Actually these Uber Volvo self driving cars have been picking up passengers using UberX in San Francisco for weeks. They're easy to spot because they have a huge lidar contraption on the roof and a lot of camera's mounted on the roof, rear vision mirrors, and the rear tailgate of the vehicle. The depot they use is on Harrison and 3rd so you see a lot of them driving around the area just south of Market Street, which has a lot of traffic obstacles, construction, and pedestrians. They go very slow and stop often out of an abundance of caution, much to the consternation of impatient SF drivers behind them.
Uber’s self-driving cars start picking up passengers in San Francisco
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Re: Uber’s self-driving cars start picking up passengers in San Francisco
#62How is this going to combat people who make a mess inside the vehicle after going 100 percent without human drivers/test engineers? If it picks up a drunk person at 3 AM who then throws up inside the car, is it vomit-aware and knows it needs a cleaning before picking up the next passenger?
if(weightOfCarpet > averageWeight && noPersonDetected)
{
//person left something, send sms to previousPassenger ( could be their bag, puke, ...)
}
Re: Uber’s self-driving cars start picking up passengers in San Francisco
#63Actually these Uber Volvo self driving cars have been picking up passengers using UberX in San Francisco for weeks. They're easy to spot because they have a huge lidar contraption on the roof and a lot of camera's mounted on the roof, rear vision mirrors, and the rear tailgate of the vehicle. The depot they use is on Harrison and 3rd so you see a lot of them driving around the area just south of Market Street, which…
If you think self driving cars are cool, wait until two years from now when you're stuck behind them in your morning commute every day, while they drive 15 miles under the speed limit.
Re: Uber’s self-driving cars start picking up passengers in San Francisco
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
Real Soon Now
Not really, If I have an AI good enough to drive safely. There are many other places where I can use them more profitably.
Currently, self-driving AIs are kind of like chess AIs, or the Watson AI that won at Jeopardy: they have some inhuman strengths that mostly compensate for their sub-human understanding of inputs.
So, for example, chess AIs are better chess players than humans because they have longer lookahead, even though they're worse at analyzing a given board. The Watson AI didn't understand questions as well as a human, and had obvious comprehension failures such as the final jeopardy answer, but when its comprehension was good enough, it had a vast database that it could perfectly recall at very high speed, and those more than compensated for its comprehension problems.
Driving AIs are not as good at understanding what's happening around them, but they are constantly attentive in 360 degrees and have fast reactions, which (may, someday, but does not yet) compensates for their imperfect understanding of the world.
This AI is not generalizable to tons of other circumstances in which there is no obvious way to parlay the inhuman strengths of the AI into compensating for their weaknesses. As such, while there may be some other places where a driving-AI-like intelligence could be used profitably, there probably aren't many such places.
Re: Uber’s self-driving cars start picking up passengers in San Francisco
#65As a Canadian, I wonder how anyone in this industry can create an autonomous vehicle that can safely drive during winter?
The biggest problem human drivers have in winter weather is simply driving too fast. Self-driving cars won't get impatient and will presumably never exceed safe speeds for given conditions.
Having lived nearly my whole life in Michigan, I think this grossly oversimplifies the problem. I'm sure my Canadian friends will agree. This assumes there's some clear algorithm for determining a "safe" speed. There's not.
Even in highway driving you can lose traction in an instant if you hit a patch of black ice. Autonomous vehicles will need to be able to recover from a complete loss of traction safely. This isn't trivial - in fact it's probably the most complicated bit of driving I tend to do. Once you are sliding and your steering wheel becomes more of a suggestion than a command, the entire act of driving becomes a process of trying to coax the car off the road using a combination of steering, brakes, and even occasionally gas. I think it's possible for a computer to do this - but you can't avoid all slides just by driving slowly.
Then there's the plethora of other winter fun you run into with a vehicle: getting stuck (happens all the time on city streets) and all the techniques to get unstuck, going too slow and losing your momentum (and thus traction), having every indication you have traction and then discovering you actually don't (it's very easy to be driving at a "safe" speed and still slide through an intersection), white out conditions where you are guessing where the lane is... etc...
To be clear, I believe most of these conditions could eventually be handled by computers. I also believe a lot of people drive too fast in/on snow. However, winter driving is in no way simple. It's a problem domain unto itself, and one I've seen relatively little work being done on.
Re: Uber’s self-driving cars start picking up passengers in San Francisco
#66Actually these Uber Volvo self driving cars have been picking up passengers using UberX in San Francisco for weeks. They're easy to spot because they have a huge lidar contraption on the roof and a lot of camera's mounted on the roof, rear vision mirrors, and the rear tailgate of the vehicle. The depot they use is on Harrison and 3rd so you see a lot of them driving around the area just south of Market Street, which…
If you think self driving cars are cool, wait until two years from now when you're stuck behind them in your morning commute every day, while they drive 15 miles under the speed limit.
15 mph under the speed limit during SF morning commute is ~30 mph faster than today, so that'll be awesome.
Re: Uber’s self-driving cars start picking up passengers in San Francisco
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
Humans do an unbelievably bad job at this, too, like all other tasks behind the wheel. Humans essentially just follow the tracks of the last car, creating ad hoc lanes. Computers can do this just as well.
What happen when you are the first on the road with no tracks to follow from previous cars and suddenly it turns into a blizzard/zero visibility? I am guessing the car can pull over and turn on emergency flasher...I don't know but to me I believe a Human will always have to take over at some point because you never know what mother nature will throw at you, keep in mind I am talking about a future where we aim for 10…
Having lived through many such blizzards, there are two things that humans do:
The smart ones pull over and turn on the emergency flasher. Then they check to make sure they have lots of gas, blankets and water, just as they prepared.
The dumb ones slow down to 45 mph and stare into the white blankness looking for clues about curves.
Re: Uber’s self-driving cars start picking up passengers in San Francisco
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
Interesting. My guess is Uber is just planning on paying the inevitable fines as is their modus operandi. I wonder how much an infraction like this costs? I doubt there's any precedent.
Not sure why you're being downvoted. It's the MO of airbnb, uber and other SV startups. We've seen more than once that making a land grab for a new market brings more long-term success than any penalties dished out for not playing by the rules.
Because there is no reason to guess and make baseless claims, the article already addressed this topic. A permit is not required because a safety operator is on board at all times. Skirting regulations and paying fines has nothing to do with it.
Re: Uber’s self-driving cars start picking up passengers in San Francisco
#69Uber's product is the company's stock. All of their "AI" and "self-driving" stunts so far have been transparent hype fuel that anyone with the slightest domain knowledge knows have no practical significance. Their PR department are, as can be expected, top notch though. I especially like how they put a populist spin on their announcements, like the beer delivery (yay, beer!) and now picking up passengers with their p…
Nah, Uber and Lyft CEOs both said they envision a future where we don't own cars and just call self driving taxi services via app when we need them. They both envision this happening in less than a decade. This seems to be coming true, millennials have the lowest rate of car ownership and it seems to be the best explanation for why both companies are willing to bleed money to expand market-share as quickly a possible in the mobile taxi app game.
Re: Uber’s self-driving cars start picking up passengers in San Francisco
#70Uber's product is the company's stock. All of their "AI" and "self-driving" stunts so far have been transparent hype fuel that anyone with the slightest domain knowledge knows have no practical significance. Their PR department are, as can be expected, top notch though. I especially like how they put a populist spin on their announcements, like the beer delivery (yay, beer!) and now picking up passengers with their p…
[citation needed]
I have a friend working for a major supplier in self-driving vehicle sensor tech who went to Pittsburg to learn from Uber. I imagine they at least did their homework before flying him out there.