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Watch Zoox’s autonomous car drive around San Francisco for an hour

venturebeat.com

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Re: Watch Zoox’s autonomous car drive around San Francisco for an hour

#101

Post by stale2002 »

ghaff wrote: post #68
chrisseaton wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I was once driving on a road I could not see at all. It was at night, in a blizzard on the road from Denver to Vail. It didn't take long until I was following the two red lights of the bus in front of me. Perhaps you should have pulled over at this point? Maybe that's what an autonomous car would do.

Pulling over in a snowstorm to the side of the highway can be pretty dangerous too. Once you're in that situation there aren't necessarily great alternatives.

How about "Dont use the self driving mode during a snowstorm. Make the human drive".

That sounds like it solves the situation nicely.

Re: Watch Zoox’s autonomous car drive around San Francisco for an hour

#102

Post by stale2002 »

ghaff wrote: post #67
BubRoss wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a parking lot the car would be starting from a position it can stay in, so requiring a person to intervene is one option. Also busy parking lots frequently don't stay busy forever and heavy rain doesn't last forever either. A look at the local weather could see where a storm is and give an estimate of when it will be able to automate leaving and require a person otherwise. I think there are pragmatic answers to ex…

As soon as you require human intervention, you require a sober, licensed human to be in the vehicle at all times. You no longer have a robo-taxi. It can also be hard to predict weather in much of the US. And as soon as you place too many restrictions, you no longer have a reliable transportation option. Imagine your public transit system only ran in good weather. How useful would it be?

> And as soon as you place too many restrictions, you no longer have a reliable transportation option.

yes you do. There is a whole lot of driving that happens in perfect conditions.

Think "Truck driving, on long highways".

Replacing half of all truck drivers is still a trillion dollar industry.

And for your robo taxi situation, you can simply only allow the robotaxis to run half of the time.

Human drivers, can simply get in their cars, and be paid to drive, when it is likely to be unsafe driving conditions. IE, surge driving/pricing.

But there absolutely would be days/times/places where the robo taxi would be perfectly safe. And these days/times/places could be predicted easily, ahead of time.

IE, in arizona, I am sure that it is safe most of the time, and there would not be any issues with snow.

Re: Watch Zoox’s autonomous car drive around San Francisco for an hour

#103

Post by anigbrowl »

carapace wrote: post #89

It really really bothers me that these folks are using a live city with real, non-volunteer test subjects of all ages (little kids and old folks use public streets) as a test bed for their massive car-shaped robots. It's bad enough that people are driving cars all over the place, car collisions have killed more Americans than all the wars we've fought put together. I'm one of those people who say, "Self-driving cars…

In the video, which was recorded with a safety driver behind the wheel

I can live with it. Human drivers annoy me so much that throwing the dice on autonomous cars is not a big stressor to me.

Re: Watch Zoox’s autonomous car drive around San Francisco for an hour

#104

Post by ghaff »

stale2002 wrote: post #101
ghaff wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pulling over in a snowstorm to the side of the highway can be pretty dangerous too. Once you're in that situation there aren't necessarily great alternatives.

How about "Dont use the self driving mode during a snowstorm. Make the human drive". That sounds like it solves the situation nicely.

That definitely works. It just means that if there is a possibility of a snowstorm or other circumstance that self-driving doesn't work, you now require a driver who can take over control. Which is fine. It just eliminates the robo-taxi use case of self-driving which is what a lot of people seem to care about.

Re: Watch Zoox’s autonomous car drive around San Francisco for an hour

#105

Post by ghaff »

stale2002 wrote: post #102
ghaff wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As soon as you require human intervention, you require a sober, licensed human to be in the vehicle at all times. You no longer have a robo-taxi. It can also be hard to predict weather in much of the US. And as soon as you place too many restrictions, you no longer have a reliable transportation option. Imagine your public transit system only ran in good weather. How useful would it be?

> And as soon as you place too many restrictions, you no longer have a reliable transportation option. yes you do. There is a whole lot of driving that happens in perfect conditions. Think "Truck driving, on long highways". Replacing half of all truck drivers is still a trillion dollar industry. And for your robo taxi situation, you can simply only allow the robotaxis to run half of the time. Human drivers, can simpl…

>IE, in arizona, I am sure that it is safe most of the time, and there would not be any issues with snow.

