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Waymo updates 3,800 robotaxis after they 'drive into standing water'

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Re: Waymo updates 3,800 robotaxis after they 'drive into standing water'

#101

Post by tim333 »

reaperducer wrote: post #82
drob518 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a particularly hard problem in Texas. We get torrential rains and the landscape is relatively flat. Couple that with shallow soil over lots of limestone and it means flooding is really common. We also have roads that have a “low water crossing,” where a road crosses a creekbed that is normally dry but which will flood. There are often water depth signs there (basically a vertical ruler with feet marks so you can…

Texas has it easy. I've seen several places in England (and at least one in the western United States) where they have fords. For those not familiar, water runs over the road full-time, and people are expected to just drive through it like it's no big deal. Except for right after a storm, when it is a big deal. It's essentially the intersection of a road and a stream where a bridge should be, but nobody ever built on…

My dad went through one of those in England where it was a bit deep. The car had to have a new engine.

Re: Waymo updates 3,800 robotaxis after they 'drive into standing water'

#102

Post by 329187 »

cucumber3732842 wrote: post #97
eraGq wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any human can distinguish wet pavement from a flooded street. Some voluntarily drive into the flooded street. And that is the difference. In a Waymo you are a prisoner, in your own car you can turn around.

This is the naive "if you can't stop you're following too close" circular definition based take. Makes for good rightthink points on reddit and communities of similar quality membership but you're not actually gonna build anything useful thinking like that. In order to drive reasonably humans need to drive through water that is 6-12in deep on occasion. That's just how it is. Near me it's whenever the storm drain at t…

Why do you ignore the context (humans cannot distinguish?). If what you say is true, Waymos are useless in your areas. Thank you for confirming this!

Re: Waymo updates 3,800 robotaxis after they 'drive into standing water'

#103

Post by ollin »

srameshc wrote: post #5

Does anyone with a better understanding about LIDAR vs camera approach to autonomous drivng explain how would Tesla handle such situation ?

This is a HW4 Tesla on FSD 14.3.2 trying to drive into a lake five days ago (a la The Office): https://www.reddit.com/r/TeslaFSD/comments/1t9rl2u/fsd_tried..., so I would not say Tesla has solved standing water yet.

That said, FSD seems quite capable of routing around standing water in many cases (e.g. https://xcancel.com/planoken/status/2030754820462633031, https://www.reddit.com/r/TeslaFSD/comments/1pw9f2m/fsd_navig..., https://xcancel.com/BLKMDL3/status/1991862465328779317, https://xcancel.com/JVTacoma/status/2046313902749921638), so handling the remaining cases seems more like a model intelligence / data issue rather than a sensor limitation. Lidar beams generally bounce off mirrorlike surfaces without returning to the sensor, so I think all lidar would tell you about standing water is "there's something shiny/reflective within this region of the image", which you already know from cameras+headlights.

Re: Waymo updates 3,800 robotaxis after they 'drive into standing water'

#104

Post by cucumber3732842 »

329187 wrote: post #102
cucumber3732842 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the naive "if you can't stop you're following too close" circular definition based take. Makes for good rightthink points on reddit and communities of similar quality membership but you're not actually gonna build anything useful thinking like that. In order to drive reasonably humans need to drive through water that is 6-12in deep on occasion. That's just how it is. Near me it's whenever the storm drain at t…

Why do you ignore the context (humans cannot distinguish?). If what you say is true, Waymos are useless in your areas. Thank you for confirming this!

Humans can distinguish well enough to know that it's not a "normal puddle amount" of water on the road and slow down.

Re: Waymo updates 3,800 robotaxis after they 'drive into standing water'

#105

Post by tim333 »

xnx wrote: post #8

"recall" = applies software update

Wikipedia has

>A product recall is a request from a manufacturer to return a product after the discovery of safety issues...

I think using the term for a software update is abusing the language a bit. And may confuse people who have a real recall where the thing has to go to the dealer.

Re: Waymo updates 3,800 robotaxis after they 'drive into standing water'

#106

Post by MetaWhirledPeas »

stevekemp wrote: post #60
tintor wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LIDAR isn't helpful for water. Standing water behaves like a mirror on LIDAR.

This is one of the reasons why I'm suspicious of camera-only systems, here in Finland. Half the year there's a lot of snow and ice around. Which I imagine means most of the view is "white" and "shiny". Coupled with the dark winters it's gotta be a nightmare to deal with.

Plenty of snow and ice in parts of the US. Hopefully you'll get a chance to try the self-driving for yourself.

Re: Waymo updates 3,800 robotaxis after they 'drive into standing water'

#107

Post by bombcar »

reaperducer wrote: post #82
drob518 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a particularly hard problem in Texas. We get torrential rains and the landscape is relatively flat. Couple that with shallow soil over lots of limestone and it means flooding is really common. We also have roads that have a “low water crossing,” where a road crosses a creekbed that is normally dry but which will flood. There are often water depth signs there (basically a vertical ruler with feet marks so you can…

Texas has it easy. I've seen several places in England (and at least one in the western United States) where they have fords. For those not familiar, water runs over the road full-time, and people are expected to just drive through it like it's no big deal. Except for right after a storm, when it is a big deal. It's essentially the intersection of a road and a stream where a bridge should be, but nobody ever built on…

It seems to me you could do something interesting with floating warning devices that only appear when the water's too deep.

Re: Waymo updates 3,800 robotaxis after they 'drive into standing water'

#108

Post by MetaWhirledPeas »

blueskies1029 wrote: post #39

They are rolling these out in New Orleans soon. Standing water is everywhere, and sometimes you have big hidden potholes. You just need to know the roads. Should be fun.

On a normal day it should suffice to train the model to use its judgment and maybe monitor how other cars are reacting to water covering the road, but when it starts flooding everywhere maybe they should pause the service until it dries out.

Re: Waymo updates 3,800 robotaxis after they 'drive into standing water'

#109

Post by bombcar »

jjmarr wrote: post #74
tintor wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Such detailed database of fine grained road geometry gets stale very quickly, due to road maintenance and road construction. In US highway lanes are shifted sideways frequently.

I traveled to Austin 3 weeks ago and there were entire highways not on Google Maps. Apparently they were built in just a few months.

There's some places where Apple still thinks I'm driving through a cornfield even though the development is a few years old, now.

I suppose I could inform them somehow, but it's not worth the bother.

Re: Waymo updates 3,800 robotaxis after they 'drive into standing water'

#110

Post by MetaWhirledPeas »

foobazgt wrote: post #43
gib444 wrote: post #3

This is ok though because humans drive into flood waters too. Look, you can't make progress without getting your feet wet and then diving straight into the deep end.

Maybe you drive into flood waters, but I don't. That's not a difficult skill to pull off. We're still in the early days of self driving cars, and as much simulation and miles as they have, they're still constantly getting exposed to real world conditions that are new to them. The world is dynamic, so this will always remain true. It remains to be seen where we'll converge on capability, incident rate, and acceptance.

> It remains to be seen where we'll converge on capability, incident rate, and acceptance.

I think we're already there with Waymo as the example. We may later choose to diverge from this now-accepted path, but for the moment we have a blueprint, and fixing edge cases with a software update is apparently acceptable, if you just look at all the Waymos operating legally right now.

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