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Cruise Shows Off Level 4 Skills in SF, Passing Uber and Maybe Waymo

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Re: Cruise Shows Off Level 4 Skills in SF, Passing Uber and Maybe Waymo

#31

Post by Animats »

abalone wrote: post #25
Animats wrote: post #17

Nice. It's annoying that they provide only 10x sped up video. Watching this slowed down is helpful. Notes: * There are frequent steering twitches to the left. This may be associated with passing parked cars. There are similar twitches to the right when in the left lane of a one-way street. * Crosswalk behavior when turning needs some work. The vehicle enters the intersection, then stops in the intersection before the…

I counted 30 seconds of being stuck behind the unloading van with no way to pass without crossing double yellow. I didn't notice the autonomous green light turn off though. Possibly the algorithm is, if you're stuck then certain rules become flexible. Worth mentioning, 30 seconds would feel like an eternity inside a car.

I assumed the "autonomous green light" was added in post-production, along with the timer and the company logo.

Google had another crash last month.[1] As usual, it was probably the other driver's fault. Other driver apparently botched a left turn in a two-lane left turn intersection at Rengsdorf and El Camino. Google drives in traffic on the SF peninsula every day, and we know exactly how many times they've crashed. It's reassuring seeing all those miles with only the occasional fender-bumper. It's not like Tesla slamming into something on a freeway at full speed. Three times.

Still waiting for the CA DMV to post the 2016 autonomous vehicle disconnect reports. Those cover December through November and are due Jan 1st, so DMV should have them up by now.

[1] https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/wcm/connect/3d358211-3f0c-430e...

Re: Cruise Shows Off Level 4 Skills in SF, Passing Uber and Maybe Waymo

#32

Post by mahyarm »

grogenaut wrote: post #30

Random side thought: How do I signal in an ambiguous situation to the car on who's going first. Like Super high traffic and I want to merge in front of them or let them go first? Currently I do that with a wave. Which is super effective on a motorcycle as people almost always say "sure we can squeeze you in here" which lets me get places way faster.

LED signs attached to the car.

Re: Cruise Shows Off Level 4 Skills in SF, Passing Uber and Maybe Waymo

#33

Post by Xunxi »

Animats wrote: post #17

Nice. It's annoying that they provide only 10x sped up video. Watching this slowed down is helpful. Notes: * There are frequent steering twitches to the left. This may be associated with passing parked cars. There are similar twitches to the right when in the left lane of a one-way street. * Crosswalk behavior when turning needs some work. The vehicle enters the intersection, then stops in the intersection before the…

All the points you make are heavily characteristic of NYC as well as double parking, rampant cabbie pickups and drop offs, midtown crosswalk blockade by heavy pedestrian traffic, etc

I would love to see how the self driving contraptions handle this city at rush hour.

Re: Cruise Shows Off Level 4 Skills in SF, Passing Uber and Maybe Waymo

#34

Post by Animats »

STRiDEX wrote: post #24
Animats wrote: post #17

Nice. It's annoying that they provide only 10x sped up video. Watching this slowed down is helpful. Notes: * There are frequent steering twitches to the left. This may be associated with passing parked cars. There are similar twitches to the right when in the left lane of a one-way street. * Crosswalk behavior when turning needs some work. The vehicle enters the intersection, then stops in the intersection before the…

At one of the red lights it comes to a complete stop then crawls forward. 0:49 Maybe because of the cars turning left. That stood out to me

That happens more than once. Google cars sometimes do that when they don't have a good view of cross traffic due to corner obstructions. It's the right thing to do, but it's resulted in Google cars being rear-ended at very low speed several times.

Re: Cruise Shows Off Level 4 Skills in SF, Passing Uber and Maybe Waymo

#35

Post by exDM69 »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #26
exDM69 wrote: post #19

"Level 4" means that no human intervention is required and in case of conditions going from good to bad, the car can autonomously put itself in a safe state. That was nice and clean city driving in the video clips but nothing that distinguishes it from "Level 3" (human intervention may be required within ~15 seconds or so) or even "Level 2" (human intervention may be required within seconds, current state of the art)…

I imagine a space defined by visibility, traction and road flatness. A large space of Level 0 conditions, i.e. the conditions within most humans can drive, encapsulates Level 1, i.e. cruise control, which mostly encapsulates successive levels. The benefit of this is you notice where levels "poke through," e.g. Level 4 may work on a sunny day, but a small change in rain or road conditions could downgrade the system to…

> Level 4 may work on a sunny day, but a small change in rain or road conditions could downgrade the system to Level 1.

