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The Waymo World Model

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Re: The Waymo World Model

#261

Post by JBorrow »

ok_dad wrote: post #244

I'd like to see Waymo have a few of their Drivers do some sim racing training and then compete in some live events. It wouldn't matter much to me if they were fast at all, I'd like to see them go into the rookie classes in various games and see how they avoid crashes from inexperienced players. I believe that it would be the ultimate "shitty drivers vs. AI" test.

Racing and street driving are completely different. Racing involves detailed knowledge of vehicle dynamics and grip. Street driving is mainly obstacle recognition and avoidance. No waymo ever operates anywhere close to the limit of grip, which is where you are all the time when racing.

Re: The Waymo World Model

#262

Post by themafia »

zzzeek wrote: post #169
themafia wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a 3500lb robot that can kill you. Boston Robotics is working on a smaller robot that can kill you. Anduril is working on even smaller robots that can kill you. The future sucks.

and they're all controlled by (poorly compensated) humans anyway [1] [2] [1] https://www.wsj.com/tech/personal-tech/i-tried-the-robot-tha... [2] https://futurism.com/advanced-transport/waymos-controlled-wo...

They couldn't even make burger flipping robots work and are paying fast food workers $20/hr in California.

If that doesn't make it obvious what they can and cannot do then I can't respect the tranche of "hackers" who blindly cheer on this unchecked corporate dystopian nightmare.

Re: The Waymo World Model

#263

Post by torginus »

verelo wrote: post #135
jellojello wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without Lidar + the terrible quality of tesla onboard cameras.. street view would look terrible. The biggest L of elon's career is the weird commitment to no-lidar. If you've ever driven a Tesla, it gives daily messages "the left side camera is blocked" etc.. cameras+weather don't mix either.

Yeah its absurd. As a Tesla driver, I have to say the autopilot model really does feel like what someone who's never driven a car before thinks it's like. Using vision only is so ignorant of what driving is all about: sound, vibration, vision, heat, cold...these are all clues on road condition. If the car isn't feeling all these things as part of the model, you're handicapping it. In a brilliant way Lidar is the miss…

I quickly googled Lidar limitations, and this article came up:

https://www.yellowscan.com/knowledge/how-weather-really-affe...

Seeing how its by a lidar vendor, I don't think they're biased against it. It seems Lidar is not a panacea - it struggles with heavy rain, snow, much more than cameras do and is affected by cold weather or any contamination on the sensor.

So lidar will only get you so far. I'm far more interested in mmwave radar, which while much worse in spatial resolution, isn't affected by light conditions, weather, can directly measure stuff on the thing its illuminating, like material properties, the speed its moving, the thickness.

Fun fact: mmWave based presence sensors can measure your hearbeat, as the micro-movements show up as a frequency component. So I'd guess it would have a very good chance to detect a human.

I'm pretty sure even with much more rudimentary processing, it'll be able to tell if its looking at a living being.

By the way: what happened to the idea that self-driving cars will be able to talk to each other and combine each other's sensor data, so if there are multiple ones looking at the same spot, you'd get a much improved chance of not making a mistake.

Re: The Waymo World Model

#264

Post by wnevets »

pcurve wrote: post #259

Dumb question - Why would Waymo disclose this much information to public and competitors?

Maybe to distract from the story that they use remote drivers after one of their cars hit a kid? [1]

[1] https://people.com/waymo-exec-reveals-company-uses-operators...

edit: fixed kill -> hit

Re: The Waymo World Model

#266

Post by brokencode »

phkahler wrote: post #206
mattlondon wrote: post #89

Suddenly all this focus on world models by Deep mind starts to make sense. I've never really thought of Waymo as a robot in the same way as e.g. a Boston Dynamics humanoid, but of course it is a robot of sorts. Google/Alphabet are so vertically integrated for AI when you think about it. Compare what they're doing - their own power generation , their own silicon, their own data centers, search Gmail YouTube Gemini wor…

Google has been doing more R&D and internal deployment of AI and less trying to sell it as a product. IMHO that difference in focus makes a huge difference. I used to think their early work on self-driving cars was primarily to support Street View in thier maps.

There was a point in time when basically every well known AI researcher worked at Google. They have been at the forefront of AI research and investing heavily for longer than anybody.

It’s kind of crazy that they have been slow to create real products and competitive large scale models from their research.

But they are in full gear now that there is real competition, and it’ll be cool to see what they release over the next few years.

Re: The Waymo World Model

#267

Post by docere »

wnevets wrote: post #264
pcurve wrote: post #259

Dumb question - Why would Waymo disclose this much information to public and competitors?

Maybe to distract from the story that they use remote drivers after one of their cars hit a kid? [1] [1] https://people.com/waymo-exec-reveals-company-uses-operators... edit: fixed kill -> hit

The child did not die, and suffered only minor injuries: https://abc7.com/post/california-teamsters-call-suspension-w...

Under the same circumstances (kid suddenly emerging between two parked cars and running out onto the street), it could be debated that the outcome could have been worse if a human were driving.

Re: The Waymo World Model

#268

Post by spiderfarmer »

mattlondon wrote: post #89

Suddenly all this focus on world models by Deep mind starts to make sense. I've never really thought of Waymo as a robot in the same way as e.g. a Boston Dynamics humanoid, but of course it is a robot of sorts. Google/Alphabet are so vertically integrated for AI when you think about it. Compare what they're doing - their own power generation , their own silicon, their own data centers, search Gmail YouTube Gemini wor…

Grok/xAI is a joke at this point. A true money pit without any hopes for a serious revenue stream.

They should be bought by a rocket company. Then they would stand a chance.

Re: The Waymo World Model

#269

Post by threethirtytwo »

What if we put this mechanism of recording the world on people. We have mics listening to people talking to us and noises we hear.

Also we record body position actuation and self speech. As output then we put this on thousands of people to get as much data as Waymo gets.

I mean that’s what we need to imitate agi right? I guess the only thing missing is the memory mechanism. We train everything as if it’s an input and output function without accounting for memory.

Re: The Waymo World Model

#270

Post by kranke155 »

smallmancontrov wrote: post #228
ambicapter wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So if they’re already “fusioning” all these things, why would LIDAR be any different?

Tesla went nothing-but-nets (making fusion easy) and Chinese LIDAR became cheap around 2023, but monocular depth estimation was spectacularly good by 2021. By the time unit cost and integration effort came down, LIDAR had very little to offer a vision stack that no longer struggled to perceive the 3D world around it. Also, integration effort went down but it never disappeared. Meanwhile, opportunity cost skyrocketed…

Always thought the case was for sensor redundancy and data variety - the stuff that throws off monocular depth estimation might not throw off a lidar or radar.
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