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Uber’s self-driving cars start picking up passengers in San Francisco

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Re: Uber’s self-driving cars start picking up passengers in San Francisco

#131

Post by marssaxman »

lucker wrote: post #39

Bit of a conspiracy theory sort of question, but... is there any reason to believe that maybe self-driving car technology is being backed by the military-industrial complex as a way to run R&D for military automation and related technologies? That could explain why there was a sudden spike in interest in this technology several years ago, and it could also explain why enormous amounts of hype are continually being ge…

There's no conspiracy about it - that is exactly what happened, and it happened right out in the open, in the form of the DARPA Grand Challenge races in 2004-2007. The explicitly stated goal of those races was to motivate research into autonomous vehicles that would enable the US military to begin converting its ground vehicles to autonomous operation. The much-hyped commercial applications are a spin-off.

Re: Uber’s self-driving cars start picking up passengers in San Francisco

#132

Post by trvlngwlbry »

saosebastiao wrote: post #127
bigtones wrote: post #61

Actually these Uber Volvo self driving cars have been picking up passengers using UberX in San Francisco for weeks. They're easy to spot because they have a huge lidar contraption on the roof and a lot of camera's mounted on the roof, rear vision mirrors, and the rear tailgate of the vehicle. The depot they use is on Harrison and 3rd so you see a lot of them driving around the area just south of Market Street, which…

I've never understood why people think traffic will move faster with self driving cars. The status quo is drivers driving well beyond the physical capabilities to stop given the conditions at hand. Sure, they might be able to cut down on reaction time, but they still can't do anything about physics. Given that these vehicles will shift the risk model from driver to manufacturer, and subsequently programmed to obey th…

The video you linked to was interesting - thanks for sharing - but I didn't follow how that's related at all to self-driving cars driving around looking for parking. The video seems like more an example of what happens when individual households all own cars and don't carpool when taking their kids to school.

If the kids being dropped off at that school started using self-driving Uber Pools, then that video would be better described as "Welcome to your traffic jam of the past."

Re: Uber’s self-driving cars start picking up passengers in San Francisco

#133

Post by dagw »

koenigdavidmj wrote: post #110
fullshark wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They require preplanning, adherence to scheduling, take more time, and may not take you exactly where you want to go.

Then add more trains until you don't need to look at a schedule anymore (every fifteen minutes at the absolute worst). EDIT: Punctuation

Standing for 14 minutes in the cold pissing rain is not fun. And that still doesn't solve the problem of getting to and from the train station.

Re: Uber’s self-driving cars start picking up passengers in San Francisco

#134

Post by usrusr »

linkregister wrote: post #121
kbenson wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, I imagine there will be lots of locations where Uber and Lyft won't serve with their own fleet, either because it's too small, or because it's too sparse. Having a program, or a separate competitor, that allowed people to submit their own vehicles and do their own upkeep might help those areas get served. Then again, those areas might be geographically small enough that you don't need a car (depend…

Yes! The far suburbs of Nashville aren't going to see UberTeslaWaymo fleet cars; the utilization would be far too low. They'll see what they see right now: one or two drivers on Uber or Lyft. And the trip price will be higher to reflect the human driving the car.

Cars deprecate by mile as much as by year (ignoring the initial drop which is only based on a non-zero preowner count instead of time or distance). So unlike a driver, who is as expensive while driving as while waiting, a robocab spending much of its time on cold standby would not require a terribly high premium on trip prices.

Adoption in the suburbs will still be much slower, but mostly because unused car storage is so much less of a headache out there.

Re: Uber’s self-driving cars start picking up passengers in San Francisco

#135

Post by packetized »

bigtones wrote: post #61

Actually these Uber Volvo self driving cars have been picking up passengers using UberX in San Francisco for weeks. They're easy to spot because they have a huge lidar contraption on the roof and a lot of camera's mounted on the roof, rear vision mirrors, and the rear tailgate of the vehicle. The depot they use is on Harrison and 3rd so you see a lot of them driving around the area just south of Market Street, which…

The depot is the former Otto building, I believe - seen plenty of Otto tractor cabs pulling off of the Bay Bridge, left on to Harrison, then straight down and into their garage/depot there.

Re: Uber’s self-driving cars start picking up passengers in San Francisco

#136

Post by erispoe »

kabes wrote: post #130
saosebastiao wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never understood why people think traffic will move faster with self driving cars. The status quo is drivers driving well beyond the physical capabilities to stop given the conditions at hand. Sure, they might be able to cut down on reaction time, but they still can't do anything about physics. Given that these vehicles will shift the risk model from driver to manufacturer, and subsequently programmed to obey th…

A lot of traffic jams are so called shockwave/phantom traffic jams and a lot of other ones are where lanes have to merge in each other. Those could be avoided with self driving cars. Maybe in the beginning they will be too cautious for that, but after some time and experience, I'm sure these optimizations will be implemented. It may not make the traffic in downtown SF faster, but it sure will make the traffic on the…

It is true but as pointed the benefits are mainly on highways.