Parts of Arizona.

Re: Watch Zoox’s autonomous car drive around San Francisco for an hour

#106

Post by carapace »

torpfactory wrote: post #97
carapace wrote: post #89

It really really bothers me that these folks are using a live city with real, non-volunteer test subjects of all ages (little kids and old folks use public streets) as a test bed for their massive car-shaped robots. It's bad enough that people are driving cars all over the place, car collisions have killed more Americans than all the wars we've fought put together. I'm one of those people who say, "Self-driving cars…

There is a different perspective that you could use (and I’m not necessarily advocating for it; hear me out): Human driven cars are dangerous to the tune of ~36,000 deaths per year. Every year without the implementation of full self driving we pay some large percentage of that number in lives. Self driving cars won’t make it out of the lab without real driving on real roads in real scenarios. Taking appropriate preca…

What about the nerf-golf-cart idea?

Re: Watch Zoox’s autonomous car drive around San Francisco for an hour

#107

Post by taneq »

TheSmiddy wrote: post #61
Fricken wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine an uncontrolled intersection. The Robotaxi is approaching from one direction. In the opposite direction is a cyclist who intends to turn left across the Robotaxi. There is also a pedestrian that may or may not cross the street, and another vehicle about to cross in front of the Robotaxi from the other direction. There are a huge number of ways this scenario can play out, and any decision made by one agent can…

In Australia there are no uncontrolled intersections (that I am aware of). Every single junction clearly marks who must give way and we don't have any 4-way stops, instead using roundabouts in these situations. It's possible that for self driving to work road systems will have to be more formalised to remove the ambiguous situations you've described. I can't imagine it working well in China or Indonesia where traffic…

There are definitely uncontrolled intersections once you get out of the cities. My understanding is that if unmarked, there’s an implied give-way at the side road in a T-junction and all roads in a four-way junction.

Re: Watch Zoox’s autonomous car drive around San Francisco for an hour

#108

Post by taneq »

vardump wrote: post #33

Yawn. Good lane markings, no rain/snow or other bad weather, perfect road surfaces. Just like all other self-driving demos. I'd like to see a demo like this on snow covered roads, with no lane markings visible. I think that would tell a lot more about the system's ability to deal with an imperfect world.

You lot are always so fixated on snow. Give it a decade or two and with global warming, the environment might meet us halfway on that one.

Re: Watch Zoox’s autonomous car drive around San Francisco for an hour

#109

Post by cmendel »

dev_tty01 wrote: post #95
BubRoss wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This person said navigating automatically out of a crowded parking lot in the rain. You shifted this to just driving in the rain.

I'm confused. Are you asserting that driving in actual traffic in the rain is easier than navigating a parking lot in the rain? Yes, several of us generalized the issue. I don't see why that is troubling.

Because the generalization changes the question. There is a world between "can drive 90 % of the time on 90% of roads" and "can drive 100% of the time on 100% of roads." The former is still extraordinarily valuable, the latter effectively impossible. When you conflate the two there really isn't even a point in having a discussion.

In the given example "driving in a parking lot +rain" it's completely reasonable to pass the buck to the human driver. In your example "driving +rain" you can't because that situation occurs well more frequently.

Re: Watch Zoox’s autonomous car drive around San Francisco for an hour

#110

Post by KKKKkkkk1 »

carapace wrote: post #89

It really really bothers me that these folks are using a live city with real, non-volunteer test subjects of all ages (little kids and old folks use public streets) as a test bed for their massive car-shaped robots. It's bad enough that people are driving cars all over the place, car collisions have killed more Americans than all the wars we've fought put together. I'm one of those people who say, "Self-driving cars…

I think you're missing the narrative that the self-driving industry is pushing here. They "solved the problem" and their fleets driving around "autonomously" is being done in order to demonstrate this to the public. A golf cart is obviously unsuitable for that purpose.

I think this narrative has run out of steam at this point, by the way. Waymo's valuation has gone from $175B to $105B to $30B since 2018. Zoox specifically is now laying off engineers.

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