Watch Zoox’s autonomous car drive around San Francisco for an hour • Hacker News Board

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

#161

Post by carapace » Sun, Apr 19, 2020, 3:07 PM UTC

pj_mukh wrote: post #149

carapace wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The whole point is to build a machine that can go the speed limit. Sure, eventually, when the machines and sensors and algorithms and so on are good enough. When the infrastructure can be rebuilt to accommodate them (e.g. Boring company tunnels for auto-trucking, sensors and comms in the roads and signage, &c.) The rush to market is the whole problem. Not the ultimate concept. I want a machine that can take my moth…

Sorry you’re asking for a completely different concept. Asking for the infrastructure to change to adopt AV’s is a pipe dream. Never going to happen. “ I want a machine that can take my mother to her doctors appointment now that the dementia has gotten to the point where she shouldn't take the bus on her own anymore.“ This meanwhile is already happening[1]. We’ve been testing on toy cars for 15 years. We’re not ready…

> you’re asking for a completely different concept.

Yes! Exactly! Robot-shaped cars that weigh multiple tons at travel at 45mph are a bad idea! It's too soon.

> Asking for the infrastructure to change to adopt AV’s is a pipe dream. Never going to happen.

Sure it will. There will be "smart dust" in the asphalt, etc.

> This meanwhile is already happening

Fantastic!

> We’ve been testing on toy cars for 15 years.

How about 30?

If my robots go out into the world and kill people I'm going to feel bad for making killer robots even if they look like cars, have people inside them, and everybody else is killing people with their cars.

Is that so goddamned crazy?

Don't make killer robots.

"Am I going crazy? Or is it the world around me?"

> We’re not ready to remove the safety driver but we are ready for the road.

That sounds wrong on the face of it to me, but let's grant it for the sake of argument.

Build yourself a city, populate it with people who have signed waivers, and use that as your test lab.

Self-driving Lark? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobility_scooter

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

#162

Post by carapace » Sun, Apr 19, 2020, 3:12 PM UTC

torpfactory wrote: post #140

carapace wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about the nerf-golf-cart idea?

Speed is an important parameter: you can’t do freeway driving in a golf cart. IMO regular vehicles can be safe enough with appropriate supervision. It’s really once you get to the first runs without safety drivers where your backup goes away. Hopefully that will be only after your intervention rate is zero.

We can work our way to that point (freeway driving) without killing people.

Really, the problem is the rush to market not the idea itself.

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

#163

Post by carapace » Sun, Apr 19, 2020, 3:15 PM UTC

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #98

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…

You can't learn to operate in environments you don't train in. It would be great if we had a solution to the out-of-distribution inference/reward problem, but I don't think it really exists. I'm firmly in the "Perfect for freight, questionable value for consumers" camp WRT autonomous cars. I also think it's irresponsible to do this but the reality is, they are doing all the socially "appropriate" things, like get app…

It's one of those things where I wonder if I'm not being too much of a curmudgeon. I'm sure the case could be made that these things will reduce overall traffic deaths long before they become perfect drivers, eh

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

#164

Post by loufe » Sun, Apr 19, 2020, 4:24 PM UTC

renewiltord wrote: post #125

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.

Well, universality is not necessarily a useful end goal. Lyft is a successful company that doesn't operate even in Canada. A solution that works only in coastal California may well be sufficient. Lots of things come to the Bay Area and Los Angeles before anywhere else. Partly that's because coastal California is an innovation hotbed. Partly because it's a single large rich market. Since one of these that succeeds ent…

Not to take away from your point but Lyft does operate in Canada, now.

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

#165

Post by AndrewKemendo » Sun, Apr 19, 2020, 5:11 PM UTC

carapace wrote: post #163

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't learn to operate in environments you don't train in. It would be great if we had a solution to the out-of-distribution inference/reward problem, but I don't think it really exists. I'm firmly in the "Perfect for freight, questionable value for consumers" camp WRT autonomous cars. I also think it's irresponsible to do this but the reality is, they are doing all the socially "appropriate" things, like get app…

It's one of those things where I wonder if I'm not being too much of a curmudgeon. I'm sure the case could be made that these things will reduce overall traffic deaths long before they become perfect drivers, eh

Yeah I don't buy that argument. These systems would have to be at least human level and also so pervasive that it would be almost like an inoculation.

At that point there are cheaper and easier ways to do that, which by the way are already happening. If you buy a modern car they have very impressive look ahead/smart cruise and lane keeping systems.

