Self-Driving Cars Must Meet 15 Benchmarks in U.S. Guidance • Hacker News Board

Re: Self-Driving Cars Must Meet 15 Benchmarks in U.S. Guidance

#251

Post by ocdtrekkie » Wed, Sep 21, 2016, 4:29 AM UTC

aaronblohowiak wrote: post #224

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea that Google is anywhere near level 3 is merely some incredibly good marketing, and a fat pile of deception. Google has an impressive tech demo, not a product nor a reliable technology. Nobody is above level 2. Google's self driving system only basically works with the route preplanned and premapped ahead of time, specifically for that car. Even small changes in the environment are potentially devastating. An…

Can you back that up?

Circa 2014, highlights below: http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2014/10/...

"These maps contain the exact three-dimensional location of streetlights, stop signs, crosswalks, lane markings, and every other crucial aspect of a roadway."

"But the maps necessary for the Google car are an order of magnitude more complicated. In fact, when I first wrote about the car for MIT Technology Review, Google admitted to me that the process it currently uses to make the maps are too inefficient to work in the country as a whole."

"To create them, a dedicated vehicle outfitted with a bank of sensors first makes repeated passes scanning the roadway to be mapped. The data is then downloaded, with every square foot of the landscape pored over by both humans and computers to make sure that all-important real-world objects have been captured. This complete map gets loaded into the car's memory before a journey"

"The company frequently says that its car has driven more than 700,000 miles safely, but those are the same few thousand mapped miles, driven over and over again."

"Chris Urmson, director of the Google car team, told me that if the car came across a traffic signal not on its map, it could potentially run a red light, simply because it wouldn't know to look for the signal."

Google's entire business advantage is based on cloud. I welcome anyone to prove that this has changed.

Re: Self-Driving Cars Must Meet 15 Benchmarks in U.S. Guidance

#252

Post by pauloday » Wed, Sep 21, 2016, 4:33 AM UTC

semi-extrinsic wrote: post #148

peteretep wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I would say the majority of regulations (at least in > OECD countries) are sensible I think it can be shocking to non-Americans just how much the Americans distrust and think their lawmakers and -- especially shockingly, their civil servants -- are both incompetent and have malicious intent. American friends have found it incredible -- for example -- that something like NICE[0] can exist and people don't assume it'…

Regarding your Jade Helm 15 question: round this neck of the wood we host every year the worlds largest cold weather military excercise, with 15-20 000 soldiers from all across NATO. We literally have US Marines and other foreign forces playing invasion right where we live, using air force, army and naval assets. There has never been any conspiracies or fears regarding this. Perhaps mainly because we appreciate you g…

Here's a non-mobile link to the comment itself:

https://reddit.com/r/ProRevenge/comments/1w0sav/6th_grade_gi...

Re: Self-Driving Cars Must Meet 15 Benchmarks in U.S. Guidance

#253

Post by imh » Wed, Sep 21, 2016, 4:57 AM UTC

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #244

swsieber wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could expect them to not call it autopilot, and instead call it lane keeping, like it really is. The name does a really good job at setting a terrible expectation, almost to the point of undoing any attention grabbing mechanism to keep users engaged.

> You could expect them to not call it autopilot, and instead call it lane keeping, like it really is. That is all that most auto pilots in planes do, however. I don't get where "autopilot" somehow came to mean full autonomy in cars but not in planes (and other vehicles like boats) where the term was used previously. Ridiculous.

Autopilots in planes can take you across the world. The car analogy would be only having to pull into and out of your driveway. And while they don't use it so frequently, aren't most of the planes most people fly in (big commercial aviation) certified to autoland themselves? The connotation of autopilot is absolutely that it can fly itself. Same with tesla's autopilot.

Re: Self-Driving Cars Must Meet 15 Benchmarks in U.S. Guidance

#254

Post by seanmcdirmid » Wed, Sep 21, 2016, 5:00 AM UTC

imh wrote: post #253

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You could expect them to not call it autopilot, and instead call it lane keeping, like it really is. That is all that most auto pilots in planes do, however. I don't get where "autopilot" somehow came to mean full autonomy in cars but not in planes (and other vehicles like boats) where the term was used previously. Ridiculous.

Autopilots in planes can take you across the world. The car analogy would be only having to pull into and out of your driveway. And while they don't use it so frequently, aren't most of the planes most people fly in (big commercial aviation) certified to autoland themselves? The connotation of autopilot is absolutely that it can fly itself. Same with tesla's autopilot.

An autopilot in a Cessna can most definitely not take you around the world. Also, autopilots even in a commercial jet keep the plane steady along a route, they don't deal with collisions at all...you could call it "lane keeping" if you want to sue the airline industry for misleading us over a term they created.

Autolanding is not autopilot. In fact, autolanding is not even certified if multiple autopilots are not available to provide redundancy.

Re: Self-Driving Cars Must Meet 15 Benchmarks in U.S. Guidance

#255

Post by imh » Wed, Sep 21, 2016, 5:29 AM UTC

Tiktaalik wrote: post #243

pmyjavec wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the response and totally agree with the sitting in traffic, wasted time thing ,but with all due respect it still seems inefficient, wouldn't public transport and telecommuting be better options in a connected world? How will there still be no traffic jams, or the car will be like an office? In that case why not just work from home and come to work for meetings here and there? Might flexible / less work hou…

It's incredibly frustrating that people are getting excited for autonomous cars' ability to free them from the drudgery of driving when this has been a solved problem for a long time with public transit. Unfortunately anti-public transit special interest groups have discredited public transit initiatives all over, and fighting this has been incredibly difficult. On your last point people definitely do see owning expe…

I fully expect self driving cars to arrive before BART goes all the way down the peninsula. It's total crap, but I'd be surprised if it wasn't true. Same for more frequent/faster/more reliable caltrain with room to sit or bring your bike.

