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Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco

blog.waymo.com

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Re: Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco

#271

Post by jedberg »

MontyCarloHall wrote: post #59

“All rides in the program will have an autonomous specialist on board for now” This tells me that we’re still a long way from full level 4 (and certainly level 5) autonomy in a busy city like San Francisco. The edge cases requiring immediate human attention are still too frequent for the human safety driver to be remote, as is the case in Phoenix. Also, just a reminder that Waymo in Phoenix is nowhere close to being…

> This tells me that we’re still a long way from full level 4

The only thing it tells me is that regulations are more lax in Arizona than California.

Re: Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco

#272

Post by oppositelock »

morpheos137 wrote: post #51
gfodor wrote: post #27

Kind of interesting to consider how this adjusts priors on these outcomes: - Self driving is not possible - Self driving is not possible anytime soon - Self driving is possible, but requires LIDAR - Self driving is possible, and can be done with normal cameras I've engaged with a lot of people who presume self-driving reduces onto AGI, therefore it will not be achieved anytime soon if ever. I wonder which of their as…

Most important one you missed: Given sufficient qualitative and quantitative investment self driving may be technologically feasible at some point in the future but not price competitive with human driving. Self driving proponents seem to assume the tech is free. Just keeping sub meter scale 3d street maps up to date has a massive cost.

I make these kinds of maps for a living.

Yes, it's expensive, however, as we refine algorithms, and the processing systems, it gets cheaper, especially amortized over more cars, where the per-car cost becomes affordable.

ML doesn't work well enough for offline maps generation either, and all the high quality maps require human editors for final touch.

All this work is currently done because realtime perception doesn't work well enough, and you can have a much more reliable system with the aid of the maps. Having a 3D base map of the world makes the realtime perception problem far simpler, and it makes fancy sensors less critical.

In the US, where the cost of labor is very expensive, self driving will make sense, even if it's expensive, but someplace like China or India, where a middle class person can afford a driver, it probably makes less sense, though the push for it in China is probably the strongest that I've seen anywhere in the world.

Re: Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco

#273

Post by leesec »

ancientworldnow wrote: post #265
leesec wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"If Google can't do it with its massive resources and sensors don't ever expect a Tesla to perform better than this." 10 years ago this might have read: "If General Motors can't do it with its massive resources and sensors don't ever expect a Tesla to perform better than this."

Of course this ignores that super cruise is considered safer and better on the same tasks that it's allowed to do as Tesla FSD by third party analysts. The difference is GM is less willing to allow it to be enabled for dangerous beta driving unlike Tesla which clearly doesn't care about consistency or safety.

I meant 10 years ago people might have assumed if GM can't make the electric car work than Tesla can't either, and yet here we are.

Re: Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco

#274

Post by MattGaiser »

boplicity wrote: post #180
MattGaiser wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume that they just don't solve the really wacky edge cases which might require AGI. Many people assume that a self driving car must be 100% successful. To me it is sufficient to beat the top 20%/bottom 80% of drivers. So the car will crash if a seagull flies in front of the camera and there is a deer just beyond it. The human would probably crash too.

> To me it is sufficient to beat the top 20% of drivers. Computerized safety systems can, should, and are raising the bar, in terms of safety for the top 20% of drivers. "Self-Driving Cars" aren't competing in a static environment, similar tools are raising the safety bar that they have to compete against. This means it will get increasingly difficult to beat non-self-driving vehicles.

Shouldn't this rapidly lead to a convergence between self driving cars and human cars though? I assume a lot of the technology is similar.

Re: Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco

#275

Post by threatofrain »

boplicity wrote: post #180
MattGaiser wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume that they just don't solve the really wacky edge cases which might require AGI. Many people assume that a self driving car must be 100% successful. To me it is sufficient to beat the top 20%/bottom 80% of drivers. So the car will crash if a seagull flies in front of the camera and there is a deer just beyond it. The human would probably crash too.

