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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

#51

Post by cbr »

blisterpeanuts wrote: post #42

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 a…

    red, yellow, green, flashing red, flashing yellow,
    no-turn-left red arrow, no-turn-right red arrow
You forgot flashing green, which does actually exist, at least in MA. You treat it like a green light, but it could go yellow and then red if a pedestrian presses the walk button.

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

#52

Post by exDM69 »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #48
exDM69 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

It's impossible to tell the level of autonomy from this article. What was shown in this article could qualify as Level 2, 3, 4 or 5.

To provide proof of Level 4 autonomy with video (in certain conditions), it would need to show adverse and exceptional conditions, such as terrible weather, accidents ahead, all routes to destination blocked or any other situation short of a force majeure disaster and then provide a safe contingency for that.

In San Francisco, that would probably mean finding a parking lot where it is safe to wait for assistance from your Transport Service Provide(tm). In rural northern Europe where I'm from, it would mean parking on the side of the road and calling your wife/mom/friend to pick you up :)

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

#53

Post by phil21 »

Stratoscope wrote: post #44
bbananas wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 mov…

When only 10% of drivers apparently know the correct way, the problem is with the system not the drivers.

Better signage and more consistent (state to state) rules that make common sense would go a long way.

Keeping in mind what is common sense to a biker is many times counter-intuitive to a driver. I hate the unprotected bike lanes on the right - as a driver you simply are not expecting people to be passing you on the right, on what effectively "feels" like a shoulder. It amazes me there are not more deaths due to this, to be honest.

After I spent some time in the Netherlands and Belgium I realized this was not just me. Those systems actually work and are designed with "road sharing" in mind. Everyone gets where they need to go, and even a dumb foreign tourist who knew nothing of local traffic laws could operate a vehicle safely amongst cyclists.

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

#56

Post by zeroer »

Xunxi wrote: post #33
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…

All the points you make are heavily characteristic of NYC as well as double parking, rampant cabbie pickups and drop offs, midtown crosswalk blockade by heavy pedestrian traffic, etc I would love to see how the self driving contraptions handle this city at rush hour.

Fuck. I can't handle your city at rush hour.

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

#57

Post by abalone »

At the risk of sounding pedantic this is not a Level 4 demo. It is a Level 2 demo where the driver didn't have to intervene during the demonstrated route.

What's the difference? Apart from the legal requirement to have a diver ready to take over in test vehicles (which necessarily makes it Level 2), the fundamental difference is that you'd have to show a lot more than one demo to establish that you've achieved Level 4. Level 4s are supposed to be able to operate without human intervention at all within prescribed domains (e.g. downtown cities). That doesn't mean operate one trip or one day or one month without a disengagement -- that's still Level 2.

I'm super impressed by the demo but Cruise will have to show more data to back up a Level 4 claim.

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

#58

Post by thefastlane »

HappyTypist wrote: post #9
woofyman wrote: post #3

>within 5 to 10 years we'll see these vehicles driving safely around San Francisco

Pretty ironic in consideration of "red lights don't apply to me" Ubers and more sane but extremely slow grandma Teslas

how dare you emit an utterance that amounts to anything other than deification of our future self-driving overlords and the peter-theil-worshipping engineers who unleash them upon us!

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

#59

Post by ericd »

GFK_of_xmaspast wrote: post #22
ericd wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cruise is now owned by GM, which I really doubt is going to throw something out into the market without testing very rigorously first.

I get GM cars as rentals pretty often and while they're better than Chrysler I don't have a lot of faith in their product.

My point was that they don't take a cavalier SV-style approach to testing things.

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

#60

Post by oxymoron »

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.…

Tesla's system has an order of magnitude or two of more miles driven than anyone else though, so I think it's unfair to speak of a higher risk based on current data.
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