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Waymo: Google's self-driving car company

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

#351

Post by thebspatrol »

walrus1066 wrote: post #339

It feels there's a mountain of hype around autonomous vehicles. I think the core challenges to a fully autonomous vehicle (with no human backup), are still far from solved. They need to reliably deal with an almost infinite number of edge and corner cases, each quite different from the last. For example: - communication with other human drivers. In London, this is required all the time, like when parked cars block th…

In terms of communication, I think the end game is a Las Vegas/Audi style centralized system of traffic negotiation and communication.

But that's an obvious chicken or egg problem that has unrealistic solutions like making sure everyone starts driving a networked car at all once.

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

#352

Post by walrus1066 »

walrus1066 wrote: post #339

It feels there's a mountain of hype around autonomous vehicles. I think the core challenges to a fully autonomous vehicle (with no human backup), are still far from solved. They need to reliably deal with an almost infinite number of edge and corner cases, each quite different from the last. For example: - communication with other human drivers. In London, this is required all the time, like when parked cars block th…

Regarding emergency vehicles, found this, but haven't seen videos of it actually in action http://www.freepatentsonline.com/20160252905.pdf

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

#353

Post by amerkhalid »

jcranmer wrote: post #312
joeguilmette wrote: post #49

I'm interested to see where all the major players end up in 5yrs: • Tesla bootstrapping a ride service on the backs of buyers • Waymo directly rolling their own fleet • Uber trying to get a self-driving fleet up, burning mountains of money to maintain their "monopoly" on Uber for rides • Lyft working with GM to get a fleet up • All of the other car manufacturers trying to get autonomous vehicles going, presumably hop…

> Also: Private car ownership is going to fall off a cliff shortly after autonomous ride services arrive. Which probably means general demand for vehicles will fall off a cliff. I've seen this sentiment so many times now that I have to ask a serious question to anyone who echoes this sentiment: Do you own a personal car right now? If so, why? All of this... excitement over the transformations that self-driving vehicl…

I own one now because there is no decent public transport in Dallas. I would sell it in a heartbeat if we have better public transport or if Ride Sharing services (with human drivers or autonomous) get cheaper.

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

#354

Post by notatoad »

walrus1066 wrote: post #339

It feels there's a mountain of hype around autonomous vehicles. I think the core challenges to a fully autonomous vehicle (with no human backup), are still far from solved. They need to reliably deal with an almost infinite number of edge and corner cases, each quite different from the last. For example: - communication with other human drivers. In London, this is required all the time, like when parked cars block th…

Do you really think the companies building autonomous cars haven't thought about all these things? They may not have solved them yet (If they had, we've probably see their products on the road) but I'm sure it's in progress.

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

#355

Post by estreeper »

ssharp wrote: post #279
kbenson wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's much easier to coordinate ride sharing when there's an interested third party in place. ad-hoc ride-sharing for a reduces cost could result in the average car traveling at much closer to full capacity much of the time. If you set it up ahead of time, it could even optimize a route that picks up and drops off along an optimal route. Don't think of it as replacing what historically was walking outside and hailing…

I think you overestimate how willing someone is to sit in a small car with 3 other strangers during their morning and evening commutes. I don't see a huge impact on ownership at least in the first decade or two of autonomous cars. Lots of people still have relatively specific needs, e.g. requiring car seats of various sizes for their young children, needing to pick-up or drop-off kids at school, sports practice, etc.…

> I think you overestimate how willing someone is to sit in a small car with 3 other strangers

Why not just keep your partition up between you and the other passengers? Because no human driver needs visibility out all of the windows, you can split the car into private spaces. When no driver is needed, it opens up a lot of different configurations.

