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Waymo: Google's self-driving car company

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

#361

Post by robterrell »

joeguilmette wrote: post #63
scarmig wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a particular reason to think Uber is going to be last to autonomous vehicles? I can see a good argument that they're head of the pack today, between Tesla's not-really-autonomous vehicles and Google's perpetual inability to execute.

This is a fair point. Uber has yet to ship any hardware, and really any software aside from an app that is a couple steps above "Uber for X" that are whipped out in a weekend. I know they gobbled up a bunch of researchers, but moonshot engineering feats like autonomous driving is not (yet) in their DNA. And their current business model is not profitable and will die the moment they go up against an autonomous service…

I saw an uber car covered in a crazy amount of sensors a couple of days ago on Van Ness avenue... There was a human driver, so I assumed it was mapping the environment, but it might have been a test vehicle; it looked similar to the pictures of the autonomous cars in Pittsburg.

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

#362

Post by [deleted] »

mantas wrote: post #313
jrockway wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also feel like if you know where every car on the road is, you can also optimize the traffic light timing. There is no reason to sit at a red light at 2:00 in the morning when there are no other vehicles, pedestrians or bicycles on the road. But the law currently requires it.

So bicycles would have to carry the car-to-bicycle communication device too?

[deleted]

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

#363

Post by atarian »

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…

It's too bad these companies are not working together on this stuff since any improvements to safety would be a win for everyone.

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

#364

Post by woofyman »

koheripbal wrote: post #357
larrik wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Or if you see a ball cross the road there are strong odds a child might be chasing after it.

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

#365

Post by thebspatrol »

bambax wrote: post #138
emmett wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you really think it hasn't occurred to WayMo/Google that maybe they should test their cars in snow/rain/sleet/fog/confetti?

Well, they only tested in US cities, so it's unclear what has occurred to them. How will it work in small crowded streets in India, China, or just Italy?

They are a US company, after all, who generally aims to release their innovative products and services in the US first, and the US has comparatively predictable and routine driving compared to other major countries.

Why not walk before running? Especially when this is a technology that is heavily driven by machine learning?

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

#367

Post by zoul »

koheripbal wrote: post #357
larrik wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Do computer drivers have to be perfect, or is it enough to be much better than human drivers?

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

#368

Post by virmundi »

ryandrake wrote: post #180
virmundi wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are plenty of conversations around that idea here. UBI for example. Some people think that the population in general will retool (some will get left behind). Others point to the horse population in the US that went from some 5 million to a few hundred thousand following mechanized transportation as an example of what will happen to the middle class.

Won't happen in the USA. Due to our puritanical obsession with "earning" a living through labor, we'll never see Basic Income. It would be more politically do-able to pay 1/2 the people to dig holes and the other 1/2 to fill them in, than to implement a sensible UBI system.

What I don't get, even now, is the lack of public works. Digging a ditch and then filling it is dumb. Why not have individuals on welfare work cleaning out the forests in California? Playing a role in sensible land management implements? There are many places that the unused labor could benefit the people. At least then there is a work/trade for the money. In the end, those people get life lessons that would benefit them in the workplace.

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

#369

Post by marssaxman »

jedberg wrote: post #304
marssaxman wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what people said five years ago. I am sure something will happen eventually, but it will take longer than people expect and the results will never be as good as people are currently fantasizing that they might be. We'll get to "good enough" but never to "great".

I don't know of anyone who was saying self driving is only five years away in 2011. It was still a fantasy then. Now we actually have working software and hardware, and real people are experiencing self driving. I live in the bay area, but not a month goes by that I don't see a self driving vehicle at some point. And that's not counting the Teslas that are autopiloting their way down the highway next to me that I don…

How is it that "real people are experiencing self driving"? I was under the impression that Google's autonomous vehicle and other projects like it were still all technology research prototypes. There is a very big difference between the sort of next-generation cruise control driver assistance features Tesla and others are providing, and the sort of fully autonomous wheeled robot people are fantasizing about when they hyperventilate over the city of the future and its wondrous transportation technologies.

Maybe my negative feelings are excessive; I'm just really, really tired of having people jump in with the whole "but self-driving cars will change everything!!!" routine every time people try to have a serious conversation about public transit investment.

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

#370

Post by JohnDotAwesome »

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…

I can attest to the police car pulling it over. I saw a little Google car pulled over on the way to the grocery store a month or two ago.
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