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Cruise is running an autonomous ride hailing service for employees in SF

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Re: Cruise is running an autonomous ride hailing service for employees in SF

#51

Post by TwoFactor »

Fricken wrote: post #36
abalone wrote: post #15

> Still, Cruise says those drivers have had to take over manual control of vehicles engaged in Cruise Anywhere service only on a few occasions Not trying to pour cold water on this but.. it's all about those "few occasions". The difference between level 2 and level 4/5 autonomy is vast. Those "few occasions" would presumably be accidents without the intervention of the safety driver. A small corporate shuttle service…

At the end of 2016 all companies testing autonomous vehicles in California filed their disengagement reports. Waymo reported 1 unplanned disengagement every 5000 miles, and GM reported 1 every 180. Nobody else was even in the running. These metrics are crude, but it's currently the only benchmarking system we've got, and we'll see in December where Cruise is really at when they report their 2017 numbers. Cruise does…

There was actually a dispute about a potential Cruise cofounder getting compensation for equity at the acquisition. They recently settled the lawsuit out of court [1]. I agree they have good leadership, but they're not without any lawsuits.

[1] http://www.businessinsider.com/car-startup-cruise-settles-le...

Re: Cruise is running an autonomous ride hailing service for employees in SF

#52

Post by chubot »

maxerickson wrote: post #12
chubot wrote: post #6

It’s available across all of the mapped area of San Francisco where the test fleet operates, and the app works like any ride-sharing experience, mapping ride requesters with available cars. What area is that? Isn't all of San Francisco "mapped" 100 times over by this point? If the "mapped area" isn't all of San Francisco, does this speak to a limitation of their tech or a regulatory/deployment issue?

They may be creating their own highly detailed maps. In that case it would be a limitation of how much effort they have invested in generating the maps.

I'm not an expert, but the more detailed your maps, the higher chance that they are inaccurate. Details of SF streets change regularly.

If they don't have good coverage of SF now, it's not just a fixed effort to make it more detailed. It's a continuous effort.

Also there is no map of detours, etc. I had thought that many self-driving algorithms were not relying as much on maps for this reason, but I could be wrong.

At least Elon Musk said that humans don't need a global map to drive. They just need two cameras pointing out the front windshield. Global maps help to navigate, but they don't necessarily help you drive.

Re: Cruise is running an autonomous ride hailing service for employees in SF

#53

Post by anindha »

abalone wrote: post #15

> Still, Cruise says those drivers have had to take over manual control of vehicles engaged in Cruise Anywhere service only on a few occasions Not trying to pour cold water on this but.. it's all about those "few occasions". The difference between level 2 and level 4/5 autonomy is vast. Those "few occasions" would presumably be accidents without the intervention of the safety driver. A small corporate shuttle service…

San Francisco would be one of the harder cities to make self-driving work: bad light, heavy traffic traffic, bicycles, poor lane markings, spotty GPS downtown, etc.

I haven't been to Phoenix, so can't comment on the difficulty of running a self driving car there, but I would guess its easier than SF.

Re: Cruise is running an autonomous ride hailing service for employees in SF

#54

Post by moonka »

r0fl wrote: post #48
hammock wrote: post #35

Why does the photo show a lady getting in the back seat? There is no driver(?), and the front seat has an airbag...

Back seat behind the driver is statistically the safest. In case of a collision a driver will instinctively try to save himself and therefore crash with the passenger side. Being behind the driver therefore puts you at less risk

In an autonomous ride would this still hold true?

Re: Cruise is running an autonomous ride hailing service for employees in SF

#55

Post by biggc »

Fricken wrote: post #36
abalone wrote: post #15

> Still, Cruise says those drivers have had to take over manual control of vehicles engaged in Cruise Anywhere service only on a few occasions Not trying to pour cold water on this but.. it's all about those "few occasions". The difference between level 2 and level 4/5 autonomy is vast. Those "few occasions" would presumably be accidents without the intervention of the safety driver. A small corporate shuttle service…

At the end of 2016 all companies testing autonomous vehicles in California filed their disengagement reports. Waymo reported 1 unplanned disengagement every 5000 miles, and GM reported 1 every 180. Nobody else was even in the running. These metrics are crude, but it's currently the only benchmarking system we've got, and we'll see in December where Cruise is really at when they report their 2017 numbers. Cruise does…

Is disengagement per X miles really a good metric. It doesn't reflect the difference between driving in different environments, i.e dense urban areas, suburban streets, and open highways.

Re: Cruise is running an autonomous ride hailing service for employees in SF

#56

Post by maxerickson »

chubot wrote: post #52
maxerickson wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They may be creating their own highly detailed maps. In that case it would be a limitation of how much effort they have invested in generating the maps.