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

#356

Post by robszumski »

robbiemitchell wrote: post #346
jcranmer wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also: Private car ownership is going to fall off a cliff shortly after autonomous ride services arrive. Which probably means general demand for vehicles will fall off a cliff. I've seen this sentiment so many times now that I have to ask a serious question to anyone who echoes this sentiment: Do you own a personal car right now? If so, why? All of this... excitement over the transformations that self-driving vehicl…

I have two kids. They need car seats. We often haul stuff between home and the in-laws. This makes perma-Ubering infeasible. We need a radically new car seat design, either: 1. Super portable and quick to install/remove, or 2. Built into the car, safe for all ages, easily extended/retracted.

With a huge fleet of self-driving cars, there would be enough capacity to have permanently configured cars for child seats, bike racks, dog areas, etc.

eg. "I need a 4wd vehicle for 2 adults and 2 bikes to take me to X park at 10am tomorrow."

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

#357

Post by koheripbal »

larrik wrote: post #347
walrus1066 wrote: post #339

It feels there's a mountain of hype around autonomous vehicles. I think the core challenges to a fully autonomous vehicle (with no human backup), are still far from solved. They need to reliably deal with an almost infinite number of edge and corner cases, each quite different from the last. For example: - communication with other human drivers. In London, this is required all the time, like when parked cars block th…

I'm not sure what your point is. Fully autonomous is still in progress, and still has work to do.

The point is that we are far far further away than commonly accepted. The day a computer can distinguish between a plastic bag in the road and a child is the day I'd support them on the road.

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

#358

Post by rory096 »

haberman wrote: post #286
aoeu345 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Google's car actually does this, on real roads, today. It should be obvious that Tesla is going to win this race. Tesla already does fully autonomous driving, they released that video in November. And they build real, production cars. "Real artists ship", as Steve Jobs said. If you a manufacturing ace, would you join the company with a long list of failed projects and no actual production cars, or would you join the…

> Tesla already does fully autonomous driving, they released that video in November. That video, for reference, is: https://www.tesla.com/videos/full-self-driving-hardware-all-... I'm not super convinced by that video. That drive had almost no challenges/obstacles. No bicycles, no construction, basically no pedestrians, no other vehicles behaving erratically. Google has cars that can respond to everything from a cycl…

They released a video a month later (3 weeks ago) with a much more challenging route:

https://www.tesla.com/videos/autopilot-self-driving-hardware...

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

#359

Post by londons_explore »

walrus1066 wrote: post #339

It feels there's a mountain of hype around autonomous vehicles. I think the core challenges to a fully autonomous vehicle (with no human backup), are still far from solved. They need to reliably deal with an almost infinite number of edge and corner cases, each quite different from the last. For example: - communication with other human drivers. In London, this is required all the time, like when parked cars block th…

These issues could mostly be solved by the car having a "remote control" where an expert in a remote immersive environment could take manual control of the car for a few seconds to resolve whatever the problem is.

Now you've reduced all your problems down to simply "identify problem and alert a remote human".

If each of those problems only happen once per day, and they are resolved in 30 seconds, it's going to cost only about $30 per car per year to have that remote expert on hand.

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

#360

Post by hehheh »

THE_PUN_STOPS wrote: post #213
arijun wrote: post #116

I still don't understand why every company doing self driving cars is focusing on consumer cars while no major player is doing interstate trucking. Interstate trucking could pretty much be done now, and has several advantages. Driving on interstate freeways is orders of magnitude easier than driving in a city with pedestrians, bikes, cars parked in the road, etc. And there is a great monetization scheme--no driver me…

True, the controls challenges to a self driving truck may be easier than a personal car, but the stakes in the event of an accident are an order of magnitude greater in an autonomous truck. As proof, let's napkin-math some kinetic energies using 0.5mv^2. If we are riding along in the current heaviest production car, the Rolls Royce Phantom Extended-wheelbase[1], which weighs in at 6000 pounds, and we are moving at 70…

A self driving truck doesn't have to go 60mph to be as cost efficient as a human driven truck. They could be governed at 45 mph and still come out way ahead and cause far less damage if something does go wrong.
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