Waymo: Google's self-driving car company • Hacker News Board

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

#691

Post by ktta » Wed, Dec 14, 2016, 5:00 AM UTC

nojvek wrote: post #678

Its great that waymo has its own brand now. I really wish udacity's open self driving car takes off as well. I predict there will be a linux of self driving car software/hardware kit that will be battle tested, reliable, secure and solid with contributions and test cases from all around the world. I also really think someone should invent a solution to convert existing modern cars with brake, gas and steering from CA…

Wow, you just described everything that commaai[1] did (or tried to do).

They tried the kit that can be self installed[2] but decided not to continue[3]

They also have a dataset that can be downloaded by anyone[4]

And they have open sourced the software on their github, [1]: http://comma.ai/ [2]: https://techcrunch.com/2016/09/13/comma-ai-will-ship-a-999-a... [3]: http://www.theverge.com/2016/10/28/13453344/comma-ai-self-dr... [4]: http://research.comma.ai/

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

#692

Post by RRL » Wed, Dec 14, 2016, 5:01 AM UTC

linkregister wrote: post #418

slackstation wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an N of one but, I use either Uber or Lyft to and from work every day. People get used to it. I find it far more pleasant than a crowded and dirty bus or train. Even when the car is small and full, the car usually smells better, is cleaner and oddly feels like there are more defined boundaries than a bus or train seat when crowded. Everyone has their own door as well so there isn't as much jostling past and t…

If everyone took a Lyft or Uber or Grab to work, then the congestion would be unbearable. San Francisco's BART takes about 400,000 would-be passengers off the road daily. Mass transit remains the most viable method of transporting people over dense, multi-mile terrain. The last mile and "normal" metros like Memphis, Baltimore, or Cleveland, where it is not dense enough to justify a comprehensive subway/light rail sys…

Look at it this way,

There is at least one lane on either side of the road at full capacity. Always bumper to bumper. But, the cars do not move save 2% of the time when their operators remove them from the traffic jam, I mean parking spot. There are 275,450 streetside parking spots in San Francisco city limits. Assuming a pooling of some drivers, and an increased utility of roads due to size & traffic flow then we can look forward to a net decrease of cars on roads and a net increase of available land for expanded sidewalks and bike paths.

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

#693

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Dec 14, 2016, 5:12 AM UTC

Ph0X wrote: post #649

rory096 wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They released a video a month later (3 weeks ago) with a much more challenging route: https://www.tesla.com/videos/autopilot-self-driving-hardware...

Again, not to take away by the amazing feat Tesla has achieved, but Google has had similar videos going back 2-3 years, and they are still not ready to release. So either the problem in practice is much harder than a simple video can show, or something else is up. Though, I think the real issue is that google wants to go straight for L5 (meaning 100% automated, and you can remove the steering wheel). As compared to a…

[deleted]

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

#694

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Dec 14, 2016, 5:15 AM UTC

NolF wrote: post #245

pg314 wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Tesla executes perfectly they might stand a chance. They don't have much margin of error though. One lost lawsuit because of an accident caused by a bug in their software, and they are out of business...

I find that notion very frustrating. 30,000 people die on the road in the US every year and no one seems to bat an eye, a self driving vehicle has one and it's the end of the world. The expectations seems rather unrealistic and the media seems to love creating a controversy.

[deleted]

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

#695

Post by notatoad » Wed, Dec 14, 2016, 5:43 AM UTC

thaw13579 wrote: post #436

notatoad wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you really think the companies building autonomous cars haven't thought about all these things? They may not have solved them yet (If they had, we've probably see their products on the road) but I'm sure it's in progress.

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.

But nobody's asking you to use any of these systems yet. they're in development, not products for sale. There's no benefit to anybody in questioning whether google knows that snow exists, or if uber understands that traffic stops unexpectedly sometimes. Obviously everybody involved in developing self-driving cars understands the most basic definition of the problem.

If google actually starts selling a self-driving car and doesn't give any information about whether it can deal with a policeman-controlled intersection, then you can be concerned. Until then, implying their self-driving car programs haven't considered the basic problems that any uninformed commenter on the internet can think up is not incredibly helpful.

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

#696

Post by industriousthou » Wed, Dec 14, 2016, 5:58 AM UTC

ageofwant wrote: post #610

marssaxman wrote: post #594

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That may well be the case, but it does not follow that a 98%-complete self-driving car would actually be a viable product. It's not good enough that the robot can beat a human in a head-to-head skills test; the robot also has to be as versatile as a human, across an unpredictably wide range of circumstances. That's hard.

If a autonomous car can pass a standard driving test it should be allowed to drive. They always do, every time.

