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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

#41

Post by bluejekyll »

Animats wrote: post #31
abalone wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 not like Tesla slamming into something on a freeway at full speed.

To be fair, Tesla is not selling a fully autonomous vehicle, yet, people are treating it like one.

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

#42

Post by blisterpeanuts »

Dumb question: how do these systems distinguish a traffic light? Here in New England at least, there's quite a variety of lights, many different modes (red, yellow, green, flashing red, flashing yellow, no-turn-left red arrow, no-turn-right red arrow, and different light technologies: old-fashioned style, Fresnel lens, slotted shade.

Add to this complexity the weather conditions. Suppose the sun is shining straight at you and you need to squint and shade your eyes just to make out what the light is -- this happens to me frequently -- can the camera see the traffic light and distinguish its color clearly under such conditions?

What about when it's raining, misting or drizzling, snowing heavily, etc. and the traffic lights are these fragmented outlines that you, the human, can heuristically distinguish but a machine might not?

One last thought: suppose it's right turn on red and first car in line is a self-driving vehicle. Can it really look left and safely determine there's enough time to beat the cross traffic? If it's highly conservative and just waits until green, there could be ten irate motorists behind it and guaranteed to honk and curse.

It's exciting technology but there are some very difficult problems to solve. I worry that if these machines can't demonstrate 110% of a human's ability to drive, they simply won't be implemented in many places except some very well defined rigid routes that are free of problematical challenges and variations.

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

#43

Post by andrewem »

Watching this video what struck me most was how overbuilt almost all the streets were - they're designed for high speeds and devote essentially all the space to cars. We know how to get at least a 3x reduction in fatalities, as the Netherlands has done, with engineering changes that make human drivers less likely to make mistakes and make their mistakes less costly.

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

#44

Post by Stratoscope »

bbananas wrote: post #29
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…

> The pedestrians now block the vehicle, and the vehicle blocks the bike lane Entering the bike lane appears to be legally-required [1] behavior for a driver turning right across a bike lane in California. Entering the intersection, however, i'm not sure about. Illustrated here: https://www.sfbike.org/news/bike-lanes-and-right-turns/ [1] https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySectio...

What is scary is how few drivers in California know about this rule or the reason behind it, which is for the safety of the bicyclists.

Near my home there are several intersections with bike lanes, and I estimate that perhaps one driver in 10 enters the bike lane to make the right turn as they are required to.

In fact, I sometimes get surprised or even dirty looks from drivers making illegal right turns when I do move into the bike lane to make the turn. I guess they think I'm trying to get ahead of them and cut them off, but I'm not, I'm simply following the law and improving bicycle safety.

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

#45

Post by mcintyre1994 »

exDM69 wrote: post #36
mahyarm wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

There's a lot of academic work on Vehicle Adhoc Networks (VANETs) - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicular_ad_hoc_network has some sources. We discussed it a little at university in a module about mobile/sensor nerworks, it's definitely an interesting research area.

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

#46

Post by swsieber »

bluejekyll wrote: post #41
Animats wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 not like Tesla slamming into something on a freeway at full speed. To be fair, Tesla is not selling a fully autonomous vehicle, yet, people are treating it like one.

And Tesla had encouraged that perception.

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

#47

Post by nlawalker »

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.

>> Worth mentioning, 30 seconds would feel like an eternity inside a car.

Would it, when the car is driving for you and you're free to putter about with a phone or laptop or book?

I always figured that this would be one of the greatest benefits of autonomous vehicles - perhaps the car isn't as aggressive as the human it's driving it would be, or as quick to get "unstuck", but the human won't care too much because they're too busy on their phone. In most cases, what's a few extra minutes when you're no longer actually driving the car?

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

#48

Post by JumpCrisscross »

exDM69 wrote: post #40
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Got it. That's helpful. So Cruise/GM are 4G'ing a Level 3 vehicle?

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

#49

Post by gcheong »

employee8000 wrote: post #6

Very cool. But am I mistaken that they didn't attempt to go through a 4-way stop with massive pedestrians, like in PacHeights or Marina? I would be curious to see how they fared with the obnoxious drivers skipping their turn as well as the constant flow of pedestrians. I'm also curious how it would react to going up Mason and California, where there's a traffic light at the top of a steep hill. Last time I had to phy…

I'm guessing that will be part of Level 5 or at least we will be very close to level 5(full) autonomy once complex situations like 4-way stops with lots of pedestrians have been mastered.
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