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

venturebeat.com

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

#171

Post by chx »

cmendel wrote: post #109
dev_tty01 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm confused. Are you asserting that driving in actual traffic in the rain is easier than navigating a parking lot in the rain? Yes, several of us generalized the issue. I don't see why that is troubling.

Because the generalization changes the question. There is a world between "can drive 90 % of the time on 90% of roads" and "can drive 100% of the time on 100% of roads." The former is still extraordinarily valuable, the latter effectively impossible. When you conflate the two there really isn't even a point in having a discussion. In the given example "driving in a parking lot +rain" it's completely reasonable to pas…

> In the given example "driving in a parking lot +rain" it's completely reasonable to pass the buck to the human driver.

People like me are only looking forward to completely autonomy -- I am forbidden to drive, you see.

And it gives me some perspective... I believe society would benefit enormously if it didn't treat "everyone can drive" as a truism. If you were to break down what the concept "drive" means in terms of simultaneous tasks a human most be capable of performing you would quickly see how utterly ridiculous it is -- with devastating results in how urban environments have transformed and how many deaths are on the roads.

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

#172

Post by BubRoss »

chx wrote: post #171
cmendel wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the generalization changes the question. There is a world between "can drive 90 % of the time on 90% of roads" and "can drive 100% of the time on 100% of roads." The former is still extraordinarily valuable, the latter effectively impossible. When you conflate the two there really isn't even a point in having a discussion. In the given example "driving in a parking lot +rain" it's completely reasonable to pas…

> In the given example "driving in a parking lot +rain" it's completely reasonable to pass the buck to the human driver. People like me are only looking forward to completely autonomy -- I am forbidden to drive, you see. And it gives me some perspective... I believe society would benefit enormously if it didn't treat "everyone can drive" as a truism. If you were to break down what the concept "drive" means in terms o…

> People like me are only looking forward to completely autonomy -- I am forbidden to drive, you see.

This thread is about automated driving from a systematic point of view, it isn't about you.

> if it didn't treat "everyone can drive" as a truism.

No one said that or implied that anywhere here. You hallucinated some sort link between this conversation and your own frustrations.

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

#173

Post by torpfactory »

carapace wrote: post #162
torpfactory wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That’s the heart of the original argument I posed on this thread: we really should rush to market because the status quo is quite unsafe.

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

#174

Post by carapace »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #165
carapace wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I agree with you, I think. To me it seems that you pretty much need AGI to drive IRL. And there are a lot of cheaper and easier things to do in the meantime. Cheers

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

#175

Post by carapace »

torpfactory wrote: post #173
carapace wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That’s the heart of the original argument I posed on this thread: we really should rush to market because the status quo is quite unsafe.

The status quo is insane, IMO. I call our mixed ped/car transportation networks the "mayhem lottery" (As in, every time you go out there you're taking a chance that you won't come back with all your limbs, or your life.) It was years ago, but a neighbors son was crossing the street in a crosswalk when someone ran a stop sign and knocked him fifty feet. I've twice seen little old ladies lying dead in the street from hit and run drivers.

Making bad imitations of KITT from Knight Rider is not the solution here.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_calming is cheaper and easier, for example.

Look I want robot cars, okay? I even want them ASAP.

As soon as possible without testing robots on public ways.

Build a fake city, populate it with people who have signed waivers, test there.

Sure it's expensive but at least you don't risk killing more innocent people with your experimental car-shaped robots.

I mean, what if I built a television with H.E.M? (Human Eradication Mode) If it escapes and kills someone, isn't that my fault?

Maybe if I put a human in there, give her a phone to distract her, and call her "Safety Driver", I can deflect any blame for my robot's killing spree onto her and get away with murder scott free! It's the perfect crime!

Okay, sorry, I got a little carried away there. But I hope my point is clear: Safety: Yes. Robot Cars: also yes, but obeying the First Law of Robotics. Testing robots cars on innocent people: hard no.

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

#176

Post by carapace »

lonelappde wrote: post #170
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.

My understanding is that the software in the car detected Herzberg and could have stopped the car in time to avoid the collision but that that subroutine had been disabled due to to many false positives. The "safety driver" (in quotes because she turned out to be both unsafe and not actually driving at the time) is also at fault.

Certainly, Elaine Herzberg wouldn't have been killed by that car if it wasn't there, eh?

Don't test killer robots on the public.

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

#177

Post by wutbrodo »

renewiltord wrote: post #148
wutbrodo wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> door-to-door small-group spikable public transit!), What does spikable mean here?

Sorry, couldn't think of a good word. Rapid increase in supply to meet demand. Because the units are smaller they are more fluid. Because they are autonomous storage doesn't have to be centralized and they aren't subject to human scheduling constraints.

Ah gotcha, thanks for clarifying.

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

#178

Post by idavidrein »

lolc wrote: post #158
idavidrein wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with a significant amount of your point, but with regard to object permanence, I would guess that they have prediction algorithms that don't only rely on the current-time perception, so if something blips out of sight for a second the system will still infer/predict it's existence (for a time - obviously if something is hidden for a long time it won't continue to not trust perception).

I'd be very interested to know how that works. But I don't think they have it. The boxes they draw are very wobbly and dimensions expand and contract directly with sensor input. Maybe they only show fused output (in itself an achievement) and there is a later step they don't show. That would be weird though because if they want to brag about their model they would definitely show it if it was any good.

that's a fair point, but it seems reasonable to me that they would separate the sensory input and the predictive/higher-level aspects of their modeling. For example, we know for a fact that they must be doing tons of prediction for both cars and people, so I think it's likely that different models (not sensory) have the info that a person is probably still there.

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

#179

Post by lolc »

idavidrein wrote: post #178
lolc wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd be very interested to know how that works. But I don't think they have it. The boxes they draw are very wobbly and dimensions expand and contract directly with sensor input. Maybe they only show fused output (in itself an achievement) and there is a later step they don't show. That would be weird though because if they want to brag about their model they would definitely show it if it was any good.

that's a fair point, but it seems reasonable to me that they would separate the sensory input and the predictive/higher-level aspects of their modeling. For example, we know for a fact that they must be doing tons of prediction for both cars and people, so I think it's likely that different models (not sensory) have the info that a person is probably still there.

Yes it's true they must have some form of persistence when they do predictions. But expected trajectory of other vehicles and pedestrians was missing from their video. A lot of other interesting feeds were missing too, so I don't know what to read into it. I tend to think that that stuff would look much worse. But maybe they just didn't want to clutter the video or show how advanced they are already.

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

#180

Post by idavidrein »

lolc wrote: post #179
idavidrein wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that's a fair point, but it seems reasonable to me that they would separate the sensory input and the predictive/higher-level aspects of their modeling. For example, we know for a fact that they must be doing tons of prediction for both cars and people, so I think it's likely that different models (not sensory) have the info that a person is probably still there.

Yes it's true they must have some form of persistence when they do predictions. But expected trajectory of other vehicles and pedestrians was missing from their video. A lot of other interesting feeds were missing too, so I don't know what to read into it. I tend to think that that stuff would look much worse. But maybe they just didn't want to clutter the video or show how advanced they are already.

yeah, it's possible that the stuff doesn't look very good, but my guess (maybe my hope?) is that it's too cluttering or through careful analysis could reveal IP about their predictive algos
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