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How Waymo outlasted the competition and made robo-taxis a real business

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Re: How Waymo outlasted the competition and made robo-taxis a real business

#361

Post by CharlieDigital »

HarHarVeryFunny wrote: post #327
CharlieDigital wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> All it takes is for something non-routine to happen such as a car ahead reacting to an animal, or swerving as the driver reaches for something or spills coffee on themself, or a wheel come off a car (I've seen it happen to a car in front of me), or a car crosses the center median in opposite direction (which left my ex-boss hospitalized for 6 months) Inherent in this statement is the assumption that in such types o…

It depends how quickly it happens, and how well they are paying attention. We all know those accident prone drivers who are never "at-fault" - just very bad at avoiding them! However, the human has the major advantage of having a brain and being able to understand the consequences and potential outcomes of something in real-time as it is unfolding. I doubt most autopilots would understand the situations I mentioned -…

Here's the thing: the technology will get faster and better.

Your average driver is already at the limits of human capabilities with no room for improvement unless they go train to drive like F1 racers. So comparing humans to the current state of tech seems silly given that the tech will assuredly one day be faster than a human.

Re: How Waymo outlasted the competition and made robo-taxis a real business

#362

Post by choppaface »

1oooqooq wrote: post #61
drdec wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand the downvotes of the parent post. I am unfamiliar with the details of this incident and my reading based on the facts presented is similar. Could someone provide more information?

threads on hn brings people from the mentioned company. all root comments saying bad things will always get downvotes.

This is especially true for comments that disagree with Googlers, likely because there are soooo many Googlers now and they (and Waymo) have highly aligned perspectives. Especially on Google-launch-related posts, 5-10 point swings in 24hrs can happen.

A good piece by an ex-Googler on his 2-year journey toward recognizing the scale of institutional thought at Google: https://mtlynch.io/why-i-quit-google/

Re: How Waymo outlasted the competition and made robo-taxis a real business

#363

Post by Panzer04 »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #110
Denvercoder9 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The economies of scale you get by packing people in larger vehicles mostly have to do with the cost of fuel and staffing. Trains (and train-like options such as metros) are vastly more efficient than cars in number of people moved per unit of time per area used. That might not be a big deal in suburbia, but in dense inner cities it's one of the most important drivers of public transport.

Autonomous vehicles could chain up or drive really close together and achieve similar space efficiency. Also, if you look at a train track. It's mostly empty space with a train passing occasionally. Very different than a well used road. And autonomous vehicles could collaborate to counter any congestion. What makes trains efficient has more to do with the cost of energy and drivers than anything else. Both of those g…

Roads already occupy massive fractions of most cities. Making cars drive closer together or collaborate will make roads environments more hostile to pedestrians than they already are - and arguably in many places we shouldn't even really have private drivers aside from business users on the roads, given the massively disproportionate space they require vs a pedestrian or PT vehicle.

A train line has 10x the capacity of a single lane of road. Even if trains are only coming every few minutes, its impossible to compete with a train carrying 1k people with cars. Perhaps reasonably loaded busses would be comparable or better, but that's not the argument you're making.

Trains are financially efficient because of cost of energy and drivers (and, arguably, roads + cars move much of the expense to the public, where as everything related to the train is on the operator's balance sheet), but they are also very space efficient, compared to roads + cars.

Re: How Waymo outlasted the competition and made robo-taxis a real business

#364

Post by ra7 »

martythemaniak wrote: post #333
ra7 wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Say you're driving down the road and there's a bit of construction, there's a guy holding SLOW/STOP sign directing traffic. LIDAR will tell you it's a hexagonal sign, but it can't tell you what it says, you need a camera to read the sign and tell you what it says. But Waymo never said you don't need cameras. Hell, they have 29 cameras in each vehicle compared to Tesla's 8. Your point about their approaches being mo…

Indeed, cameras are absolutely necessary for self-driving. They're the only ones that can read lane markings, signs, etc. LIDAR alone is not sufficient - you cannot navigate the roads using nothing but an unlabled 3D scene. It simply does not have the necessary information for you to drive ie, is that hexagonal sign a STOP or a GO, pretty important bit of info. So the question is: is LIDAR also necessary or are camer…

The reasons to think it’s actually true is because:

1. Only companies who have LiDAR in their stack have shown fully autonomous driving i.e. driverless.

2. Better 3D scene construction, which LiDAR, unquestionably provides permeates as an advantage throughout the stack.

I do think “LiDAR or not” is a narrow argument. But the advantages are massive and undeniable, so it becomes necessary especially in light of rapidly falling costs.

Re: How Waymo outlasted the competition and made robo-taxis a real business

#365

Post by Panzer04 »

ec109685 wrote: post #356
drozycki wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not according to civil engineers (it's not even close) Private motor vehicles: 600 - 1600 per hour Mixed traffic with frequent buses: 1000 - 2800 per hour Two-way protected bikeway: 7500 per hour Dedicated transit lane: 4000 - 8000 per hour Sidewalk: 9000 per hour On-street transitway, bus or rail: 10000 - 25000 per hour https://nacto.org/publication/transit-street-design-guide/in...

That graph those numbers are pulled from should incorporate speed. Otherwise, you could say sidewalks are more efficient than cars.

