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Beginning fully autonomous operations with the 6th-generation Waymo driver

waymo.com

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Re: Beginning fully autonomous operations with the 6th-generation Waymo driver

#221

Post by astrange »

rhubarbtree wrote: post #201
jacquesm wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sensor fusion allows you to resolve that ambiguity, I wonder if Elon is really as in touch with this as you would expect. No single sensor is perfect, they all have their problematic areas and a good sensor fusion scheme allows you to have your sensors reinforce each other in such a way that each operates as close as possible to their area of strength. No single sensor can ever give you that kind of resilience. Sure,…

Last time I checked I relied entirely on vision to drive autonomously.

You also have hearing, you can move your head and wear sunglasses to avoid glare, etc.

Re: Beginning fully autonomous operations with the 6th-generation Waymo driver

#222

Post by jacquesm »

rhubarbtree wrote: post #201
jacquesm wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sensor fusion allows you to resolve that ambiguity, I wonder if Elon is really as in touch with this as you would expect. No single sensor is perfect, they all have their problematic areas and a good sensor fusion scheme allows you to have your sensors reinforce each other in such a way that each operates as close as possible to their area of strength. No single sensor can ever give you that kind of resilience. Sure,…

Last time I checked I relied entirely on vision to drive autonomously.

That's a very naive way of looking at this.

You have an extremely detailed world model including a mental model of the drivers and other road users around you. You rely on sight, sound, experience and lots of knowledge. You are aware of the social contracts at work when dealing with shared resources and your brain is many orders of magnitude more powerful than any box full of electronics.

What you can do with 'just vision' misses the fact that you are part of the hardware.

Re: Beginning fully autonomous operations with the 6th-generation Waymo driver

#223

Post by close04 »

SecretDreams wrote: post #172
mlsu wrote: post #71

Obviously there is a huge amount of money and effort being spent on automated driving. But I cannot help thinking that this perception technology will prove very useful for robotics in general, factory, home, in space, etc. Car dynamics are fast enough to be useful across a huge number of domains. In some sense, the visionaries in this space are not thinking big enough. I want visions of mobility with a totally diffe…

> Tesla's choice to abandon lidar will be one of the biggest oof in business history. This yes. > The lead that Waymo has acquired in perceiving its driverless car's environment will be almost impossible to kill. This, I don't think so. I think it'll be more like the space race. Or the LLM race. Anytime money or data is all that's required, you won't hold the lead forever. The reason big tech holds their leads today…

> The reason big tech holds their leads today is not innovation, but critical mass combined with user entrapment.

And regulatory capture by the incumbent. Reach the top then push for regulation behind you. Thats’s one big additional obstacle to overcome for a new player.

OpenAI was so willing to support regulating AI just as soon as they thought they’ve gained enough of an advantage over the competition and they can burn the bridge behind them.

Re: Beginning fully autonomous operations with the 6th-generation Waymo driver

#224

Post by thefounder »

mlsu wrote: post #71

Obviously there is a huge amount of money and effort being spent on automated driving. But I cannot help thinking that this perception technology will prove very useful for robotics in general, factory, home, in space, etc. Car dynamics are fast enough to be useful across a huge number of domains. In some sense, the visionaries in this space are not thinking big enough. I want visions of mobility with a totally diffe…

Yeah but imagine how hard robotics are if we can’t make a dam thing to just speed and turn correctly(I.e 2 params). You also seem to overestimate the inertia of the tech advantage. Being first is not always the most important thing. See google AI as prime example.

Re: Beginning fully autonomous operations with the 6th-generation Waymo driver

#225

Post by p-e-w »

thefounder wrote: post #224
mlsu wrote: post #71

Obviously there is a huge amount of money and effort being spent on automated driving. But I cannot help thinking that this perception technology will prove very useful for robotics in general, factory, home, in space, etc. Car dynamics are fast enough to be useful across a huge number of domains. In some sense, the visionaries in this space are not thinking big enough. I want visions of mobility with a totally diffe…

Yeah but imagine how hard robotics are if we can’t make a dam thing to just speed and turn correctly(I.e 2 params). You also seem to overestimate the inertia of the tech advantage. Being first is not always the most important thing. See google AI as prime example.

The failure of self-driving cars has nothing to do with technology and everything to do with regulation. It’s been demonstrated time and again that statistically, self-driving cars are safer than human-driven cars.[1]

Autonomous driving is a solved problem. The fact that self-driving cars are not permitted on most of the world’s roads is 100% the fault of regulators and those who vote for them.

[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-48526-4

Re: Beginning fully autonomous operations with the 6th-generation Waymo driver

#226

Post by bradleyjg »

raw_anon_1111 wrote: post #138
gcanyon wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And they didn't have sugar daddy (Google) willing to burn several billions a year for many years. Tesla's market cap is $1.3 trillion. Granted the company itself doesn't have access to all of that, but surely if they wanted to spend, say, $10 billion per year on something big like FSD, they could have. > didn't have the luxury of adding $50k to the cost of the car for the hardware A little more extreme, but: Tesla…

You can’t trade market cap for goods and services. Tesla is not exactly rolling in cash these days.

You can. It’s called a secondary offering. The SEC has a whole process.

Re: Beginning fully autonomous operations with the 6th-generation Waymo driver

#227

Post by zacmps »

mlsu wrote: post #71

Obviously there is a huge amount of money and effort being spent on automated driving. But I cannot help thinking that this perception technology will prove very useful for robotics in general, factory, home, in space, etc. Car dynamics are fast enough to be useful across a huge number of domains. In some sense, the visionaries in this space are not thinking big enough. I want visions of mobility with a totally diffe…

I think what you're looking for is a bike.

Re: Beginning fully autonomous operations with the 6th-generation Waymo driver

#228

Post by gniv »

abraxas wrote: post #86

I actually hope that they do not succeed in the end. Ubiquitous self driving cars will spell the end of what's left of walkable areas in North America and bring about (in time) similar destruction of the urban fabric to Europe and elsewhere. I'm not very articulate and English is my second language but this video below is really worth watching before we all swallow as an axiom the idea that autonomous cars are going…

Why would driverless cars mill around? They would just wait around in underground garages. They can even block each other, so they don't need that much space to park.

Re: Beginning fully autonomous operations with the 6th-generation Waymo driver

#229

Post by [deleted] »

ilaksh wrote: post #58

The ambiguity in the title is going to get a lot of the "skeptics" who have remained in denial about this to assume it's some kind of admission that they haven't been autonomous this whole time. It's weird how many people there are like that still. But what they mean is that they are putting the new release into production (without backup drivers). They have been fully autonomous for many years.

[deleted]

Re: Beginning fully autonomous operations with the 6th-generation Waymo driver

#230

Post by rbbydotdev »

mlsu wrote: post #71

Obviously there is a huge amount of money and effort being spent on automated driving. But I cannot help thinking that this perception technology will prove very useful for robotics in general, factory, home, in space, etc. Car dynamics are fast enough to be useful across a huge number of domains. In some sense, the visionaries in this space are not thinking big enough. I want visions of mobility with a totally diffe…

I’m imagining these vehicles on a sort of track, this way if the automation fails, it can still be guided. Also, the track could even potentially deliver power. The vehicle can be any number of connected pods.
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