I agree that autonomous cars are happening, but there are a ton of assumptions about human capabilities embedded in a standard driving test. It's not nearly rigorous enough greenlighting autonomous vehicles.

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

#697

Post by EdHominem » Wed, Dec 14, 2016, 6:03 AM UTC

kbenson wrote: post #264

nerfhammer wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why wouldn't Toyota just launch Toyotas On Demand? If the cost of the car and fuel are the only significant costs, Toyota could probably do it more cheaply than Uber. Uber's network effect is its driver network. It will find it a lot harder to compete if you no longer need drivers, when it has to compete with real car companies that could be able to undercut them on cost.

> Toyota could probably do it more cheaply than Uber. I agree. The fact that autonomous cars will likely reduce ownership will put a squeeze on car companies, and it might make sense for them to branch into service areas, as they can get the cars at cost. I guarantee that for 10,000 Camrys purchased by Uber and 10,000 Camrys built and shuffled to a ride service division by Toyota, Toyota's ride-sharing division will…

It isn't efficient for Toyota to fully stock every city in the world for peak demand, and yet that's what they'd have to do to compete with the surging multi-manufacturer fleet of Uber.

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

#698

Post by kbenson » Wed, Dec 14, 2016, 6:07 AM UTC

crazy2be wrote: post #677

kbenson wrote: post #624

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually wonder about this. Is it a matter of most cars being mostly empty, or is it inherently impossible to match the mass transit capacity. If we look at it as passengers carried over space required and time spent, here's how I see it: Rail mass transit does not as efficiently use the land it's on a occupancy basis (there's not always a train on a specific square foot of track). In peak times, cars are more effi…

Of course, you could have a separate pull-out track for train stations, and interleave the trains. Then you would be able to double your utilization :). I can't really think of any reason why one technology is inherently higher-capacity than the other, it's mostly that private cars are very inefficient, not rubber tyres.

Sure. I just wanted to run the numbers to see how it actually broke down currently, and what we could theoretically aim for. Light rail systems are useful in that they are efficient, and can readily move large amounts of people currently. Unfortunately their delivery characteristics are very rigid, and they have a very large up-front cost.

An autonomous car system that supports easy ride sharing, and semi-public transportation through something like uber for busses can fulfill much of the same need, but without quite the expected density, but with the ability to deliver to just about any location.

Both would benefit from a last-mile service . Sort of like arteries and capillaries in the circulatory system.

Actually, you know what would be really cool with this? Autonomous bikes[1]. Not that you need them to drive you, but that you can rent a bike and have it show up for you, or rent it at the bus depot/train station, and have it return after you've reached your destination.

1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSZPNwZex9s

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

#699

Post by kyrra » Wed, Dec 14, 2016, 6:08 AM UTC

aetherson wrote: post #384

robszumski wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With a huge fleet of self-driving cars, there would be enough capacity to have permanently configured cars for child seats, bike racks, dog areas, etc. eg. "I need a 4wd vehicle for 2 adults and 2 bikes to take me to X park at 10am tomorrow."

Not without seriously increasing the costs for car rental. The cost savings for car rental are predicated on increased utilization. Increased utilization is predicated on each car having more people using it on any given day. And these things don't scale infinitely -- each car can only serve a particular locality. The number of variations that you propose is a fast geometric progression. Kids 0-12 months or so need d…

Convertible car seats can handle kids from 5 pounds to 65 pounds (like the Britax Marathon). That handles from newborn to 5+ years old.

You don't need drastically different car seat.

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

#700

Post by industriousthou » Wed, Dec 14, 2016, 6:08 AM UTC

marssaxman wrote: post #457

criley2 wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>These cars are overhyped Not really, they're correctly hyped. The concept is revolutionary. > They've been just around the corner for the last 10 year B-S. Holy revisionism BS!! We were NOT talking about self-driving cars in 2006! There was no company seriously designing fully autonomous cars in 2006! It was fully in the realm of science fiction, no investment, no major players, nothing. And you make it sound like i…

We absolutely were talking about self-driving cars in 2006, when no less a "major player" than the US Government had already been investing in this "science fiction" idea for two years, in the form of the DARPA Grand Challenge races. The 2007 race even required compliance with traffic laws in order to win. Google's autonomous vehicle program is a direct result of this project - that's why they hired Sebastian Thrun,…

Wasn't there a breakthrough year with DARPA challenge? It seemed like for a while the results seemed to indicate that autonomous vehicles were basically impossible, then suddenly a few vehicles just killed it one year. I could be wrong, but seems like that threshold may have been less than ten years ago.