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Yandex’s on-demand taxi service debuts its self-driving car project

techcrunch.com

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Re: Yandex’s on-demand taxi service debuts its self-driving car project

#11

Post by Animats »

That takes me back. That's about the level of performance we had with our DARPA Grand Challenge vehicle in 1985. Driving around barrels is a basic test; we did that too. Ours worked OK at 15MPH, but faster than that we'd out-drive the LIDAR range.

It's much easier now to get to that level - good multibeam LIDAR is available, GPS/INS integration is common and cheap, and powerful computers that will survive in the automotive environment are available. Progress in vision has been huge, there's good software for digesting point clouds, and 3D SLAM works.

Most of the hard problems today involve dealing with other road users.

Re: Yandex’s on-demand taxi service debuts its self-driving car project

#12

Post by georgecmu »

Animats wrote: post #11

That takes me back. That's about the level of performance we had with our DARPA Grand Challenge vehicle in 1985. Driving around barrels is a basic test; we did that too. Ours worked OK at 15MPH, but faster than that we'd out-drive the LIDAR range. It's much easier now to get to that level - good multibeam LIDAR is available, GPS/INS integration is common and cheap, and powerful computers that will survive in the auto…

> DARPA Grand Challenge vehicle in 1985

I think that date is off by two decades ;)

Re: Yandex’s on-demand taxi service debuts its self-driving car project

#15

Post by salimmadjd »

Yandex has some of the best programmers in the world. This was a surprise to me, but in the past 5 years, I've been spending few months a year in Belarus with various engineering team and have been learning a lot about this region.

Yandex has it's own school within the universities where they recruit the best minds early on and train them. I've heard from programmers who now work at FB. That they could pass google's interview tests, but could not pass the Yandex test at all.

Add to that, Yandex Taxi is currently the second most popular on demand Taxi service in Russia. They might also be able to easily bypass many regulations we face here in US and get to a lot more driving data than google/uber/apple/lyft might have.

What does that mean? I think, the self driving car might finally give Yandex team something to do with all the talent they've been recruiting. So I would not dismiss their efforts at all. They could become a real force very quickly.

Re: Yandex’s on-demand taxi service debuts its self-driving car project

#16

Post by muthdra »

georgecmu wrote: post #12
Animats wrote: post #11

That takes me back. That's about the level of performance we had with our DARPA Grand Challenge vehicle in 1985. Driving around barrels is a basic test; we did that too. Ours worked OK at 15MPH, but faster than that we'd out-drive the LIDAR range. It's much easier now to get to that level - good multibeam LIDAR is available, GPS/INS integration is common and cheap, and powerful computers that will survive in the auto…

> DARPA Grand Challenge vehicle in 1985 I think that date is off by two decades ;)

So they did have self driving cars in the 60's. I knew it!

Re: Yandex’s on-demand taxi service debuts its self-driving car project

#18

Post by wsinks »

salimmadjd wrote: post #15

Yandex has some of the best programmers in the world. This was a surprise to me, but in the past 5 years, I've been spending few months a year in Belarus with various engineering team and have been learning a lot about this region. Yandex has it's own school within the universities where they recruit the best minds early on and train them. I've heard from programmers who now work at FB. That they could pass google's…

What's the first most popular Taxi service? I haven't seen anyone using something different than Yandex.

Re: Yandex’s on-demand taxi service debuts its self-driving car project

#19

Post by lambdadmitry »

vbezhenar wrote: post #9
virtuexru wrote: post #6

Too bad most roads in Russia are a joke. This will never happen until Russian infrastructure improves; albeit this tech will stay in the huge provinces, Moscow & St. Petersburg.

This tech won't be used in small cities, it makes no sense, and big cities usually have good roads.

1.1mil city, 6th in Russia (Samara), city center (I lived not far from the place) [1] I would argue that's not a "good road". However, GP is right that this is Moscow-only (maybe Saint-Petersburg, too) anyway.

[1] https://a.d-cd.net/9661606s-960.jpg

Re: Yandex’s on-demand taxi service debuts its self-driving car project

#20

Post by georgecmu »

muthdra wrote: post #16
georgecmu wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> DARPA Grand Challenge vehicle in 1985 I think that date is off by two decades ;)

So they did have self driving cars in the 60's. I knew it!

Right. Jokes aside, though, they did have self-driving cars in the 80s: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/project/alv/www/

If you scroll down to the PhD theses names, there are some pretty well-known names that defended their dissertations as a part of the NavLab development.

(The Second) Grand Challenge, of course, was 2005. If I remember right, vehicles didn't have to deal with other road users until 2007 (Urban Challenge).

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