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Volvo’s first self-driving cars now being tested live on public roads in Sweden

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Re: Volvo’s first self-driving cars now being tested live on public roads in Sweden

#11

Post by haberman »

protomyth wrote: post #9
MrClean wrote: post #5

“The test cars are now able to handle lane following, speed adaption, and merging traffic all by themselves,” This is an important step, although I must say they appear to be far behind Google. My money is on Google getting to an acceptable deployment phase far earlier.

Given the driving conditions in Sweden and the years of experience Volvo has as a car company, I would bet they will be able to deploy and all weather version before Google.

This effort does not appear to be as ambitious as the Google approach. The cars drive a specific test route around "50 kilometers of selected roads in and around Gothenburg." That's quite a different thing than a system where you key in an arbitrary destination and the car drives you there.

Re: Volvo’s first self-driving cars now being tested live on public roads in Sweden

#12

Post by Qworg »

nabla9 wrote: post #7
chiph wrote: post #3

No rotating laser dome on the roof?

LIDAR does not work in rain, on wet roads or in the snow. Google car drives only in good weather in California for a reason. In Sweden they could drive maybe a week in a year. ... Sommaren är kort de mesta regnar bort ..

Google currently has a req out for a electromechanical engineer to work on a new sensor system. I'm betting they're building a new sensor for their vehicle - rotating, but perhaps not LIDAR.

Cracking the heavy rain/snow problem would require more than just a new design though - you'd need a totally different sensor modality, a mix of sensors that can extract enough data, or a system that's far more robust to noise.

Re: Volvo’s first self-driving cars now being tested live on public roads in Sweden

#13

Post by Qworg »

haberman wrote: post #11
protomyth wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given the driving conditions in Sweden and the years of experience Volvo has as a car company, I would bet they will be able to deploy and all weather version before Google.

This effort does not appear to be as ambitious as the Google approach. The cars drive a specific test route around "50 kilometers of selected roads in and around Gothenburg." That's quite a different thing than a system where you key in an arbitrary destination and the car drives you there.

Google's system is not yet arbitrary. They prerun the roads the system drives on.

I'm excited to see more "in the wild" units - more competition and innovation is always a good thing.

Re: Volvo’s first self-driving cars now being tested live on public roads in Sweden

#14

Post by roel_v »

haberman wrote: post #11
protomyth wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given the driving conditions in Sweden and the years of experience Volvo has as a car company, I would bet they will be able to deploy and all weather version before Google.

This effort does not appear to be as ambitious as the Google approach. The cars drive a specific test route around "50 kilometers of selected roads in and around Gothenburg." That's quite a different thing than a system where you key in an arbitrary destination and the car drives you there.

But those 50 kms are, according to the article, 'main commuter arteries' which to me makes it seem that they selected a small set of roads not to make the driving circumstances easier but to be able to more easily monitor the cars that drive there and to be able to reproduce similar situations more easily, to test improvements to certain algorithms or hardware.

So basically they're testing under the 'worst' circumstances, making it likely that it will perform well on 'easy' routes as well. This approach makes sense - what good is it to clock 1000's of kms of test drives on straight roads with no traffic and in broad daylight?

Re: Volvo’s first self-driving cars now being tested live on public roads in Sweden

#15

Post by alkonaut »

haberman wrote: post #11
protomyth wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given the driving conditions in Sweden and the years of experience Volvo has as a car company, I would bet they will be able to deploy and all weather version before Google.

This effort does not appear to be as ambitious as the Google approach. The cars drive a specific test route around "50 kilometers of selected roads in and around Gothenburg." That's quite a different thing than a system where you key in an arbitrary destination and the car drives you there.

I think they are probably trying to solve the same problem from two different directions.

Google appears to be making an advanced and expensive solution to "full" autonomous driving. The limitation will not be in where it can go, but it is initially limited in weather/environmental conditions. The target audience is likely not production cars in the short term, but a system like theirs can for example make their street view photography cars autonomous: they can work in summer, stop if it rains, and it doesn't matter too much if they cost twice as much as a regular car. It will of course be a regulation nightmare to allow the driverless cars out in the street though.

