The only thing I really learned watching that video is that google decided to call its autonomous vehicle unit 'Waymo'.
While I'm excited, I'd love to know how they actually plan to roll this out!
Waymo: Google's self-driving car company
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Re: Waymo: Google's self-driving car company
#62This is such a minor nitpick, but I'm bothered by it because I see so much performance-shaming coming from some Googlers: The site loads large pictures for all viewport widths (ideally they'd load downscaled images for smaller viewports — it's wasteful to load a large image for small devices) and the image files are PNGs when they should be jpeg or webp (example: http://waymo.com/static/images/journey/streets.png )
That example isn't even compressed, which could drastically reduce its size.
Re: Waymo: Google's self-driving car company
#63I'm interested to see where all the major players end up in 5yrs: • Tesla bootstrapping a ride service on the backs of buyers • Waymo directly rolling their own fleet • Uber trying to get a self-driving fleet up, burning mountains of money to maintain their "monopoly" on Uber for rides • Lyft working with GM to get a fleet up • All of the other car manufacturers trying to get autonomous vehicles going, presumably hop…
Is there a particular reason to think Uber is going to be last to autonomous vehicles? I can see a good argument that they're head of the pack today, between Tesla's not-really-autonomous vehicles and Google's perpetual inability to execute.
This is a fair point. Uber has yet to ship any hardware, and really any software aside from an app that is a couple steps above "Uber for X" that are whipped out in a weekend.
I know they gobbled up a bunch of researchers, but moonshot engineering feats like autonomous driving is not (yet) in their DNA. And their current business model is not profitable and will die the moment they go up against an autonomous service.
They don't need to be last to market to lose, they need to be first in order to survive.
Re: Waymo: Google's self-driving car company
#64On days like today, when there are several inches of snow on the ground and more to come, I always wonder how autonomous vehicles will handle such situations. What happens when snow (or mud, etc) accumulates on the camera or sensors? I don't doubt that a computer can react quicker and with more precision in an "event", but what about when it simply can't "see"? I don't see a steering wheel in these videos, so I guess…
If it can't see, you can't see either.
Re: Waymo: Google's self-driving car company
#65Interesting that this very same day, the US Government is looking into proposals to require vehicle-to-vehicle communication in passenger cars to enhance safety. http://www.wsj.com/articles/regulators-call-on-cars-to-chat-...
Seems a little premature to require this as we don't necessarily know that this would help.
I think we do know it would help. If your car can't physically see the car 1/4 mile ahead, but gets info that it has slammed on its brakes, thats very useful.
If you've ever driven in bumper to bumper traffic on a highway you know how invaluable this info would be, even to a human driver.
Plus info about road conditions (icy spots ahead!), etc..
Re: Waymo: Google's self-driving car company
#66This is such a minor nitpick, but I'm bothered by it because I see so much performance-shaming coming from some Googlers: The site loads large pictures for all viewport widths (ideally they'd load downscaled images for smaller viewports — it's wasteful to load a large image for small devices) and the image files are PNGs when they should be jpeg or webp (example: http://waymo.com/static/images/journey/streets.png )
That example isn't even compressed, which could drastically reduce its size.
The image shouldn't be a png in the first place.
Re: Waymo: Google's self-driving car company
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
Tesla has lane-assist, adaptive cruise control and a few other goodies. Many auto manufacturers have those things. You still have to manually follow GPS directions. Google/Waymo is actually piloting a car from origin to destination without a steering wheel or pedals. That's a much more difficult challenge. Put another way, no blind person is going to sit behind the wheel of a Tesla and tell the car to take him/her to…
> Put another way, no blind person is going to sit behind the wheel of a Tesla and tell the car to take him/her to the supermarket. That's exactly what Tesla is marketing and working on with their new self-driving features, and you can buy cars that will allegedly be capable of this today . "All you will need to do is get in and tell your car where to go. If you don’t say anything, the car will look at your calendar…
I'm looking forward to seeing calendar spam invites bring people to unexpected locations.
Re: Waymo: Google's self-driving car company
#68"The average US city gets 26 inches of snow per year."
http://www.bestplaces.net/climate/city/california/mountain_v...
"Snowfall is 0 inches."
http://www.bestplaces.net/climate/city/arizona/phoenix
"Snowfall is 0 inches."
http://www.bestplaces.net/climate/city/texas/austin
"Snowfall is 1 inches."
http://www.bestplaces.net/climate/city/washington/kirkland
"Snowfall is 4 inches."
I hope they are driving far enough from their home bases to get some snow miles under their belt.
http://www.bestplaces.net/climate/city/massachusetts/boston
"Snowfall is 47 inches."
Re: Waymo: Google's self-driving car company
#69They have a number of blog posts that just launched on Medium: https://medium.com/waymo
Re: Waymo: Google's self-driving car company
#70This is really exciting! I see these cars all over the place in the Bay Area, so it's nice to see that they're at least one step closer in making it into a product and thus bringing it to reality. I wonder about the internationalization of this product, especially if (or when?) it's brought to other countries and regions, such as the Middle East. In some of those countries, women aren't allowed to drive and men drive…
Women aren't allowed to drive in, e.g. Saudi Arabia, because they aren't allowed to be out of their home without a blood relative or husband. That could lead to mingling with the opposite sex or something like that. “What would happen if a woman got in a car accident? Then she would be forced to deal with the male driver of the other car, a stranger, with no oversight." [0] So I don't think self driving cars will sol…
I appreciate the reply, that's pretty sad to hear. Thanks for the links, they're really interesting.