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Waymo: Google's self-driving car company

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

#481

Post by chefkoch »

londons_explore wrote: post #453
chefkoch wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it's the part that limits the usable hours of a truck most. A self driving truck can pretty much drive 24/7 but the driver has to rest more than half the day. Truck drivers are allowed to work 70h per week.

I assumed all trucks stop at a truck stop and the driver sleeps while another driver continues the journey? That way the valuable truck and cargo never stop moving. Is that not typically the case?

At least in continental europe single drivers are the vast majority.

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

#482

Post by [deleted] »

londons_explore wrote: post #453
chefkoch wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it's the part that limits the usable hours of a truck most. A self driving truck can pretty much drive 24/7 but the driver has to rest more than half the day. Truck drivers are allowed to work 70h per week.

I assumed all trucks stop at a truck stop and the driver sleeps while another driver continues the journey? That way the valuable truck and cargo never stop moving. Is that not typically the case?

[deleted]

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

#483

Post by MorePowerToYou »

monk_e_boy wrote: post #402
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 imagine in an emergency the car would show a set of options on a screen and you click one and the car will do it. For example getting out of the way of emergency vehicles on a blocked road. It will ask you what to do and if you tell it to drive up the pavement or into a bus lane or cross to the wrong side of the road -- the car will just do it. I do wonder about all the non-verbal human-to-human communication. But…

Bringing human decision making into the loop makes things messier. If any of these human decisions need to be made quickly in the interest of safety, then the driver needs to be paying attention at all times. That won't happen. This is very dangerous. This is also complex in terms of liability. If the car hits something while driving partially autonomously, where does the responsibilty lie? The software, the driver, or somewhere else? We're far from the widespread use of autonomous cars. I'm not even going to mention the dangers of buggy software written by large companies that can't get iCloud notes syncing to work.

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

#484

Post by thecrazyone »

baq wrote: post #444
achamayou wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You're oversimplifying it and being a little pessimistic. Why? Because there's an order of magnitude or more difference in the complexity of AI of cars and AI that a human uses to navigate

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

#485

Post by fareesh »

What is it about car hardware+software that gives people confidence that the operating system / some core process won't crash or reboot in the middle of a turn or brake? I'm not familiar with the architecture of "mission critical" systems which I assume would be similar to what they use in these cars.

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

#486

Post by brwr »

riprowan wrote: post #308

A lot of comments here and I haven't seen one that addresses the problem of impulsivity. Many / most of the times I need a car are not schedulable events but impulses. For example when I'm working on a project around the house, it's typical to need to run up to the hardware store 3 times in a day. I think autonomous transport will be very popular but shared vehicles will be hardly more popular than Uber / taxis are n…

I think you may be experiencing recall bias.

How do you get to work every day? How often do you go to the grocery store? What about going out to dinner?

For myself, living in the Bay Area, anything related to driving or owning a car is a nightmare -- not that that has stopped me from owning a car. Driving from Mountain View to San Mateo takes about 45 minutes in the morning at 75 minutes in the evening. I went to SF to have breakfast with a friend this past weekend and finding parking took half an hour. I'd love a self-driving car that could just drop me at my door. Autonomous cars should also lead to drastic traffic improvements, assuming the cars will eventually be able to communicate with each other in a reliable way.

Maybe you live in a less densely-populated area? I have an aunt that lives in a rural area and I couldn't imagine a need or desire for autonomous cars there.

There is definitely a long way to go, but think of all the advantages! Parking can be automated and condensed, which means more land is available for buildings or parks or anything else. If you suffer from traffic problems now, your daily commute could be cut by 50% or more. Shared vehicles should cost less than what you pay for gas and insurance now. High availability is a real possibility if someone can figure out how to make the economics work. Ride sharing can be almost completely automated, leading to less pollution.

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

#487

Post by walrus1066 »

Retric wrote: post #469
walrus1066 wrote: post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's fine if there's a human in the car, simple, they just take control to manage the incident. But to truly disrupt our lives (24 hour robot trucks, autonomous taxi fleets ), which is what all these companies are aiming for, the car needs to be able to drive without a human.

Having a human on call to remote into a Car is still a viable option in most of the US. This is not a good fit for sub second response times or tunnels, but it vastly reduces the endless .0001% edge cases. ED: Not hitting kids is manditory, not blocking traffic is mandatory, parking in every random stop is optional as long as their are safe places it can drive to.

Yes, it may provide a good impetus to upgrade our mobile data infrastructure. It would have to be ultra fast, ultra reliable, ultra wide coverage. Because if you can't remote in, and the cars caused a huge traffic jam, it'll be very difficult to get the owner companies human in to help out the vehicle. I guess the recovery man can just use a bike :/

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

#488

Post by mypalmike »

koheripbal wrote: post #357
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.

The point is that we are far far further away than commonly accepted. The day a computer can distinguish between a plastic bag in the road and a child is the day I'd support them on the road.

The day a human can distinguish between a plastic bag in the road and a child is the day I'd support them on the road.

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

#489

Post by anchpop »

imh wrote: post #389
NolF wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find that notion very frustrating. 30,000 people die on the road in the US every year and no one seems to bat an eye, a self driving vehicle has one and it's the end of the world. The expectations seems rather unrealistic and the media seems to love creating a controversy.

On their webpage, waymo breaks down that 30k into smaller pieces. 94% of those deaths were due to human choice or human error. At least 71% were due to speeding, alcohol, distraction, and drowsiness. It's probably safe to say that driving like those 94% during your DMV driving test would mean a human wouldn't even get licensed. Why lower the bar to just being better than them? I want my autonomous car to be better th…

Sure, but if the average person really would be safer with a car that self-drives 90% of the time, wouldn't you recommend that everyone get a self driving car? You can't say "Only get a self-driving car if you're a below average driver" because then nobody would get one (and they'd be worse off for it)

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

#490

Post by brwr »

jrowley wrote: post #260

How long until someone puts a personal gym inside a self driving SUV, so you can workout during your commute? I can imagine people running on a treadmill inside a car while it is stuck in traffic. Or at least sitting on a trainer.

That would be pretty great. How do you handle the movements of the car though? Bumps in the road and stuff like that?
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