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The Waymo World Model

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Re: The Waymo World Model

#51

Post by breckinloggins »

mgaunard wrote: post #13

Still needs to be trained on the final boss: dense cities with narrow streets.

I live in such an area. The route to my house involves steep topography via small windy streets that are very narrow and effectively one-way due to parked cars.

Human drivers routinely do worse than Waymo, which I take 2 or 3 times a week. Is it perfect? No. Does it handle the situation better than most Lyft or Uber drivers? Yes.

As a bonus: unlike some of those drivers the Waymo doesn't get palpably angry at me for driving the route.

Re: The Waymo World Model

#52

Post by zhengyi13 »

xnx wrote: post #27
mgaunard wrote: post #13

Still needs to be trained on the final boss: dense cities with narrow streets.

What would be an example city? Waymo just announced they're ramping up in Boston: https://waymo.com/blog/?modal=short-back-to-boston "we’re excited to continue effectively adapting to Boston’s cobblestones, narrow alleyways, roundabouts and turnpikes."

Various European cities come to mind: Narrow streets are something of a trope in certain movies/genres.

Re: The Waymo World Model

#53

Post by runarberg »

0x457 wrote: post #4
OGEnthusiast wrote: post #3

What's going to happen to all the millions of drivers who will lose their job overnight? In a country with 100 million guns, are we really sure we've thought this through?

Yes, let's stop all progress and roll-back all automation to keep hypothetical angry people with guns happy.

Autonomous private cars is not the technological progress you think it is. We’ve had autonomous trains for decades, and while it provides us with a more efficient and cost effective public transit system, it didn’t open the doors for the next revolutionary technology.

Self driving cars is a dead end technology, that will introduce a whole host of new problems which are already solved with public transit, better urban planning, etc.

Re: The Waymo World Model

#54

Post by eptcyka »

menaerus wrote: post #49
ActorNightly wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The purpose of lidar is to prove error correction when you need it most in terms of camera accuracy loss. Humans do this, just in the sense of depth perception with both eyes.

How expensive is their lidar system?

Less than the lives it saves.

Re: The Waymo World Model

#55

Post by breckinloggins »

PeterStuer wrote: post #38

Imagine driving in a Waymo 'out of a raging fire'. Talk about edge cases. But, what would you do? Trust the Waymo, or get out (or never get in) at the first sign of trouble?

Interesting question. If the Waymo was driving aggressively to remove us from the situation but relatively safely I might stay in it.

This does bring up something, though: Waymo has a "pull over" feature, but it's hidden behind a couple of touch screen actions involving small virtual buttons and it does not pull over immediately. Instead, it "finds a spot to pull over". I would very much like a big red STOP IMMEDIATELY button in these vehicles.

Re: The Waymo World Model

#57

Post by mycall »

xnx wrote: post #2

> The Waymo World Model can convert those kinds of videos, or any taken with a regular camera, into a multimodal simulation—showing how the Waymo Driver would see that exact scene. Subtle brag that Waymo could drive in camera-only mode if they chose to. They've stated as much previously, but that doesn't seem widely known.

That is still important for safety reasons in case someone uses a LiDAR jamming system to try to force you into an accident.

Re: The Waymo World Model

#58

Post by Jyaif »

mycall wrote: post #57
xnx wrote: post #2

> The Waymo World Model can convert those kinds of videos, or any taken with a regular camera, into a multimodal simulation—showing how the Waymo Driver would see that exact scene. Subtle brag that Waymo could drive in camera-only mode if they chose to. They've stated as much previously, but that doesn't seem widely known.

That is still important for safety reasons in case someone uses a LiDAR jamming system to try to force you into an accident.

If somebody wants to hurt you while you are traveling in a car, there are simpler ways.

Re: The Waymo World Model

#59

Post by etrautmann »

mycall wrote: post #57
xnx wrote: post #2

> The Waymo World Model can convert those kinds of videos, or any taken with a regular camera, into a multimodal simulation—showing how the Waymo Driver would see that exact scene. Subtle brag that Waymo could drive in camera-only mode if they chose to. They've stated as much previously, but that doesn't seem widely known.

That is still important for safety reasons in case someone uses a LiDAR jamming system to try to force you into an accident.

It’s way easier to “jam” a camera with bright light than a lidar, which uses both narrow band optical filters and pulsed signals with filters to detect that temporal sequence. If I were an adversary, going after cameras is way way easier.

Re: The Waymo World Model

#60

Post by etrautmann »

uejfiweun wrote: post #8
xnx wrote: post #2

> The Waymo World Model can convert those kinds of videos, or any taken with a regular camera, into a multimodal simulation—showing how the Waymo Driver would see that exact scene. Subtle brag that Waymo could drive in camera-only mode if they chose to. They've stated as much previously, but that doesn't seem widely known.

I've always wondered... if Lidar + Cameras is always making the right decision, you should theoretically be able to take the output of the Lidar + Cameras model and use it as training data for a Camera only model.

Sure, but those models would never have online access to information only provided in lidar data…
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