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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

#171

Post by vladimirralev »

bo1024 wrote: post #101
dzdt wrote: post #7

They describe this as a third-generation vehicle, but it still requires multiple human-driver interventions over a single journey. How many more generations to reach reliable true autonomy?

My opinion as a researcher in AI/ML but without any expertise in self-driving tech: We are a long way from where I would be willing to trust my life to self-driving cars - as a passenger, as another driver on the streets, as a cyclist, or as a pedestrian. Much farther away than these companies press releases make it seem. Here's why. These driving algorithms are successful in large part because of data. They train th…

I think you are missing the most important part here. These cars are always online and share data between them. They have a detailed map of every street and every road bump and every road pole/sign that can be used for navigation. Even if everything is in snow and the camera/lidar is frozen and can't see anything, these cars know exactly where they are and where the road is from predictive navigation based on speed, direction, road shape/bumps from previous data that was collected from 1000s of passes before that on that very same road. At first AI cars will probably avoid certain areas that have not been mapped. Each car will signal any unexpected road blocks, data will be sent realtime to a human operator who will script a walkthrough in seconds. Such as "ok, you are legitimately stuck in traffic right now, just wait" or "ok, there is a crashed car ahead of you so the right-turning lane is closed, move into the left lane and you can turn right from here as an exception". There will be humans like ATC in all cases.

Police and emergency services will just coordinate with the "ATC" to pre-script routes differently depending on the situation.

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

#172

Post by sampo »

autotune wrote: post #88
amelius wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I imagine that the next user would just tap a button on their smartphone saying that the car is dirty, upon which the car drives back to a service center and the user receives a new car (not the same car).

The problem with this is, as a rider, I personally would not want to have to be constantly expecting a dirty car. If one out of every 3 cars has vomit or syringes in it or feces, I would personally stick with a service that has human drivers at the wheel.

> If one out of every 3 cars has vomit or syringes in it or feces

1 in 3... you must be from San Francisco?

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

#173

Post by usrusr »

autotune wrote: post #13

How is this going to combat people who make a mess inside the vehicle after going 100 percent without human drivers/test engineers? If it picks up a drunk person at 3 AM who then throws up inside the car, is it vomit-aware and knows it needs a cleaning before picking up the next passenger?

Self-checking a car interior between rides should be one of the easiest computer vision tasks imaginable: fixed camera angles, fixed scene and any differences in outside lighting could be drowned with a strong internal flash (which could even double as a minor privacy improvement if the cameras were tailored to match the light intensity of that flash to be practically blind without).

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

#174

Post by andegre »

kd5bjo wrote: post #33
autotune wrote: post #13

How is this going to combat people who make a mess inside the vehicle after going 100 percent without human drivers/test engineers? If it picks up a drunk person at 3 AM who then throws up inside the car, is it vomit-aware and knows it needs a cleaning before picking up the next passenger?

The same way stores keep unattended restrooms clean: periodic inspections throughout the day and a timely response to customer complaints: If cars report to a central facility for a 5-minute inspection after 45 minutes of service, they've already cut labor costs by 90%, but with some increased capital costs due to decreased fleet availability.

I was thinking it would be kind of up to the next passenger. If they are ready to get in the car/Uber, and notice it's extremely dirty, or god-forbid someone puked in their recently, maybe they have something on the app or in the car that says "Report car for service inspection/cleaning" and "request another ride".

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

#175

Post by kafkaesq »

vivekd wrote: post #69
aedron wrote: post #34

Uber's product is the company's stock. All of their "AI" and "self-driving" stunts so far have been transparent hype fuel that anyone with the slightest domain knowledge knows have no practical significance. Their PR department are, as can be expected, top notch though. I especially like how they put a populist spin on their announcements, like the beer delivery (yay, beer!) and now picking up passengers with their p…

Nah, Uber and Lyft CEOs both said they envision a future where we don't own cars and just call self driving taxi services via app when we need them. They both envision this happening in less than a decade. This seems to be coming true, millennials have the lowest rate of car ownership and it seems to be the best explanation for why both companies are willing to bleed money to expand market-share as quickly a possible…

Except they forget that people like owning their personal space -- especially if it's they need to inhabit for multiple hours in the day, pretty much every day.

And (as with the "smart home" advocates), they forget that, outside of the tech crowd - not everyone likes interacting with (and hence, being dependent on) computers for every conceivable need in their life, 24x7.

The ownerless model might work for some people -- but not too many, I suspect.

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

#176

Post by [deleted] »

andegre wrote: post #174
kd5bjo wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same way stores keep unattended restrooms clean: periodic inspections throughout the day and a timely response to customer complaints: If cars report to a central facility for a 5-minute inspection after 45 minutes of service, they've already cut labor costs by 90%, but with some increased capital costs due to decreased fleet availability.

I was thinking it would be kind of up to the next passenger. If they are ready to get in the car/Uber, and notice it's extremely dirty, or god-forbid someone puked in their recently, maybe they have something on the app or in the car that says "Report car for service inspection/cleaning" and "request another ride".

[deleted]

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

#177

Post by santaclaus »

kafkaesq wrote: post #175
vivekd wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah, Uber and Lyft CEOs both said they envision a future where we don't own cars and just call self driving taxi services via app when we need them. They both envision this happening in less than a decade. This seems to be coming true, millennials have the lowest rate of car ownership and it seems to be the best explanation for why both companies are willing to bleed money to expand market-share as quickly a possible…

Except they forget that people like owning their personal space -- especially if it's they need to inhabit for multiple hours in the day, pretty much every day. And (as with the "smart home" advocates), they forget that, outside of the tech crowd - not everyone likes interacting with (and hence, being dependent on) computers for every conceivable need in their life, 24x7. The ownerless model might work for some peopl…

I dunno, of my friends under 35 (San Francisco and Oakland) it is rarer to own a car than to be carless. Most couples I know with cars are also single car families. In cities and the surrounding metros (which continue to grow as a proportion of the US pop) I could totally see an ownerless model working. How many Manhattan residents own cars?

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

#178

Post by dragonwriter »

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…

> 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.

And, to build on this point, a lot of urban ones are produced or exacerbated by improper behavior at stoplights.

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

#179

Post by cfreeman »

sampo wrote: post #169
jonknee wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The age old last mile problem. I don't think anyone is suggesting getting rid of mass transit and in fact self driving cars could be the best thing ever happen to mass transit (no need to park at the train station if coming from the suburbs). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_mile_(transportation)

When a whole suburb is taking self-driving car every morning to get to the train, I guess someone will innovate and start offering rides in a minibus or even a bus.

I know Elon has talked about some sort of minibus form factor for their taxi fleet plans.

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

#180

Post by crucini »

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…

> Sure, it's possible, but what profit-driven company would ever take that risk knowing the real-world reliability of wireless communication?

I think it can be done; the following car may have to brake hard if communication is lost with the leading car.

Let z1 be the safe following distance behind a non-smart car, and z2 be the safe following distance behind a smart car. z2 Follower approaches leader and settles at z1. Follower attempts to contact leader. If contact is successfull, follower measures link quality and computes z3=f(z1, z2, quality). If link quality is perfect, z3 can be z1 - in which case the slightest link disturbance causes hard braking.

If link quality is 50%, z3 might be avg(z1, z2), and the follower has more time budget to avoid braking during tiny dropouts.

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