Tesla has a self-driving strategy other companies abandoned years ago • Hacker News Board

Re: Tesla has a self-driving strategy other companies abandoned years ago

#101

Post by wil421 » Fri, Mar 08, 2019, 10:26 PM UTC

mikestew wrote: post #82

wil421 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least Tesla has an actual product you can buy? Where’s Waymos product? Will they sell to consumers or the incumbent car makers? I agree with your statement about Tesla’s marketing of self driving. My Grand Cherokee isn’t so far off their mark. It has lane assist, adaptive cruise control with stop, parallel and back in parking. I’d bet Jeep could do summon and more stuff on the highway.

At least Tesla has an actual product you can buy? I have a self-driving automotive product you can buy. It doesn't work as advertised, either. Calling a lamb's tail a leg doesn't make for a five-legged farm animal. This reminds me of the conversations about, say, phone authentication using facial identification. "Samsung had it before FaceID!" Yeah, I had one of those Samsung phones. It did not do what it said on the…

Can you show me a Waymo product of any kind? I can buy a Tesla today and the car can drive for extended periods on the highway using their driving tech.

Re: Tesla has a self-driving strategy other companies abandoned years ago

#102

Post by 05 » Fri, Mar 08, 2019, 10:30 PM UTC

Someone1234 wrote: post #38

martythemaniak wrote: post #30

There's a few things to keep in mind when discussing self-driving tech. 1) Self driving tech doesn't exist today. It simply does not. There's lots of people working on it and they are using different strategies, but it is not clear how long it will take, which strategy is technically superior, which strategy is more economical, etc etc. There's a lot of very strong opinions floating around (LIDAR is essential! No, vi…

> They're in the business in shipping real cars to real people and there was never any possibility of mixing that with LIDAR. Can you explore that a little? We have consumer products that contain LIDAR already (e.g. Neato Vacuums). The sensors no longer cost thousands of dollars, and could supplement other types of inputs to provide a broader picture of the road.

Neatos don’t have a real ToF LiDAR in them - they use triangulation to estimate distance. Those don’t work well outside or at long ranges.

https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:995686/FULLTEXT0...

Re: Tesla has a self-driving strategy other companies abandoned years ago

#103

Post by ufmace » Fri, Mar 08, 2019, 10:32 PM UTC

Animats wrote: post #49

Waymo keeps plugging away. Each year, for the last few years, the number of miles between disconnects they report to the CA DMV has doubled. Three more doublings, and that number will be bigger than average miles between accidents for human drivers. Then they can ship a product. Nobody else is even close. This problem is slowly being solved, by normal engineering practices. The "fake it til you make it" players are b…

The last Ars article that I read on Waymo did imply that they had hit a metaphorical wall on their progress, and were keeping things looking good by sticking to lower-speed residential neighborhoods and avoiding situations they had trouble with, like making unprotected left turns onto major streets and passing slow or stopped vehicles on a busy road. Essentially things that require being able to understand that the other cars around are driven by people who tend to react to things, and will probably slow down if you make a turn into a lane that they would be passing you in.

https://arstechnica.com/cars/2019/02/googles-waymo-risks-rep...

https://arstechnica.com/cars/2018/12/we-finally-talked-to-an...

Re: Tesla has a self-driving strategy other companies abandoned years ago

#104

Post by dcomp » Fri, Mar 08, 2019, 10:35 PM UTC

perl4ever wrote: post #59

Animats wrote: post #49

Waymo keeps plugging away. Each year, for the last few years, the number of miles between disconnects they report to the CA DMV has doubled. Three more doublings, and that number will be bigger than average miles between accidents for human drivers. Then they can ship a product. Nobody else is even close. This problem is slowly being solved, by normal engineering practices. The "fake it til you make it" players are b…

"Three more doublings, and that number will be bigger than average miles between accidents for human drivers. Then they can ship a product." I am skeptical of that, because I expect that even if disconnects are ultra-rare overall, and the testing is representative of normal usage, there will be enough people that frequently use the technology in ways far off on the tail of the distribution that for them, disconnects…

I've now seen the word heteroscedasticity twice in 5 minutes and thank you for providing the link to Wikipedia. Although I think the 'meta-variety' synonym was quite apt on the other page.

Re: Tesla has a self-driving strategy other companies abandoned years ago

#105

Post by justapassenger » Fri, Mar 08, 2019, 10:36 PM UTC

devy wrote: post #64

The top editor promoted comment[1] on the article summed up very well. The attention problem is well known in engineering. It is very hard to get a human to concentrate on something that will turn up good more than 99% of the time, even when there's serious or fatal consequences of failure. Trains are the classic example - tracks are amost always clear, signals are almost always correct which means you have to devise…

Sadly, Silicon Valley companies don't think that best practices of engineering apply to them. It's all about disruption, both with products and safety.

