141–150 of 244 posts
What happens if these things get a flat tires?
What if the police want to pull one of these things over?
Can drivers exit this thing at will or are they trapped until some computer in California thinks it is safe?
Uber does know that their drivers do lot more then drive
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What do you think about Ford announcement, IIUC they're skipping level 3 (semi auto autos) straight to level 4 (wheel-less).
Everybody wants to jump straight to 4, because 3 is actually dangerous and likely to cause deaths as people are lulled into a false sense of safety. The question is how long will it take? Some people say 2 years, some people say 20.
Practical, reliable ML stems from enormous data sets. And I can't see a way of obtaining the necessary data volume other than sitting in Level 3 for a product cycle...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Give me a car which self-drives for 4 months of the year, and requires me to drive it the other 8 months. That's still a massive advantage over the car I currently own.
Indeed but the context here are all the futuristic predictions starting with mass-unemployment of taxi and truck drivers (indeed that's what Uber is selling their market valuation on). If drivers are still needed 60% of the time, they're going nowhere. The hype right now is so great that even if the reality is amazing it will be disappointing.
For example, a train of self driving trucks can be led by 1 in the front. Yes, I know, REAL trains exist, but they don't go everywhere. A train of self driving trucks could save a lot of money.
If self driving Taxis don't work in the rain, then Uber can just NOT drive them when it is raining! For example, Maybe the penetration rate will be very low in Seattle, but very high in Texas. Disrupting 20% of the Taxi market by eliminating drivers is still a very big deal.
In Pittsburgh, you have potholes, ubiquitous construction (especially on PA-28), bridges (and I'm not talking Bay Bridge esque suspension bridges here), windy single lane dirt roads without markings, to say nothing of winter (snow usually obstructs what little markings there are 6-8 months out of the year), and a completely different driving style than in NorCal. Most people in Pittsburgh drive trucks or four-wheel drive Subarus (indeed, Pittsburgh has been a good niche market for Subaru -- they focus a lot of their advertising there). In Pittsburgh, roads only have two lanes max in each direction (and that's the highways). Even downtown has its fair share of dirt roads (near Allegheny River) and brick roads (roads that are made of bricks). I was shell shocked when I first moved to California and drove on the 101 with its 4 perfectly paved lanes filled with drivers exceeding 50 MPH.
Precipitation is a nightmare for self-driving cars' LADAR sensors, rendering them completely unusable. Drought-afflicted SV has zero precipitation, and Pittsburgh has almost as much as Seattle. Driving in snow is such a drastically different task/skill than driving in perfect weather that most people in California don't even know how to drive in Tahoe on their skiing trips (and the "snow" there is maintained by humans!).
If anything, us Pittsburgh-based autonomous vehicle researchers are the ones more grounded in reality. Elon hasn't even seen "the Turnpike" -- it is sad to say that the rather unfortunate fatal Tesla autopilot accident happened here in Pittsburgh.
As aside, Sebastian Thrun was in snow-laden Boston, and he and his lab also have a more realistic time estimate for driverless vehicles hitting the road than TechCrunch.
Anytime anyone in California complains about the roads (and believe it or not, people do complain about them here a lot), I just laugh.
Ubiquitous comment, as a person within the industry: there's a big difference between cars that have a hands-free driving mode, and cars that do not have a driver. The latter will be an absolute game-changer; the former can yield some marginal gains in safety and congestion, but does not really shatter any paradigms. This is the former. The latter will certainly happen eventually, but is orders of magnitude more chal…
We don't need to jump to completely driverless right away, there is a convenient intermediate step: The passenger can be the passive driver, and the car would drive to the pickup location empty. As soon as regulation allows, that step already gets you the major benefit of not having to "pay for the other dude in the car".
If I am engaged with my phone, I am not supervising/shadowing the car.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I literally had an Uber driver this morning who didn't speak enough English to take the route I requested. She knew "Hello", and "Have a nice day." No harm done if she's a competent driver. Would I devote hours being behind the wheel? No. I would try to find a job UNIXing for food because that's what I know. But we're not talking about me. We're talking about folks who have a driver's license, a clean driving record…
If you're paying attention to prevent collisions then it's not a passive job. And if I got into a car to find the 'driver' dividing their attention between the road and their novel then I would get right out again.
Definitely not better road markings. I'm a Pittsburgh native, having spent most of my life there, and if anything the immaculate roads here in NorCal are a part of the ongoing skewed optimism regarding self-driving vehicles. In Pittsburgh, you have potholes, ubiquitous construction (especially on PA-28), bridges (and I'm not talking Bay Bridge esque suspension bridges here), windy single lane dirt roads without marki…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> the car would drive to the pickup location empty. It would seem full driverless with nobody in the car is the big deal here. It doesn't really matter is someone will be behind the wheel later, you already had the thing driving around with no human to intervene in case it does something crazy. Don't see how that's an intermediary step.
A car driving around with no human inside poses less risk to human life than a car driving around with a human inside who is unable to control the car.
What happens if someone is in one of these and it needs gas? What happens if these things get a flat tires? What if the police want to pull one of these things over? Can drivers exit this thing at will or are they trapped until some computer in California thinks it is safe? Uber does know that their drivers do lot more then drive
2) The computer detects that the flat tire happened, pulls off to the side, and autodials the Uber triple A repair crew.
3) This one is hard actually. Perhaps the cameras could detect the flashing lights and sound of a police car, and automatically pull over? Or maybe there is just an emergency pull over button that the passenger presses?
4) Aforementioned emergency pull over button.
Ubiquitous comment, as a person within the industry: there's a big difference between cars that have a hands-free driving mode, and cars that do not have a driver. The latter will be an absolute game-changer; the former can yield some marginal gains in safety and congestion, but does not really shatter any paradigms. This is the former. The latter will certainly happen eventually, but is orders of magnitude more chal…