Google Street View: A wolf in sheep’s clothing • Hacker News Board

Re: Google Street View: A wolf in sheep’s clothing

#61

Post by koide » Wed, Jun 06, 2012, 2:27 PM UTC

jessriedel wrote: post #59

koide wrote: post #17

Everyone who took Sebastian Thrun's Udacity "Building a self driving car" course (or everybody that has had training in robotics) will see that there's a whole lot more than mere training data to build a self driving car. It could be helpful in certain scenarios, but it's for sure not enough for the data for the cars to be the main reason behind street view. As the author himself notices, the map business is huge, an…

> It could be helpful in certain scenarios, but it's for sure not enough for the data for the cars to be the main reason behind street view. Your logic doesn't go through. Driverless cars are potentially worth hundreds of billions of dollars annually . It could easily be worth hundreds of millions of dollars to make them 2% better.

What I'm saying is that the data alone won't make self driving cars much better, nor bring driverless cars much closer to reality.

Re: Google Street View: A wolf in sheep’s clothing

#62

Post by jessriedel » Wed, Jun 06, 2012, 2:35 PM UTC

koide wrote: post #61

jessriedel wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It could be helpful in certain scenarios, but it's for sure not enough for the data for the cars to be the main reason behind street view. Your logic doesn't go through. Driverless cars are potentially worth hundreds of billions of dollars annually . It could easily be worth hundreds of millions of dollars to make them 2% better.

What I'm saying is that the data alone won't make self driving cars much better, nor bring driverless cars much closer to reality.

Sure, but that really doesn't address the OP's assertion.

Re: Google Street View: A wolf in sheep’s clothing

#63

Post by koide » Wed, Jun 06, 2012, 3:02 PM UTC

jessriedel wrote: post #62

koide wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I'm saying is that the data alone won't make self driving cars much better, nor bring driverless cars much closer to reality.

Sure, but that really doesn't address the OP's assertion.

How so? If that data alone won't bring significant improvements, how could it be the primary reason behind its collection? Much more likely they are collecting the data mainly for other applications and have the self driving car data as a nice addon.

Re: Google Street View: A wolf in sheep’s clothing

#64

Post by idspispopd » Wed, Jun 06, 2012, 3:18 PM UTC

riffraff wrote: post #39

uuilly wrote: post #33

I worked for a company that made the first two street view systems. They also contributed a lot to the robocar project and eventually got bought by google to work on Chauffeur. The sensors and math that provide the perception component of chauffeur are, for conversational purposes, identical to those of street view. But the two teams are not working together. The demands of each project are too different.

it also feels that in some cases the data would simply be useless, e.g. data collected in rome and other historical cities by pedaling bikes in pedestrian areas.

I agree, the author mistakes that any kind of driving is all that is needed to build the driverless car system. When so far it's been revealed that the current level of technology requires the same route to be driven many times. I.E. It's not generalised yet, and not the trojan horse purported to be. (That and the driverless car relies on technology with a resolution that was not originally available when the street view program originally launched.)

Re: Google Street View: A wolf in sheep’s clothing

#65

Post by jessriedel » Wed, Jun 06, 2012, 4:55 PM UTC

koide wrote: post #63

jessriedel wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but that really doesn't address the OP's assertion.

How so? If that data alone won't bring significant improvements, how could it be the primary reason behind its collection? Much more likely they are collecting the data mainly for other applications and have the self driving car data as a nice addon.

Buying paper clips won't bring a significant improvement to my office productivity--less than 1%, I would say--but it's still true that the primary reason for buying paper clips is to improve productivity. It's just that paper clips are so cheap compared to the value of my total office output that it's still worth buying them for a tiny improvement. This is all still true if I also occasionally use the paper clips to construct tiny toy ninjas for fun.

Re: Google Street View: A wolf in sheep’s clothing

#66

Post by koide » Wed, Jun 06, 2012, 5:42 PM UTC

jessriedel wrote: post #65

koide wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How so? If that data alone won't bring significant improvements, how could it be the primary reason behind its collection? Much more likely they are collecting the data mainly for other applications and have the self driving car data as a nice addon.

Buying paper clips won't bring a significant improvement to my office productivity--less than 1%, I would say--but it's still true that the primary reason for buying paper clips is to improve productivity. It's just that paper clips are so cheap compared to the value of my total office output that it's still worth buying them for a tiny improvement. This is all still true if I also occasionally use the paper clips to…

Right. LIDAR data would correspond to the toy ninjas, IMO.