If self-driving vehicles are tested on public streets, all data generated should be public. Companies should be cooperating, not competing, on "don't hit telephone poles" and "don't run over children".
Waymo issues software and mapping recall after robotaxi crashes into a pole
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Re: Waymo issues software and mapping recall after robotaxi crashes into a pole
#22"Recall" really needs to be retired as a term.
What'd be the proper term then? In french when, for example, many cars are sent back to the dealerships (or factory) to fix something, it's called a "campagne de rappel ("recall campaign"). P.S: I've got nothing against "recall" being recalled so that it can be fixed ; )
I think that's the problem. "Recall" to most people means "I need to take my car to the dealership, and they will fix something dangerous with the car and give it back to me".
Whereas, may recalls these days are just "Your car performed an over the air update while you were sleeping".
Maybe we need the concept of "physical recall" and "software recall".
Re: Waymo issues software and mapping recall after robotaxi crashes into a pole
#23I'm sure they did it out of caution, considering their excellent track record. Love this company, would like to see them expanding.
I don't think the economics will work (for quite some time). They have ~670 cars in total, and still have seriously negative cash flow.
Re: Waymo issues software and mapping recall after robotaxi crashes into a pole
#24" The update corrects an error in the software that “assigned a low damage score” to the telephone pole." What did it get classified as? What's a Waymo allowed to hit?
Cars hit "objects" all the time without issue. Bits of paper flying through the air, bags, cups, steam clouds, and other small objects are very common sources of "motion planning collision" in urban environments.
Re: Waymo issues software and mapping recall after robotaxi crashes into a pole
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
My best guess is they're lying, or they model curbs to have a "low damage score" so its okay if the ai thinks theres a 10% chance a path will hit a curb. I'm excited for self driving cars, but I have reservations about a system that has to hard code "don't hit a telephone pole". It reminds me of this skit https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3m5qxZm_JqM
> My best guess is they're lying It would be extremely silly to lie about an implementation detail that doesn't matter in an official recall filing with an agency currently investigating you for your reporting of incidents like this. It could also just be everything gets a damage score, including reflection artifacts that aren't really there or paper garbage in the road, and in this case the pole was identified incor…
Cruise withheld details (lied by omission) about the person they ran over...
Re: Waymo issues software and mapping recall after robotaxi crashes into a pole
#26[deleted]
Re: Waymo issues software and mapping recall after robotaxi crashes into a pole
#27If self-driving vehicles are tested on public streets, all data generated should be public. Companies should be cooperating, not competing, on "don't hit telephone poles" and "don't run over children".
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Re: Waymo issues software and mapping recall after robotaxi crashes into a pole
#28If self-driving vehicles are tested on public streets, all data generated should be public. Companies should be cooperating, not competing, on "don't hit telephone poles" and "don't run over children".
Sounds cool in theory, but much less than useful in practice. The hardware and file formats are different enough that the data would be mostly useless to us (I work at a self driving-ish company).
The models are predicated a specific set of hardware ( which camera, what fidelity LiDAR, but even something as simple as “what’s the frame rate” can have a difference)
Re: Waymo issues software and mapping recall after robotaxi crashes into a pole
#29After some sleuthing and Geoguessring, here's the alley where it happened:
https://maps.app.goo.gl/UNUzQn686ESYWbfo7
Further south of the pin, by the section of the alley with stripes on the pavement behind the garages for 842 N 6th Ave (but not on 6th or 7th, on an unnamed alley between the two).
Let me repeat - it's an alley. The Google Maps car didn't even go down that road (though it looks to have been under construction when the Maps car went through).
Without exclusing Waymo (they had their car do something dangerous and stupid) this is the kind of pseudo-off-road parking lot/driveway/construction zone nav stuff that's really hard to get right, and almost requires AGI.
I think the real error was not the damage score but the planning algorithm that directed it to drive down and to continue through that alley.
I think we'll soon get to (if we're not there already) a form of level 2 driver aids or level 3 geofenced self driving (highway only?) that's safer than average human drivers. I think we're a long way from self-driving cars that will assign a low damage score and drive over an empty cardboard box in an unmarked, unmapped private alley, and we may never get there. But that doesn't mean Waymo can't or shouldn't exist, it means they need to shut down the car and delegate to a human when they're stuck and not not on public, mapped, confirmed clear roads. Maybe that means it can't pick you up from the back of the Chic Fil A parking lot or the entrance to the mall that's an island in a quarter mile of private parking lots and you have to go to the nearest parking spot on the actual road, but if the alternative is assigning damage scores to stuff in alleys that's probably for the best.
Re: Waymo issues software and mapping recall after robotaxi crashes into a pole
#30I assume Waymo is continuously improving the safety of their software. It's bizarre to classify two of these updates as "recalls" but not the others.