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Waymo: Google's self-driving car company

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

#441

Post by galdosdi »

bdrool wrote: post #232
derefr wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two sides of the same coin. If you can rent your neighbour's car, why own your own? Heck, why have driveways? In cities, at least, I could fully imagine new townhouse developments operating more like apartment buildings: one central parking lot for the "pool" of (mostly) driverless cars. Your car drops you off at your door and then parks in the pool; then comes back out to get you in the morning.

> Heck, why have driveways? My point is that millions of them already exist, with a distributed network of roads leading to them, as well as storage (garages). It would be costly to suddenly rip all those up.

They could be used for other purposes. People filling their garages with other junk and then having to put their car somewhere else is so common already. The driveway can become a front yard.

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

#442

Post by Angostura »

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…

A lot of these problems can be solved by simply making them fly.

... that's right, now you know what the driving force behind all those flying cars in sci-fi was. It's simply a way to separate the autonomous and old-style vehicles.

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

#443

Post by grecy »

tim333 wrote: post #337
DennisP wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why Volvo?

"Level 3: Within known, limited environments (such as freeways), the driver can safely turn their attention away from driving tasks" Volvo have announced shipping that in 2017. I don't think anyone else has. ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2q00jIBhkq4 )

Based on the videos on YouTube, I would say Tesla are already shipping that.

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

#444

Post by baq »

achamayou wrote: post #375
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.

His point is that the remaining 5% of a problem can take considerably longer to solve than might initially be anticipated by looking at the quick progress made on the first 95% of it. A textbook example of that is voice recognition. It's also not particularly clear that the costs will drop rapidly to zero or even to a level that leads to mass adoption (see air travel at Mach 1+, Segways...).

Your examples aren't very good, sorry. We're talking about adding AI, autopilot, autonomous capabilities, whatever you want to call it to already existing hardware. It's mostly a matter of software and you're a living example that it can be done, in 20W, with nothing more than stereo cameras and mics.

If I had to compare, I expect the change to be more akin to what Excel has done to paper spreadsheets.

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

#445

Post by ghaff »

hehheh wrote: post #360
THE_PUN_STOPS wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, the controls challenges to a self driving truck may be easier than a personal car, but the stakes in the event of an accident are an order of magnitude greater in an autonomous truck. As proof, let's napkin-math some kinetic energies using 0.5mv^2. If we are riding along in the current heaviest production car, the Rolls Royce Phantom Extended-wheelbase[1], which weighs in at 6000 pounds, and we are moving at 70…

A self driving truck doesn't have to go 60mph to be as cost efficient as a human driven truck. They could be governed at 45 mph and still come out way ahead and cause far less damage if something does go wrong.

So now you have a greater disparity of vehicle speeds on a typical highway. Having just returned from driving on highways cutting through mountain ranges, I'm acutely aware of the "interesting" driving that results from having vehicles traveling at very different speeds on long uphill grades.

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

#446

Post by londons_explore »

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?

Sounds reasonable.

They already require other safety devices like lights at night and brakes.

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

#447

Post by awful »

xyzzyz wrote: post #430
awful wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't add anything profound, but I will say that 40+ years ago I camped at Disney's Ft. Wilderness campground, with all my many brothers and sisters. The electric trams had a routine schedule that came around and stopped almost in front of your campsite, all of kids would simply jump on, go to anywhere in the park like the stores, the showers, the outdoor theater, and hop off again. It was incredibly liberating and…

> No, not really as buses don't go where all the people live. They do, though, you just haven't been to places where this is standard. Try finding a place that's more than 10 minutes walk from public transit: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Warsaw,+Poland/

No, I have been to many places in Europe and was amazed at the places they did go; schoolkids into the Alps for their skiing lessons, for example. I meant here in the US where bus service is mostly an urban experience, as well as underground/trains.

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

#448

Post by walrus1066 »

BurningFrog wrote: post #434
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…

A lot of that will be best solved by making a lot of other actors communicate directly with the car. Traffic lights will send out the same messages they send to humans by red/green lights to the cars using radio. Emergency vehicles, roadworks, traffic signs etc will do the same. Or so I assume, because it makes so much of sense. I know there is vehicle-to-vehicle communication in the works: https://en.wikipedia.org/w…

Yes, I think you're right. We'd need to update a lot of our infrastructure to make it friendlier for these cars.

I should also add: - very fast mobile data, with no blackspots, so a remote driver can take over a car that's confused by a situation - a replacement for GPS, it's not reliable enough, the signal is far too weak - digital signal beacons embedded in lane markings, and edges of the road, and on traffic cones for roadworks

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

#449

Post by amelius »

thaw13579 wrote: post #436
notatoad wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you really think the companies building autonomous cars haven't thought about all these things? They may not have solved them yet (If they had, we've probably see their products on the road) but I'm sure it's in progress.

I agree that it's safe to assume folks at these companies are aware of these issues. But if I'm going to risk my life by using one of these systems, I'd want to have good answers to how they have solved them. Until then, I think it's fair to keep asking to avoid unrealistic hype.

Well, one way to solve the problem is to simply bring the car to a halt, then wait until the problem is solved by itself (or by the user).

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

#450

Post by fullshark »

Florin_Andrei wrote: post #145
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…

I live almost in the backyard of their facility in Silicon Valley. No issues here either, the vehicles are very well behaved. Of course, how much is that an indicator of their progress, I don't know.

The issue is they drive too slowly and obey traffic laws.
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