I'm not an expert, but the more detailed your maps, the higher chance that they are inaccurate. Details of SF streets change regularly. If they don't have good coverage of SF now, it's not just a fixed effort to make it more detailed. It's a continuous effort. Also there is no map of detours, etc. I had thought that many self-driving algorithms were not relying as much on maps for this reason, but I could be wrong. A…

Yeah, they are all pretty tight lipped about exactly how map dependent they are. But anytime they start talking about limited operating areas it is an obvious question to ask.

And it is even possible that operating in areas with detailed maps is simply more valuable (if the map improves their ability to evaluate the performance of other systems).

Re: Cruise is running an autonomous ride hailing service for employees in SF

#57

Post by vm »

abalone wrote: post #15

> Still, Cruise says those drivers have had to take over manual control of vehicles engaged in Cruise Anywhere service only on a few occasions Not trying to pour cold water on this but.. it's all about those "few occasions". The difference between level 2 and level 4/5 autonomy is vast. Those "few occasions" would presumably be accidents without the intervention of the safety driver. A small corporate shuttle service…

I've seen ~10 Cruise cars around Mission Dolores and Soma in SF. 100% of the time the driver has his hands on the wheel and appears to be making the turns himself. I'm skeptical of how automated this service actually is.

Maybe those are training runs or the drivers are letting the wheel guide them.

Re: Cruise is running an autonomous ride hailing service for employees in SF

#58

Post by yourapostasy »

lucidrains wrote: post #28
aluminussoma wrote: post #22

I am skeptical. It sounds way too perfect, like a story manufactured for PR. If it really is that way, then great. What is the reputation of Cruise in the self-driving community?

The only reason I paid any attention was because of an impressive demo they put out a few months back. https://youtu.be/6tA_VvHP0-s Still, who knows at this point.

Neat, but I've yet to see a demo of a self-driving vehicle in rain so hard drivers slow down from 65 mph to 45 mph, the wipers at their fastest setting are struggling to keep up, and when you drive through a puddle, the splash from the water obscures the windshield for a couple seconds. Conditions with such low visibility from the rain coming down so hard that you wish you had a clear view screen (also called spin window) [1], usually found on ships and machine tools that use lots of liquid. Humans regularly drive through this kind of rain, though not well. If a self-driving platform relies exclusively upon LIDAR, my understanding is seeing through this much rain requires a lot more processing.

The rain demos I've seen [2] [3] [4] are all in wet weather, but not this kind of heavy rain, where a promise of self-driving technology saving lives and property can be more assuredly realized. If anyone in the field knows of one of the contenders already working on training in such poor conditions, then please post a link to a demo if one is available.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clear_view_screen

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xs9Gr9V2mOE

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvlazzsroCA

[4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GMvgtPN2IBU

Re: Cruise is running an autonomous ride hailing service for employees in SF

#59

Post by Fricken »

biggc wrote: post #55
Fricken wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the end of 2016 all companies testing autonomous vehicles in California filed their disengagement reports. Waymo reported 1 unplanned disengagement every 5000 miles, and GM reported 1 every 180. Nobody else was even in the running. These metrics are crude, but it's currently the only benchmarking system we've got, and we'll see in December where Cruise is really at when they report their 2017 numbers. Cruise does…

Is disengagement per X miles really a good metric. It doesn't reflect the difference between driving in different environments, i.e dense urban areas, suburban streets, and open highways.

Yes, it's a crude metric. The other thing is disengagements are self reported, and an unplanned disengagement doesn't necessarily mean a crash was narrowly avoided, it may be an overly cautious test driver, or the result of some non-safety critical intervention.

After the core software problems have been solved, the key challenge shifts to discovering edge cases, which become progressively more marginal the further advanced the software becomes, and the only way to find these edge cases is through 1000s of miles of driving waiting for unexpected situations to show up.

Re: Cruise is running an autonomous ride hailing service for employees in SF

#60

Post by msnanney »

pmichaud wrote: post #39
delegate wrote: post #18

Self-driving cars will slowly (or quickly) make car ownership redundant. Why own a car (pay taxes, insurance, parking), when you can have one at your door in a couple of minutes ? When you arrive at the destination, just exit the car - no need to look for parking or anything like that, let the car figure it out. If technology can do that, then owning a car becomes more of a hobby than necessity. I hope GM's strategy…

I used to think this, and I still think it'll happen in urban centers, but there are pretty big swaths of rural or just low density areas that wouldn't be well served by this, so it'd take a while (a couple decades extra maybe) to get local rideshare hubs going, and in some more remote places it maybe would never happen.

This ^ Exactly this. Now if every person in a rural area sold their car back to the manufacturer and then those cars were used to service those rural areas than there is a possibility. But cars will still be purchased because of rural areas. I live 120 miles from my job. My neighbor is a mile down from me. If I want to drive to nearest town, where a car service would most likely be located, I'm not waiting the 30 minutes for it to pick me up. And it doesn't make financial sense for them to have one closer to my house.
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