Well, they are - you can move more people with a sidewalk :P. That being said, obviously most people aren't going to walk much more than maybe a km before looking for alternatives.

Usually the comparison comes up in cities where throughput is the limiting factor, and cars end up moving at near-walking pace anyway.

Re: How Waymo outlasted the competition and made robo-taxis a real business

#366

Post by ra7 »

m348e912 wrote: post #346
jeffbee wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are no Teslas that have ever taken a trip without an operator behind the wheel. The idea that there will be a near-future discontinuity after which a Tesla will be able to serve as a robotaxi is pretty ridiculous. I just watched the latest video from AIDRIVR on YouTube. AIDRIVR is a TSLA pumper-and-dumper who has dedicated their channel to uncritical praise of FSD. In the first third of the video FSD v12 runs t…

>This stuff is not even a little bit ready for fully supervised operation. https://youtu.be/fpoXr_z_6a4?t=565 Thanks for sharing. I skimmed through the video and watched a fair amount of it. I got a different impression. I thought it was impressive how FSD 12 navigated narrow winding roads with parked cars and oncoming traffic and flaggers holding signs that alternate between stop and slow. My impression was while it…

Here’s a Tesla failing to detect a train and crashing into a railroad crossing gate: https://www.reddit.com/r/SelfDrivingCars/s/AghLi791rO

This isn’t just “a few iterations away”.

Most of what you said has been repeated for years from people who just watch curated YouTube videos. I’ve driven on FSD v12 and I’ve intervened multiple times almost every single drive. It’s nowhere near ready and will likely never be with that sensor suite.

Re: How Waymo outlasted the competition and made robo-taxis a real business

#367

Post by Zigurd »

ra7 wrote: post #289
leesec wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lol Tesla has made significant progress and doesn't show much sign of slowing down. There's no reason to think there approach can't work at this point. People go weeks without intervention.

> People go weeks without intervention. https://www.teslafsdtracker.com puts miles to disengagement at 30 and miles to critical disengagement at 300 for all v12.x.y versions. Note: this is crowdsourced data and the users themselves get to decide what's critical and what's not. As far as numbers required to make it fully self driving, it's at least 3 orders of magnitude worse than the big players. Waymo and Cruise rou…

TBF robotaxis have a much higher duty cycle than a private car, so much sooner than 3 years. Something like twice per year per taxi, I'd estimate. But that doesn't take away from what a travesty it is to claim FSD will be robotaxiing anytime soon. 30 miles to disengagement would amount to 5-7 times per day per taxi.

On top of all that, Waymo does intensive 3d mapping for their service locations. These maps have to be maintained. Then the cars need sensors that take advantage of those 3D maps. If that combination of intensive mapping and LIDAR sensing turns out to be necessary to get beyond FSD's current and near future performance, then Tesla isn't even at the starting line.

Re: How Waymo outlasted the competition and made robo-taxis a real business

#368

Post by Zigurd »

martythemaniak wrote: post #244
zellyn wrote: post #107

This seems silly. It’s been obvious even to casual observers like myself for years that Waymo/Google was one of the only groups taking the problem seriously and trying to actually solve it, as opposed to pretending you could add self-driving with just cameras in an over-the-air update (Tesla), or trying to move fast and break things (Uber), or pretending you could gradually improve lane-keeping all the way into auton…

I think a lot of people have uncritically been repeating Waymo's marketing talking points for so long they've started mistaking it for "consensus" or even worse "truth". Waymo's tech is impressive and it works, but that doesn't mean it is the only way to make it work. The Tesla/Waymo approaches are far far more alike than they are different, so the whole debate is about very little. The question of Camera vs LIDAR+Ca…

Tesla and Wayno are so unalike that Tesla could have to start from scratch if a detailed 3D map and the sensors to sense one's position in that map prove to be required. Tesla hasn't got, and can't retrofit that hardware. Tesla hasn't got the mapping data. Tesla hasn't got the many years of steady progress toward thousands of uneventful trips per day with no human touching the wheel.

Re: How Waymo outlasted the competition and made robo-taxis a real business

#369

Post by mgiannopoulos »

everforward wrote: post #280
mgiannopoulos wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A 45’ drive is not sufficient data for a serious review.

It is if it disengages or requires intervention twice. The major players are at tens of thousands of miles between disengagement. We’re talking days or weeks of non-stop driving without disengagements.

Disengagement on a Tesla (manual override of the specific driver, riding on an unknown route) vs Waymo (pre-mapped tiny geographical area, no info on what counts as disengagement) can not be comparable.

Re: How Waymo outlasted the competition and made robo-taxis a real business

#370

Post by ok_dad »

gretch wrote: post #352
ok_dad wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So answer my question, how do I know the Waymo sees me? With a human I can tell 90% of the time where I live (we have tint laws and stuff). I can’t see trusting that a robot sees me, otherwise I guess I’m just giving deference to them now? At least with humans I can see if they are distracted, I can yell at them to get attention, perhaps others. With a robot taxi, I can’t tell anything about it, and I’m a software de…

That’s not all of the possible cases. “In 2022, 13,524 people died in alcohol-impaired driving traffic deaths.” Source nhtsa.gov You’re gonna briefly glimpse a passed out drunk driver before it plows through you at 40 mph

You still didn’t answer my question about robot taxis, you just did another “what about x“.
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