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Waymo updates 3,800 robotaxis after they 'drive into standing water'

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Re: Waymo updates 3,800 robotaxis after they 'drive into standing water'

#211

Post by Scoundreller »

reaperducer wrote: post #117
phatfish wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Make a mental note of the level of the air intake for the engine in your car, if the water doesn't make it that high you should be fine as long as you don't get stuck (no, i don't where it is on my car). The engine gets damaged when water gets into the piston chamber i think. Water compresses less than air so important things bend or crack if the engine is running too long with water in it. I wonder how electric cars…

I wonder how electric cars fare with deep water. The ground clearance for my EV is 7 inches. The manual specifies it can handle 18 inches of water. I don't know if that's the point where water messes with the electronics, or a swift current would start to move it sideways.

It’s probably all well and good until a vehicle gets old and gaskets no longer seal, immersion becomes more of quicker contributor to failure, electric or not. E.g. cracked boots on a ball joint or not so sealed wheel bearings.

Also why I don’t like pressure washing anything mechanical.

E.g. Drove through a heavy rain storm and my ecu decided one of my wheel speed sensors was faulty and suspended my abs and traction control. Even after drying it out on a nice day of driving, the error persisted but I was able to reset it with my vehicle specific obd reader and not an issue again. Ugh.

Re: Waymo updates 3,800 robotaxis after they 'drive into standing water'

#212

Post by tstrimple »

bushbaba wrote: post #174
cesarb wrote: post #132

That's the promise of self-driving cars. Every time an issue is found, no matter how minor, it's fixed and updated everywhere. From now on, every car of that model (and future models, and related models) will no longer have that problem. Several passes of that improvement cycle, and self-driving cars become safer (and more efficient/comfortable/etc) than human drivers. At least, that's how it's supposed to work.

If you've ever built software, you'll know that regressions are all too common. Especially when AI/ML is involved. It's likely they patch this and cause 2 other bugs in the process.

> If you've ever built software, you'll know that regressions are all too common. Especially when AI/ML is involved.

"AI/ML" has delivered far more complete testing criteria than any "QA expert" has. It's absolutely crazy to me the number of people who defend the status quo in software testing when software quality has been on the decline for over a decade. But sure. "AI/ML" is the problem, not shit developers who never considered that angle in the first place.

Re: Waymo updates 3,800 robotaxis after they 'drive into standing water'

#213

Post by nomel »

cma wrote: post #209
nomel wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> drive slow too through flooded section This first requires knowing you're in a flooded section . That's the gap here, is it not? My point is that you can't use descent AS a "flooded zone" detection because then your speed, by the harsh mistress of psychics, is very limited everywhere you go , flooded or not, because stopping distance has to be kept very short since just a few feet of overshoot, when your flood dete…

I'm assuming there is no issue detecting water over the road, only depth below it that has changed since the HD map was made.

And, we're full circle at this point.

Re: Waymo updates 3,800 robotaxis after they 'drive into standing water'

#214

Post by DANmode »

Animats wrote: post #2

That's a tough problem - distinguishing wet pavement from deep water. Humans make that mistake frequently. Autonomous vehicles should probably be equipped with a water sensor. (We did that in our DARPA Grand Challenge vehicle back in 2005). Then they can enter water very cautiously and see if it's too deep. This may make them too cautious about shallow puddles on roads, though.

Weren’t they figuring out radar or radar adjacent technologies for measuring snow density etc?

Did that get anywhere?

Re: Waymo updates 3,800 robotaxis after they 'drive into standing water'

#215

Post by bigfatkitten »

sunrunner wrote: post #138
_puk wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like overkill. Stick in the ground will do it. https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2F...

As long as the ground doesn't dip halfway across...

If in doubt, walk it first. (Unless you’re in an area with crocodiles, of course.)

If you can’t walk the crossing, then under no circumstances should you drive it.

Re: Waymo updates 3,800 robotaxis after they 'drive into standing water'

#217

Post by cma »

nomel wrote: post #213
cma wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm assuming there is no issue detecting water over the road, only depth below it that has changed since the HD map was made.

And, we're full circle at this point.

They had an issue detecting them here. But my understanding was people were saying beyond seeing the flooded section there is a fundamental problem that they can never solve that if there is new construction under the flooded section lowering the level of the road they can never deal with that. But as long as it is not a sudden dip or sinkhole I think HD mapping can still help with that since they can monitor the cars altitude as it traverses it and detect divergence from what is mapped early.

Re: Waymo updates 3,800 robotaxis after they 'drive into standing water'

#218

Post by [deleted] »

cma wrote: post #217
nomel wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And, we're full circle at this point.

They had an issue detecting them here. But my understanding was people were saying beyond seeing the flooded section there is a fundamental problem that they can never solve that if there is new construction under the flooded section lowering the level of the road they can never deal with that. But as long as it is not a sudden dip or sinkhole I think HD mapping can still help with that since they can monitor the car…

[deleted]

Re: Waymo updates 3,800 robotaxis after they 'drive into standing water'

#219

Post by nomel »

stavros wrote: post #127
bombcar wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's some places where Apple still thinks I'm driving through a cornfield even though the development is a few years old, now. I suppose I could inform them somehow, but it's not worth the bother.

I don't know how they don't notice thousands of users driving through these "cornfields" at 60mph every day, though. You'd have thought that'd raise some alert?

Waze was pretty public about how they used it, with automatic flags and route updates with no/little human intervention. I assume everyone else is doing the same, since it's so obvious. I'm sure they know, but if it was a cornfield a couple years before, there's a good chance it's lower on the priority list, in a "how many people will this impact" sense.

Re: Waymo updates 3,800 robotaxis after they 'drive into standing water'

#220

Post by blueskies1029 »

MetaWhirledPeas wrote: post #108
blueskies1029 wrote: post #39

They are rolling these out in New Orleans soon. Standing water is everywhere, and sometimes you have big hidden potholes. You just need to know the roads. Should be fun.

On a normal day it should suffice to train the model to use its judgment and maybe monitor how other cars are reacting to water covering the road, but when it starts flooding everywhere maybe they should pause the service until it dries out.

Sometimes there are not other cars around. Sometimes, I get scared driving on the same roads I know in heavy rain. So I am interested to see how Waymo handles it. I agree a suspended service is nice. The issue with that is flooding is local localized at times, like even block by block. So I don't know how they will make the call to suspend service.

Because the nuclear options is any heavy rain cancel rides, but that seems to hurt their service model.

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