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Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco

blog.waymo.com

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Re: Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco

#531

Post by tuatoru »

njarboe wrote: post #398
paganel wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or an ambulance going on the opposite direction (because that’s the only available choice) on a boulevard in a busy capital city like Bucharest. Saw that a couple of hours ago, the ambulance met a taxi which was going the right way but of course that the taxi had to stop and find a way for the ambulance to pass (by partly going on the sidewalk). I said to myself that unless we get to AGI there’s no way for an “autono…

People at Tesla and other autonomous driving companies, of course are aware and worry about such situations. If you have a few hours and want to see many of the technologies and methods that Tesla is using to solve them, check out Tesla's recent "AI day" presentation. Tesla is quite cool about openly discussing the problems they have solved, problems they still have, and how they are trying to solve them. An incomple…

You described a lot of effort, but no results.

Re: Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco

#532

Post by michaelt »

njarboe wrote: post #398
paganel wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or an ambulance going on the opposite direction (because that’s the only available choice) on a boulevard in a busy capital city like Bucharest. Saw that a couple of hours ago, the ambulance met a taxi which was going the right way but of course that the taxi had to stop and find a way for the ambulance to pass (by partly going on the sidewalk). I said to myself that unless we get to AGI there’s no way for an “autono…

People at Tesla and other autonomous driving companies, of course are aware and worry about such situations. If you have a few hours and want to see many of the technologies and methods that Tesla is using to solve them, check out Tesla's recent "AI day" presentation. Tesla is quite cool about openly discussing the problems they have solved, problems they still have, and how they are trying to solve them. An incomple…

> People at Tesla and other autonomous driving companies, of course are aware and worry about such situations.

Yeah, a Tesla couldn't possibly drive into a stationary, clearly visible fire engine or concrete barrier, on a dry day, in direct sunlight.

Re: Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco

#533

Post by tuatoru »

zestyping wrote: post #379
VBprogrammer wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me the solution to that is obvious and far better than the current status quo. The cars are all attached to a network and when an emergency service vehicle needs to get somewhere in a hurry there is a coordinated effort to move vehicles off the required route. As things stand emergency vehicles have to cope with a reasonable minority of people who completely panic and actually impede their progress.

This has to work even if network reception is weak or absent. You can't be certain that 100% of cars will receive the signal and get themselves out of the way in time.

> This has to work even if network reception is weak or absent.

Or hacked maliciously.

Re: Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco

#534

Post by pavon »

thesausageking wrote: post #138
MontyCarloHall wrote: post #59

“All rides in the program will have an autonomous specialist on board for now” This tells me that we’re still a long way from full level 4 (and certainly level 5) autonomy in a busy city like San Francisco. The edge cases requiring immediate human attention are still too frequent for the human safety driver to be remote, as is the case in Phoenix. Also, just a reminder that Waymo in Phoenix is nowhere close to being…

Level 4 is where most of value is. If a system could drive in all cities and highways, that's more than 90% of benefit.

The more I travel, the more I consider myself an SAE level 4 driver :)

Re: Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco

#535

Post by willyt »

smeyer wrote: post #310
willyt wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of roads like that in Britian as well and the speed limit is 60mph/100kph. Not uncommon for two cars on a single track road to adjust speed to pass each other at a passing place without slowing down much, so at a closing speed of over 100mph. Perfectly safe for human drivers who know the roads.

This sounds like the sort of "perfectly safe for human drivers who know the roads" that actually results in a fair number of road deaths.

If you look at the accident maps, there are almost none on single track roads and lots on twin track roads. My hypothesis is that driving on a single track road feels much more risky so people pay more attention and slow down more on blind corners. Also, it’s not possible to overtake and a lot of accidents are related to overtaking.

Re: Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco

#536

Post by TameAntelope »

bobsomers wrote: post #407
TameAntelope wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope, not even close. There's a very specific reason they've picked Chandler, and it's that there's relatively little weather and the roads are fairly simple (among many other things specific to Chandler). The vast majority of the contiguous United States is decidedly not "on the table" as of now. "The contiguous United States" is still a decade (or more) away. It may literally never happen.

> The vast majority of the contiguous United States is decidedly not "on the table" as of now. So the vast majority of the US has either significantly worse weather than SF, or a significantly harder ODD than SF? Could you elaborate on that?

No sorry, the vast majority of the US has significantly worse weather and/or more complex traffic than Chandler, AZ.

I didn't make any statements about SF traffic or weather.

Re: Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco

#537

Post by mavhc »

akira2501 wrote: post #388
snarf21 wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed 100%. There will be special exit/on ramps built along highways and the trucks will largely just stay in their lane even if slower. It would cut the number of truckers needed by probably 50+%.

For depot to depot runs, sure. Most runs aren't that though, and require direct delivery from manufacturer to purchaser. Plenty of deliveries, for example in Chicago, basically happen off a residential street. Alley docking and turning around in these environments is challenging even for a human. Add to all this one thing and we're further than I think most people realize: Weather. Show me an FSD doing better than a…

From 2018 https://www.engadget.com/2018-05-08-waymo-snow-navigation.ht...

Re: Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco

#538

Post by polynox »

nradov wrote: post #281
arsome wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I've seen of Tesla's solution at least - even busy city centers and complex parking lots are very difficulty for present day autonomous driving technologies. The understanding level necessary just isn't there. These things are excellent - undeniably better than humans at the boring stuff, highway driving, even major roads. They can rightfully claim massive mileage with high safety levels in those circumstan…

Would you describe Tesla's tendency to crash full speed into stopped emergency vehicles during highway driving as "excellent"? https://www.cnn.com/2021/08/16/business/tesla-autopilot-fede...

The failure modes are going to be very strange and the technology is not strictly comparable to a human driver. It is going to fail in ways that a human never would. Not recognizing obstacles, misrecognizing things, sensors being obscured in a way humans would recognize and fix (you would never drive if you couldn't see out of your eyes!).

It is also possible that if it develops enough it will succeed in ways that a human cannot, such as extremely long monotonous cross-country driving (think 8 hour highway driving) punctuated by a sudden need to intervene within seconds or even milliseconds. Humans are not good at this but technology is. Autonomous cars don't get tired or fatigued. Code doesn't get angry or make otherwise arbitrary and capricious decisions. Autonomous cars can react in milliseconds, whereas humans are much worse.

There will undoubtedly be more accidents if the technology is allowed to develop (and I take no position on this).

Re: Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco

#539

Post by mavhc »

zeusk wrote: post #526
mavhc wrote: post #523

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's autopilot, not FSD beta though, at this point it's probably 10 generations old

Ah yes, because "autopilot" is not autonomous.

Well yeah, it's like other autopilots:

An autopilot is a system used to control the path of an aircraft, marine craft or spacecraft without requiring constant manual control by a human operator. Autopilots do not replace human operators. Instead, the autopilot assists the operator's control of the vehicle, allowing the operator to focus on broader aspects of operations (for example, monitoring the trajectory, weather and on-board systems).

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