15 »

IAmWorried wrote: post #336
SheinhardtWigCo wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've nailed the dirty little secret of the AV industry. Everyone's safety model is underpinned by the ridiculous assumption that a human will be (a) reachable with very high reliability over shitty cellular networks; (b) able to correctly interpret complex situations with extremely limited information; (c) able to resolve safety-critical situations by making planner adjustments, without direct control over steering…

Wow. I had no idea that these things had such fundamental limitations. I'd feel a lot less safer using one now, to be honest. If you had to estimate, how long would it be before AVs would be able to do all their calculations locally? Is that something that's even under consideration at the time?

It is probably a chicken-and-egg problem. They need the data from these scenarios, so they can train the local model for later iterations accordingly.

Re: Driverless robotaxi fleet paralyzed for hours in San Francisco

#357

Post by throw_5202 »

elpescado wrote: post #352
Flankk wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obviously there is no failsafe that pulls the car over, otherwise you would see that the cars had pulled over. This might be annoying on city streets but imagine if it were on the highway. An almost guaranteed 50 car pileup. If history is any guide, this will actually happen in the next few years and be followed by a lawsuit and regulation.

That's assuming that there's a space to pull over, which is often not the case on city streets. Especially, when every AV wants to pull over.

Stopping as close to a curb as possible is still better than stopping in the middle of the line. And much better than stopping on an intersection.

Re: Driverless robotaxi fleet paralyzed for hours in San Francisco

#358

Post by jakzurr »

gambiting wrote: post #339
Peleus wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The bait and switch with this comparison is you're comparing something you have no control over (bread slicer which randomly malfunctions) against something you have full control over (my own cutting abilities). No one thinks their cutting ability is inferior, so of course they don't want to give up control, because they are (obviously) better than the average human. If I posed the question as: Would you prefer to pl…

Ok, maybe a different, well known example - the radiation Theraphy Therac-25 machines which would sometimes(extremely rarely) deliver a lethal dose of radiation instead of the one entered. Undoubtedly those machines saved more lives than they took, and also it's without question that they did so more accurately than any human operated machine could ever do. Yet they are considered one of the biggest failures of medic…

Would I be incorrect to suppose that you don't use seatbelts?

Re: Driverless robotaxi fleet paralyzed for hours in San Francisco

#359

Post by stavros »

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.

Eh, most large European cities manage just fine, the car is often the slowest or the least convenient mode.
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