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Waymo: Google's self-driving car company

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Re: Waymo: Google's self-driving car company

#581

Post by IanCal »

serge2k wrote: post #546
mypalmike wrote: post #498

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> those who live in the urban centres Per the 2010 US census, over 80% of the US population lives in urban areas.

uh huh. and just what is the definition of urban area?

It's a definition in the census. I find it somewhat disappointing to see such a dismissive response when the answer is so easy to find.

Here's a link to the definitions of urban and rural: https://www.census.gov/geo/reference/gtc/gtc_urbanrural.html

Here's the 2010 figures for the split between the urban and rural: https://www.census.gov/geo/reference/ua/urban-rural-2010.htm...

Re: Waymo: Google's self-driving car company

#582

Post by jedberg »

rtx wrote: post #568
jedberg wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're more than just prototypes. Their employees are using self-driving cars for their daily lives. If you have a friend who works at Google (well Waymo now) who is using the car, you can get a ride. Also, as a driver on Mt View roads, I have experience self-driving as someone behind and next to the vehicle. They aren't the "robotic" drivers you'd expect, but fit in pretty well. They still show signs of being a rob…

Will they stop when they see a ball fly across the street, because a child may be chasing it. Fringe cases will determine their success. Until then, it will be glorified cruise control.

Do all humans stop when they see a ball? Of course not. Some of them miss it, some of them ignore it, some of them don't make the connection.

The problem is people expect self-driving cars to be perfect on day one. They won't be. But they are already safer than humans driving.

Re: Waymo: Google's self-driving car company

#583

Post by agildehaus »

walrus1066 wrote: post #378
larrik wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure what your point is. Fully autonomous is still in progress, and still has work to do.

That people are talking as if it's just round the corner, that taxi drivers and truckers are about to become obsolete. Whereas I understand the technical challenges are much greater than is stated, it may even be they won't be all overcome.

Tesla is launching Autopilot 2.0 (in stages) starting in January.

It's still NHTSA level 3, not 4 or 5, but it's a major step up from pretty much anything currently available and will be in consumer's hands. Even more so when the Model 3 comes.

I think you'll be surprised how fast this technology will exit the labs. Just that Google has decided to brand around it is a big indicator that they're growing confident.

Re: Waymo: Google's self-driving car company

#584

Post by jasonwatkinspdx »

walrus1066 wrote: post #573
ageofwant wrote: post #554

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea so ? Harping on the 2% issues does not negate the benefit you have the rest of the time: It can swerve in microseconds, you cannot. How many times will your nail removal skills save you or your kids live compared to software that knows that rolling the car to the left have a 87.34 better chance of occupants survival that the head-on collision with the truck that just swerved in 0.4 seconds ago ? Forget it, driver…

My nail removal skill will prevent gridlock on the road. If an auto-car gets confused due to a 2% issue, it becomes a brick, clogging the road. If multiple auto-cars do this in a city, the result is standstill.

You make it sound like people are gonna be strapped into their autonomous vehicle like Hannibal Lector. Seriously, a couple pieces of debris are not some thing where we go "oh crap, we're done, guess the whole city will just sit here all day."

Re: Waymo: Google's self-driving car company

#585

Post by dispose13432 »

ticviking wrote: post #466
bhntr3 wrote: post #462

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My scuba instructor shared this piece of wisdom: "You don't have to swim faster than the shark. You just need to swim faster than your buddy." People get this stuff wrong all the time. Especially when they're drunk, tired or texting. These cars won't be perfect but I think pretty good and conservative under uncertainty will be better than human, drunk and overconfident.

That's a key point here. The cars don't have to be perfectly safe, just safer than the average driver.

It's true, but is it better?

Are there statistics?

It's true that humans do stupid things, but so do robots.

What would be _safer_ is an automated "hit" avoid system (if you're about to hit a wall, warn!!) or long distance driving system (for trucks/buses).

Re: Waymo: Google's self-driving car company

#586

Post by euyyn »

londons_explore wrote: post #426
Fricken wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One can scale up the first 99% of an autonomous driving os pretty fast just using pattern recognition, but the devil is in the edge cases. We haven't heard much from Google because they've been programming and validating all the unglamorous little problems that training data and a neural net can't solve alone. 4 way stops, passing motorcyclists and stuff like that, where old fashioned hand coded features are necessar…

>old fashioned hand coded features are necessary I don't believe your hand coded features will outperform ML trained over a billion miles, even in the long tail rare events. Sure ML is bad at rare events, but hand coded features also map poorly to such rare events, because it's unlikely you'll be able to imagine them all, or even manage to handle categories of rare events well. Furthermore, I believe it would be poss…

> and then refer to a remote human to resolve the issue

Successful remote control is a whole different project, very different from self-driving. In order to give the remote pilot enough situational awareness, you need plenty of streamed imagery (recreated or recorded). And you need a feedback loop with a very small latency. Not saying it couldn't be done, but it won't happen "organically" by cars becoming self-driving.

Re: Waymo: Google's self-driving car company

#587

Post by BurningFrog »

trome wrote: post #465
walrus1066 wrote: post #448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I think you're right. We'd need to update a lot of our infrastructure to make it friendlier for these cars. I should also add: - very fast mobile data, with no blackspots, so a remote driver can take over a car that's confused by a situation - a replacement for GPS, it's not reliable enough, the signal is far too weak - digital signal beacons embedded in lane markings, and edges of the road, and on traffic cones…

Why should local municipalities foot the bill for adding beacons to stop lights, etc? I get trying to make infrastructure friendly towards self driving cars, but the general public should not be footing the bill for someone's life choice to buy such a vehicle.

This is important traffic infrastructure, just like visual traffic lights and asphalt. That said, it can be paid for my many actors.

Re: Waymo: Google's self-driving car company

#589

Post by ghaff »

crazybigdan wrote: post #534
kcanini wrote: post #454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Conversely, if a significant proportion of the cars on the road are autonomous and safer than human-driven cars, then the accident rate for everyone could decline, making insurance cheaper for both autonomous and human-driven cars.

Wouldn't that make insurance cheaper for autonomous cars and more expensive for human-driven cars since humans would be more of a liability behind the wheel?

The comparison isn't between cars with assistive/autonomous systems and those without. It's between cars without those systems some decades hence and those without such systems today. Why should the existence of such systems make driving by humans more expensive than it is today?

Re: Waymo: Google's self-driving car company

#590

Post by stormbrew »

walrus1066 wrote: post #475
thaw13579 wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that it's safe to assume folks at these companies are aware of these issues. But if I'm going to risk my life by using one of these systems, I'd want to have good answers to how they have solved them. Until then, I think it's fair to keep asking to avoid unrealistic hype.

I think safety is fine, especially in cities with not too crazy weather. It's more that if an autonomous car with no human stalls, due to a traffic light that's stopped working, or an oddly shaped plastic bag in the road, it's stuck, and would cause a traffic jam. Not sure how to resolve such a scenario, can't rely on someone remotely taking control, as mobile data doesn't have 100% coverage, so a human who is allowe…

It's not as if human driven cars never get stuck in an intersection. I imagine the solution will be much the same: it will be moved manually if possible or towed if not. If a person is deliberately fucking with traffic by deliberately messing with an autonomous car, they'll also probably be fined.

I mean the other day on my daily commute there were two cars right in the middle of a freeway, one attempting to jump start the other and they were at it for a while. This is not shockingly new ground.

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