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Why Tesla's Autopilot and Google's car are entirely different animals

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Re: Why Tesla's Autopilot and Google's car are entirely different animals

#41

Post by Johnny555 »

sandworm101 wrote: post #35
oneJob wrote: post #4

Tesla has stated publicly they believe that within three years their cars will be capable of full autonomy, and expect it to take another two years to receive regulatory approval. By fully autonomous they state you will be able to walk outside, have the car approach to meet you, it will open and close the door for you, you can fall asleep, and several hours later wake up at your destination. Yes, Tesla is taking an i…

> will open and close the door for you, you can fall asleep, and several hours later wake up at your destination. Not going to happen. Seatbelts and upright seats meant for crashes are not going away even if the robots do all the driving. And I have yet to see any attempt at a robocar capable of understanding and interacting with today's chaotic and haphazard parking rules. Heaven help us should all passengers be req…

Wearing a seatbelt and sitting (mostly) upright is not orthogonal to sleeping - people sleep in barely reclining airline seats all the time, on long car trips my wife and I take turns dozing in the passenger seat, with seatbelt secure and seat back only slightly reclined.

Self driving cars don't have to park where there are haphazard parking rules, they can drive to a garage or lot that caters to self-driving cars.

Re: Why Tesla's Autopilot and Google's car are entirely different animals

#42

Post by cthalupa »

sandworm101 wrote: post #35
oneJob wrote: post #4

Tesla has stated publicly they believe that within three years their cars will be capable of full autonomy, and expect it to take another two years to receive regulatory approval. By fully autonomous they state you will be able to walk outside, have the car approach to meet you, it will open and close the door for you, you can fall asleep, and several hours later wake up at your destination. Yes, Tesla is taking an i…

> will open and close the door for you, you can fall asleep, and several hours later wake up at your destination. Not going to happen. Seatbelts and upright seats meant for crashes are not going away even if the robots do all the driving. And I have yet to see any attempt at a robocar capable of understanding and interacting with today's chaotic and haphazard parking rules. Heaven help us should all passengers be req…

Why can't you fall asleep with a seatbelt and upright seat? I've done it as a passenger many times

Re: Why Tesla's Autopilot and Google's car are entirely different animals

#43

Post by rasz_pl »

albertzeyer wrote: post #27

Another interesting article about Tesla's Autopilot is this: http://electrek.co/2015/10/30/the-autopilot-is-learning-fast... It's learning. That is an interesting approach. I wonder how far they get by that. I guess Google's car will also collect data and help Google to improve the performance. My impression so far was that it's mostly engineered work however, and not so much learned (in a machine learning way).

its self reported, most likely placebo effect

Re: Why Tesla's Autopilot and Google's car are entirely different animals

#44

Post by Johnny555 »

rev_bird wrote: post #32
slyall wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"...the Google cars look like something one buys for their four year old niece or nephew. " You have to stop thinking like some guy from Mad Men and more like somebody buying AWS instances. Imagine that instead of buying a single car that you drive everywhere you instead reserve a car for your daily commute, you might get various options, eg: $500/month - Tesla Sports car, 30min journey, unshared occupancy $300/month…

> $125/month - 8 seat van, 40min journey, shared, up to 1 vehicle change This is interesting -- it's basically a little autonomous bus, for essentially the same price as a regular one, that might pick up/drop off at a more convenient location, minus someone there to supervise. I kind of like having a bus driver.

But would you rather walk 3 blocks in the rain (or snow) to a bus, wait at the stop for it to come, then walk another 3 blocks to your office, or would you rather have the minibus pick you up at your door and drop you at your office? Point-to-point travel is where self-driving cars excel - even if you're sharing the vehicle with others so you don't have a direct trip.

Re: Why Tesla's Autopilot and Google's car are entirely different animals

#45

Post by Cyph0n »

Animats wrote: post #28

The Tesla "autopilot" is comparable to what BMW[1] and Mercedes[2] have been shipping for years. Self-driving is much harder. The first-order problems of driving on a empty road were solved by the DARPA Grand Challenge, ten years ago. The second-order problems involve dealing with other road users. That's hard, and that's what Google is working on, with considerable success. So is the CMU/Cadillac consortium, which h…

I'm surprised the article didn't mention Mercedes' history with drive assist systems especially. This is very old tech for them. For instance, I recall seeing a Mercedes S class with dynamic cruise control in 2002.

