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Waymo pauses Atlanta service as its robotaxis keep driving into floods

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

#391

Post by spaceman_2020 »

jimbo808 wrote: post #337
JimTheMan wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hard disk drives were the size of washing machines. I don't see how they will ever be practical!

Not comparable at all. Autonomous driving isn't obviously a viable business. It's not because computer programs can't drive well, it's because the and workforce infrastructure required to maintain and operate the expensive fleet may be less efficient than a human maintaining their own vehicle.

You also have to be some completely isolated sociopath to not see the very obvious political and economic risks if this does indeed become successful

No amount of lobbying will help you win against a million drivers suddenly out of work

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

#392

Post by simondotau »

jsrozner wrote: post #307
robotresearcher wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked in the field, not at Waymo. Everyone in the business is acutely aware of weather, along with hundreds of other factors, many much less obvious. The engineers whose expertise you assume away are actually debating corner cases like the one we saw of someone carrying a bicycle on their skateboard. In fact the companies run test campaigns in shitty weather all over the country on purpose, at great expense.

Yeah maybe we should just stop doing that and invest in public transit infrastructure instead.

Public transit is a function of city design, less so much the presence of public transit. If you can’t walk to a stop, or if your destination isn’t reasonably accessible from that network, it won’t be used for that trip.

While it sucks for many other reasons, autonomous vehicles are actually a very good solution to public transit in most American cities. What I envisage is a dense grid of virtual bus stops in N square miles surrounding a rapid transit stop. You hail using an app, and a minibus (8-20 pax) adjusts its route to collect you and get you to that rapid transit station. The inverse happens for people arriving at that station, where routes are planned as the train approaches, so people heading to the same general area can be directed to the same minibus.

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

#393

Post by jurgemaister »

bitpush wrote: post #310
HDBaseT wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A human has to pass a test to be able to drive. A human (for the most part) doesn't just unknowingly drive into floods. Why aren't we holding computers to AT LEAST the same expectation as humans.

Are you suggesting every DL holder knows all the driving conditions? Quick, what should one do when the car starts drifting in ice? How about aqua planing? If it is just taking a regular DL test, then waymo, Tesla and others would be driving all across the US by now. They already have a higher standard

> Are you suggesting every DL holder knows all the driving conditions?

In my country at least: Yes.

Hydroplaning and driving on ice is part of the compulsory training, including driving on simulated ice on a special course.

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

#394

Post by contubernio »

robotresearcher wrote: post #317
jsrozner wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah maybe we should just stop doing that and invest in public transit infrastructure instead.

These are companies. They can invest where they please. Call your government reps.

They depend on public investment to build and support road infrastructure. If one accepts your point of view, these companies depend on massive government subsidies. Or perhaps they should pay for the construction and upkeep of the roads their vehicles use.

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

#395

Post by contubernio »

etempleton wrote: post #90

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…

Flooded roadways completely throw human drivers too.

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

#396

Post by wasmitnetzen »

jimbo808 wrote: post #383
beering wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn’t the implication there that Uber works because the drivers shoulder more costs and make less money, but Waymo won’t work because they have to shoulder all the costs?

I'm implying that drivers are more efficient at cleaning and maintaining, refueling, storing, repairing, and replacing their cars they own than the complex systems of personnel maintaining a much more expensive fleet of cars they don't own or give a shit about.

Are you also implying that people who maintain vehicles for a living do a worse job at it than the owners doing it themselves? I would say the opposite is true.

Plenty of companies around the world have well-maintained fleets of vehicles. Trucking businesses, bus companies, train companies, even some taxi companies with salaried drivers, ...

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

#399

Post by pj_mukh »

grumbel wrote: post #151
dhbradshaw wrote: post #123

To me this doesn't seem like a disaster but just the kind of thing that happens as you role out a service and expose it to new challenges. Presumably they haven't had the chance to do a lot of flood training but now they have that chance. The huge advantage they have over people in general is that ideally if they figure this out then it will stay figured out. Then they can slowly role out and watch for the next hitch…

I am a little worried that this is still a problem after 20 years. Don't they have simulators to test every weird and unexpected road condition offline? And flooded roads aren't exactly an unusual event to begin with.

"Don't they have simulators to test every weird and unexpected road condition offline? "

I remember when this was brought up in a Cruise (RIP) crash. The situation was that another human driver had hit and run a pedestrian who had been flung across the street and under a Cruise self-driving car. The cars were getting complaints for making too many emergency stops in the middle of the street, so it dutifully dragged the lady in the under-carriage a couple of more feet to get off to the side of the road.

Suffice to say that that had not coming up in simulation.

P.S: Lady survived but the Human hit and run driver is still at large. No one wrote about them or cared.

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

#400

Post by viking123 »

jlebar wrote: post #283
ryukoposting wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SV is the most cloistered place I've ever seen. I'm comfortable assuming that nobody in any position of power at Waymo ever thought to themselves "gee maybe the weather is different in this new city we're deploying to, perhaps we should test that"

As a former engineer and manager at Waymo I can say with the confidence and sincerity of firsthand experience that this is not the case. People at all levels of the company think deeply about how different locations have present different challenges, including different weather. Also it's not like we never have flooded roads here in the valley. Whatever is going on, I'm confident it's not a result of straightforward…

How many years for Waymo to work in Mumbai?
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