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The Waymo World Model

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171–180 of 699 posts

Re: The Waymo World Model

#171
post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hesai has driven the cost into the $200 to 400 range now. That said I don't know what they cost for the ones needed for driving. Either way we've gone from thousands or tens of thousands into the hundreds dollar range now.

Looking at prices, I think you are wrong and automotive Lidar is still in the 4 to 5 figure range. HESAI might ship Lidar units that cheap, but automotive grade still seems quite expensive: https://www.cratustech.com/shop/lidar/

Those are single unit prices. The AT128 for instance, which is listed at $6250 there and widely used by several Chinese car companies was around $900 per unit in high volume and over time they lowered that to around $400.

The next generation of that, the ATX, is the one they have said would be half that cost. According to regulator filings in China BYD will be using this on entry level $10k cars.

Hesai got the price down for their new generation by several optimizations. They are using their own designs for lasers, receivers, and driver chips which reduced component counts and material costs. They have stepped up production to 1.5 million units a year giving them mass production efficiencies.

Re: The Waymo World Model

#172
post #2

> The Waymo World Model can convert those kinds of videos, or any taken with a regular camera, into a multimodal simulation—showing how the Waymo Driver would see that exact scene. Subtle brag that Waymo could drive in camera-only mode if they chose to. They've stated as much previously, but that doesn't seem widely known.

Autonomous cars need to be significantly better than humans to be fully accepted especially when an accident does happen. Hence limiting yourself to only cameras is futile.

Re: The Waymo World Model

#173
post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah its absurd. As a Tesla driver, I have to say the autopilot model really does feel like what someone who's never driven a car before thinks it's like. Using vision only is so ignorant of what driving is all about: sound, vibration, vision, heat, cold...these are all clues on road condition. If the car isn't feeling all these things as part of the model, you're handicapping it. In a brilliant way Lidar is the miss…

The inputs to FSD are: 7 cameras x 36fps x 5Mpx x 30s 48kHz audio Nav maps and route for next few miles 100Hz kinematics (speed, IMU, odometry, etc) Source: https://youtu.be/LFh9GAzHg1c?t=571

So if they’re already “fusioning” all these things, why would LIDAR be any different?

Re: The Waymo World Model

#174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the (gray) line is the degree of autonomy. My washing machine makes very small, predictable decisions, while a Waymo has to manage uncertainty most of the time.

Its irrelevant. A robot is a robot. Dictionary def: "a machine controlled by a computer that is used to perform jobs automatically."

In the same way people online have argued helicopters are flying cars, it doesn't capture what most people mean when they use the word "robot", anymore than helicopters are what people have in mind when they mention flying cars.

Re: The Waymo World Model

#175
post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without Lidar + the terrible quality of tesla onboard cameras.. street view would look terrible. The biggest L of elon's career is the weird commitment to no-lidar. If you've ever driven a Tesla, it gives daily messages "the left side camera is blocked" etc.. cameras+weather don't mix either.

Yeah its absurd. As a Tesla driver, I have to say the autopilot model really does feel like what someone who's never driven a car before thinks it's like. Using vision only is so ignorant of what driving is all about: sound, vibration, vision, heat, cold...these are all clues on road condition. If the car isn't feeling all these things as part of the model, you're handicapping it. In a brilliant way Lidar is the miss…

Autopilot hasn’t been updated in years and is nothing like FSD. FSD does use all of those cues.

Re: The Waymo World Model

#176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At first I gave him the benefit of the doubt, like that weird decision of Steve Jobs banning Adobe Flash, which ran most of the fun parts of the Internet back then, that ended up spreading HTML5. Now I just think he refused LIDAR on purely aesthetic reasons. The cost is not even that significant compared to the overall cost of a Tesla.

he didn't refuse it. MobileEye or whoever cut Tesla off because they were using the lidar sensors in a way he didn't approve. From there he got mad and said "no more lidar!"

False. Mobileye never used lidar. Lmao where do you all come up with this

Re: The Waymo World Model

#177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without Lidar + the terrible quality of tesla onboard cameras.. street view would look terrible. The biggest L of elon's career is the weird commitment to no-lidar. If you've ever driven a Tesla, it gives daily messages "the left side camera is blocked" etc.. cameras+weather don't mix either.

At first I gave him the benefit of the doubt, like that weird decision of Steve Jobs banning Adobe Flash, which ran most of the fun parts of the Internet back then, that ended up spreading HTML5. Now I just think he refused LIDAR on purely aesthetic reasons. The cost is not even that significant compared to the overall cost of a Tesla.

[dead]

Re: The Waymo World Model

#178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without Lidar + the terrible quality of tesla onboard cameras.. street view would look terrible. The biggest L of elon's career is the weird commitment to no-lidar. If you've ever driven a Tesla, it gives daily messages "the left side camera is blocked" etc.. cameras+weather don't mix either.

I have HW3, but FSD reliably disengages at this time of year with sunrise and sunset during commute hours.

FSD14 on hw4 does not. Its dynamic range is equivalent or better than human.

Re: The Waymo World Model

#179

Suddenly all this focus on world models by Deep mind starts to make sense. I've never really thought of Waymo as a robot in the same way as e.g. a Boston Dynamics humanoid, but of course it is a robot of sorts. Google/Alphabet are so vertically integrated for AI when you think about it. Compare what they're doing - their own power generation , their own silicon, their own data centers, search Gmail YouTube Gemini wor…

Tesla built something like this for FSD training, they presented many years ago. I never understood why they did productize it. It would have made a brilliant Maps alternative, which country automatically update from Tesla cars on the road. Could live update with speed cameras and road conditions. Like many things they've fallen behind

No Lidar anymore on the 2026 Volvo models ES60 and EX60. See for example: https://www.jalopnik.com/2032555/volvo-ends-luminar-lidar-20...

Re: The Waymo World Model

#180
post #163

1. Still hard not to think that this is a huge waste of time as opposed to something that's a little more like a public transport train-ish thing, i.e. integrate with established infrastructure. 2. No seriously, is the filipino driver thing confirmed? It really feels like they're trying to bury that.

America is not europe, how would public transport work for the last 1/2miles

Walking, bikes and scooters.
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