Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Waymo pauses Atlanta service as its robotaxis keep driving into floods

techcrunch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 498 posts

Re: Waymo pauses Atlanta service as its robotaxis keep driving into floods

#81

Post by janderson215 »

dangus wrote: post #73
ibejoeb wrote: post #9

I assumed they went to Miami to develop their foul weather capabilities. It's still pretty early.

Doubtful. They probably just pause service when it rains. Miami weather is ideal most of the time. These self-driving companies have made very little progress on dealing with weather for how long they’ve spent on the problem.

During the “winter”, sure, but it dumps rain during the same and there are flash floods occasionally. I agree with the parent comment that Miami is a great area to test - especially given that the bad weather is seasonal. They can run 24/7 during the good weather seasons.

Also, the drivers in Miami are a bit more unpredictable than the average driver around the country in my experience, so good challenge cases for self-driving development.

Re: Waymo pauses Atlanta service as its robotaxis keep driving into floods

#82

Post by mschulkind »

ramraj07 wrote: post #60
paxys wrote: post #13

Driving through an obviously flooded street thinking "I'll easily make it" and getting stuck in the middle? Yeah, these cars have achieved human level intelligence.

They never advertised that they did. Its not even real true AI. They just struggle with new scenarios. People drive into floods too. They just don't get sensational articles written about it, just posted on reddit.

Whoosh...

Re: Waymo pauses Atlanta service as its robotaxis keep driving into floods

#84

Post by mschulkind »

fastball wrote: post #72
paxys wrote: post #13

Driving through an obviously flooded street thinking "I'll easily make it" and getting stuck in the middle? Yeah, these cars have achieved human level intelligence.

This is why I personally feel like Tesla's approach is more likely to "win". The fundamental blocker to self-driving cars is not sensing / sensor fusion, it is intelligence. And the Tesla approach seems much more likely to achieve functional intelligence than Waymo's.

While I agree with basically all of this, and find the FSD on my Tesla to be quite useful, a question pops into my mind.

Why can't Waymo ALSO develop the same smarts and just also solve the sensor fusion issue such that they can use the right set of sensors in the right environmental conditions, and then leapfrog Tesla's capabilities?

Re: Waymo pauses Atlanta service as its robotaxis keep driving into floods

#85

Post by entropicdrifter »

bushbaba wrote: post #58
masklinn wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'd need to ensure every electrical connection is in a waterproof location which I'm pretty sure is not a thing for any standard car manufacturing. Cabins are also rarely watertight. AFAIK your best bet is a diesel with a snorkel, and hope things have dried off before you need to restart the engine.

If cabins are water tight you risk carbon monoxide poisoning

Carbon monoxide... in an EV?

Re: Waymo pauses Atlanta service as its robotaxis keep driving into floods

#86

Post by retrocryptid »

I thought Weymo's were supposed to be "supervised" by humans in the Philippines. Maybe driving in circles in the suburbs and driving into flood waters happens only when the cars are out of mobile data range? Did Weymo pay their mobile phone bill? Does the (somewhat) autonomous system on the car decide when to flag a human for help? I would have expected a human to be watching all the time. Are they experiencing labor problems in the Philippines? Maybe Weymo doesn't want to pay their remote operators as much as the remote operators want to get paid?

Re: Waymo pauses Atlanta service as its robotaxis keep driving into floods

#87

Post by venussnatch »

fastball wrote: post #72
paxys wrote: post #13

Driving through an obviously flooded street thinking "I'll easily make it" and getting stuck in the middle? Yeah, these cars have achieved human level intelligence.

This is why I personally feel like Tesla's approach is more likely to "win". The fundamental blocker to self-driving cars is not sensing / sensor fusion, it is intelligence. And the Tesla approach seems much more likely to achieve functional intelligence than Waymo's.

You can have intelligence with lidar.

You can have even more intelligence with both.

Re: Waymo pauses Atlanta service as its robotaxis keep driving into floods

#88

Post by losvedir »

I think another way of framing it is "Waymo pauses Atlanta service due to weather conditions", which doesn't sound at all unreasonable to me. It's no different from "Chicago O'Hare pauses flight departures due to a winter storm" or whatever.

I think that self driving cars won't ever be able to handle every condition out there, and so there's probably a time when the system will be paused / shutdown when conditions aren't safe to drive in. Honestly, I wish we could do this with human drivers for that matter, too, but some will press on even when they shouldn't...

Re: Waymo pauses Atlanta service as its robotaxis keep driving into floods

#89

Post by OsrsNeedsf2P »

retrocryptid wrote: post #86

I thought Weymo's were supposed to be "supervised" by humans in the Philippines. Maybe driving in circles in the suburbs and driving into flood waters happens only when the cars are out of mobile data range? Did Weymo pay their mobile phone bill? Does the (somewhat) autonomous system on the car decide when to flag a human for help? I would have expected a human to be watching all the time. Are they experiencing labor…

Your assumption that Waymos are "(somewhat) autonomous" is wrong, which is why your questions and conclusion don't make any sense

Re: Waymo pauses Atlanta service as its robotaxis keep driving into floods

#90

Post by etempleton »

This is really my bear case against AI. I am not against it. I actually think it is really neat! But we have been working on driverless cars for how long and spent how much? And still things like a flooded roadway completely throw them.

Tesla failed to deliver driverless cars but now is pivoting to the much more complex fully autonomous robots. And we can’t get AI to stop hallucinating facts, but any day we are going to be at AGI in a few years? I get people want these things to happen, but I just don’t see it happening any time soon. The whole tech industry feels built on what maybe, someday, possibly, could happen but most likely won’t, but we are all going to act like is a sure thing and is just around the corner.

Are there no responsible adults left at these tech companies?

Post reply on HN