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Snark aside, there will probably always be conditions in which waymo is not the right answer. Are they going to do hurricane evacuation? I think removing the driver just necessitates this.
Except the Waymo can do 150 mph bumper to bumper with other Waymos if you let them.
Self driving will never handle all corner cases until they essentially have a frontal cortex. They probably need something like an LLM to help with very high level abstract situations, e.g. avoiding a hurricane like someone else mentioned in this thread.
I wonder how much of this is trouble perceiving water depth vs integrating that understanding into the larger driver model without creating regressions elsewhere.
You could maybe use short-wave infrared cameras combined with ground penetrating radar, but it'll get real expensive so probably not commercially viable.
I think the only "good" solution is to have the car be overly paranoid, and if it detects water on the roadway that's bigger than some arbitrary diameter (to rule out mud puddles), then the car has to assume its a flood, stop, and escalate to a human or change the route.
Alternatively, just don't run Waymo operations during flood/flash flood warnings. Maybe we as a society need to top forcing everything to still operate normally during natural disasters. It's OK to shut things down when safety calls for it, and that applies to human drivers too. If areas are flooding, stay home.
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Why would there be less gridlock if people were in a driverless car instead of a regular car?
Ideally, robot drivers will some day be better drivers than humans in all road conditions. They'll be able to coordinate fast lane merges and busy intersections by subtly adjusting speed without vehicles having to stop. Imagine a busy intersection where all the cars fly past one another at 40 miles an hour without stopping but none of them crash. Humans can't do this, but machines could , if, and when the technology…
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Ironically, a properly sealed EV system would better deal with a flood. Combustion engines have issues due mostly to the air intake and exhaust.
AFAIK your best bet is a diesel with a snorkel, and hope things have dried off before you need to restart the engine.
does Waymo use Lidar or is it like Musk's "cost saving" cameras only
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why would there be less gridlock if people were in a driverless car instead of a regular car?
Traffic is usually caused by adding inefficiencies across a system with little slack - someone brakes too hard or too early, and if all the cars are stacked up, that one brake event can ripple through hundreds of following cars, getting worse and worse because each person brakes more. Self driving cars can perfectly sync up and move like a train. Theoretically there could be no traffic on highways if all cars are sel…
Yep, here in Chicago you might even go as many as 12 hours between such events