Re: Why Tesla's Autopilot and Google's car are entirely different animals

#46

Post by sokoloff »

ghaff wrote: post #34
kordless wrote: post #3

> A full robocar product is only workable if you would need to correct it in decades or even lifetimes of driving. I had a conversation about this with friends in Germany a few months back. In most societies, a mistake that causes suffering to another individual is usually 'blamed' on the person causing the suffering. In many cases where causality is obvious, this assignment of blame is fairly straightforward. Exampl…

It's an interesting question in that properly maintained and properly driven automobiles do have accidents that are clearly no one's fault--skidding on a patch of ice, deer running into the road, etc. Perhaps a more skilled or more cautious driver could avoid such an accident--or not. I'm hard-pressed to think of many other examples where a product used as intended will nonetheless cause harm to the user or others wi…

Chainsaws and handguns are probably other examples.

Fast food is another. (Alcohol, tobacco?)

Side note: I would argue that your patch of ice example is not nearly as good as the deer one. Skidding on a patch of ice and crashing is, IMO, simply driving too fast for conditions.

Re: Why Tesla's Autopilot and Google's car are entirely different animals

#47

Post by ghaff »

Cyph0n wrote: post #45
Animats wrote: post #28

The Tesla "autopilot" is comparable to what BMW[1] and Mercedes[2] have been shipping for years. Self-driving is much harder. The first-order problems of driving on a empty road were solved by the DARPA Grand Challenge, ten years ago. The second-order problems involve dealing with other road users. That's hard, and that's what Google is working on, with considerable success. So is the CMU/Cadillac consortium, which h…

I'm surprised the article didn't mention Mercedes' history with drive assist systems especially. This is very old tech for them. For instance, I recall seeing a Mercedes S class with dynamic cruise control in 2002.

Because Mercedes isn't making absurd claims about autopilot systems and because "everyone knows" that innovation only comes from Silicon Valley. OK, that was a bit snarky but assistive driving systems, however useful and safety-enhancing, don't get people all wide-eyed and excited the way promises of autonomy in "just five years" does.

Re: Why Tesla's Autopilot and Google's car are entirely different animals

#48

Post by joshvm »

taytus wrote: post #12
oneJob wrote: post #4

Tesla has stated publicly they believe that within three years their cars will be capable of full autonomy, and expect it to take another two years to receive regulatory approval. By fully autonomous they state you will be able to walk outside, have the car approach to meet you, it will open and close the door for you, you can fall asleep, and several hours later wake up at your destination. Yes, Tesla is taking an i…

"...the Google cars look like something one buys for their four year old niece or nephew. " They really are quite ugly. I believe that will impact adoption rate.

Modern cars are styled to be aggressive because that's what sells. The Google car is almost certainly designed to look harmless, because they want people to be comfortable riding in it. My late grandmother, for instance, refused to buy a car that had an angry 'face' (i.e. the shape of the headlights).

Re: Why Tesla's Autopilot and Google's car are entirely different animals

#49

Post by ghaff »

sokoloff wrote: post #46
ghaff wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's an interesting question in that properly maintained and properly driven automobiles do have accidents that are clearly no one's fault--skidding on a patch of ice, deer running into the road, etc. Perhaps a more skilled or more cautious driver could avoid such an accident--or not. I'm hard-pressed to think of many other examples where a product used as intended will nonetheless cause harm to the user or others wi…

Chainsaws and handguns are probably other examples. Fast food is another. (Alcohol, tobacco?) Side note: I would argue that your patch of ice example is not nearly as good as the deer one. Skidding on a patch of ice and crashing is, IMO, simply driving too fast for conditions.

Fast food etc. though is more "stuff that's bad for you taken to excess" as opposed to something that can randomly get in an accident though.

I agree the deer is the better example. You can have patches of unexpected black ice though. I've skidded a few times though never had an accident.

There's certainly gear one uses in activities that have some inherent danger like your chainsaw example. I guesxs things like skis and helmets could be another. The difference with an AI though is that it's the machinery itself that is making the decisions.

Re: Why Tesla's Autopilot and Google's car are entirely different animals

#50

Post by ghaff »

makomk wrote: post #15
joelwilliamson wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The author didn't justify that statement at all. If we have gone from an error once per minute (cruise control) to once per 30 minutes, and think that level of improvement can be repeated twice more, we will be at one error every 450 hours. A third time will put us at one error every 13500 hours. Is continuous, gradual improvement the best way to fully autonomous cars? I don't know. But the author's argument is simpl…

The trouble is that if they're not continually involved in the driving process, drivers can't actually concentrate well enough to be able to step in quickly when something happens that the automated systems can't handle. If I recall correctly, there have been studies on this and it takes tens of seconds for drivers to be able to respond to an unexpected situation sensibly if they haven't been actively driving. Mostly…

This interaction of computer and human decision-making is actually the subject of a fair bit of active research. e.g. at Duke http://hal.pratt.duke.edu/

To your basic point--yep, at some point you need to stop automating unless you're willing to hand over control entirely.

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