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Mercedes is the first automaker to offer Level 3 self-driving in the US

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Re: Mercedes is the first automaker to offer Level 3 self-driving in the US

#141

Post by Dylan16807 »

sgjohnson wrote: post #107
TekMol wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I came here 10 minutes ago, this was the top comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34335123 Calling the article "complete horseshit". That sounds hateful to me.

> Mercedes’ Level 3 conditionally automated driving assistant can, on suitable highway sections and where traffic density is high, offer to take over the driving, leaving the driver free to do something else, like watch a movie or participate in a meeting. Objectively speaking, the article IS complete horseshit, if it resorts to suggesting "watching a movie" or "participating in a meeting". Which has got nothing to d…

Please explain what's horseshit about that?

Watching videos is one of the top things I would probably do while level 3 is engaged, and the writing of that sentence seems fine to me.

Re: Mercedes is the first automaker to offer Level 3 self-driving in the US

#142

Post by akira2501 »

TekMol wrote: post #44
eddsh1994 wrote: post #28

Why's everyone being so negative? This is cool!

For some reason, a large part of HN users seem to hate every fundamentally new technology. It seems the majority here thinks the next 20 years will be like the last 20 years, with only minor, gradial improvements. And every idea of a bigger shift is a scam. I have yet to see a good explanation of this. Maybe this is the case on every forum, simply because that is the prevailing attitude among people in general? Durin…

> It seems the majority here thinks the next 20 years will be like the last 20 years, with only minor, gradial improvements. And every idea of a bigger shift is a scam.

More like the last 200 years will be like the last 200 years. When has there been some truly "giant shift" that swept the world in less than a decade?

The automobile we know today was an outgrowth of the decades of developments of steam engines to farm tractors to passenger vehicles and was only fully enabled once we built the interstate system and has required decades of further development particularly of safety systems to bring us to the comfortable place we are now.

I imagine this technology will eventually be useful, but so many more developments and earned experience needs to be gained before we can build out the rest of the infrastructure that will truly allow this technology to become a ubiquitous improvement over our current state.

It's maybe not that we're negative on the new technology, it's just that we'd like to acknowledge this gap and concentrate on the issues that it creates rather than getting lost in the perennial shine of the new.

Re: Mercedes is the first automaker to offer Level 3 self-driving in the US

#143

Post by ricardobayes »

midoridensha wrote: post #82
foepys wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Germany (where this system is already available) Mercedes takes liability and the system gives the driver a 10 second advanced warning before they have to take over. It's also only available on certain stretches of the Autobahn. If the system allows you to enable it, you can use it. The German law allows autonomous driving up to 130 km/h although Mercedes currently only allows their system to work up to 60 km/h.

>The German law allows autonomous driving up to 130 km/h although Mercedes currently only allows their system to work up to 60 km/h. That's weird; usually laws are behind the tech, not ahead of it.

Sometimes it pays off to have a cool head with tech too: have you ever seen a broken down Mercedes on the side of the road? Well, I just thought about it too, and no, never.

Re: Mercedes is the first automaker to offer Level 3 self-driving in the US

#144

Post by llampx »

ricardobayes wrote: post #140
ahartmetz wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I kind of like it, it's moving away from the overly aggressive looking style of most modern cars. Maybe we can have cars for adults again instead of these Transformers-style designs. A shape that is fit for purpose (aerodynamic) is part of that. BMW and Mercedes switch places periodically in technical and design leadership, and I think it's Mercedes's time. BMW has been going off the rails recently...

As a kid I remember standing in ave when a new car came out, very few cars have that effect anymore (on me). New car design generally is pretty meh nowadays. Seems mid-2000s leading up to 2014-15 was peak.

You also grew up and the world changed in that time. I had the same thing, but I realized it was just my teenage years romanticizing the designs of that era.

Re: Mercedes is the first automaker to offer Level 3 self-driving in the US

#145

Post by whoisburbansky »

tmzt wrote: post #121
spookie wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same, I don't see it happening unless most cars in the road have the capabality of intercommunication to perform sensor fusion with other cars. This implies that everyone gets on board using the same protocol. As for smart roads, what would these imply? Bear in mind maintenance costs and the fact that asphalt is 100% recycled and reusable.

