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Waymo: Google's self-driving car company

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

#411

Post by criley2 »

moxious wrote: post #399
brosky117 wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The page about technology says, "Our sensors observe that the cyclist has extended their left arm. Detecting the cyclist's hand signal, our software predicts that the cyclist will move to the left side of the lane." This suggests to me that they're trying to deal with situations like the ones you've brought up.

There is a difference between "trying to deal with" and "product on sale next month". These cars are overhyped. They've been just around the corner for the last 10 years. They are the Duke Nukem Forever of Silicon Valley.

>These cars are overhyped

Not really, they're correctly hyped. The concept is revolutionary.

> They've been just around the corner for the last 10 year

B-S. Holy revisionism BS!!

We were NOT talking about self-driving cars in 2006! There was no company seriously designing fully autonomous cars in 2006! It was fully in the realm of science fiction, no investment, no major players, nothing.

And you make it sound like it was supposed to be released 10 years ago! Vaporware! They told us we'd have AI cars in 2006! It never came! Why do you feel the need to lie about recent history? Shouldn't you observe that if you have to make a nasty lie to support your argument, maybe your argument is wrong?

You're definitely parroting the contrarian point here, but you're being very low-effort about it. Contrarian can be cool but please try harder.

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

#412

Post by lifeformed »

woofyman wrote: post #382
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…

And that's just a partial list: deep pot holes, construction zones, standing water an inch deep or is it a foot deep?

How do humans tell how deep water is?

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

#413

Post by londons_explore »

fsckin wrote: post #123
chiph wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have friends that live in one of the neighborhoods they're testing in, here in Austin (Mueller, if you're curious). And they've said the vehicles have been performing well, with no issues at intersections or dealing with pedestrians or cyclists. It's a new-urbanism style neighborhood, with the houses positioned close to the streets, with lots of on-street parking. I imagine it's a challenging environment for the ca…

Yep! Plenty of pedestrians with strollers/dogs/bikes/etc, vehicles stopping in moving lanes for pickups or dropoffs, a mixture of stop signs and traffic lights, one-ways, two lanes, four lanes, divided roads, and the cherry on top: a two lane roundabout, which endlessly baffles drivers here. I'm not sure there's a better spot in Austin to test autonomous cars. That said, they aren't perfect. 1. They wait just long en…

They're limited to 25mph by law.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neighborhood_Electric_Vehicle

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

#414

Post by alooPotato »

moxious wrote: post #399
brosky117 wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The page about technology says, "Our sensors observe that the cyclist has extended their left arm. Detecting the cyclist's hand signal, our software predicts that the cyclist will move to the left side of the lane." This suggests to me that they're trying to deal with situations like the ones you've brought up.

There is a difference between "trying to deal with" and "product on sale next month". These cars are overhyped. They've been just around the corner for the last 10 years. They are the Duke Nukem Forever of Silicon Valley.

If you use autonomous miles driven as a metric, there is actual progress happening. That metric is increasing exponentially btw. This tells you nothing about time to market, but it does tell you that the time to market is a definite (but maybe unknowable number).

In contrast, fission reactors have been around the corner for a long time, however, there if you use the metric of net power generated from fission as a metric, no real progress is being made there.

I see a real difference between these two "always around the corner" technologies.

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

#416

Post by walrus1066 »

londons_explore wrote: post #359
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 o…

That's an option, but London has loads of signal black holes, or the speed is just not good enough. Infinitely worse in the country, if we want autonomous lorries.

I think we'd need a huge infrastructure upgrade to make life easier for autonomous cars. It'd have to be >100 Mb/s mobile data, with extremely good coverage (for the recovery mechanism you mention). Think GPS would need to be replaced too, the signal is way too weak and unreliable. We'd have to embed digital markers/emitters alongside lane markings, traffic lights, signs etc, so they're easier to deal with.

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

#417

Post by ThomPete »

walrus1066 wrote: post #383
iraklism wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get that we have to be open with tech. After all most tech seemed "impossible" "unrealistic" and "unfeasible" even a couple of years before they go mainstream. But you have touched some use cases that are more frequent than most people think. London is a great example. My hometown Athens is much more closer to London as far as driving is concerned as opposed to LA or NY. I guess many other metropolis also. How will…

I can see communication with other autonomous cars happening, but with humans is another question altogether. We enter the realms of 'general ai' here, which is way out of scope of our ML tools.

Is that really true though?

You don't use your general AI to see someone extending their hand in traffic ex. General AI is the ability to both drive car, score a girl, cook food, clean your room etc.

I think you would be surprised how little general AI have to do with this.

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

#418

Post by linkregister »

slackstation wrote: post #306
ssharp wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

This is an N of one but, I use either Uber or Lyft to and from work every day. People get used to it. I find it far more pleasant than a crowded and dirty bus or train. Even when the car is small and full, the car usually smells better, is cleaner and oddly feels like there are more defined boundaries than a bus or train seat when crowded. Everyone has their own door as well so there isn't as much jostling past and t…

If everyone took a Lyft or Uber or Grab to work, then the congestion would be unbearable. San Francisco's BART takes about 400,000 would-be passengers off the road daily.

Mass transit remains the most viable method of transporting people over dense, multi-mile terrain.

The last mile and "normal" metros like Memphis, Baltimore, or Cleveland, where it is not dense enough to justify a comprehensive subway/light rail system, are probably the best use cases for self-driving cars and universal car sharing systems.

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

#419

Post by dpark »

maxerickson wrote: post #255
baldeagle wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ability to clean / autonomously clean itself. I think this will be the next big thing for car ride fleets.

If you are competing on price for commuters the obvious thing is a waterproof interior and some high pressure nozzles in the ceiling. Car drives up to machine with hose, hose attaches, water sprays.

The obvious thing is to pay a couple of people minimum wage to sit in a parking lot and clean cars when they arrive.

A car with a waterproof interior would be miserable and cheap feeling. No one wants to sit in a humid, rubber car.

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

#420

Post by ZeroFries »

criley2 wrote: post #411
moxious wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a difference between "trying to deal with" and "product on sale next month". These cars are overhyped. They've been just around the corner for the last 10 years. They are the Duke Nukem Forever of Silicon Valley.

>These cars are overhyped Not really, they're correctly hyped. The concept is revolutionary. > They've been just around the corner for the last 10 year B-S. Holy revisionism BS!! We were NOT talking about self-driving cars in 2006! There was no company seriously designing fully autonomous cars in 2006! It was fully in the realm of science fiction, no investment, no major players, nothing. And you make it sound like i…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_autonomous_cars
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