> To me it is sufficient to beat the top 20% of drivers. Computerized safety systems can, should, and are raising the bar, in terms of safety for the top 20% of drivers. "Self-Driving Cars" aren't competing in a static environment, similar tools are raising the safety bar that they have to compete against. This means it will get increasingly difficult to beat non-self-driving vehicles.

> similar tools are raising the safety bar

And what is the story on driving becoming safer?

Re: Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco

#276

Post by toast0 »

ra7 wrote: post #82
bluGill wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It may not scale to rural areas though. There are some roads were you don't need to look at the road in front of your: it is there and nothing else is. Instead you need to watch the ditches in a wide area around because that is where wildlife will jump out of in front of you.

Is there a market for taxis in the rural areas? They have little incentive to expand there if there's no money to be made.

If the price is right, maybe. I live in a semi-rural area (about a house per acre, but unevenly distributed) and we have one Uber driver and a handful of taxi companies. Competition is tough though, my PHEV costs very little to operate and there's always parking and the bus system does on demand rides for $2 during weekdays between the morning and evening peaks.

Re: Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco

#277

Post by _ea1k »

dragontamer wrote: post #172
6gvONxR4sf7o wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I understand it, they just started selling the "fsd capable" stuff a few years ago. Are any of those cars nearing end of life? That would be an even greater cause for concern IMO.

Its not "end of life" vehicles that should be concerned, but instead "end of lease" vehicles. People who bought a 3-year or 5-year lease from 2016 with the $5k full-self driving package probably should feel pissed for wasting money.

To be fair, a lot of people right now would willingly pay $5k for the features that are available now, especially if they spend a lot of time on long highway trips.

Re: Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco

#278

Post by cascom »

Lammy wrote: post #67
ra7 wrote: post #19

It's fantastic to see Waymo's progress. SF is a real nightmare to drive. If they can nail it there, that's 2/2 for busy, urban street driving (SF) and "boring" suburban driving (Chandler, AZ). They've been quietly very confident of their tech, but this is a real test. Tangentially, I've also noticed that Waymo has picked up pace ever since the recent leadership changes. They are publishing more blog posts, offering m…

> SF is a real nightmare to drive. 'cause they decided not to build most of the roads: https://www.cahighways.org/maps/1955trafficways.jpg

Supposedly more road construction doesn’t alleviate traffic, in only induces more demand (which is moderated by high traffic levels)

Source (great read if your interested in the subject): https://www.amazon.com/Traffic-Drive-What-Says-About/dp/0307...

Re: Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco

#279

Post by skrtskrt »

VelkaMorava wrote: post #197
hammock wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>“All rides in the program will have an autonomous specialist on board for now” This tells me that we’re still a long way Did you expect something different? I can't really see a boardroom writing a roadmap that goes straight from test rides (no passengers) with a backup driver onboard to actual rides with passengers - no backup driver onboard with no in-between steps.

I wonder where "a country road with no lanes which barely fits 1.5 car in winter in the Czech republic" is on your scale... Something like this, just imagine the snowdrifts around it https://www.google.com/maps/@49.080269,16.4569252,3a,75y,307...

Now add the completely blind switchback turns, where your "visibility' into whether another car is coming comes from a convex mirror nailed to a tree or post at the apex of the corner - if it hasn't fallen off or been knocked crooked...

basically all of Italy

Re: Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco

#280

Post by bluGill »

bobsomers wrote: post #237
bluGill wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It may not scale to rural areas though. There are some roads were you don't need to look at the road in front of your: it is there and nothing else is. Instead you need to watch the ditches in a wide area around because that is where wildlife will jump out of in front of you.

> It may not scale to rural areas though. Most products, including this one, don't need to do everything to be both useful and profitable.

So long as it is only urban areas it is a band-aid for the lack of good transit options.

Not that you are wrong, just that you should be wrong because if cities actually had useful transit rural areas would be a much larger share of demand despite not having many people.

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