This isn't the way it works. If a car says it can do "Level 4 on a sunny day" it means when you sit in the car and engage the autopilot (and it says it's safe to engage), then no human intervention will not be required during the course of the trip. If conditions change, the car will be parked without human assistance and wait for help (what happens next is outside of the scope). You could be sitting in the back seat, or your kids could be in the car alone on their way to school.

"Level 4 on a sunny day on some pre-certified highways" is ok. "Level 4 in San Francisco traffic" is also ok, and much harder. "Level 4 unless it starts raining and we'll deteriorate to Level 3" is Level 3, not 4.

This is the definition of autonomy levels from SAE, and they're pretty strictly defined.

Re: Cruise Shows Off Level 4 Skills in SF, Passing Uber and Maybe Waymo

#36

Post by exDM69 »

mahyarm wrote: post #32
grogenaut wrote: post #30

Random side thought: How do I signal in an ambiguous situation to the car on who's going first. Like Super high traffic and I want to merge in front of them or let them go first? Currently I do that with a wave. Which is super effective on a motorcycle as people almost always say "sure we can squeeze you in here" which lets me get places way faster.

LED signs attached to the car.

Yes, I absolutely do think that some kind of car-to-car communication is required for these situations.

It's not an impossible problem to solve, but I have not heard of any efforts to create a car-to-car or car-to-road communications protocol and infrastructure that would be cross-manufacturer and/or internationally approved.

In my opinion, before such a mechanism exists, autonomous cars will only work as long as the majority of cars are driven by humans. I will change my opinion when I see a demonstration of a city (or city-like test site) traffic where all or the majority of cars are autonomous.

Re: Cruise Shows Off Level 4 Skills in SF, Passing Uber and Maybe Waymo

#37

Post by JumpCrisscross »

exDM69 wrote: post #35
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I imagine a space defined by visibility, traction and road flatness. A large space of Level 0 conditions, i.e. the conditions within most humans can drive, encapsulates Level 1, i.e. cruise control, which mostly encapsulates successive levels. The benefit of this is you notice where levels "poke through," e.g. Level 4 may work on a sunny day, but a small change in rain or road conditions could downgrade the system to…

> Level 4 may work on a sunny day, but a small change in rain or road conditions could downgrade the system to Level 1. This isn't the way it works. If a car says it can do "Level 4 on a sunny day" it means when you sit in the car and engage the autopilot (and it says it's safe to engage), then no human intervention will not be required during the course of the trip. If conditions change, the car will be parked witho…

> This is the definition of autonomy levels from SAE

It's still domain dependent, right? If the rules say we're flattening precipitation and visibility within normal bounds, fine, but sometimes you have abnormal weather and badly-maintained roads. It is useful to compare hypothetical cars that autonomously navigate conditions no humans would dare.

EDIT: Never mind. The point of "Level 4" is it is competent in all reasonable operating domains.

Re: Cruise Shows Off Level 4 Skills in SF, Passing Uber and Maybe Waymo

#40

Post by exDM69 »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #37
exDM69 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Level 4 may work on a sunny day, but a small change in rain or road conditions could downgrade the system to Level 1. This isn't the way it works. If a car says it can do "Level 4 on a sunny day" it means when you sit in the car and engage the autopilot (and it says it's safe to engage), then no human intervention will not be required during the course of the trip. If conditions change, the car will be parked witho…

> This is the definition of autonomy levels from SAE It's still domain dependent, right? If the rules say we're flattening precipitation and visibility within normal bounds, fine, but sometimes you have abnormal weather and badly-maintained roads. It is useful to compare hypothetical cars that autonomously navigate conditions no humans would dare. EDIT: Never mind. The point of "Level 4" is it is competent in all rea…

> It's still domain dependent, right? If the rules say we're flattening precipitation and visibility within normal bounds, fine, but sometimes you have abnormal weather and badly-maintained roads

No, it's not.

In Level 4, if there's "abnormal weather and badly-maintained roads", the car must be able to deal with the situation and enter a safe state. It can say "please sit down and wait for assistance" but it may not say, "take over the wheel".

In practice you'd probably disengage the autonomy and drive yourself, you take control and it does not give you control. If you can't sit on the back seat drinking beer or send the car to drive your kids to school (we're not considering legislation issues here), it's not Level 4.

This is an important distinction. "Level 3 in most conditions" is good enough to pass as "full autonomy" for most people, but Level 4 is a requirement for not absolving the humans on board for any legal responsibility.

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