Re: Tesla has a self-driving strategy other companies abandoned years ago

#106

Post by CamperBob2 » Fri, Mar 08, 2019, 10:42 PM UTC

jniedrauer wrote: post #68

peeters wrote: post #32

I've always found that half the issue is with the name: Autopilot. On an airplane, autopilot means you can take your focus off of both the physical and mental act of moving the plane through the air, and if it needs you to intercede there is pretty much no emergency in which you wouldn't have a few seconds to react. In a car, Tesla's Autopilot simply doesn't give you that. If you are reading and your autopilot exits,…

I don't think this accurately considers how the term "autopilot" is actually used in aviation. Autopilot can mean anything from "hold a gyro estimated heading but not pitch or speed" to "maintain airspeed and follow the localizer down a glide slope while cross checking GPS and ILS." > if it needs you to intercede there is pretty much no emergency in which you wouldn't have a few seconds to react. Traffic avoidance is…

It doesn't matter how it works in aviation. It matters how people think it works in aviation.

There was nothing OK about Tesla calling their system "Autopilot."

Re: Tesla has a self-driving strategy other companies abandoned years ago

#107

Post by danaliv » Fri, Mar 08, 2019, 10:46 PM UTC

jniedrauer wrote: post #68

peeters wrote: post #32

I've always found that half the issue is with the name: Autopilot. On an airplane, autopilot means you can take your focus off of both the physical and mental act of moving the plane through the air, and if it needs you to intercede there is pretty much no emergency in which you wouldn't have a few seconds to react. In a car, Tesla's Autopilot simply doesn't give you that. If you are reading and your autopilot exits,…

I don't think this accurately considers how the term "autopilot" is actually used in aviation. Autopilot can mean anything from "hold a gyro estimated heading but not pitch or speed" to "maintain airspeed and follow the localizer down a glide slope while cross checking GPS and ILS." > if it needs you to intercede there is pretty much no emergency in which you wouldn't have a few seconds to react. Traffic avoidance is…

You're absolutely right, but the issue isn't what an aircraft autopilot actually is. It's what the word "autopilot" evokes in the minds of the non-pilot public. To them, autopilot means fully automated with no oversight. ("Planes fly themselves!" and other such nonsense.)

Re: Tesla has a self-driving strategy other companies abandoned years ago

#108

Post by onlyrealcuzzo » Fri, Mar 08, 2019, 11:01 PM UTC

ufmace wrote: post #103

Animats wrote: post #49

Waymo keeps plugging away. Each year, for the last few years, the number of miles between disconnects they report to the CA DMV has doubled. Three more doublings, and that number will be bigger than average miles between accidents for human drivers. Then they can ship a product. Nobody else is even close. This problem is slowly being solved, by normal engineering practices. The "fake it til you make it" players are b…

The last Ars article that I read on Waymo did imply that they had hit a metaphorical wall on their progress, and were keeping things looking good by sticking to lower-speed residential neighborhoods and avoiding situations they had trouble with, like making unprotected left turns onto major streets and passing slow or stopped vehicles on a busy road. Essentially things that require being able to understand that the o…

What's the problem? If a a robot can drive a car more statistically more safely than a human, that seems like a net win.

Maybe humans shouldn't be making left turns in traffic or passing trucks either. Those are probably, statistically, the most dangerous things you can do when driving. But we do them all the time, because we have no idea how dangerous they really are.

Re: Tesla has a self-driving strategy other companies abandoned years ago

#109

Post by garmaine » Fri, Mar 08, 2019, 11:08 PM UTC

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #108

ufmace wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The last Ars article that I read on Waymo did imply that they had hit a metaphorical wall on their progress, and were keeping things looking good by sticking to lower-speed residential neighborhoods and avoiding situations they had trouble with, like making unprotected left turns onto major streets and passing slow or stopped vehicles on a busy road. Essentially things that require being able to understand that the o…

What's the problem? If a a robot can drive a car more statistically more safely than a human, that seems like a net win. Maybe humans shouldn't be making left turns in traffic or passing trucks either. Those are probably, statistically, the most dangerous things you can do when driving. But we do them all the time, because we have no idea how dangerous they really are.

The problem is the other car has a human in it, and those situations are ones where the reaction of the other human is critical to safety analysis, but generally unpredictable.

Re: Tesla has a self-driving strategy other companies abandoned years ago

#110

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Mar 08, 2019, 11:12 PM UTC

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #108

ufmace wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The last Ars article that I read on Waymo did imply that they had hit a metaphorical wall on their progress, and were keeping things looking good by sticking to lower-speed residential neighborhoods and avoiding situations they had trouble with, like making unprotected left turns onto major streets and passing slow or stopped vehicles on a busy road. Essentially things that require being able to understand that the o…

What's the problem? If a a robot can drive a car more statistically more safely than a human, that seems like a net win. Maybe humans shouldn't be making left turns in traffic or passing trucks either. Those are probably, statistically, the most dangerous things you can do when driving. But we do them all the time, because we have no idea how dangerous they really are.

[deleted]