On one side, you have a solution that requires a whole bunch of groups to align. On the other, you have an individual decision (buying a car). That's why I am excited. If it looked like it was on the horizon, I'd be just as excited for great public transit.

Re: Self-Driving Cars Must Meet 15 Benchmarks in U.S. Guidance

#256

Post by imh » Wed, Sep 21, 2016, 5:44 AM UTC

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #254

imh wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Autopilots in planes can take you across the world. The car analogy would be only having to pull into and out of your driveway. And while they don't use it so frequently, aren't most of the planes most people fly in (big commercial aviation) certified to autoland themselves? The connotation of autopilot is absolutely that it can fly itself. Same with tesla's autopilot.

An autopilot in a Cessna can most definitely not take you around the world. Also, autopilots even in a commercial jet keep the plane steady along a route, they don't deal with collisions at all...you could call it "lane keeping" if you want to sue the airline industry for misleading us over a term they created. Autolanding is not autopilot. In fact, autolanding is not even certified if multiple autopilots are not ava…

Most people who have flown don't even know what a Cessna is, much less its capabilities. It's totally irrelevant. Same with dealing with collisions, which aren't analogous challenges between flying and driving. To a non-engineer, the point is that autopilot gets you from point A to point B, not the details of how it has to achieve that.

Re: Self-Driving Cars Must Meet 15 Benchmarks in U.S. Guidance

#257

Post by imh » Wed, Sep 21, 2016, 5:54 AM UTC

chc wrote: post #195

Animats wrote: post #131

From the regulations: "Fall back strategies should take into account that—despite laws and regulations to the contrary—human drivers may be inattentive, under the influence of alcohol or other substances, drowsy, or physically impaired in some other manner." NHTSA, which, after all, studies crashes, is being very realistic. Here's the "we're looking at you, Tesla" moment: "Guidance for Lower Levels of Automated Vehic…

I don't understand this anti-autonomy cheerleading. It's like people on HN live in a parallel universe where there have been a bunch of deaths from cars running Autopilot, whereas in the world I live in, it seems to be somewhat safer than a human alone. Like, people can mess up either way, but they seem to be less likely to do so when the car is also looking out for them. What am I missing?

Autonomy will be great. We aren't there yet. Tesla is/was deceptively marketing their capabilities so they can risk their customer's safety with the opposite of informed consent (mislead consent? [0]). They are doing it in order to collect data that will get them to real autonomy first. That's fucked up and greedy. The other comment demonstrated that it is in fact risking their customer's lives. It's safer than some random human alone, but not against a comparable human alone.

[0] You can say they tell you to keep your hands on the wheel and all that, but they themselves manufactured/fanned a ton of hype to the contrary. It's like arguing that you should have paid more attention to the EULA.

Re: Self-Driving Cars Must Meet 15 Benchmarks in U.S. Guidance

#258

Post by studentrob » Wed, Sep 21, 2016, 6:12 AM UTC

aaronblohowiak wrote: post #224

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea that Google is anywhere near level 3 is merely some incredibly good marketing, and a fat pile of deception. Google has an impressive tech demo, not a product nor a reliable technology. Nobody is above level 2. Google's self driving system only basically works with the route preplanned and premapped ahead of time, specifically for that car. Even small changes in the environment are potentially devastating. An…

Can you back that up?

Google is definitely level 3. Their presentation at SXSW this year shows it,

https://youtu.be/Uj-rK8V-rik?t=17m54s

Re: Self-Driving Cars Must Meet 15 Benchmarks in U.S. Guidance

#259

Post by dogma1138 » Wed, Sep 21, 2016, 6:25 AM UTC

blazespin wrote: post #214

CamperBob2 wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are other ways of doing this incrementally. Yes, and they're all undesirable, unworkable, or useless, as your own post points out.

They are not undesirable at all. There are plenty of circumstances where these are great use. Airports, for example. Downtown cores. Smart Cities developed from scratch. Resorts. The list goes on..

I'm sure when you open Jurassic Park youll enable auto pilot.

Resorts are irrelevant, smart cities are an oxymoron and would come way past the time wheen level 5 would be worked out.

Downtown cores are pretty much the worst possible place for level 2 systems at this time.

Re: Self-Driving Cars Must Meet 15 Benchmarks in U.S. Guidance

#260

Post by LeChuck » Wed, Sep 21, 2016, 6:35 AM UTC

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #244

swsieber wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could expect them to not call it autopilot, and instead call it lane keeping, like it really is. The name does a really good job at setting a terrible expectation, almost to the point of undoing any attention grabbing mechanism to keep users engaged.

> You could expect them to not call it autopilot, and instead call it lane keeping, like it really is. That is all that most auto pilots in planes do, however. I don't get where "autopilot" somehow came to mean full autonomy in cars but not in planes (and other vehicles like boats) where the term was used previously. Ridiculous.

Yes, but with planes and ships (on ships it's almost always called track pilot and speed pilot, by the way) you can let go of the controls for extended periods of time. In cars, right now, that's a recipe for disaster. Functionally they may be the same, but practically speaking it's very different.