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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

#231

Post by boredpudding »

rbbydotdev wrote: post #230
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.

Maybe even have multiple people in each pod, and on the set track, have common stops where people are likely to get on/off.

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

#232

Post by [deleted] »

rhubarbtree wrote: post #199
qwerpy wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope this prods Tesla to up their game. I love my Teslas but if Waymo’s approach is shown to be truly better then I’d happily switch to a car that used their tech. For now I have no choice but to stick with the self-driving that’s available for personal cars. Hopefully Waymo works on licensing their tech for other manufacturers and expanding their geographical coverage.

Tesla’s approach is smarter than Waymo. Maybe Tesla won’t win, perhaps a Chinese firm, but the winner will follow a vision based system and not a micro-mapping LIDAR system. “Vision is all you need.”

[deleted]

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

#233

Post by brulx126 »

p-e-w wrote: post #225
thefounder wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Your link does not prove your point. It's about ADAS and even shows that it is not universally safer than human driving.

> However, accidents involving Advanced Driving Systems occur more frequently than Human-Driven Vehicle accidents under dawn/dusk or turning conditions, which is 5.25 and 1.98 times higher, respectively.

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

#234

Post by ted_bunny »

devmor wrote: post #66

Is this one going to stop parking on the side of city streets with the hazards on the middle of rush hour? For all the impressive technological advances Waymo makes (and don’t get me wrong, they are impressive), their cars are still a constant obnoxious menace to drivers.

I do a lot of driving in Austin for a living. I am not a fan of these for several reasons. But on average they're quite competent and I see humans do dumber stuff all the time. I can also cut them off in traffic without repercussions!

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

#235

Post by p_l »

rhubarbtree wrote: post #204
xnx wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Truly. I don't understand why Tesla fans think camera/lidar fusion is unsolvable but camera/camera fusion is a non-issue.

Unsure if you’re trolling, but you haven’t listened to what Tesla are actually saying. Having more sensors is complicating the matter, but yes sure you can do that if you want to. But just using vision simplifies training a huge amount. The more you think about it, the stronger this argument is. Synthesising data is a lot easier if you’re dealing with one fairly homogenous input. But the real point is that cameras ar…

Chinese are going with lidars as well.

It's just that the cost of lidars are falling like crazy, with new automotive lidars using phased-array laser optics instead of what waymo started with (mechanically scanned lidars)

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

#236

Post by ForHackernews »

anonymous908213 wrote: post #79
ForHackernews wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What, why? There's no winner-take-all aspect to shuttling people around. Taxi service is a commodity and taxis-without-drivers will also be a commodity. The switching costs for users are essentially zero. That's how we get Uber, Lyft, DiDi, Grab, Bolt, WeRide, BlackWolf...

I don't know how you can write that list and come to the conclusion that it's not winner-take-all. In their home market (US), Uber is ~75%, Lyft is ~25%, and all other competitors are sub-1% combined. Didi is similarly dominant in China, and so on. "Completely different markets have different winners taking it all" does not counteract the claim of winner-takes-all in any way, nor does listing utterly insignificant pl…

Try to raise prices and see how fast those regional "monopolies" evaporate. MoviePass was the winner in the "unlimited movie tickets" subscription space.

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

#237

Post by small_model »

dinobones wrote: post #122
kjksf wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tesla never had lidar so they didn't abandon it. Also, Tesla started FSD in 2016. The very core of their strategy was (and is) to sell $40k car with hardware capable of running FSD. Cameras are super cheap, FSD chip is reasonably inexpensive. Lidar is not. Maybe today the cost isn't completely prohibitive (I think it still is, because you need multiple lidars) but it certainly was for the first 8 years of FSD program…

> And given that in Austin they just reached parity with Waymo (i.e. completely unsupervised robotaxi service), they are not doing badly. There is no unsupervised robotaxi service in Austin and there won't be, for years, if ever. Just like the way "FSD" is not fully self driving and likely never will be.

lol its running now and growing every day, the thing about Tesla's solution is it works globally and the costs are much much less than Waymo will ever be able to achieve (Given there reliance on third parties for most of the hardware) Waymo and uber will be gone in a year.

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

#238

Post by small_model »

WarmWash wrote: post #156
DerekL wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are these the cars where the safety driver is in a car tailing the robotaxi, or do they actually run without the need for a safety driver? https://electrek.co/2026/01/22/tesla-didnt-remove-the-robota...

It seems they run without a safety driver or follow car (mostly?). However the area it operates is extremely small, and they are still only allowing Tesla bros to try it.

Nope is open to the public and covers bigger area then Waymo. EDS is limiting a lot of people here's ability to critically evaluate the current autonomous auto rollout.

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

#239

Post by atonse »

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…

Musk has been talking about this (generalizing the self driving model for their Optimus bot) for a while now.

Which is why their strategy (purely vision/photons in, controls out) seems to be more widely applicable and scalable over time.

And waymo seems to be arriving there too as they keep reducing the equipment (it would seem)

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

#240

Post by small_model »

_diyar wrote: post #29
torginus wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally as much as people like to dunk on Musk, he did build several successful companies in extremely challenging domains, and he probably listens to the world-leading domain experts in his employ. So while he might turn out to be wrong, I don't think his opininon is uninformed.

I fully agree with your first point: Musk has shown tremendous ability to manage companies to become unicorns. He's clearly skilled in this domain. However, if you think about this for 2 seconds with even a rudimentary understanding of sensor fusion, more hardware is always better (ofc with diminishing marginal value). But ~10y ago, when Tesla was in a financial pinch, Musk decided to scrap as much hardware as possib…

Lowest cost per mile will win and Tesla's cyber cab doesn't need expensive suite of sensors. They use lidar in their validation/calibration test cars which is the correct use of lidar. People are already driving USA coast to coast without an SINGLE intervention. It's already over, Tesla has won, Waymo cant compete on cost.
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