Waymo: Google's self-driving car company • Hacker News Board

Re: Waymo: Google's self-driving car company

#31

Post by hellcow » Tue, Dec 13, 2016, 6:26 PM UTC

visarga wrote: post #6

At least they could have given a more up to date report on what they are doing. 7 years passed since 2009 and all we've seen is a couple of promo videos with scant actual information. We have no idea how they compare to Tesla or other self driving car startups.

Tesla has lane-assist, adaptive cruise control and a few other goodies. Many auto manufacturers have those things. You still have to manually follow GPS directions.

Google/Waymo is actually piloting a car from origin to destination without a steering wheel or pedals. That's a much more difficult challenge.

Put another way, no blind person is going to sit behind the wheel of a Tesla and tell the car to take him/her to the supermarket. Google's car actually does this, on real roads, today... and that's amazing.

Re: Waymo: Google's self-driving car company

#32

Post by boxcardavin » Tue, Dec 13, 2016, 6:26 PM UTC

Google's commitment to SDCs has always seemed half hearted so I wonder if this indicates that they are getting more serious about it. Moonshots at X have been getting the axe, the SDC stuff seems to be the only obviously viable one right now.

To the surprise of many folks (myself included) it has turned out that SDC tech is probably for existing manufacturers to develop versus software guys learning how to build cars without the massive supply chains needed to assemble 4000lb widgets. Before anyone points to Tesla, try getting inside a $140k Tesla and then a $140k Mercedes and it will be obvious what advantages there are to having manufacturing experience stretching decades.

Re: Waymo: Google's self-driving car company

#33

Post by ddoolin » Tue, Dec 13, 2016, 6:26 PM UTC

ucaetano wrote: post #25

visarga wrote: post #6

At least they could have given a more up to date report on what they are doing. 7 years passed since 2009 and all we've seen is a couple of promo videos with scant actual information. We have no idea how they compare to Tesla or other self driving car startups.

"how they compare to Tesla" Given that Tesla doesn't even have emergency braking and auto-steering, I'd guess they compare quite favorably...

Tesla models equipped with Autopilot enhancements do in fact have some form of emergency braking (automatic emergency breaking) to avoid rear-end collisions and primitive auto-steer.

Re: Waymo: Google's self-driving car company

#34

Post by SippinLean » Tue, Dec 13, 2016, 6:26 PM UTC

Sounds like "lame-o" D:

Re: Waymo: Google's self-driving car company

#35

Post by CPLX » Tue, Dec 13, 2016, 6:27 PM UTC

ucaetano wrote: post #25

visarga wrote: post #6

At least they could have given a more up to date report on what they are doing. 7 years passed since 2009 and all we've seen is a couple of promo videos with scant actual information. We have no idea how they compare to Tesla or other self driving car startups.

"how they compare to Tesla" Given that Tesla doesn't even have emergency braking and auto-steering, I'd guess they compare quite favorably...

Given that Google doesn't have a car you can buy I think the jury is still very much out on who is ahead and behind here.

Re: Waymo: Google's self-driving car company

#36

Post by XaspR8d » Tue, Dec 13, 2016, 6:27 PM UTC

tedajax wrote: post #14

joezydeco wrote: post #12

Interesting that this very same day, the US Government is looking into proposals to require vehicle-to-vehicle communication in passenger cars to enhance safety. http://www.wsj.com/articles/regulators-call-on-cars-to-chat-...

Seems a little premature to require this as we don't necessarily know that this would help.

I agree that you shouldn't assume any information will necessarily improve performance, but I feel that, naively, inter-car communication would have tons of useful applications.

If anything else, during the transition to fully-automated, it would be wonderful if human drivers were able to visualize the intent of the automated vehicles around them. To know that a car is going to merge into my lane in 50m, or is attempting a U-turn, is so much more useful than simply seeing a turn signal.

Re: Waymo: Google's self-driving car company

#37

Post by dictum » Tue, Dec 13, 2016, 6:27 PM UTC

This is such a minor nitpick, but I'm bothered by it because I see so much performance-shaming coming from some Googlers:

The site loads large pictures for all viewport widths (ideally they'd load downscaled images for smaller viewports — it's wasteful to load a large image for small devices) and the image files are PNGs when they should be jpeg or webp (example: http://waymo.com/static/images/journey/streets.png)

Re: Waymo: Google's self-driving car company

#38

Post by fullshark » Tue, Dec 13, 2016, 6:28 PM UTC

serg_chernata wrote: post #2

I'm optimistic. I agree with Musks estimates. At most I see first fully autonomous vehicles being on the roads within 5 years. Yes, they may only work in places with clearly marked streets but if I could use my autonomous car for daily commute or roughly 50% of the time it's still an incredible achievement and well worth the cost.

Those two ideas are contradictory. It's not fully autonomous if it only works in ideal conditions. There's already a bunch of prototypes that work perfectly in ideal conditions.

Re: Waymo: Google's self-driving car company

#39

Post by aoeu345 » Tue, Dec 13, 2016, 6:28 PM UTC

This repels me for a few reasons:

- Instead of talking about their car's capabilities on the front page, they include a pathos about drunk driving. I feel embarrassed how Google doesn't have more things to say about the car.

- It looks really unattractive, I could hardly call it cute.

- It's not in production, it's in testing.

These companies are sitting on mountains of cash! And they still fail to do things effectively! Apple and Google are just sitting on their fat cashflows while the world is getting very scary very fast. I'm tired of these "technology" companies doing complete fails of R&D projects, too damn shy to leave their advertising revenues. We need leaders with real courage.

Re: Waymo: Google's self-driving car company

#40

Post by tyingq » Tue, Dec 13, 2016, 6:29 PM UTC

meterplech wrote: post #26

Obviously this vision is compelling. I'm confused by the decision of their prototype car to not have manual control overrides (e.g steering wheel or something similar). Air travel has been revolutionized with autopilot, but there are clear overrides for safety in case systems crash. I don't think we need to be wed to the pedal + wheel paradigm - but having a manual override option seems critical to safety.

You can read Google's initial rationale for "no steering wheel" here: http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2016/02/24/467...

They seem pretty clearly, however, to have changed their minds on the topic. It's enlightening to compare the information on this new site with information on the old site (https://www.google.com/selfdrivingcar/). You can see what language they've either removed, or toned down.