Maybe something as simple as an active RF emitter in the reflective or similar spikes added to the road surface. It wouldn't require a networked infrastructure, or complex standards. Just something capable of penetrating feet of snow or inches of dirt and grime. The car would always have other sensors to fallback on, but this would reduce the amount of time that the DDT disengages due to inclement weather or other ro…

How does one power active RF emitters on miles and miles of road surface? The vast majority of surface level roadway doesn’t even have powered illumination in most places, which leads me to think the lowest hanging fruit for this type of thing would be something passive, like the RF equivalent of cats eyes.

Re: Mercedes is the first automaker to offer Level 3 self-driving in the US

#146

Post by andreareina »

judge2020 wrote: post #23

For reference, level 3 is not exactly well-defined; the main requirements for level 3 over a level 2 system are[0][1]: - OEDR is required, which is "monitoring the driving environment (detecting, recognizing, and classifying objects and events and preparing to respond as needed) and executing an appropriate response to such objects and events (i.e., as needed to complete the DDT and/or DDT fallback [fallback to drive…

The key feature of L3 is that the driver doesn’t have to be attentive all the time. Exactly what road conditions allow for L3 is much less important.

Re: Mercedes is the first automaker to offer Level 3 self-driving in the US

#147

Post by ricardobayes »

TekMol wrote: post #44
eddsh1994 wrote: post #28

Why's everyone being so negative? This is cool!

For some reason, a large part of HN users seem to hate every fundamentally new technology. It seems the majority here thinks the next 20 years will be like the last 20 years, with only minor, gradial improvements. And every idea of a bigger shift is a scam. I have yet to see a good explanation of this. Maybe this is the case on every forum, simply because that is the prevailing attitude among people in general? Durin…

Maybe I'm picking wrong examples, but lately almost every "distruptor" company or tech either turned to be an outright scam or a net negative social outcome.

Re: Mercedes is the first automaker to offer Level 3 self-driving in the US

#148

Post by Toumassa »

ricardobayes wrote: post #139
Toumassa wrote: post #119

Very cool, still dont understand why electric cars got to be ugly ... The design is more like Prius than S-class.. Sorry for being off topic.

Current cars' aerodynamics are optimized on downforce, range comes way down the line. EVs are mostly optimized for range. Blobfish, or water droplet shape is the most aerodyanamic one out there. Once manufacturers figure out battery efficiency, I think we'll see more aesthetic cars out there again. Prius was a notable exception because it also focused on range and efficiency.

That's right, but they could make it look more like a 2016 Mercedes CLS than ... i dont know what this looks like... I mean they could work they 2010-2016 models in terms of aerodynamism. I guess electric cars have to be different..

Re: Mercedes is the first automaker to offer Level 3 self-driving in the US

#149

Post by cypress66 »

lolinder wrote: post #134
czzr wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re correct, but this is the point of this announcement - 10secs to reorient yourself is a lot of time - it’s vastly different to “oops, you’re about to crash in 0.5s, sorry, you’re on your own”

10 seconds may be a lot or a little, depending on what you were doing. Humans are bad at grayscale rules and time estimation, so it's far safer to say "you're either a passenger or a driver" than to say "you're either a passenger or a driver or a person doing something that can easily be switched away from in 10 seconds". A few examples of activities that could be hard to switch away from in time: * Eating breakfast…

10 seconds seems like more than enough even if I were doing those things.

Re: Mercedes is the first automaker to offer Level 3 self-driving in the US

#150

Post by [deleted] »

rogersnm wrote: post #138
Toumassa wrote: post #119

Very cool, still dont understand why electric cars got to be ugly ... The design is more like Prius than S-class.. Sorry for being off topic.

Electric cars struggle with range limitations (compared to their non-electric counterparts), and so manufacturers try to maximise range by reducing the drag co-efficient as much as possible, even at the cost of aesthetics (everything turns into a smooth blob).

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