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The Waymo World Model

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Re: The Waymo World Model

#591

Post by boredtofears »

ruszki wrote: post #299
senordevnyc wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love Volvo, am considering buying one in a couple weeks actually, but they're doing nothing interesting in terms of ADAS, as far as I can tell. It seems like they're limited to adaptive cruise control and lane keeping, both of which have been solved problems for more than a decade. It sounds like they removed Lidar due to supplier issues and availability, not because they're trying to build self-driving cars and ha…

Is lane keeping really a solved problem? Just last year one of my brand new rented cars tried to kill me a few times when I tried it again, and so far not even the simple lane leaving detection mechanism worked properly in any of the tried cars when it was raining.

What problem is it even solving? Keeping my car straight so I can be less attentive on the road?

I get it in the context of driverless but find it nothing but annoying as a driver.

Re: The Waymo World Model

#592

Post by creata »

andreyk wrote: post #222
smcl wrote: post #144

The Waymo driving model: hire some guys in Philippines: https://futurism.com/advanced-transport/waymos-controlled-wo...

This is quite misleading... From the article: “When the Waymo vehicle encounters a particular situation on the road, the autonomous driver can reach out to a human fleet response agent for additional information to contextualize its environment,” the post reads. “The Waymo Driver [software] does not rely solely on the inputs it receives from the fleet response agent and it is in control of the vehicle at all times.”…

In my opinion there's nothing wrong with it per se, but (a) it's still worth mentioning, because most people have the impression that Waymo cars are completely unassisted, and (b) it makes me wonder how feasible Waymo's operations would be if it weren't for global income inequality.

Re: The Waymo World Model

#593

Post by DSingularity »

wslh wrote: post #587
brokencode wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

> It’s kind of crazy that they have been slow to create real products and competitive large scale models from their research. It’s not that crazy. Sometimes the rational move is to wait for a market to fully materialize before going after it. This isn’t a Xerox PARC situation, nor really the innovator’s dilemma, it’s about timing: turning research into profits when market conditions finally make it viable. Even mammo…

This take makes even more sense when you consider the costs of making a move to create the market. The organizational energy and its necessary loss in focus and resources limits their ability to experiment. Arguably the best strategy for Google: (1) build foundational depth in research and infrastructure that would be impossible for competition to quickly replicate (2) wait for the market to present a clear new opportunity for you (3) capture it decisively by focusing and exploiting every foundational advantage Google was able to build.

Re: The Waymo World Model

#594

Post by kube-system »

boredtofears wrote: post #591
ruszki wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is lane keeping really a solved problem? Just last year one of my brand new rented cars tried to kill me a few times when I tried it again, and so far not even the simple lane leaving detection mechanism worked properly in any of the tried cars when it was raining.

What problem is it even solving? Keeping my car straight so I can be less attentive on the road? I get it in the context of driverless but find it nothing but annoying as a driver.

Lane keep keeps your car in the lane so you can stop paying attention just like cruise control keeps you going the same speed so you can stop paying attention… they don’t.

They are just aids that ease fatigue on long trips.

Re: The Waymo World Model

#595

Post by patrick451 »

No human needs to have seen an elephant standing in the road before to know that you should not drive through an elephant standing in the road. These are not "long tail" events as the waymo says. It's a big object in the road. You have seen that hundreds of thousands of times. Calling that a long tail event is an admission that your model has zero ability to generalize.

Re: The Waymo World Model

#596

Post by kube-system »

johnthewise wrote: post #588
jellojello wrote: post #563

Earlier quoted context omitted.

waymo just hit it's first pedestrian, ever. It did it at a speed of 6mph and it was estimated a human would have hit the kid at 14mph (it was going 17mph when a small child jumped out in front of it from behind a black suv. First pedestrian struck. That's crazy. Tesla just disengages fsd anytime a sensor is slightly blocked/covered/blinded.. waymo out here doing fsd 100% of the time and basically never hurts anyone.…

Waymos disengage and get tele operated too?

Not really. Waymos can’t be driven remotely, their remote operators can give the car directions, e.g. “use this lane”, and then the autonomous system controls the vehicle to execute those directions.

I’m sure latency and connectivity is too much of an risk to do it any other way.

The only Waymos driven by a human are the ones with human drivers physically in the car

Re: The Waymo World Model

#597

Post by lonjil »

scoofy wrote: post #445
GoatInGrey wrote: post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> most people don't want to use I'm not sure if this was intended or not, but this is a common NIMBY refrain. The argument of "This thing being advocated for that I'm fighting against isn't something people want anyway". And like walkable neighborhood architecture, extremely few Americans have access to light rail. Let alone light rail that doesn't have to yield to car traffic. Regardless, the cost arguments fall apa…

You seem to be misunderstanding my point. I am a transit alternatives advocate, and have been my entire adult life. I'm NOT saying "people don't want to ride trains." I AM saying "people don't want ride trains that allow 5% of the riders to smoke cigarettes on enclosed train platforms and in enclosed train cars." You might says "what? but that's not happening." In Chicago, yes it is: https://resphealth.org/snuff-out-…

> I AM saying "people don't want ride trains that allow 5% of the riders to smoke cigarettes on enclosed train platforms and in enclosed train cars."

Just don't allow that then?

> Public transit advocates need to be honest with themselves that anti-social behavioral issues really matter to people. People are willing to pay more to have a more pleasant experience. When a transit system fails to meet that standard, then you'll suddenly find yourself with a transit system that people don't want to use.

"we can't have good transit because a few people who call themselves transit advocates have bad opinions" is very defeatist. Weak-spined politicians find it much easier to just set money on fire than actually solving problems, so even though most transit advocacy groups in the US emphasize quality and being less wasteful with budgets, your politicians usually prefer the worse options.

Re: The Waymo World Model

#598

Post by fcantournet »

rogerrogerr wrote: post #517
dbcurtis wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I don't think that will be successful. Consider a day where the temperature and humidity is just right to make tail pipe exhaust form dense fog clouds. That will be opaque or nearly so to a camera, transparent to a radar, and I would assume something in between to a lidar. Multi-modal sensor fusion is always going to be more reliable at classifying some kinds of challenging scene segments. It doesn't take long to…

The goal is not to drive in all conditions; it is to drive in all drivable conditions. Human eyeballs also cannot see through dense fog clouds. Operating in these environments is extra credit with marginal utility in real life.

But humans react to this extremely differently than a self driving car. Humans take responsability, and the self-driving disengages and say : WELP. Oh sorry were you "enjoying your travel time to do something useful" as we very explicitely marketed ? Well now your wife is dead and it's your fault (legally). Kisses, Elon.

Re: The Waymo World Model

#599

Post by kube-system »

epsylon wrote: post #583
IshKebab wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure but most of the world has a density low enough that cars work and trains don't really. I like trains as much as the next nerd, but you're never going to be able to take a train from your house to your local farm shop or whatever. Where trains work they are great. Where they don't, driverless electric cars seem like a great option.

Most of the world's population lives in places where trains and public transit works far better than cars. Density doesn't move around, people do.

I don’t believe the data supports that claim.

https://csh.ac.at/news/over-half-of-global-commutes-are-by-c...

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