Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Beginning fully autonomous operations with the 6th-generation Waymo driver

waymo.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 425 posts

Re: Beginning fully autonomous operations with the 6th-generation Waymo driver

#51

Post by jeffbee »

Rohansi wrote: post #40
azinman2 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What doesn’t make sense to me is that the cameras are no where as good as human eyes. The dynamic range sucks, it doesn’t put down a visor or where sunglasses to deal with beaming light, resolution is much worse, etc. why not invest in the cameras themselves if this is your claim?

I always see this argument but from experience I don't buy it. FSD and its cameras work fine driving with the sun directly in front of the car. When driving manually I need the visor so far down I can only see the bottom of the car in front of me. The cameras on Teslas only really lose visibility when dirty. Especially in winter when there's salt everywhere. Only the very latest models (2025+?) have decent self-clean…

FSD doesn't "work fine" driving directly into the sun. There are loads of YT videos that demonstrate this.

Re: Beginning fully autonomous operations with the 6th-generation Waymo driver

#52

Post by nrclark »

SoftTalker wrote: post #49
xnx wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Truly. I don't understand why Tesla fans think camera/lidar fusion is unsolvable but camera/camera fusion is a non-issue.

I mean, humans have only their eyes. And most of them intentionally distract themselves while driving by listening to music, podcasts, playing with their phones, or eating.

I get your point about camera vs lidar. Humans do have other senses in play while driving though. We have touch/vibration (feeling the road surface texture), hearing, proprioception / acceleration sense, etc. These are all involved for me when I drive a car.

Re: Beginning fully autonomous operations with the 6th-generation Waymo driver

#53

Post by xnx »

hamdingers wrote: post #42
xnx wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Truly. I don't understand why Tesla fans think camera/lidar fusion is unsolvable but camera/camera fusion is a non-issue.

Because they bought a Tesla with only cameras on it. Admitting this would be admitting their Tesla will never be self driving.

Add a tow hitch to Waymos and any car can be autonomous!

Re: Beginning fully autonomous operations with the 6th-generation Waymo driver

#54

Post by inerte »

0xffff2 wrote: post #9
xnx wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Waymo is absolutely delighting in their luck that Elon is so stubborn that he has kept Tesla from being anywhere close to catching up.

I don't thing it's purely stubbornness. Tesla sold the promise of software only updates resulting in FSD to hundreds of thousands of people. Not all of those people are in the cult of Tesla. I would expect admitting defeat at this point would result in a large class action lawsuit at the very least.

I know it's "illegal" and technically sold as FSD (assisted), but just 2 days ago I was in a friend's Model Y and it drove from work to my house (both in San Jose) without any steering wheel or pedal touch, at all. And he told me he went to Palm Springs like that too.

I shit on Tesla and Elon on any opportunity, and it's a shame they basically have the software out there doing things when it probably shouldn't, but I don't think they're that far behind Waymo where it really matters, which is the thing actually working.

Re: Beginning fully autonomous operations with the 6th-generation Waymo driver

#55

Post by agildehaus »

aggie wrote: post #14
tgrowazay wrote: post #5

Elon in shambles > Our experience as the only company operating a fully autonomous service at this scale has reinforced a fundamental truth: demonstrably safe AI requires equally resilient inputs. This deep understanding of real-world requirements is why the Waymo Driver utilizes a custom, multi-modal sensing suite where high-resolution cameras, advanced imaging radar, and lidar work as a unified system. Using these…

I've long expected Waymo's approach to prevail simply because - aside from whether vision-only proves good enough to some standard - it will be easy to lobby for regulations that favor the more conservative approach. But I also don't think we can take anything from what Waymo claims about the feasibility of vision-only.

Waymo has posted videos of accidents they've avoided purely because their lidar picked up on a pedestrian before their cameras saw anything.

A favorite of mine: https://x.com/dmitri_dolgov/status/1900219562437861685

Re: Beginning fully autonomous operations with the 6th-generation Waymo driver

#56

Post by jcalvinowens »

ACCount37 wrote: post #35
jcalvinowens wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> humans only use vision to drive I love this argument because it is so obviously wrong: how could any self aware person seriously argue that hearing, touch, and the inner ear aren't involved in their driving? As an adult I can actually afford a reliable car, so I will concede that smell is less relevant than it used to be, at least for me personally :)

Human inner ear is worse than a $3 IMU in your average smartphone in literally every way. And that IMU also has a magnetometer in it. Beating human sensors wasn't hard for over a decade now. The problem is that sensors are worthless. Self-driving lives and dies by AI - all the sensors need to be is "good enough".

> The problem is that sensors are worthless

Well, in TFA the far more successful manufacturer of self driving cars is saying you're wrong. I think they're in much better position to know than you :)

Re: Beginning fully autonomous operations with the 6th-generation Waymo driver

#57

Post by sja »

syntaxing wrote: post #30
garbawarb wrote: post #4

I'm forever baffled that GM gave up on Cruise just as soon as Waymo was proving that autonomous driving is feasible. (Disclaimer: former Cruise employee)

Pushing Dan Ammann out was a bad idea. I personally like the original set up at the time. Kyle as the CTO and Dan as the CEO. Kyle was great as an internal CEO, he was calling most of the internal shots anyway. The accident would have played out very differently if Dan Ammann was the CEO IMO. (Also former Cruise employee)

Was always unclear to me whether DanA was truly pushed out, or if the board (largely comprised of GM execs) wanted to take the company in a different direction than Dan wanted to go, and Dan decided to leave rather than stick around. Ie. IPO vs keep it a majority owned subsidiary.

(Another former employee)

Re: Beginning fully autonomous operations with the 6th-generation Waymo driver

#58

Post by ilaksh »

The ambiguity in the title is going to get a lot of the "skeptics" who have remained in denial about this to assume it's some kind of admission that they haven't been autonomous this whole time.

It's weird how many people there are like that still.

But what they mean is that they are putting the new release into production (without backup drivers). They have been fully autonomous for many years.

Re: Beginning fully autonomous operations with the 6th-generation Waymo driver

#59

Post by AlotOfReading »

sja wrote: post #57
syntaxing wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pushing Dan Ammann out was a bad idea. I personally like the original set up at the time. Kyle as the CTO and Dan as the CEO. Kyle was great as an internal CEO, he was calling most of the internal shots anyway. The accident would have played out very differently if Dan Ammann was the CEO IMO. (Also former Cruise employee)

Was always unclear to me whether DanA was truly pushed out, or if the board (largely comprised of GM execs) wanted to take the company in a different direction than Dan wanted to go, and Dan decided to leave rather than stick around. Ie. IPO vs keep it a majority owned subsidiary. (Another former employee)

I got the impression that it was a conflict with Mary Barra specifically, not so much the board as a whole. They simply went along with her. The tone of the notice was indicative of being pushed out, not a mutual parting of ways.

(Another former).

Re: Beginning fully autonomous operations with the 6th-generation Waymo driver

#60

Post by catigula »

SoftTalker wrote: post #49
xnx wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Truly. I don't understand why Tesla fans think camera/lidar fusion is unsolvable but camera/camera fusion is a non-issue.

I mean, humans have only their eyes. And most of them intentionally distract themselves while driving by listening to music, podcasts, playing with their phones, or eating.

To be fair, humans are fairly poor drivers and generally can't be trusted to drive millions of miles safely.
Post reply on HN