Volvo on the other hand will probably try to make a simpler and much less expensive solution that will have to work in rain/darkness/snow, and not add a significant amount to the cost of the car. Clearly that means having other restrictions, presumably in the overall intelligence or in which roads it works on. Volvo's system is likely intended for making day-to-day travel more secure at the lowest cost possible, not for creating completely autonomous navigation and problem solving (e.g. 4 way stop turn-taking). It must work in almost any environmental conditions, but it will probably require a driver at all times, and will almost certainly not work everywhere.

Re: Volvo’s first self-driving cars now being tested live on public roads in Sweden

#16

Post by nmcfarl »

haberman wrote: post #11
protomyth wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given the driving conditions in Sweden and the years of experience Volvo has as a car company, I would bet they will be able to deploy and all weather version before Google.

This effort does not appear to be as ambitious as the Google approach. The cars drive a specific test route around "50 kilometers of selected roads in and around Gothenburg." That's quite a different thing than a system where you key in an arbitrary destination and the car drives you there.

In addition to what other’s have said it stuck me as very important that Volvo is having customers, not employees drive these cars. I imagine they react very differently, and will be better at simulating what the real world is like.

Re: Volvo’s first self-driving cars now being tested live on public roads in Sweden

#17

Post by threeseed »

nabla9 wrote: post #7
chiph wrote: post #3

No rotating laser dome on the roof?

LIDAR does not work in rain, on wet roads or in the snow. Google car drives only in good weather in California for a reason. In Sweden they could drive maybe a week in a year. ... Sommaren är kort de mesta regnar bort ..

Apparently LIDAR does work in rain albeit with degradation in it's effectiveness.

Regardless I wasn't aware of this before. Why would Google chose this technology ? It's bizarre.

Re: Volvo’s first self-driving cars now being tested live on public roads in Sweden

#18

Post by threeseed »

alkonaut wrote: post #15
haberman wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This effort does not appear to be as ambitious as the Google approach. The cars drive a specific test route around "50 kilometers of selected roads in and around Gothenburg." That's quite a different thing than a system where you key in an arbitrary destination and the car drives you there.

I think they are probably trying to solve the same problem from two different directions. Google appears to be making an advanced and expensive solution to "full" autonomous driving. The limitation will not be in where it can go, but it is initially limited in weather/environmental conditions. The target audience is likely not production cars in the short term, but a system like theirs can for example make their stre…

Never thought of this before but you might be spot on. Maybe Google has no intention of making autonomous cars for normal use but exclusively for Street View.

Street View is hopelessly out of date in many places (4 years in some parts of Sydney for example) and it has to be super expensive to keep thousands of people continuously driving around the world. And Street View will likely be a vital and profitable data source if VR/AR (in all its forms) is ever used en masse.

Re: Volvo’s first self-driving cars now being tested live on public roads in Sweden

#19

Post by ghaff »

threeseed wrote: post #17
nabla9 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LIDAR does not work in rain, on wet roads or in the snow. Google car drives only in good weather in California for a reason. In Sweden they could drive maybe a week in a year. ... Sommaren är kort de mesta regnar bort ..

Apparently LIDAR does work in rain albeit with degradation in it's effectiveness. Regardless I wasn't aware of this before. Why would Google chose this technology ? It's bizarre.

For Google, sensor technology is pretty much an implementation detail at this point. I imagine their interest is much more in vetting out the basic concept and understanding where the gaps are than it is on pushing toward getting a near- to mid-term product on the roads.

On the other hand, I imagine that auto manufacturers are much more interested in getting to viable product--whether it's improved assistive driving features (collision avoidance, speed matching, etc.) or, in the somewhat longer term, autonomy for some limited range of conditions. Hence, for example, Volvo's involvement of government as well.

Re: Volvo’s first self-driving cars now being tested live on public roads in Sweden

#20

Post by [deleted] »

roel_v wrote: post #14
haberman wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This effort does not appear to be as ambitious as the Google approach. The cars drive a specific test route around "50 kilometers of selected roads in and around Gothenburg." That's quite a different thing than a system where you key in an arbitrary destination and the car drives you there.

But those 50 kms are, according to the article, 'main commuter arteries' which to me makes it seem that they selected a small set of roads not to make the driving circumstances easier but to be able to more easily monitor the cars that drive there and to be able to reproduce similar situations more easily, to test improvements to certain algorithms or hardware. So basically they're testing under the 'worst' circumsta…

[deleted]
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