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

#166

Post by beams_of_light » Sun, Apr 19, 2020, 5:16 PM UTC

rrdharan wrote: post #126

beams_of_light wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Road infrastructure is going to change, by necessity. It seems like self-driving technology is as good as it can be, given current circumstances. There's no way to get self-driving cars to airplane safety numbers without on/near road devices/reflectors/computer-readable signage/etc, edge compute, better pedestrian understanding of what the cars are seeing and are capable of reacting to, and probably much more. It's t…

Is the reason all of this makes more sense than just building tracks and trains just the fact that there’s an evolutionary path to get there with incremental releases along the way? Because every time I hear this kind of thing I keep finding myself asking why/whether mass transit systems aren’t just the same end state?

IMO, the reason mass transit isn't popular in moderately populated areas (think population per sq mi/km) is that it's too inconvenient. In these places, it's much, much quicker to hop in your car and get where you're going than to try to use the public transportation system, which is a pretty sparse set of bus routes in most places.

I'm a firm believer in Elon Musk's vision for public transit, wherein you may own an autonomous vehicle that is hired out for rides by others via something like Lyft. If you choose to own a car, it'll sit at your house when you choose, but can go out and make you money while you have nowhere to go. At this point, you can imagine that there are detractors from this idea - namely those who would profit from owning all the vehicles, those who manufacture traditional vehicles, and the fossil fuel industry, to name a few. Those people are the ones who will keep us in a state of limbo as long as possible from a legal and infrastructural standpoint. We have to decide that this future is better than the one we're in. It'll have a vast impact on pollution, anthropological contributions to climate change, and human equality and prosperity.

All we have to do is start demanding progress and stop accepting mediocrity.

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

#167

Post by chrisseaton » Sun, Apr 19, 2020, 6:10 PM UTC

dev_tty01 wrote: post #93

chrisseaton wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is any traffic moving in conditions this bad? Just stop.

Again, I assume you've never experienced this. Storms can come up fast in the mountains and be very localized. As I, and the previous poster mentioned, it can be more dangerous to stop sometimes.

If you can't see, then it's always safest to just stop rather than driving on, potentially off the edge of a cliff.

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

#168

Post by tom-_- » Sun, Apr 19, 2020, 6:38 PM UTC

carapace wrote: post #124

pj_mukh wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of these companies run closed-circuit tests (aka nerf-golf-carts) and 1000's of hours of simulation. In the end, the only test that matters is the real-test. Real speed (sensor/computation latency et al.), real sensor feeds (lighting et al.) and real car size (momentum et al.). Source: Am Controls engineer. There WILL be bugs and un-modellable sources of error. The real hedging in these situations is the safety…

> Most of these companies run closed-circuit tests (aka nerf-golf-carts) and 1000's of hours of simulation. I don't think we're talking about the same thing. I mean build a machine that, in the real world, can't hurt people. Make it light. Make it soft . Program it to limit its speed such that it can always stop before colliding with whatever ( whoever ) might leap out in front of it. If the top speed is five miles p…

I imagine reducing the weight of the vehicle would effect it's stopping distance, traction, turning radius, a bunch of other car physics that would in turn produce unreliable data to train on.

I assume much of the training is done in simulation or within a controlled environment but unfortunately the only way to train for city driving is to gather as much real world data as possible and that means "testing in production" with a hopefully alert humans (one for backup) behind the wheel.

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

#169

Post by pj_mukh » Sun, Apr 19, 2020, 8:07 PM UTC

carapace wrote: post #161

pj_mukh wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry you’re asking for a completely different concept. Asking for the infrastructure to change to adopt AV’s is a pipe dream. Never going to happen. “ I want a machine that can take my mother to her doctors appointment now that the dementia has gotten to the point where she shouldn't take the bus on her own anymore.“ This meanwhile is already happening[1]. We’ve been testing on toy cars for 15 years. We’re not ready…

> you’re asking for a completely different concept. Yes! Exactly! Robot-shaped cars that weigh multiple tons at travel at 45mph are a bad idea! It's too soon. > Asking for the infrastructure to change to adopt AV’s is a pipe dream. Never going to happen. Sure it will. There will be "smart dust" in the asphalt, etc. > This meanwhile is already happening Fantastic! > We’ve been testing on toy cars for 15 years. How abo…

"Sure it will. There will be "smart dust" in the asphalt, etc."

Even if you want this, the best way to get the government to move is to deploy, prove customer demand/appetite. Everythings going just to plan and early statistics are showing fewer people will die with each autonomous car on the road (with zero infrastructure changes).

The killer robots are already out there, they are being driven by distracted humans killing 35000 people per year (who signed those waivers?!). This is trying to rapidly fix that problem.

"How about 30?"

Yup. Like I thought, moving goalposts. If we did 30, you'd say why not 45? So I gotta move on.

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

#170

Post by lonelappde » Sun, Apr 19, 2020, 9:12 PM UTC

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…

Elaine Herzberg was killed by a human driver not watching the road.