Re: Uber’s self-driving cars start picking up passengers in San Francisco

#137

Post by saosebastiao »

kabes wrote: post #130
saosebastiao wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never understood why people think traffic will move faster with self driving cars. The status quo is drivers driving well beyond the physical capabilities to stop given the conditions at hand. Sure, they might be able to cut down on reaction time, but they still can't do anything about physics. Given that these vehicles will shift the risk model from driver to manufacturer, and subsequently programmed to obey th…

A lot of traffic jams are so called shockwave/phantom traffic jams and a lot of other ones are where lanes have to merge in each other. Those could be avoided with self driving cars. Maybe in the beginning they will be too cautious for that, but after some time and experience, I'm sure these optimizations will be implemented. It may not make the traffic in downtown SF faster, but it sure will make the traffic on the…

Those won't go away. They might be mitigated, but once again, you can only mitigate the portion that is due to driver error, and the major problem in those scenarios is physics.

The shock wave phenomenon is one caused by physics (it literally is modeled by fluid dynamics simulation), exacerbated by limited visibility, and exacerbated once again by human reaction times. You can only get rid of the human reaction times, and maybe a little bit of visibility due to communication (although I'm extremely skeptical that there is any incentive for cars to rely on wireless communication to make decisions).

Lanes merging is a physical bottleneck. Sure, humans might make the merge worse, but speed is still limited by the capacity bottleneck, not the friction of the merge. The zipper merge has never proven to be faster, merely safer and more space efficient. You'll get to the bottleneck faster, and cars that try to exit before the bottleneck will get out of your way faster, but that's about it.

Re: Uber’s self-driving cars start picking up passengers in San Francisco

#138

Post by linkregister »

kbenson wrote: post #105
samfisher83 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not use trains or buses. Thousands of cars compared to a single train seems inefficient.

Well, since I put significant work into doing napkin calculations on this and would like to get some mileage on it, here's my comment from a discussion yesterday ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13172888 ). Edit: It should be noted this was in the context of a discussion regarding ad-hoc pairing systems for carpooling/ride-sharing possibly making car travel much more efficient, possibly with vehicles that seat…

Replying to this one as I don't want to reply to yesterday's thread.

(numbers unrelated to yours)

1. BART track utilization at peak times is already pretty much at capacity. The typical westbound rush hour train will be waiting in the transbay tube for trains ahead of it to unload passengers at Embarcadero.

2. Seating capacity on BART is underreporting the ridership. At least 30 more people fit into each car during peak and late hours.

It's great that you dove into the napkin math and worked out your idea. I think that the notion of using many busses is worth looking into. When it comes to capital expenditure and ongoing subsidization, BART is an expensive remedy for traffic congestion.

I think the most vital part of the exercise is to examine the choke points: the Bay Bridge and Market St. Without another bridge and another level for road traffic, I don't see how the city could accommodate the extra usage from the loss of BART, van/bus use notwithstanding.

Re: Uber’s self-driving cars start picking up passengers in San Francisco

#139

Post by tclancy »

artlogic wrote: post #99
ams6110 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't disagree. But without exception every winter slide-off I've witnessed first hand has been caused by excessive speed. You're driving along on a snow-covered interstate highway, someone in a BMW or 4x4 flies past you because "I have all wheel drive" starts to fishtail, overcorrects, spins out, and ends up backwards and stuck on the median.

Respectfully, I think this amounts to bias more than anything. It's a lot easier to believe that the slide-offs are caused by bad driving - and most probably are. But some are unavoidable.

I have to agree as well. I've only had two winter driving accidents, both of them just me and one of them was unavoidable: I was travelling at very low speed down a plowed street and found a long streak of ice. I've been in plenty of winter skids and am decent and correcting them but I had 0 traction and essentially skated at 5mph into a telephone pole (which seemed safer than the cross street I was drifting toward).

I'm not sure how a self-driving car would have fixed that. I certainly believe one could but it would require a ton of learning beforehand and conditions vary widely in storms. I suppose with all-wheel drive and some selective application of the wheels in reverse it might have stopped the car before any damage was done, but how to handle situations where the AI can't stop the car before an incident and has to minimize the damage? That feels like a lawsuit waiting to happen in the US.

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